Advanced Supersonic Technology concept AST-100 characteristics developed in a baseline-update study

The advanced supersonic technology configuration, AST-100, is described. The combination of wing thickness reduction, nacelle recontouring for minimum drag at cruise, and the use of the horizontal tail to produce lift during climb and cruise resulted in an increase in maximum lift-to-drag ratio. Lighter engines and lower fuel weight associated with this resizing result in a six percent reduction in takeoff gross weight. The AST-100 takeoff maximum effective perceived noise at the runway centerline and sideline measurement stations was 114.4 decibels. Since 1.5-decibels tradeoff is available from the approach noise, the required engine noise supression is 4.9 decibels. The AST-100 largest maximum overpressure would occur during transonic climb acceleration when the aircraft was at relatively low altitude. Calculated standard +8 C day range of the AST-100, with a 292 passenger payload, is 7348 km (3968 n.mi). Fuel price is the largest contributor to direct operating cost. However, if the AST-100 were flown subsonically (M = 0.9), direct operating costs would increase approximately 50 percent because of time related costs

Stage-theoretical naming and counting

According to the stage view, ordinary objects are instantaneous stages, which “persist” by being counterpart-related to stages that exist at other times. In this paper, I consider the respective merits of current proposals for a stage-theoretical semantics of proper names of ordinary objects and sketch what I argue is a better alternative. On any stage-theoretical account, names of ordinary objects refer to stages. I argue that names should be understood as temporally flexible, referring indeterminately over stages that constitute an object’s history, and sketch a stagetheoretical semantics for names of ordinary objects that yields the intuitively correct results for reference and counting in both ordinary cases and extraordinary puzzle cases of fission

Occasional Identity or Occasional Reference?

André Gallois argues that individuals that undergo fission are on some occasions identical, but on others distinct. Occasional identity however, is metaphysically costly. I argue that we can get all the benefits of occasional identity without the metaphysical costs. On the proposed account, the names of ordinary material objects refer indeterminately to stages that belong to reference classes determined by the context of utterance or temporal adverbs. In addition, temporal markers indicating the perspective from which we count objects and assign properties to them determine how many count and what is true of them. So, as Gallois holds, the truth value of claims about what is true at a time may change over time and, where fission or fusion occur, does change. The current account, however, secures this result without commitment to occasional identity: reference, predication and counting are “occasional”; identity is not

Left Libertarianism: What\u27s in It for Me?

Left libertarianism cannot effectively promote equal opportunity for well-being. Neither direct distributions from the rent fund nor financial incentives for firms will significantly reduce gross, ongoing discrimination which locks most women into a narrow range of boring, dead-end, pink collar drudge jobs and puts minorities at a disadvantage in hiring, housing, and access to credit. Left libertarianism: What\u27s in it for me? Not much

Task analysis for error identification: Theory, method and validation

This paper presents the underlying theory of Task Analysis for Error Identification. The aim is to illustrate the development of a method that has been proposed for the evaluation of prototypical designs from the perspective of predicting human error. The paper presents the method applied to representative examples. The methodology is considered in terms of the various validation studies that have been conducted, and is discussed in the light of a specific case study

The real presence

AbstractThe doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.</jats:p