An HFACS Analysis of German F-104 Starfighter Accidents

From 1961 onwards, Germany acquired 916 Lockheed F-104 Starfighters, of which 292 aircraft crashed and 116 pilots lost their lives. The purpose of this research project was to find out why these aircraft crashed and whether the Starfighters crashed for reasons different from those for other military aircraft in Germany. Seventy-one German F-104 accidents between 1978 and 1986 were analyzed by reviewing the original accident files. A Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) Level-1 analysis was used as methodology. It was found that more than 50% of the reviewed German F-104 accidents occurred due to technology and/or physical environment. More than half of the sample’s accidents were engine related. It was concluded that the F-104 was indeed more accident-prone than other co-era types. Moreover, the J-79 engine was found to be a weak link in the F-104’s safety record, and the Starfighter’s unforgiving handling characteristics induced an elevated level of skill-based errors

Calvins sozialethik und der Kapitalismus

No abstract available

Zur antropologie calvins menchenwürde - Imago dei zwischen humanistischem und theologischem ansatz

No abstract available

The People of 'Linden Tree Street' and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Lately I have been receiving numerous requests for contributions to commemorative publications, farewell speeches, and anniversary lectures. I cannot respond to all of these requests, especially since not all of them are as inspiring as the one today: the 25th (in words: the twenty-fifth!) wave of the SOEP! This is indeed an anniversary that should be duly celebrated and honored. The German soap opera "Lindenstrasse" (Linden Tree Street) that was first aired in December 1985 is almost as old as the SOEP. Who could have foreseen in 1984 that there would be so many waves of the SOEP and so many episodes of "Lindenstrasse" following that first one? In the following, I will address four different aspects. First, I will describe some of my impressions while participating in the establishment of the SOEP and its first waves. Second, I will draw attention to the SOEP's role in current public debates (such as the one on migration issues). Third, I will describe my experiences as a SOEP user, and finally, I will elaborate on the great significance of the SOEP for the integration of the social sciences and their empirical methodologies

Multicanonical Simulations of the Tails of the Order-Parameter Distribution of the Two-Dimensional Ising Model

We report multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations of the tails of the order-parameter distribution of the two-dimensional Ising model for fixed boundary conditions. Clear numerical evidence for "fat" stretched exponential tails is found below the critical temperature, indicating the possible presence of fat tails at the critical temperature.Comment: 4 pages, elsart3.cls (included), 5 postscript figures, author information under http://www.physik.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?id=2

Not-So-Risky Business? Assessing the Risk of Integrating Large RPVs into the Current Air Traffic System

In spite of considerable efforts to commercialize large remotely piloted vehicles (RPV), an integration of these RPVs into the existing Air Transportation System (ATS) and Airspace Structure is pending. The purpose of this paper was to assess the risks of an exemplary integration of a Heron 1 type RPV into the existing European air space structure within the current regulatory framework and without the availability of sense and avoid technology. Six incident occurrence scenarios were investigated, based on a modified Fault Tree Analysis and Eurocontrol’s risk matrix. It was found that without the implementation of technological or procedural changes, an integration of a Heron 1 RPV presents a low to medium risk to air traffic. Recommended risk mitigation measures include equipping the RPV-operator with a recognized air picture, equipping the RPV with TCAS, installing a conventional telephone land line between the RPV-operator and air traffic control, and commencing the integration of large RPVs into air traffic at night. Further, simulation and flight based research is necessary to demonstrate whether these control measures would reduce the risk to an overall low level

Sequential anti-cytomegalovirus response monitoring may allow prediction of cytomegalovirus reactivation after allogeneic stem cell transplantation

Background: Reconstitution of cytomegalovirus-specific CD3+CD8+ T cells (CMV-CTLs) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is necessary to bring cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation under control. However, the parameters determining protective CMV-CTL reconstitution remain unclear to date. Design and Methods: In a prospective tri-center study, CMV-CTL reconstitution was analyzed in the peripheral blood from 278 patients during the year following HSCT using 7 commercially available tetrameric HLA-CMV epitope complexes. All patients included could be monitored with at least CMV-specific tetramer. Results: CMV-CTL reconstitution was detected in 198 patients (71%) after allogeneic HSCT. Most importantly, reconstitution with 1 CMV-CTL per µl blood between day +50 and day +75 post-HSCT discriminated between patients with and without CMV reactivation in the R+/D+ patient group, independent of the CMV-epitope recognized. In addition, CMV-CTLs expanded more daramtaically in patients experiencing only one CMV-reactivation than those without or those with multiple CMV reactivations. Monitoring using at least 2 tetramers was possible in 63% (n = 176) of the patients. The combinations of particular HLA molecules influenced the numbers of CMV-CTLs detected. The highest CMV-CTL count obtained for an individual tetramer also changed over time in 11% of these patients (n = 19) resulting in higher levels of HLA-B*0801 (IE-1) recognizing CMV-CTLs in 14 patients. Conclusions: Our results indicate that 1 CMV-CTL per µl blood between day +50 to +75 marks the beginning of an immune response against CMV in the R+/D+ group. Detection of CMV-CTL expansion thereafter indicates successful resolution of the CMV reactivation. Thus, sequential monitoring of CMV-CTL reconstitution can be used to predict patients at risk for recurrent CMV reactivation

Janus—a comprehensive tool investigating the two faces of transcription

Motivation: Protocols to generate strand-specific transcriptomes with next-generation sequencing platforms have been used by the scientific community roughly since 2008. Strand-specific reads allow for detection of antisense events and a higher resolution of expression profiles enabling extension of current transcript annotations. However, applications making use of this strandedness information are still scarce. Results: Here we present a tool (Janus), which focuses on the identification of transcriptional active regions in antisense orientation to known and novel transcribed elements of the genome. Janus can compare the antisense events of multiple samples and assigns scores to identify mutual expression of either transcript in a sense/antisense pair, which could hint to regulatory mechanisms. Janus is able to make use of single-nucleotide variant (SNV) and methylation data, if available, and reports the sense to antisense ratio of regions in the vicinity of the identified genetic and epigenetic variation. Janus interrogates positions of heterozygous SNVs to identify strand-specific allelic imbalance. Availability: Janus is written in C/C++ and freely available at http://www.ikmb.uni-kiel.de/janus/janus.html under terms of GNU General Public License, for both, Linux and Windows 64×. Although the binaries will work without additional downloads, the software depends on bamtools (https://github.com/pezmaster31/bamtools) for compilation. A detailed tutorial section is included in the first section of the supplemental material and included as brief readme.txt in the tutorial archive. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics onlin