University of Portsmouth

About: University of Portsmouth is a education organization based out in Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Galaxy. The organization has 5452 authors who have published 14256 publications receiving 424346 citations. The organization is also known as: Portsmouth and Gosport School of Science and Art & Portsmouth and Gosport School of Science and the Arts.

The Cognitive Interview: A meta-analytic review and study space analysis of the past 25 years.

Abstract: The Cognitive Interview (CI) is a well-established protocol for interviewing wit- nesses The current article presents a study space analysis of laboratory studies of the CI together with an empirical meta-analysis summarizing the past 25 years of research The study space comprises 57 published articles (65 experiments) on the CI, providing an assessment of the boundary conditions underlying the analysis and application of this interview protocol The current meta-analysis includes 46 pub- lished articles, including 20 articles published since the last meta-analysis conducted a decade earlier (Kohnken, Milne, Memon, & Bull, 1999) Reassuringly for prac- titioners, the findings of the original meta-analysis were replicated with a large and significant increase in correct details and a small increase in errors In addition we found that there were no differences in the rate at which details are confabulated Importantly, the effect sizes were unaffected by the inclusion of recent studies using modified versions of the CI The CI appeared to benefit older adult witnesses even more than younger adults We highlight trends and gaps in research and discuss how our findings can inform policy and training decisions The Cognitive Interview (or CI) is perhaps one of the most successful developments in psychology and law research in the last 25 years It is a method that comprises a series of memory retrieval and communication techniques designed to increase the amount of information that can be obtained from an interviewee The CI was initially developed 25 years ago by psychologists Ed Geiselman and Ron Fisher as a response to the many requests they received from police officers and legal professionals for a method of improving witness inter- views It is based upon established psychological principles of remembering and retrieval of information from memory, and empirical laboratory research on the CI has documented its ability to dramatically improve the number of correct details while only slightly increasing the number of incorrect details (Schrieber & Fisher, 2006; Kohnken et al, 1999; Memon, 2006) Field tests of the CI have also indicated that police officers trained in its techniques gain more information and

Neowise observations of near-earth objects: preliminary results

Abstract: With the NEOWISE portion of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) project, we have carried out a highly uniform survey of the near-Earth object (NEO) population at thermal infrared wavelengths ranging from 3 to 22 μm, allowing us to refine estimates of their numbers, sizes, and albedos. The NEOWISE survey detected NEOs the same way whether they were previously known or not, subject to the availability of ground-based follow-up observations, resulting in the discovery of more than 130 new NEOs. The survey's uniform sensitivity, observing cadence, and image quality have permitted extrapolation of the 428 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) detected by NEOWISE during the fully cryogenic portion of the WISE mission to the larger population. We find that there are 981 ± 19 NEAs larger than 1 km and 20,500 ± 3000 NEAs larger than 100 m. We show that the Spaceguard goal of detecting 90% of all 1 km NEAs has been met, and that the cumulative size distribution is best represented by a broken power law with a slope of 1.32 ± 0.14 below 1.5 km. This power-law slope produces ~13,200 ± 1900 NEAs with D > 140 m. Although previous studies predict another break in the cumulative size distribution below D ~ 50-100 m, resulting in an increase in the number of NEOs in this size range and smaller, we did not detect enough objects to comment on this increase. The overall number for the NEA population between 100 and 1000 m is lower than previous estimates. The numbers of near-Earth comets and potentially hazardous NEOs will be the subject of future work.

Illuminating Gravitational Waves: A Concordant Picture of Photons from a Neutron Star Merger

Abstract: Merging neutron stars offer an exquisite laboratory for simultaneously studying strong-field gravity and matter in extreme environments. We establish the physical association of an electromagnetic counterpart EM170817 to gravitational waves (GW170817) detected from merging neutron stars. By synthesizing a panchromatic dataset, we demonstrate that merging neutron stars are a long-sought production site forging heavy elements by r-process nucleosynthesis. The weak gamma-rays seen in EM170817 are dissimilar to classical short gamma-ray bursts with ultra-relativistic jets. Instead, we suggest that breakout of a wide-angle, mildly-relativistic cocoon engulfing the jet elegantly explains the low-luminosity gamma-rays, the high-luminosity ultraviolet-optical-infrared and the delayed radio/X-ray emission. We posit that all merging neutron stars may lead to a wide-angle cocoon breakout; sometimes accompanied by a successful jet and sometimes a choked jet.