Advanced structures technology applied to a supersonic cruise arrow-wing configuration

The application of advanced technology to a promising aerodynamic configuration was explored to investigate the improved payload range characteristics over the configuration postulated during the National SST Program. The results of an analytical study performed to determine the best structural approach for design of a Mach number 2.7 arrow-wing supersonic cruise aircraft are highlighted. The data conducted under the auspices of the Structures Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Langley Research Center, established firm technical bases from which further trend studies were conducted to quantitatively assess the benefits and feasibility of using advanced structures technology to arrive at a viable advanced supersonic cruise aircraft

Numerical aerodynamic simulation facility preliminary study: Executive study

A computing system was designed with the capability of providing an effective throughput of one billion floating point operations per second for three dimensional Navier-Stokes codes. The methodology used in defining the baseline design, and the major elements of the numerical aerodynamic simulation facility are described

Evaluation of advanced lift concepts and fuel conservative short-haul aircraft, volume 1

The performance and economics of a twin-engine augmentor wing airplane were evaluated in two phases. Design aspects of the over-the-wing/internally blown flap hybrid, augmentor wing, and mechanical flap aircraft were investigated for 910 m. field length with parametric extension to other field lengths. Fuel savings achievable by application of advanced lift concepts to short-haul aircraft were evaluated and the effect of different field lengths, cruise requirements, and noise levels on fuel consumption and airplane economics at higher fuel prices were determined. Conclusions and recommendations are presented

A comparison of schematic and taxonomic iPad® AAC systems for teaching multistep navigational AAC requests to children with ASD

textThe variety of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) applications available on devices such as the Apple iPad®, necessitates research comparing different application components. AAC applications can include a variety of display formats such as: visual scene displays (VSDs; with vocabulary embedded into images of a scene or context), grid displays (with rows and columns of symbol buttons representing vocabulary), and hybrid formats (combining elements of VSDs and grids). To navigate through multiple pages of vocabulary, VSDs and hybrids are often organized schematically (i.e., by context or location) and grids are commonly organized taxonomically (i.e., by category). This study compared how four young children (ages 4 to 8) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) acquired two-step navigational requesting with an iPad® AAC application using a schematic VSD, or hybrid pop-up grid, and a taxonomic grid. Using a multielement design, acquisition was compared across two settings (e.g., living room, kitchen), and three categories of preferred items (e.g., drinks, food, toys). Intervention involved behaviorally-based strategies (e.g., time delay, least-to-most prompting). During intervention, three participants mastered the schematic systems (VSD or hybrid), but did not master the taxonomic grid. Two of these participants also generalized requesting with schematic systems to an untrained location with a new preferred item, and maintained responding across all three settings. A fourth participant mastered both a schematic VSD and a taxonomic grid during training. During generalization, she rapidly acquired requesting in the new environment with the schematic VSD, but did not meet mastery criterion with the taxonomic grid. Across participants, the most common error with schematic systems was selecting the wrong scene (i.e., selecting an image of a location that did not match the location of the given session). In contrast, all participants showed a greater variety of error types with the taxonomic grid (including selecting the wrong category symbol, pressing the screen multiple times, trying to activate the screen with the wrong motion, and selecting the wrong item symbol). Differences in the types of errors observed suggest possible advantages and disadvantages with each system. Results have important implications for the development of AAC assessment and implementation protocols.Special Educatio

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace vehicle Design (IPAD). Volume 3: Support of the design process

The user requirements for computer support of the IPAD design process are identified. The user-system interface, language, equipment, and computational requirements are considered

New trends on digitisation of complex engineering drawings

Engineering drawings are commonly used across different industries such as oil and gas, mechanical engineering and others. Digitising these drawings is becoming increasingly important. This is mainly due to the legacy of drawings and documents that may provide rich source of information for industries. Analysing these drawings often requires applying a set of digital image processing methods to detect and classify symbols and other components. Despite the recent significant advances in image processing, and in particular in deep neural networks, automatic analysis and processing of these engineering drawings is still far from being complete. This paper presents a general framework for complex engineering drawing digitisation. A thorough and critical review of relevant literature, methods and algorithms in machine learning and machine vision is presented. Real-life industrial scenario on how to contextualise the digitised information from specific type of these drawings, namely piping and instrumentation diagrams, is discussed in details. A discussion of how new trends on machine vision such as deep learning could be applied to this domain is presented with conclusions and suggestions for future research directions

Developing Innovative Business Models in Social Ventures

Social ventures represent a new type of organization that aim to create sustainable social value, such as promoting the well-being of communities and their existence is based on developing solutions to tackle complex social problems. Developing a suitable business model for a social venture is crucial because the right model with a sustainable value offering in its core can support the venture and direct it toward self-sustainability and competitiveness. Research on social venture business models has been so far limited and particularly innovation in business models needs more inquiry. Through an in-depth case study, we aim to extend the understanding how business models of social ventures can meet these goals and how the business model elements interact with each other. The study findings indicate that opportunity recognition which is followed by innovative resource mobilization and integration can turn into a well-functioning business-model that serves the desired ends, creating social value and help to achieve self-sustainability. Furthermore, establishing the right interconnections between the business model elements was found to support the development of an efficient social venture business model.Przedsięwzięcia społeczne reprezentują nowy typ organizacji, których celem jest stworzenie trwałej wartości społecznej, takiej jak promowanie dobrobytu społeczności, a ich istnienie opiera się na tworzeniu rozwiązań do radzenia sobie ze złożonymi problemami społecznymi. Opracowanie odpowiedniego modelu biznesowego przedsięwzięcia społecznego jest kluczowe, ponieważ odpowiedni model o zrównoważonej ofercie wartości może wspierać przedsięwzięcie i skierować je w kierunku samowystarczalności i konkurencyjności. Badania na modelach przedsięwzięć społecznych jak dotąd są ograniczone, tak więc w szczególności innowacje w modelach biznesowych wymagają większego zainteresowania. Poprzez pogłębione badanie przypadku staramy się rozszerzyć wiedzę, jak modele biznesowe przedsięwzięć społecznych mogą osiągnąć swój cel, oraz w jaki sposób elementy modelu biznesowego współdziałają ze sobą. Wyniki badania wskazują, że rozpoznanie możliwości, po których następuje mobilizacja i integracja innowacyjnych zasobów, może przekształcić się w dobrze funkcjonujący biznes-model, który służy do pożądanych celów, tworzenia wartości społecznej i przyczynić się do osiągnięcia samowystarczalności. Ponadto, ustalenia właściwych wzajemnych powiązań pomiędzy elementami modelu biznesowego okazały się wspierać rozwój efektywnego modelu biznesowego przedsięwzięcia społecznego

Conceptual design study for a teleoperator visual system, phase 2

An analysis of the concept for the hybrid stereo-monoscopic television visual system is reported. The visual concept is described along with the following subsystems: illumination, deployment/articulation, telecommunications, visual displays, and the controls and display station

When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed