Towards a Relational Understanding of the Performance Ecosystem

This article seeks to form a deeper understanding of the performance ecosystem by drawing parallels with Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and Guattari's conception of subjectivity as outlined in Chaosmosis. Through an examination of participation within performance, and a recognition of the mutability of the roles of performer, listener, instrument and environment in the creation of the music event, this article examines the place of subjectivity, the capacity for self-creation, in the formation of a group aesthetic. Such a concept places the creation of meaning not within the individual participant but rather within the relationship between participants in a situation, a relationship that recognises the interaction between individuals, societies and institutions in its production. Such a discussion helps further our understanding of the performance ecosystem as a conceptual tool

Communication training for aircrews: A review of theoretical and pragmatic aspects of training program design

This study is the final report of a project studying methods of communications training applicable to both civilian and military aviation personnel, including multiperson teams or single pilot fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft. A review is provided of a number of theories proposed as relevant for producing training materials for improved communications. Criteria are given for evaluating the applicability of training programs to the aviation environment, and these criteria are applied to United Airlines' Resources Management Training, as well as to a number of commercially available general purpose training programs. The report considers in detail assertiveness training and grid management training, examining their theoretical background and attempts made to validate their effectiveness. It was found that there are substantive difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of both training programs, as well as problems with the theories underlying them. However, because the aviation environment offers unique advantages for studying the effectiveness of communications training, recommendations are made on the design of appropriate training programs and on procedures that might be used to validate them

A RETROSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION MODELS ON INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

In the classical theory of economics, capital is one of the three factors of production, in addition to land and labor, and refers in particular to buildings, equipment, and machinery etc., used for the production of other goods (the term physical capital is also used by the specialized literature) (Brãtianu & Jianu, 2006). The present study intend to bring to the forefront the main evalluation methods for intellectual capital, as proposed, supported and criticized at the same time by researchers and practitioners. The study offers response to the following research questions: Which are the advantages and disadvantages of the intellectual capital evaluation methods? And what are the main studies approaching the subject of intellectual capital evaluation at international level? The collection and analysis of intellectual capital evaluation models and the non-participative observation are the main instruments used to bring to the forefront the main international existing evaluation frameworks. The information sources representing the base for these researches are especially constituted by articles published in specialized magazines, both from accounting and economics fields, specialized works relevant to the reference field, legislative documents, official documents, press releases and other documents issued by various national and international bodies. The most representative studies bringing to the forefront the evaluation of intellectual capital are the ones elaborated by Mouritsen et al (Mouritsen et al, 2001), Manea and Gorgan (Manea and Gorgan, 2003), Tayles (Tayles, 2002), Tayles et al (Tayles et al, 2007). The presented approaches offer a general idea on the range of methods, disciplines and operational specializations existing for the evaluation of intellectual capital. Only one of them - Balanced Scorecard - is largely used, while the rest of the methods remain too theoretical or too poorly developed to be universally accepted. We believe that the efforts from the regulation and standardization bodies in the view of intellectual capital evaluation are too small, despite the fact that community shows an increased interest in this sense, many companies being tempted to build their own system of evaluating performances with regards to intellectual capital.intellectual capital, evaluation models, companies, Balanced Scorecard, international level

Advancing Aircraft Operations in a Net-Centric Environment with the Incorporation of Increasingly Autonomous Systems and Human Teaming

NextGen has begun the modernization of the nations air transportation system, with goals to improve system safety, increase operation efficiency and capacity, provide enhanced predictability, resilience and robustness. With these improvements, NextGen is poised to handle significant increases in air traffic operations, more than twice the number recorded in 2016, by 2025.1 NextGen is evolving toward collaborative decision-making across many agents, including automation, by use of a Net-Centric architecture, which in itself creates a very complex environment in which the navigation and operation of aircraft are to take place. An intricate environment such as this, coupled with the expected upsurge of air traffic operations generates concern respecting the ability of the human-agent to both fly and manage aircraft within. Therefore, it is both necessary and practical to begin the process of increasingly autonomous systems within the cockpit that will act independently to assist the human-agent achieve the overall goal of NextGen. However, the straightforward technological development and implementation of intelligent machines into the cockpit is only part of what is necessary to maintain, at minimum, or improve human-agent functionality, as desired, while operating in NextGen. The full integration of Increasingly Autonomous Systems (IAS) within the cockpit can only be accomplished when the IAS works in concert with the human, formulating trust between the two, thereby establishing a team atmosphere. Imperative to cockpit implementation is ensuring the proper performance of the IAS by the development team and the human-agent with which it will be paired when given a specific piloting, navigation, or observational task. Described in this paper are the steps taken, at NASA Langley Research Center, during the second and third phases of the development of an IAS, the Traffic Data Manager (TDM), its verification and validation by human-agents, and the foundational development of Human Autonomy Teaming (HAT) between the two

Digital cockpits and decision support systems : design of technics and tools to extract and process data from heterogeneous databases

Tableau d'honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2006-200

Flight control system design factors for applying automated testing techniques

Automated validation of flight-critical embedded systems is being done at ARC Dryden Flight Research Facility. The automated testing techniques are being used to perform closed-loop validation of man-rated flight control systems. The principal design features and operational experiences of the X-29 forward-swept-wing aircraft and F-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle (HARV) automated test systems are discussed. Operationally applying automated testing techniques has accentuated flight control system features that either help or hinder the application of these techniques. The paper also discusses flight control system features which foster the use of automated testing techniques

Robotic air vehicle. Blending artificial intelligence with conventional software

The Robotic Air Vehicle (RAV) system is described. The program's objectives were to design, implement, and demonstrate cooperating expert systems for piloting robotic air vehicles. The development of this system merges conventional programming used in passive navigation with Artificial Intelligence techniques such as voice recognition, spatial reasoning, and expert systems. The individual components of the RAV system are discussed as well as their interactions with each other and how they operate as a system

Trying to break new ground in aerial archaeology

Aerial reconnaissance continues to be a vital tool for landscape-oriented archaeological research. Although a variety of remote sensing platforms operate within the earth’s atmosphere, the majority of aerial archaeological information is still derived from oblique photographs collected during observer-directed reconnaissance flights, a prospection approach which has dominated archaeological aerial survey for the past century. The resulting highly biased imagery is generally catalogued in sub-optimal (spatial) databases, if at all, after which a small selection of images is orthorectified and interpreted. For decades, this has been the standard approach. Although many innovations, including digital cameras, inertial units, photogrammetry and computer vision algorithms, geographic(al) information systems and computing power have emerged, their potential has not yet been fully exploited in order to re-invent and highly optimise this crucial branch of landscape archaeology. The authors argue that a fundamental change is needed to transform the way aerial archaeologists approach data acquisition and image processing. By addressing the very core concepts of geographically biased aerial archaeological photographs and proposing new imaging technologies, data handling methods and processing procedures, this paper gives a personal opinion on how the methodological components of aerial archaeology, and specifically aerial archaeological photography, should evolve during the next decade if developing a more reliable record of our past is to be our central aim. In this paper, a possible practical solution is illustrated by outlining a turnkey aerial prospection system for total coverage survey together with a semi-automated back-end pipeline that takes care of photograph correction and image enhancement as well as the management and interpretative mapping of the resulting data products. In this way, the proposed system addresses one of many bias issues in archaeological research: the bias we impart to the visual record as a result of selective coverage. While the total coverage approach outlined here may not altogether eliminate survey bias, it can vastly increase the amount of useful information captured during a single reconnaissance flight while mitigating the discriminating effects of observer-based, on-the-fly target selection. Furthermore, the information contained in this paper should make it clear that with current technology it is feasible to do so. This can radically alter the basis for aerial prospection and move landscape archaeology forward, beyond the inherently biased patterns that are currently created by airborne archaeological prospection