Quantifying Pilot Contribution to Flight Safety during Drive Shaft Failure

Accident statistics cite the flight crew as a causal factor in over 60% of large transport aircraft fatal accidents. Yet, a well-trained and well-qualified pilot is acknowledged as the critical center point of aircraft systems safety and an integral safety component of the entire commercial aviation system. The latter statement, while generally accepted, cannot be verified because little or no quantitative data exists on how and how many accidents/incidents are averted by crew actions. A joint NASA/FAA high-fidelity motion-base simulation experiment specifically addressed this void by collecting data to quantify the human (pilot) contribution to safety-of-flight and the methods they use in today's National Airspace System. A human-in-the-loop test was conducted using the FAA's Oklahoma City Flight Simulation Branch Level D-certified B-737-800 simulator to evaluate the pilot's contribution to safety-of-flight during routine air carrier flight operations and in response to aircraft system failures. These data are fundamental to and critical for the design and development of future increasingly autonomous systems that can better support the human in the cockpit. Eighteen U.S. airline crews flew various normal and non-normal procedures over a two-day period and their actions were recorded in response to failures. To quantify the human's contribution to safety of flight, crew complement was used as the experiment independent variable in a between-subjects design. Pilot actions and performance during single pilot and reduced crew operations were measured for comparison against the normal two-crew complement during normal and non-normal situations. This paper details the crew's actions, including decision-making, and responses while dealing with a drive shaft failure - one of 6 non-normal events that were simulated in this experiment

Collateral contamination concomitant to the polonium-210 poisoning of Mr Alexander Litvinenko

Mr Litvinenko died on 23rd November 2006, having been poisoned with polonium-210 on 1st November, with evidence of a previous poisoning attempt during October 2006. Measurements of 210Po in urine samples were made for a large number of people to determine whether they may have been contaminated. In the majority of cases, measured levels were attributable to the presence of 210Po from normal dietary sources. For a small number of cases, elevated levels provided evidence of direct contamination associated with the poisonings. For one individual, while estimated doses were below thresholds for irreversible organ damage, a notably increased risk of cancer can be inferred. The use of the chelating agent, Unithiol, to increase 210Po excretion in this case was only moderately effective in reducing doses received

Candidate Massive Galaxies at z~4 in the Dark Energy Survey

Using stellar population models, we predicted that the Dark Energy Survey (DES) - due to its special combination of area (5000 deg. sq.) and depth ($i = 24.3$) - would be in the position to detect massive ($\gtrsim 10^{11}$ M$_{\odot}$) galaxies at $z \sim 4$. We confront those theoretical calculations with the first $\sim 150$ deg. sq. of DES data reaching nominal depth. From a catalogue containing $\sim 5$ million sources, $\sim26000$ were found to have observed-frame $g-r$ vs $r-i$ colours within the locus predicted for $z \sim 4$ massive galaxies. We further removed contamination by stars and artefacts, obtaining 606 galaxies lining up by the model selection box. We obtained their photometric redshifts and physical properties by fitting model templates spanning a wide range of star formation histories, reddening and redshift. Key to constrain the models is the addition, to the optical DES bands $g$, $r$, $i$, $z$, and $Y$, of near-IR $J$, $H$, $K_{s}$ data from the Vista Hemisphere Survey. We further applied several quality cuts to the fitting results, including goodness of fit and a unimodal redshift probability distribution. We finally select 233 candidates whose photometric redshift probability distribution function peaks around $z\sim4$, have high stellar masses ($\log($M$^{*}$/M$_{\odot})\sim 11.7$ for a Salpeter IMF) and ages around 0.1 Gyr, i.e. formation redshift around 5. These properties match those of the progenitors of the most massive galaxies in the local universe. This is an ideal sample for spectroscopic follow-up to select the fraction of galaxies which is truly at high redshift. These initial results and those at the survey completion, which we shall push to higher redshifts, will set unprecedented constraints on galaxy formation, evolution, and the re-ionisation epoch

Reviews of Books

AZAR GAT. War in Human Civilization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 822. $45.00 (us). Reviewed by William R. Thompson ROBIN WATERFIELD. Xenopkon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 248.$27.95 (us). Reviewed by Noreen Humble VICTOR H. MAIR, ed. Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Pp. ix, 310. $57.00 (us). Reviewed by Paul D. Buell SERHII PLOKHY. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 379.$90.00 (us). Reviewed by Paul Bushkovitch NAOMI STANDEN. Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 279. $53.00 (us). Reviewed by Leo K. Shin CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN. God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 1,023.$35.00 (us). Reviewed by John France BJÖRN K. U. WEILER. Henry HI of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216-1272. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for The Royal Historical Society, 2006. Pp. xi, 247. $80.00 (us). Reviewed by William Chester Jordan SABINE MACCORMACK. On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xix, 320.$35.00 (us). Reviewed by Richard L. Kagan LEO K. SHIN. The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xxi, 246. $93.95 (us). Reviewed by Geoff Wade JOHN G. DEMARAY. From Pilgrimage to History: The Renaissance and Global Historicism. New York, NY: AMS Press, 2006. Pp. xv, 250.$82.50 (us). Reviewed by Felipe Fernández-Armesto ANDRE THEVET. Histoire: D'André Thevet Angoumoisin, Cosmographe du Roy, de deux voyages par luyfaits aux Indes Australes, et Occidentals, ed. Jean-Claude La-borie and Frank Lestringant. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2006. Pp. 496. CHF. 153.60. Reviewed by Margaret Sankey JESSICA L. HARLAND-JACOBS. Builders oj Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1777-1927. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 384. $39.95 (us). Reviewed by Andrew S. Thompson RENÉ HANKE. Brühl und das Renversement des alliances: Die antipreuβische Auβenpolitik des Dresdener Hofes, 1744-1756. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006. Pp. xii, 383. €39.90. Reviewed by Franz A. J. Szabo SIMON BURROWS. Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution: London's French libellistes, 1758-92. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006; dist. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Pp. xiv, 256.$50.00 (us). Reviewed by Jennifer Mori CYNTHIA RADDING. Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv, 431. $24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Stuart McCook JEAN BARMAN and BRUCE MCINTYRE WATSON. Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Pp. xiii, 512.$45.00 (us). Reviewed by James N. Nason JEREMY ADELMAN. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 409. $39.95 (us). Reviewed by Timothy E. Anna VICTOR BULMER-THOMAS, JOHN H. COATSWORTH, and ROBERTO CORTÉS CONDE, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: I: The Colonial Era and the Short Nineteenth Century. Pp. viii, 607; II: The Long Twentieth Century. Pp. viii, 755. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006.$300.00 (us), 2 vol. set. Reviewed by Eric Van Young MAN-HOUNG LIN. China Upside Down: Currency, Society, and Ideologies, 1808-1856. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xxvi, 362. $49-95 (us). Reviewed by Evelyn S. Rawski MATT D. CHILDS. The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 300.$21.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Christopher Schmidt-Nowara ALAIN LE PICHON, ed. China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong, 1827-1843. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvii, 626. $125.00 (us). Reviewed by Kent G. Deng STEPHEN BROADBERRY. Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850-2000: British Performance in International Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 409.$95.00 (us). Reviewed by Alan Booth ERIC T.JENNINGS. Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006. 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Negotiating for India: Resolving Problems through Diplomacy (Seven Case Studies, 1958-1978). New Delhi: Manohar, 2006. Pp. 296. Rs 750. Reviewed by Walter K. Andersen PATRICKJ. HANEY and WALT VANDERBUSH. The Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Pp. xi, 222.$24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Joaquín Roy NICHOLAS TARLING. Regionalism in Southeast Asia: To Foster the Political Will. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 276. $125.00 (us). Reviewed by Nicholas J. White ROBERT D. SCHULZINGER. A Time for Peace: The Legacy of the Vietnam War. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xix, 252.$30.00 (us). Reviewed by Kenton Clymer MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT. Central Asia's Second Chance. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. Pp. xiii, 389. $24.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by Shahram Akbarzadeh RYANC HENDRICKSON. Diplomacy and War atNATO: The Secretary Generaland Military Action after the Cold War. Columbia, MO and London: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 172.$16.95 (us), paper. Reviewed by James Sperling SCOTT STRAUS. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 273. $27.95 (us). Reviewed by Howard Adelman BILL ONG HING. Deporting Our So