Cognitive issues in head-up displays

The ability of pilots to recognize and act upon unexpected information, presented in either the outside world or in a head-up display (HUD), was evaluated. Eight commercial airline pilots flew 18 approaches with a flightpath-type HUD and 13 approaches with conventional instruments in a fixed-base 727 simulator. The approaches were flown under conditions of low visibility, turbulence, and wind shear. Vertical and lateral flight performance was measured for five cognitive variables: an unexpected obstacle on runway; vertical and lateral boresight-type offset of the HUD; lateral ILS beam bend-type offset; and no anomaly. Mean response time to the runway obstacle was longer with HUD than without it (4.13 vs 1.75 sec.), and two of the pilots did not see the obstacle at all with the HUD. None of the offsets caused any deterioration in lateral flight performance, but all caused some change in vertical tracking; all offsets seemed to magnify the environmental effects. In all conditions, both vertical and lateral tracking was better with the HUD than with the conventional instruments

Head-up transition behavior of pilots with and without head-up display in simulated low-visibility approaches

To quantify head-up transition behavior with and without a flightpath type head-up display, eight rated B-727 pilots each flew 31 manual and coupled approaches in a simulator with B-727 dynamics and collimated model board external scene. Data were also obtained on the roll played by the head-up display in the coupled-to-manual transition. Various wind shears, low visibilities, and ceilings were tested along with unexpected misalignment between the runway and head-up display symbology. The symbolic format used was a conformal scene. Every pilot except one stayed head-up, flying with the display after descending below the ceiling. Without the display and as altitude decreased, the number of lookups from the instrument panel decreased and the duration of each one increased. No large differences in mean number or duration of transitions up or down were found during the head-up display runs comparing the no-misalignment with the lateral instrument landing system offset misalignment runs. The head-up display led to fewer transitions after the pilot made a decision to land or execute a missed approach. Without the display, pilots generally waited until they had descended below the ceiling to look outside the first time, but with it several pilots looked down at their panel at relatively high altitudes (if they looked down at all). Manual takeover of control was rapid and smooth both with and without the display which permitted smoother engine power changes

First Evaluation of an Index of Low Vagally-Mediated Heart Rate Variability as a Marker of Health Risks in Human Adults: Proof of Concept.

Multiple studies have demonstrated low vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV) being associated with a range of risk factors for heart disease and stroke, including inflammation, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension. Yet, no cut point exists that indicates elevated risk. In the present study we sought to identify a cut point-value for HRV that is associated with elevated risk across a range of known risk factors. METHODS:A total of 9550 working adults from 19 study sites took part in a health assessment that included measures of inflammation, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension and vagally-mediated HRV (Root mean square of successive differences between normal heartbeats (RMSSD)). Multiple age and sex adjusted logistic regressions were calculated per risk factor (normal versus clinical range), with RMSSD being entered in binary at different cut points ranging from 15-39 msec with a 2 msec increment. RESULTS:For daytime RMSSD, values below 25 ± 4 indicated elevated risk (odds ratios (OR) 1.5-3.5 across risk factors). For nighttime RMSSD, values below 29 ± 4 indicated elevated risk (OR 1.2-2.0). CONCLUSION:These results provide the first evidence that a single value of RMSSD may be associated with elevated risk across a range of established cardiovascular risk factors and may present an easy to assess novel marker of cardiovascular risk

Anomalous magnetoresistance peak in (110) GaAs two-dimensional holes: Evidence for Landau-level spin-index anticrossings

We measure an anomalous magnetoresistance peak within the lowest Landau level (nu = 1) minimum of a two-dimensional hole system on (110) GaAs. Self-consistent calculations of the valence band mixing show that the two lowest spin-index Landau levels anticross in a perpendicular magnetic field B consistent with where the experimental peak is measured, Bp. The temperature dependence of the anomalous peak height is interpreted as an activated behavior across this anticrossing gap. Calculations of the spin polarization in the lowest Landau levels predict a rapid switch from about -3/2 to +3/2 spin at the anticrossing. The peak position Bp is shown to be affected by the confinement electrostatics, and the utility of a tunable anticrossing position for spintronics applications is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

External Sampling

36th International Colloquium, ICALP 2009, Rhodes, Greece, July 5-12, 2009, Proceedings, Part IWe initiate the study of sublinear-time algorithms in the external memory model [1]. In this model, the data is stored in blocks of a certain size B, and the algorithm is charged a unit cost for each block access. This model is well-studied, since it reflects the computational issues occurring when the (massive) input is stored on a disk. Since each block access operates on B data elements in parallel, many problems have external memory algorithms whose number of block accesses is only a small fraction (e.g. 1/B) of their main memory complexity. However, to the best of our knowledge, no such reduction in complexity is known for any sublinear-time algorithm. One plausible explanation is that the vast majority of sublinear-time algorithms use random sampling and thus exhibit no locality of reference. This state of affairs is quite unfortunate, since both sublinear-time algorithms and the external memory model are important approaches to dealing with massive data sets, and ideally they should be combined to achieve best performance. In this paper we show that such combination is indeed possible. In particular, we consider three well-studied problems: testing of distinctness, uniformity and identity of an empirical distribution induced by data. For these problems we show random-sampling-based algorithms whose number of block accesses is up to a factor of 1/√B smaller than the main memory complexity of those problems. We also show that this improvement is optimal for those problems. Since these problems are natural primitives for a number of sampling-based algorithms for other problems, our tools improve the external memory complexity of other problems as well.David & Lucile Packard Foundation (Fellowship)Center for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO)Marie Curie (International Reintegration Grant 231077)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0514771)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0728645)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0732334)Symantec Research Labs (Research Fellowship

Hall state quantization in a rotating frame

We derive electromagnetomotive force fields for charged particles moving in a rotating Hall sample, satisfying a twofold U(1) gauge invariance principle. It is then argued that the phase coherence property of quantization of the line integral of total collective particle momentum into multiples of Planck's quantum of action is solely responsible for quantization in the Hall state. As a consequence, the height of the Hall quantization steps should remain invariant in a rapidly rotating Hall probe. Quantum Hall particle conductivities do not depend on charge and mass of the electron, and are quantized in units of the inverse of Planck's action quantum.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter

Relating L-Resilience and Wait-Freedom via Hitting Sets

The condition of t-resilience stipulates that an n-process program is only obliged to make progress when at least n-t processes are correct. Put another way, the live sets, the collection of process sets such that progress is required if all the processes in one of these sets are correct, are all sets with at least n-t processes. We show that the ability of arbitrary collection of live sets L to solve distributed tasks is tightly related to the minimum hitting set of L, a minimum cardinality subset of processes that has a non-empty intersection with every live set. Thus, finding the computing power of L is NP-complete. For the special case of colorless tasks that allow participating processes to adopt input or output values of each other, we use a simple simulation to show that a task can be solved L-resiliently if and only if it can be solved (h-1)-resiliently, where h is the size of the minimum hitting set of L. For general tasks, we characterize L-resilient solvability of tasks with respect to a limited notion of weak solvability: in every execution where all processes in some set in L are correct, outputs must be produced for every process in some (possibly different) participating set in L. Given a task T, we construct another task T_L such that T is solvable weakly L-resiliently if and only if T_L is solvable weakly wait-free

Instrumentation design study for testing a hypersonic ramjet engine on the x-15 a-2. volume 3- conceptual design of measurement systems

Instrumentation for testing hypersonic ramjet engine on X-15A-2 aircraf

Quasar Feedback in the Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxy F11119+3257: Connecting the Accretion Disk Wind with the Large-Scale Molecular Outflow

In Tombesi et al. (2015), we reported the first direct evidence for a quasar accretion disk wind driving a massive molecular outflow. The target was F11119+3257, an ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with unambiguous type-1 quasar optical broad emission lines. The energetics of the accretion disk wind and molecular outflow were found to be consistent with the predictions of quasar feedback models where the molecular outflow is driven by a hot energy-conserving bubble inflated by the inner quasar accretion disk wind. However, this conclusion was uncertain because the energetics were estimated from the optically thick OH 119 um transition profile observed with Herschel. Here, we independently confirm the presence of the molecular outflow in F11119+3257, based on the detection of broad wings in the CO(1-0) profile derived from ALMA observations. The broad CO(1-0) line emission appears to be spatially extended on a scale of at least ~7 kpc from the center. Mass outflow rate, momentum flux, and mechanical power of (80-200) R_7^{-1} M_sun/yr, (1.5-3.0) R_7^{-1} L_AGN/c, and (0.15-0.40)% R_7^{-1} L_AGN are inferred from these data, assuming a CO-to-H_2 conversion factor appropriate for a ULIRG (R_7 is the radius of the outflow normalized to 7 kpc and L_AGN is the AGN luminosity). These rates are time-averaged over a flow time scale of 7x10^6 yrs. They are similar to the OH-based rates time-averaged over a flow time scale of 4x10^5 yrs, but about a factor 4 smaller than the local ("instantaneous"; <10^5 yrs) OH-based estimates cited in Tombesi et al. The implications of these new results are discussed in the context of time-variable quasar-mode feedback and galaxy evolution. The need for an energy-conserving bubble to explain the molecular outflow is also re-examined.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in Ap