Combating nuclear smuggling? Exploring drivers and challenges to detecting nuclear and radiological materials at maritime facilities

International concern over nuclear terrorism has grown during the past few decades. This has driven a broad spectrum of efforts to strengthen nuclear security globally, including the widespread adoption of radiation-detection technology for border monitoring. Detection systems are now deployed at strategic locations for the purported purpose of detecting and deterring the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials. However, despite considerable investment in this area, few studies have examined how these programs are implemented or the operational challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. This article seeks to address this with a focus on radiation-detection efforts at maritime facilities. Utilizing practitioner interviews and a survey, this article identifies the factors that influence the planning and use of these systems in this fast-moving environment. The results clearly demonstrate that the implementation of these systems varies significantly across different national and organizational contexts, resulting in a fragmented global nuclear-detection architecture, which arguably undermines efforts to detect trafficked nuclear-threat materials. Greater consideration should therefore be given to developing international standards and guidance, designing and adopting tools to support key parts of the alarm assessment process, and broader sharing of good practice.     

The Organization of the Defense Support System: An Economic Geography Perspective

In the context of restricted budgetary resources and the growing cost of maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) activities, a major issue for modern armed forces is to sustain defense platforms. A possible method consists of realizing economies of scale through the concentration of maintenance activities, which involves the spatial reorganization of existing industrial sites dedicated to MRO. This article provides a formalized framework to discuss the optimal organization for the MRO of defense platforms in space. The public planner organizes the maintenance of defense platforms with only two possible spatial configurations. In the dispersed configuration, two industrial production units in charge of the maintenance optimally cover space, whereas in the concentrated configuration, a unique industrial unit covers space. Focusing on the tipping point between the two configurations, the balance of forces between agglomeration and dispersion in defense support activities is described and discussed. On the one hand, economies of scale provide an opportunity to optimize defense support costs, favoring concentration in a unique industrial unit. On the other hand, space causes dispersion to reduce both transport costs and operational social costs. This trade-off illustrates a general principle in spatial economics with an application to MRO production in the French case.     

Geopolitical Risks and Movements in Islamic Bond and Equity Markets: A Note

This study applies a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test to examine the causal effect of geopolitical risks on return and volatility dynamics of Islamic equity and bond markets. Geopolitical risks are generally found to impact Islamic equity market volatility measures, rather than returns. However, geopolitical risks tend to predict both returns and volatility measures of Islamic bonds. Interestingly, causality, when it exists for returns and/or volatility of Islamic equities and bonds, is found to hold over entire conditional distributions of returns and volatilities, barring the extreme ends of the same.     

Humanitarians at sea: Selective emulation across migrant rescue NGOs in the Mediterranean sea

Between 2014 and 2017, no less than 10 different non-governmental organizations (NGOs) conducted maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) operations off the coast of Libya. By rescuing over 100,000 migrants in three years, these NGOs became the largest provider of SAR in the Mediterranean. The theory of institutionalism suggests that organizations conducting similar activities are likely to converge in a process of mimetic isomorphism, deliberately imitating one another to increase their effectiveness and cope with uncertainty. These 10 SAR NGOs, however, developed two different rescue models: While some rescued migrants and disembarked them in Italian ports, others only simply assisted those in distress until the arrival of another ship transporting them to land. They also cooperated with Italian and European authorities to different degrees. Why did SAR NGOs imitated many elements of existing non-governmental rescue models, but discarded some others? This article argues that differences in material capabilities and organizational role conceptions are crucial to explain why newer SAR NGOs have imitated most but not all of their predecessors’ policies, engaging in a process of “selective emulation.”     

On gamma estimation via matrix kriging

In financial engineering, sensitivities of derivative prices (also known as the Greeks) are important quantities in risk management, and stochastic gradient estimation methods are used to estimate them given the market parameters. In practice, the surface (function) of the Greeks with respect to the underlying parameters is much more desired, because it can be used in real‐time risk management. In this paper, we consider derivatives with multiple underlying assets, and propose three stochastic kriging‐based methods, the element‐by‐element, the importance mapping, and the Cholesky decomposition, to fit the surface of the gamma matrix that can fulfill the time constraint and the precision requirement in real‐time risk management. Numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

新体制导航信号下I/Q幅相不一致对接收机测距零值的影响分析

随着现代化导航信号带宽的增大,由于可以大幅降低采样率,复信号采样的优势日趋明显。由于存在I/Q幅相误差,复信号采样对导航接收机伪距测量造成了一定影响。改进了信道非理想与I/Q幅相误差共同影响BPSK/QPSK信号零值测量的分析模型;在该模型基础上,推导得到了任意I/Q误差和信道非理想特性影响BOC信号伪距零值的模型;探讨了二者在频域抗干扰应用场景下引起的零值变化;理论分析与软件接收机仿真结果高度吻合,误差在1.5×10^-4码片内,证明了分析模型的精确性。该分析方法可用于对高性能导航接收机信道特性进行事先约束及筛选,以确保干扰场景下的零值变化满足要求。     

平流层飞艇抗风场干扰CUKF算法设计与应用

为了提高风场干扰环境下飞艇的导航精度,研究飞艇抗风场干扰导航算法。在建立风场干扰条件下飞艇速度误差约束模型的基础上,设计抗风场干扰的约束Unscented卡尔曼滤波算法。首先确定风场干扰条件下飞艇的速度误差约束量,将该约束与Unscented卡尔曼滤波算法相结合,对速度误差进行估计和补偿,以减小风场对飞艇定位精度的影响;然后证明该算法的状态估计量不仅是无偏的,而且协方差小于标准UKF的协方差;最后将提出的算法应用于捷联惯导/天文/合成孔径雷达组合导航系统中进行仿真验证,并与自适应扩展卡尔曼滤波和抗差自适应UKF算法进行比较,结果表明：提出的约束UKF算法的滤波性能明显优于自适应EKF和抗差自适应UKF算法,能够有效抑制风场对飞艇定位精度的影响,提高飞艇的导航定位精度。     

驱护舰编队对海攻击火力运用

针对驱护舰武器装备的发展,结合现代海上进攻战斗的新特点,对驱护舰编队对海攻击时的阶段划分、火力运用等问题进行了分析,提出了驱护舰编队对海攻击火力分配的原则和火力运用方式,并就确保编队的火力运用提出了引导保障、电磁保障应遵循的战术原则,对部队作战与训练具有一定的参考应用价值。     

一种基于博弈论的无线网状网络路由与信道分配联合优化算法

无线网络中的路由与信道分配可极大地影响网络的性能.为了解决无线网状网络中的路由与信道分配问题,提出并研究了一种称为CRAG(基于博弈论的无线网状网络路由与信道分配联合优化)的方法.CRAG采用协同博弈的方式将网络中的每个节点模型化为一个弈者,每个弈者的策略为与其相关的路由与信道分配方案,收益函数为给定流量需求矩阵下的成功传输流量.弈者通过协同博弈来优化收益函数以最大化网络的吞吐量.基于NS3的仿真结果表明,CRAG在收敛性、时延、丢包率和吞吐量方面优于其他当前的算法,从而证明了协同博弈的方法可以用于无线网状网络的路由与信道分配联合优化,并有效地改进网络性能.     

弹炮结合武器系统作战仿真模型

建立了一个弹炮结合武器系统作战仿真模型 ,该模型可为弹炮结合武器系统的作战原则确定、系统配置和组成、系统设备技术要求 ,以及系统作战能力等方面问题提供仿真数据结果 ,为系统研究提供参考。