Avionics architecture studies for the entry research vehicle

This report is the culmination of a year-long investigation of the avionics architecture for NASA's Entry Research Vehicle (ERV). The Entry Research Vehicle is conceived to be an unmanned, autonomous spacecraft to be deployed from the Shuttle. It will perform various aerodynamic and propulsive maneuvers in orbit and land at Edwards AFB after a 5 to 10 hour mission. The design and analysis of the vehicle's avionics architecture are detailed here. The architecture consists of a central triply redundant ultra-reliable fault tolerant processor attached to three replicated and distributed MIL-STD-1553 buses for input and output. The reliability analysis is detailed here. The architecture was found to be sufficiently reliable for the ERV mission plan

Parties, promiscuity and politicisation: business-political networks in Poland

Research on post-communist political economy has begun to focus on the interface between business and politics. It is widely agreed that informal networks rather than business associations dominate this interface, but there has been very little systematic research in this area. The literature tends to assume that a politicised economy entails business-political networks that are structured by parties. Theoretically, this article distinguishes politicisation from party politicisation and argues that the two are unlikely to be found together in a post-communist context. Empirically, elite survey data and qualitative interviews are used to explore networks of businesspeople and politicians in Poland. Substantial evidence is found against the popular idea that Polish politicians have business clienteles clearly separated from each other according to party loyalties. Instead, it is argued that these politicians and businesspeople are promiscuous. Since there seems to be little that is unusual about the Polish case, this conclusion has theoretical, methodological, substantive and policy implications for other post-communist countries

Trade unions, foreign investment and the restructuring of Polish enterprises

The article, based on extensive research by the authors in the form of numerous interviews conducted in the field since 1993, focuses on the dynamics of the transformation of the Kracow regional economy. After an initial account of the national-level restructuring context and the tension-ridden involvement of Solidarity in the political sphere, the main section of the article reports in some detail on two case studies of union organisation in the ZPT cigarette factory, bought by Philip Morris in 1996, and the HTS steel plant. The developments witnessed and described lead the authors to the conclusion that, in both instances, disillusion and discontent with both the process and outcomes of the restructuring process is beginning to emerge, pulling the trade unions, and particularly Solidarity, in opposite directions simultaneously insofar as, while having to protect their members from the increasingly adverse effects of transformation, they nonetheless remain at the forefront of the advocacy of changePeer reviewe