Industry application of behavioral science

One of the more significant errors in the history of science occurred during the “marginal revolution” in economics near the end of the nineteenth century. Rather than explicitly recognize in basic theory that the happiness we seek to maximize in life originates within oneself, the early theorists formulated their equations as though human satisfaction resided in external things-as in so much utility (economist's term for satisfaction) per pound of sugar. Over the past 125 years, economists have developed mainstream mathematical economics on this incorrect basis resulting in the ill-founded neoclassical Equilibrium Theory. Because of this error economic theory is fundamentally timeless. The present theory, in its canonical form, corrects the early marginalist's error by identifying utility (time-integrated pleasure) exclusively with the stream-of-consciousness attending (expected) mental and physical activity. Time is now explicit in basic theory, thereby allowing, for the first time, the substantive computer-modeling of time-dependent, small- and large-scale economic systems. Furthermore, this new approach is methodologically compatible with mainstream sociology and institutional economics, allowing increased interdisciplinary cooperation that may influence policy and thereby affect industry and markets. And safety engineering stands to benefit from the accommodation of neuropsychology in understanding human error in the supervision and control of technology     

Behavioral science: a progress report

A prominent neuroscientist A. Damasio has observed that “More may have been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s... than during the entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience” (1999). This progress, which should continue at an exponentially increasing pace as we move into the 21^st century, sets the stage for another revolution-in the scientific formulation of intentional behavior. Just as applied sciences such as fluid mechanics and solid-state electronics benefited from breakthroughs in physics, so it may be expected that social psychology and economics, for example, will similarly benefit from our expanding knowledge of psychosomatic and psychological function. Economics, however, with its basic concepts dating from the nineteenth century, must endure an extensive renewal. Toward this end, a new mathematical theory of behavior was formulated in the early 1990s based on the contributions of prominent psychologists and economists over the past two centuries. Presentation of the new approach at international conferences continued in 2000 with attention moving beyond the fundamentals into macroeconomic concerns including business cycles, productivity, and unemployment     

Radar target identification of aircraft using polarization-diversefeatures

The characteristics and target identification potential of a representation of the information from two polarization-diverse measurements of the radar backscatter of an unknown target are considered. The locus of these two polarization-diverse waveforms, termed the transient polarization response (TPR), has been shown to be closely related to the geometry of the scattering centers of the target. The polarization-related components of features derived from the TPR concur well with the shape and orientation of the major scattering centers distributed in the downrange profile of the object. This illustrates the intuitively appealing result that the polarization of the backscatter, as represented by the TPR and mapped onto the modified polarization chart, is determined by target geometry. It is shown that both polarization-related and amplitude-related features derived from the TPR are useful for target identification. By using distance measures that depend on various components, the elliptical parametrization information alone is sufficient to allow satisfactory target identification at SNRs of 0 dB and above. The significance of this result is that the absolute amplitudes of the received horizontally polarized and vertically polarized channels need not be known. However, if amplitude information is known, target identification percentages improve     

Modeling and performance of HF/OTH radar target classificationsystems

The effects of a class of multipath propagation channels on the performance of a over-the-horizon (OTH) radar target classification system are considered. A Rician frequency-selective fading channel model is employed to characterize the effects of the multipath propagation medium and evaluate the performance of radar target classification systems. The performance of classification algorithms that employ relative amplitude, relative phase, and absolute amplitude measurements as features is investigated. Performance estimates of the various classification algorithms for interesting sets of channel parameters are obtained by means of Monte-Carlo simulations