Industry/government seminar on Large Space systems technology: Executive summary

The critical technology developments which the participating experts recommend as being required to support the early generation large space systems envisioned as space missions during the years 1985-2000 are summarized

GUARDIANS final report

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist fire fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the re ghters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings

Production of Reliable Flight Crucial Software: Validation Methods Research for Fault Tolerant Avionics and Control Systems Sub-Working Group Meeting

The state of the art in the production of crucial software for flight control applications was addressed. The association between reliability metrics and software is considered. Thirteen software development projects are discussed. A short term need for research in the areas of tool development and software fault tolerance was indicated. For the long term, research in format verification or proof methods was recommended. Formal specification and software reliability modeling, were recommended as topics for both short and long term research

Human-Centered Design for Individual and Social Well-being: Editorial Preface

As digital technology use becomes widespread, its unintended consequences ranging from personal health to societal righteousness are under more scrutiny. Increasingly, digital designers are accused of not being considerate enough of the depth of their creations, and their impacts on our well-being. In this special issue, we explore an alternative, genuinely human-centered approach to technology design focusing on well-being and making our interactions with digital technology more meaningful, purposeful, and sustainable. To this end, the editorial starts with a brief review of the history of research that led to the growing field of digital well-being. We then introduce the Digital Well-being Design Framework, which goes beyond the ego-centric approach in human-centered design, and is multi-layered with self (intrapersonal), social (interpersonal), and transcendent (extra-personal) levels. Similar topics in related AIS journals are summarized, followed by the application of our framework to introduce and position the papers in this special issue. Our special issue aims to bring the topic of digital well-being to the forefront of the information systems research community and launch a new era of genuinely human-centered design

Guidelines for the aerosol climatic effects special study: An element of the NASA climate research program

Research to help develop better understanding of the role of aerosols in the Earth's radiative balance is summarized. Natural volcanic injections of aerosols into the stratosphere to understand and model any resultant evidence of climate change are considered. The approach involves: (1) measurements from aircraft, balloon and ground based platforms which complement and enhance the aerosol information derived from satellite data; (2) development of instruments required for some of these measurements; (3) theoretical and laboratory work to aid in interpreting and utilizing space based and in situ data; and (4) preparation for and execution of concentrated observations of stratospheric aerosols following a future large volcanic eruption

An historical perspective on the development of the thermodynamic equation of seawater - 2010

Oceanography is concerned with understanding the mechanisms controlling the movement of seawater and its contents. A fundamental tool in this process is the characterization of the thermophysical properties of seawater as functions of measured temperature and electrical conductivity, the latter used as a proxy for the concentration of dissolved matter in seawater. For many years a collection of algorithms denoted the Equation of State 1980 (EOS-80) has been the internationally accepted standard for calculating such properties. However, modern measurement technology now allows routine observations of temperature and electrical conductivity to be made to at least one order of magnitude more accurately than the uncertainty in this standard. Recently, a new standard has been developed, the Thermodynamical Equation of Seawater 2010 (TEOS-10). This new standard is thermodynamically consistent, valid over a wider range of temperature and salinity, and includes a mechanism to account for composition variations in seawater. Here we review the scientific development of this standard, and describe the literature involved in its development, which includes many of the articles in this special issue