Technical Workshop: Advanced Helicopter Cockpit Design

Information processing demands on both civilian and military aircrews have increased enormously as rotorcraft have come to be used for adverse weather, day/night, and remote area missions. Applied psychology, engineering, or operational research for future helicopter cockpit design criteria were identified. Three areas were addressed: (1) operational requirements, (2) advanced avionics, and (3) man-system integration

Recruiting patients to medical research: double blind randomised trial of "opt-in" versus "opt-out" strategies

Objective To evaluate the effect of opt-in compared with opt-out recruitment strategies on response rate and selection bias. Design Double blind randomised controlled trial. Setting Two general practices in England. Participants 510 patients with angina. Intervention Patients were randomly allocated to an opt-in (asked to actively signal willingness to participate in research) or opt-out (contacted repeatedly unless they signalled unwillingness to participate) approach for recruitment to an observational prognostic study of patients with angina. Main outcome measures Recruitment rate and clinical characteristics of patients. Results The recruitment rate, defined by clinic attendance, was 38% (96/252) in the opt-in arm and 50% (128/258) in the opt-out arm (P = 0.014). Once an appointment had been made, non-attendance at the clinic was similar (20% opt-in arm v 17% opt-out arm; P = 0.86). Patients in the opt-in arm had fewer risk factors (44% v 60%; P = 0.053), less treatment for angina (69% v 82%; P = 0.010), and less functional impairment (9% v 20%; P = 0.023) than patients in the opt-out arm. Conclusions The opt-in approach to participant recruitment, increasingly required by ethics committees, resulted in lower response rates and a biased sample. We propose that the opt-out approach should be the default recruitment strategy for studies with low risk to participants

Reflections on careers, JBE and business ethics

Brief reflections on the impact of the Journal of Business Ethics on the field of business ethics over the past 30 years are given from over 100 scholars who authored citation classics and/or distinguished papers, as well as those who served on the Editorial Board and/or are recognized as leaders in the field

An experimental evaluation of the Sternberg task as a workload metric for helicopter Flight Handling Qualities (FHQ) research

The objective was to determine whether the Sternberg item-recognition task, employed as a secondary task measure of spare mental capacity for flight handling qualities (FHQ) simulation research, could help to differentiate between different flight-control conditions. FHQ evaluations were conducted on the Vertical Motion Simulator at Ames Research Center to investigate different primary flight-control configurations, and selected stability and control augmentation levels for helicopters engaged in low-level flight regimes. The Sternberg task was superimposed upon the primary flight-control task in a balanced experimental design. The results of parametric statistical analysis of Sternberg secondary task data failed to support the continued use of this task as a measure of pilot workload. In addition to the secondary task, subjects provided Cooper-Harper pilot ratings (CHPR) and responded to workload questionnaire. The CHPR data also failed to provide reliable statistical discrimination between FHQ treatment conditions; some insight into the behavior of the secondary task was gained from the workload questionnaire data

An Operational evaluation of head up displays for civil transport operations. NASA/FAA phase 3 report

The advantages and disadvantages of head-up displays (HUDs) in commercial jet transport approach and landing operations was evaluated. Ten airline captains currently qualified in the B-727 aircraft flew a series of instrument landing system (ILS) and nonprecision approaches in a motion base simulator using both a flight director HUD concept and a flightpath HUD concept as well as conventional head-down instruments under a variety of environmental and operational conditions to assess: (1) the potential benefits of these HUDs in airline operations; (2) problems which might be associated with their use; and (3) flight crew training requirements and flight crew operating procedures suitable for use with the HUDs. Results are presented in terms of objective simulator based performance measures, subject pilot opinion and rating data, and observer data

Principles of Lifeworld Led Public Health Practice in the UK and Sweden: Reducing Health Inequalities.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of the lifeworld perspective in reducing inequalities in health and we explain how the public health practitioner can use this perspective to address public health issues with individuals and groups. We offer ideas for public health actions that are based on and deal with the lifeworld context of individual people or families. Each of the dimensions of the lifeworld temporality, spatiality, intersubjectivity, embodiment and mood are outlined and their significance explained in relation to health inequalities. Suggestions for action to reduce health inequalities are made and overall principles of lifeworld led public health practice are proposed by way of conclusion. The principles comprise understanding the community members' lifeworld view, understanding their view of their potential, offering resources and facilitating empowerment, and sharing lifeworld case studies and lobbying to influence local and national policy in relation to both the individual and communities

Protocol for a longitudinal qualitative study: survivors of childhood critical illness exploring long-term psychosocial well-being and needs–The SCETCH Project

Life-threatening critical illness affects over a quarter of a million children and adolescents (0-18 years old) annually in the USA and the UK. Death from critical illness is rare; however, survivors and their families can be exposed to a complex array of negative physical, psychological and social problems. Currently, within the literature, there is a distinct paucity of child and adolescent survivor self-reports, thus limiting our understanding of how survivors perceive this adversity and subsequently cope and grow in the long-term following their critical illness. This study aims to explore and understand psychosocial well-being and needs of critical illness survivors, 6-20 months post paediatric intensive care admission

Analyzing the heterogeneity of rule-based EHR phenotyping algorithms in CALIBER and the UK Biobank

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are data generated during routine interactions across healthcare settings and contain rich, longitudinal information on diagnoses, symptoms, medications, investigations and tests. A primary use-case for EHR is the creation of phenotyping algorithms used to identify disease status, onset and progression or extraction of information on risk factors or biomarkers. Phenotyping however is challenging since EHR are collected for different purposes, have variable data quality and often require significant harmonization. While considerable effort goes into the phenotyping process, no consistent methodology for representing algorithms exists in the UK. Creating a national repository of curated algorithms can potentially enable algorithm dissemination and reuse by the wider community. A critical first step is the creation of a robust minimum information standard for phenotyping algorithm components (metadata, implementation logic, validation evidence) which involves identifying and reviewing the complexity and heterogeneity of current UK EHR algorithms. In this study, we analyzed all available EHR phenotyping algorithms (n=70) from two large-scale contemporary EHR resources in the UK (CALIBER and UK Biobank). We documented EHR sources, controlled clinical terminologies, evidence of algorithm validation, representation and implementation logic patterns. Understanding the heterogeneity of UK EHR algorithms and identifying common implementation patterns will facilitate the design of a minimum information standard for representing and curating algorithms nationally and internationally

The Anopheles gambiae glutathione transferase supergene family: annotation, phylogeny and expression profiles

BACKGROUND: Twenty-eight genes putatively encoding cytosolic glutathione transferases have been identified in the Anopheles gambiae genome. We manually annotated these genes and then confirmed the annotation by sequencing of A. gambiae cDNAs. Phylogenetic analysis with the 37 putative GST genes from Drosophila and representative GSTs from other taxa was undertaken to develop a nomenclature for insect GSTs. The epsilon class of insect GSTs has previously been implicated in conferring insecticide resistance in several insect species. We compared the expression level of all members of this GST class in two strains of A. gambiae to determine whether epsilon GST expression is correlated with insecticide resistance status. RESULTS: Two A. gambiae GSTs are alternatively spliced resulting in a maximum number of 32 transcripts encoding cytosolic GSTs. We detected cDNAs for 31 of these in adult mosquitoes. There are at least six different classes of GSTs in insects but 20 of the A. gambiae GSTs belong to the two insect specific classes, delta and epsilon. Members of these two GST classes are clustered on chromosome arms 2L and 3R respectively. Two members of the GST supergene family are intronless. Amongst the remainder, there are 13 unique introns positions but within the epsilon and delta class, there is considerable conservation of intron positions. Five of the eight epsilon GSTs are overexpressed in a DDT resistant strain of A. gambiae. CONCLUSIONS: The GST supergene family in A. gambiae is extensive and regulation of transcription of these genes is complex. Expression profiling of the epsilon class supports earlier predictions that this class is important in conferring insecticide resistance

Biclustering models for structured microarray data

©2005 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.Microarrays have become a standard tool for investigating gene function and more complex microarray experiments are increasingly being conducted. For example, an experiment may involve samples from several groups or may investigate changes in gene expression over time for several subjects, leading to large three-way data sets. In response to this increase in data complexity, we propose some extensions to the plaid model, a biclustering method developed for the analysis of gene expression data. This model-based method lends itself to the incorporation of any additional structure such as external grouping or repeated measures. We describe how the extended models may be fitted and illustrate their use on real data