Developing a model to predict aircraft maintenance performance

[Abstract]: A three-pronged approach was adopted to the investigation of causes of maintenance errors in army aviation. In the first phase of the research, analysis of maintenance incident reports suggested that individuals were mostly at fault, making errors because they failed to follow procedures and were inadequately supervised. Interviews with maintenance technicians, on the other hand, put the spotlight on organisational variables, such as pressures created by poor planning. In the third phase, a survey instrument administered to 448 maintenance workers was used to develop a structural model that predicted 34% of the variance in psychological health, 16% of the variance in turnover intentions, and 16% of the variance in self-reported maintenance errors. Implications of these findings are discussed

Indigenous education: experiential learning and learning through country

In Indigenous policy circles there is an increasingly desperate desire to lift the educational and employment outcomes of remote Indigenous students, relative to their non-Indigenous peers in the rest of Australia. A lack of engagement with education and a scarcity of jobs underpin this policy anxiety. This paper queries some current policy approaches to these issues and seeks to provide a practical and grounded perspective to education programs in remote Indigenous Australia. We question and challenge the weight current policy agendas are ascribing to literacy and numeracy attainment through direct and classroom based instruction. Alternatively, we seek to reinvigorate the notion that quality education can comprise other modes of learning and include community based educational approaches. As an example we outline the importance of Indigenous land and sea management (ILSM) as a development and employment activity for Indigenous people living in remote regions of Australia, and show how remote education programs are connecting to ILSM to provide local ‘Learning through Country’ solutions. From research conducted in a diversity of remote Aboriginal education and employment contexts, we find that there is a commonality of issues confronting attempts to link education with work and development activity. We finish by giving voice to some of these issues and offer insights relevant for educators and policy makers

Foreword and Preface, from Courier, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, Fall 1993

FOREWARD: When in 1962, I first visited the rare book collection of the Syracuse University Library to begin researching the history of the Oneida Community, I explored the foundation of what is now a distinguished and growing body of material related to America\u27s most complex communal venture. That foundation had been laid when Lester G. Wells, then curator, acquired a full run of the Community periodicals and a substantial body of pamphlets. The O. C. Collection as outlined by Wells in his 1961 bibliography* provided me with enough data to grasp the details of Community life reported in their own periodicals. Since then many researchers have journeyed to Syracuse to mine those periodicals and pamphlets (in 1973 they were made available on microfilm to other libraries), and I am sure that scholars will continue to explore the primary sources gathered by Mark Weimer and opened in 1993. PREFACE: SEVENTY YEARS AGO -in reply to a letter from Hope Emily Allen that was full of trepidation about the handling of the Oneida Community\u27s legacy, especially by one Mrs. Smith-George Bernard Shaw wrote: I agree with you that only a symposium could do justice to the Oneida Creek Community\u27s history: but the difficulty seems to be that the witnesses wont sympose. This being so, there is nothing for it but to let Mrs. Smith tell her history and provoke retorts, so that we shall get the symposium in different covers instead of in one book.1 Hope Allen, a respected medievalist, was born in the Mansion House a few years after the breakup of the Oneida Community. She became the Community\u27s archivist after her return as an adult to Oneida. Shaw\u27s keen interest in the Oneida Community was most fully articulated in his essay The Perfectionist Experiment at Oneida Creek , which appeared as part of The Revolutionist Handbook appended to Man and Superman (1903)

Computer mechanization of six-degree of freedom flight equations

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69091/2/10.1177_003754976801100407.pd

Spatial patterns of woody plant encroachment in a temperate grassland

Context Woody encroachment is the process whereby grasslands transition to a woody-dominated state. This process is a global driver of grassland decline and is ultimately the outcome of increased woody plant recruitment in grasslands. Yet, little is known about how recruitment distances structure spatial patterns of encroachment. Objectives Here, we develop a recruitment curve to describe the scatter of woody plant recruitment around seed sources and examine how this structures spatial patterns of encroachment. Methods We developed a recruitment curve for Juniperus virginiana using an encroachment dataset that captures spread from tree plantings into treeless grassland sites in the Nebraska Sandhills (USA). In addition, we used height classes of encroaching J. virginiana as subsequent time steps of an encroachment process to examine how the leading edge of encroachment expanded over time. Results The recruitment curve was characterized by a fat-tailed distribution. Most recruitment occurred locally, within 157 m of seed sources (95th percentile distance), while, sparse long-distance recruitment characterized the curve’s tail. Expansion of the leading edge of encroachment was characterized by two features: (1) a slow moving, high density area near tree plantings and (2) rapid expansion of the distribution’s tail, driven by long-distance recruitment in treeless areas. Conclusion Our results show a high capacity for woody plant invasion of grasslands. Local recruitment drives transitions to woody dominance, while long-distance recruitment generates a rapidly advancing leading edge. Plans to conserve and restore grasslands will require spatially informed strategies that account for local and long-distance recruitment of woody plants

New Perspectives on Ecological Mechanisms Affecting Coral Recruitment on Reefs

Coral mortality has increased in recent decades, making coral recruitment more important than ever in sustaining coral reef ecosystems and contributing to their resilience. This review summarizes existing information on ecological factors affecting scleractinian coral recruitment. Successful recruitment requires the survival of coral offspring through sequential life history stages. Larval availability, successful settlement, and post-settlement survival and growth are all necessary for the addition of new coral individuals to a reef and ultimately maintenance or recovery of coral reef ecosystems. As environmental conditions continue to become more hostile to corals on a global scale, further research on fertilization ecology, connectivity, larval condition, positive and negative cues influencing substrate selection, and post-settlement ecology will be critical to our ability to manage these diverse ecosystems for recovery. A better understanding of the ecological factors infl uencing coral recruitment is fundamental to coral reef ecology and management

Neuronal correlates of cognitive control are altered in women with endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain

Endometriosis is a debilitating women's health condition and is the most common cause of chronic pelvic pain. Impaired cognitive control is common in chronic pain conditions, however, it has not yet been investigated in endometriosis. The aim of this study was to explore the neuronal correlates of cognitive control in women with endometriosis. Using a cross-sectional study design with data collected at a single time-point, event-related potentials were elicited during a cued continuous performance test from 20 women with endometriosis (mean age = 28.5 ± 5.2 years) and 20 age- and gender-matched controls (mean age = 28.5 ± 5.2 years). Event-related potential components were extracted and P3 component amplitudes were derived with temporal principal components analysis. Behavioral and ERP outcomes were compared between groups and subjective pain severity was correlated with ERP component amplitudes. No significant behavioral differences were seen in task performance between the groups (all p > 0.094). Target P3b (all p < 0.034) and SW (all p < 0.040), and non-target early P3a (eP3a; all p < 0.023) and late P3a (lP3a; all p < 0.035) amplitudes were smaller for the endometriosis compared to the healthy control group. Lower non-target eP3a (p < 0.001), lP3a (p = 0.013), and SW (p = 0.019) amplitudes were correlated with higher pain severity scores. Findings suggest that endometriosis-associated chronic pelvic pain is linked to alterations in stimulus-response processing and inhibitory control networks, but not impaired behavioral performance, due to compensatory neuroplastic changes in overlapping cognitive control and pain networks

Saving endangered whales at no cost

Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Current Biology 17 (2007): R10-R11, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.11.045.The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most critically endangered marine species. Drastic overexploitation has driven this large, slow-swimming baleen whale to virtual extinction in Europe, while a small remnant population of ~350 individuals remains on the U.S. and Canadian east coast. Although this species has been protected for 70 years, recovery has been slight and extinction is still looming because of accidental mortality from shipstrikes and fishing gear (Figure 1A,B). Seventy five percent of appropriately photographed whales show evidence of entanglement, predominantly with lobster fishing gear, and this percentage has increased from 52% in the 1980s. At the same time, the U.S. lobster fishery is severely overexploited (the inshore fishing mortalities in the two main U.S. regions are 0.69 and 0.84, while 0.2 achieves maximum yield per recruit). We argue here that this endangered whale species can be protected from entanglement mortality, and the fishery can benefit simultaneously, by a large reduction of lobster traps used; a classic win–win situation.This work was supported by the Lenfest Foundation and NSERC