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Current Research

 

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CHILD PROTECTION: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS

Our current research is directed at the systems that are responsible for protecting children.  The agencies include child protective services, law enforcement, office of district attorney, attorneys ad litem, and CASA.  We are interested in developing AI technology to ascertain the conditions under which an agency successfully protects a child or fails to do so.

We view child abuse as one of the core problems in American society today.  It is the entry process to crime, drug addiction and mental illness.

 

BEHAVIORAL RESPONSES TO NATURAL WARNING SIGNS OF A TSUNAMI: THE DECEMBER 26, 2004 EARTHQUAKES AND RESULTING TSUNAMIS

 

I am co-principle investigator along with Bruce Houghton, Distinguish Professor of Geophysics at the University of Hawaii, on a NSF grant designed to study Thai tsunami victims of the Dec 24, 2004 North Borneo earthquake and tsunami.

 

We are both working pro bono on this grant because of the importance of the issues:  Costal communities close to the epicenter of an earthquake that generates a tsunami cannot be helped by engineered warning systems.  Tsunami waves move at about 500 miles/hr and will arrive at nearby coastal habitats in minutes.  Residents of those communities must be trained to recognize the natural signs of an imminent seismic wave and take protective measures on their own behalf.

 

The major purpose of the research we are conducting is to study the perceptual psychology and interpretation of local signs of an impending tsunami so that appropriate and effective training can be conducted.  The methodology consists of a questionnaire administered to victims in their native dialects.

 

We constructed a tsunami questionnaire in English, which was translated by a native speaker of Thai.  She also supervised the Thai college students who conducted the interviews in the various Thai dialects.  The field team collected 666 questionnaires and we are now interviewing a translator(s) for the Thai to English translations.   8/28/2005