Peripheral vision horizon display testing in RF-4C aircraft

A test program to assess the capability of the peripheral vision horizon display (PVHD) to provide peripheral attitude cues to the pilot is described. The system was installed in the rear cockpit of a RF-4C aircraft, selected because its poor instrument crosscheck conditions. The PVHD test plan was designed to assess three primary areas: (1) ability of the system to reduce spatial disorientation; (2) ability of the system to aid the pilot in recovering from unusual attitudes; and (3) improvement in pilot performance during instrument landing system (ILS) approaches. Results of preliminary test flights are summarized. The major problem areas concern the distinction of the display itself and the capability of the display to provide pitch motion cues

Covariance analysis of the airborne laser ranging system

The requirements and limitations of employing an airborne laser ranging system for detecting crustal shifts of the Earth within centimeters over a region of approximately 200 by 400 km are presented. The system consists of an aircraft which flies over a grid of ground deployed retroreflectors, making six passes over the grid at two different altitudes. The retroreflector baseline errors are assumed to result from measurement noise, a priori errors on the aircraft and retroreflector positions, tropospheric refraction, and sensor biases

Supreme Court Brief Amicus Curiae of Administrative Law Scholars in Support of Neither Party

This brief on behalf of 29 administrative law scholars takes no position on whether Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) are employees or inferior officers. It urges the Court to issue an opinion that respects the decision that Congress made unanimously in 1946 to enact numerous statutory safeguards that assure that ALJs have decisional independence from the agencies where they work while assuring that agencies retain control over the policy content and legal basis for any decision made in an adjudication in which an ALJ presides. The brief describes the fifteen years of study and deliberation that led to the unanimous decision of Congress to enact the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in 1946. It describes the particular attention that Congress devoted to the critical task of providing ALJs with the combination of statutory safeguards that minimize the risk that they will favor the agencies for whom they adjudicate cases while assuring that the agencies retain control of the policy content of any decision made in such an adjudication. It then describes the series of opinions the Supreme Court issued during the 1950s in which the Justices unanimously praised the provisions of the APA that assure that ALJs conduct adjudicatory hearings in an unbiased manner, explained the importance of those statutory provisions in protecting the values reflected in the Due Process Clause, and urged Congress to make those safeguards applicable to all agency adjudications. It concludes by urging the Court to issue an opinion that respects the decision that Congress made in 1946 to insulate ALJs from potential sources of pro-agency bias by including in the APA a combination of provisions that confer decisional independence on ALJs

Explicitly correlated trial wave functions in Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of excited states of Be and Be-

We present a new form of explicitly correlated wave function whose parameters are mainly linear, to circumvent the problem of the optimization of a large number of non-linear parameters usually encountered with basis sets of explicitly correlated wave functions. With this trial wave function we succeeded in minimizing the energy instead of the variance of the local energy, as is more common in quantum Monte Carlo methods. We applied this wave function to the calculation of the energies of Be 3P (1s22p2) and Be- 4So (1s22p3) by variational and diffusion Monte Carlo methods. The results compare favorably with those obtained by different types of explicitly correlated trial wave functions already described in the literature. The energies obtained are improved with respect to the best variational ones found in literature, and within one standard deviation from the estimated non-relativistic limitsComment: 19 pages, no figures, submitted to J. Phys.

AB INITIO STUDY OF THE VIBRATIONAL SPECTRA OF NO3

The vibrational spectra and geometry of the NO, molecule is studied using ab initio SCF and CASSCF methods. For all levels of theory and basis set the highest symmetry found is Czv, Vibrational levels agree well with recent experimental results

Reading, Trauma and Literary Caregiving 1914-1918: Helen Mary Gaskell and the War Library

This article is about the relationship between reading, trauma and responsive literary caregiving in Britain during the First World War. Its analysis of two little-known documents describing the history of the War Library, begun by Helen Mary Gaskell in 1914, exposes a gap in the scholarship of war-time reading; generates a new narrative of "how," "when," and "why" books went to war; and foregrounds gender in its analysis of the historiography. The Library of Congress's T. W. Koch discovered Gaskell's ground-breaking work in 1917 and reported its successes to the American Library Association. The British Times also covered Gaskell's library, yet researchers working on reading during the war have routinely neglected her distinct model and method, skewing the research base on war-time reading and its association with trauma and caregiving. In the article's second half, a literary case study of a popular war novel demonstrates the extent of the "bitter cry for books." The success of Gaskell's intervention is examined alongside H. G. Wells's representation of textual healing. Reading is shown to offer sick, traumatized and recovering combatants emotional and psychological caregiving in ways that she could not always have predicted and that are not visible in the literary/historical record

The Coupled Electronic-Ionic Monte Carlo Simulation Method

Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods such as Variational Monte Carlo, Diffusion Monte Carlo or Path Integral Monte Carlo are the most accurate and general methods for computing total electronic energies. We will review methods we have developed to perform QMC for the electrons coupled to a classical Monte Carlo simulation of the ions. In this method, one estimates the Born-Oppenheimer energy E(Z) where Z represents the ionic degrees of freedom. That estimate of the energy is used in a Metropolis simulation of the ionic degrees of freedom. Important aspects of this method are how to deal with the noise, which QMC method and which trial function to use, how to deal with generalized boundary conditions on the wave function so as to reduce the finite size effects. We discuss some advantages of the CEIMC method concerning how the quantum effects of the ionic degrees of freedom can be included and how the boundary conditions can be integrated over. Using these methods, we have performed simulations of liquid H2 and metallic H on a parallel computer.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

What are the resourcing requirements for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare research project?

Objective and importance To explore the role of resourcing during an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare research project. Study type Process evaluation using grounded theory approaches of a national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research project (N=500) named Getting it Right: The validation study. Methods Qualitative semi-structured interviews with thirty-six primary healthcare staff and four community members from nine of ten primary healthcare services (participating services) involved in the research project. Interviews included questions about the resources needed to conduct the research project, including flexible reimbursement to participating services (allocated within services), human resources and reimbursement to research participants (vouchers). Qualitative data were triangulated with participant feedback (questions about the aPHQ-9 [depression screening tool under examination] and free-text feedback collected during the research project), study administrative data (budgets, contracts, communication logs and ethics correspondence) and field notes kept by the interviewer. Results Three themes were identified: 1) the influence of reimbursement on participating services and the research project: 2) the influence of human resources on the research project at participating services; and 3) the consequences of offering vouchers to reimburse research participants. Reimbursement was allocated to research expenses (human resources and logistics) or non-research expenses (service operations, equipment and conference attendance costs). Most services opted to offer vouchers to compensate participants for their time, which staff considered was appropriate recognition of participants’ contributions and facilitated recruitment. Some staff described some potential unintended negative consequences from vouchers, including creating a welfare mentality or the wrong precedent. Conclusion Primary healthcare research should have sufficient resourcing available, including human resource capacity, to achieve research targets. Research planning should include consideration of the existing commitments, priorities and human capacity needs of services and patients

Design and rationale of a multi-center, pragmatic, open-label randomized trial of antimicrobial therapy - the study of clinical efficacy of antimicrobial therapy strategy using pragmatic design in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (CleanUP-IPF) clinical trial

Compelling data have linked disease progression in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) with lung dysbiosis and the resulting dysregulated local and systemic immune response. Moreover, prior therapeutic trials have suggested improved outcomes in these patients treated with either sulfamethoxazole/ trimethoprim or doxycycline. These trials have been limited by methodological concerns. This trial addresses the primary hypothesis that long-term treatment with antimicrobial therapy increases the time-to-event endpoint of respiratory hospitalization or all-cause mortality compared to usual care treatment in patients with IPF. We invoke numerous innovative features to achieve this goal, including: 1) utilizing a pragmatic randomized trial design; 2) collecting targeted biological samples to allow future exploration of 'personalized' therapy; and 3) developing a strong partnership between the NHLBI, a broad range of investigators, industry, and philanthropic organizations. The trial will randomize approximately 500 individuals in a 1:1 ratio to either antimicrobial therapy or usual care. The site principal investigator will declare their preferred initial antimicrobial treatment strategy (trimethoprim 160 mg/ sulfamethoxazole 800 mg twice a day plus folic acid 5 mg daily or doxycycline 100 mg once daily if body weight is < 50 kg or 100 mg twice daily if ≥50 kg) for the participant prior to randomization. Participants randomized to antimicrobial therapy will receive a voucher to help cover the additional prescription drug costs. Additionally, those participants will have 4-5 scheduled blood draws over the initial 24 months of therapy for safety monitoring. Blood sampling for DNA sequencing and genome wide transcriptomics will be collected before therapy. Blood sampling for transcriptomics and oral and fecal swabs for determination of the microbiome communities will be collected before and after study completion. As a pragmatic study, participants in both treatment arms will have limited in-person visits with the enrolling clinical center. Visits are limited to assessments of lung function and other clinical parameters at time points prior to randomization and at months 12, 24, and 36. All participants will be followed until the study completion for the assessment of clinical endpoints related to hospitalization and mortality events. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02759120