25,644 research outputs found

    A route generator concept for aircraft onboard fault monitoring

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    Because of the increasingly complex environments in which the flight crews of commercial aviation aircraft must operate, a research effort is currently underway at NASA Langley Research Center to investigate the potential benefits of intelligent cockpit aids, and to establish guidelines for the application of artificial intelligence techniques to advanced flight management concepts. The segment of this research area that concentrates on automated fault monitoring and diagnosis requires that a reference frame exist, against which the current state of the aircraft may be compared to determine the existence of a fault. This paper describes a computer program which generates the position of that reference frame that specifies the horizontal flight route

    Effects of expected-value information and display format on recognition of aircraft subsystem abnormalities

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    This study identifies improved methods to present system parameter information for detecting abnormal conditions and to identify system status. Two workstation experiments were conducted. The first experiment determined if including expected-value-range information in traditional parameter display formats affected subject performance. The second experiment determined if using a nontraditional parameter display format, which presented relative deviation from expected value, was better than traditional formats with expected-value ranges included. The inclusion of expected-value-range information onto traditional parameter formats was found to have essentially no effect. However, subjective results indicated support for including this information. The nontraditional column deviation parameter display format resulted in significantly fewer errors compared with traditional formats with expected-value-ranges included. In addition, error rates for the column deviation parameter display format remained stable as the scenario complexity increased, whereas error rates for the traditional parameter display formats with expected-value ranges increased. Subjective results also indicated that the subjects preferred this new format and thought that their performance was better with it. The column deviation parameter display format is recommended for display applications that require rapid recognition of out-of-tolerance conditions, especially for a large number of parameters

    Summary of a Crew-Centered Flight Deck Design Philosophy for High-Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) Aircraft

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    Past flight deck design practices used within the U.S. commercial transport aircraft industry have been highly successful in producing safe and efficient aircraft. However, recent advances in automation have changed the way pilots operate aircraft, and these changes make it necessary to reconsider overall flight deck design. Automated systems have become more complex and numerous, and often their inner functioning is partially or fully opaque to the flight crew. Recent accidents and incidents involving autoflight system mode awareness Dornheim, 1995) are an example. This increase in complexity raises pilot concerns about the trustworthiness of automation, and makes it difficult for the crew to be aware of all the intricacies of operation that may impact safe flight. While pilots remain ultimately responsible for mission success, performance of flight deck tasks has been more widely distributed across human and automated resources. Advances in sensor and data integration technologies now make far more information available than may be prudent to present to the flight crew

    Symmetry Factors of Feynman Diagrams for Scalar Fields

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    The symmetry factor of Feynman diagrams for real and complex scalar fields is presented. Being analysis of Wick expansion for Green functions, the mentioned factor is derived in a general form. The symmetry factor can be separated into two ones corresponding to that of connected and vacuum diagrams. The determination of symmetry factors for the vacuum diagrams is necessary as they play a role in the effective action and phase transitions in cosmology. In the complex scalar theory the diagrams different in topology may give the same contribution, hence inverse of the symmetry factor (1/S) for total contribution is a summation of each similar ones (1/S_i), i.e., 1/S = \sum_i (1/S_i).Comment: Journal version, new references adde

    Petrogenesis of diachronous mixed siliciclastic-carbonate megafacies in the cool-water Oligocene Tikorangi Formation, Taranaki Basin, New Zealand

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    The Oligocene (Whaingaroan-Waitakian) Tikorangi Formation is a totally subsurface, lithostratigraphically complex, mixed siliciclastic-limestone-rich sequence forming an important fracture reservoir within Taranaki Basin, New Zealand. Petrographically the formation comprises a spectrum of interbedded rock types ranging from calcareous mudstone to wackestone to packstone to clean sparry grainstone. Skeletal and textural varieties within these rock types have aided in the identification of three environmentally distinctive megafacies for the Tikorangi Formation rocks-shelfal, foredeep, and basinal. Data from these megafacies have been used to detail previous conclusions on the petrogenesis and to further refine depositional paleoenvironmental models for the Tikorangi Formation in the central eastern Taranaki Basin margin.Shelfal Megafacies 1 rocks (reference well Hu Road-1A) are latest Oligocene (early Waitakian) in age and formed on or proximal to the Patea-Tongaporutu-Herangi basement high. They are characterised by coarse, skeletal-rich, pure sparry grainstone comprising shallow water, high energy taxa (bryozoans, barnacles, red algae) and admixtures of coarse well-rounded lithic sand derived from Mesozoic basement greywacke. This facies type has previously gone unrecorded in the Tikorangi Formation. Megafacies 2 is a latest Oligocene (early Waitakian) foredeep megafacies (formerly named shelfal facies) formed immediately basinward and west of the shelfal basement platform. It accumulated relatively rapidly (>20 cm/ka) from redeposition of shelfal megafacies biota that became intermixed with bathyal taxa to produce a spectrum of typically mudstone through to sparry grainstone. The resulting skeletal mix (bivalve, echinoderm, planktic and benthic foraminiferal, red algal, bryozoan, nannofossil) is unlike that in any of the age-equivalent limestone units in neighbouring onland King Country Basin. Megafacies 3 is an Oligocene (Whaingaroan-Waitakian) offshore basinal megafacies (formerly termed bathyal facies) of planktic foraminiferal-nannofossil-siliciclastic wackestone and mudstone formed away from redepositional influences. The siliciclastic input in this distal basinal setting (sedimentation rates <7 mm/ka) was probably sourced mainly from oceanic currents carrying suspended sediment from South Island provenances exposed at this time.Tikorangi Formation rocks record the Taranaki Basin’s only period of carbonate-dominated sedimentation across a full range of shelfal, foredeep, and basinal settings. Depositional controls on the three contrasting megafacies were fundamentally the interplay of an evolving and complex plate tectonic setting, including development of a carbonate foredeep, changes in relative sea level within an overall transgressive regime, and changing availability, sources, and modes of deposition of both bioclastic and siliciclastic sediments. The mixed siliciclastic-carbonate nature of the formation, and its skeletal assemblages, low-Mg calcite mineralogy, and delayed deep burial diagenetic history, are features consistent with formation in temperate-latitude cool waters

    The making of mining engineers

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    TGRS Observations of Positron Annihilation in Classical Novae

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    The TGRS experiment on board the Wind spacecraft has many advantages as a sky monitor --- broad field of view (~2 pi) centered on the south ecliptic pole), long life (1994-present), and stable low background and continuous coverage due to Wind's high altitude high eccentricity orbit. The Ge detector has sufficient energy resolution (3-4 keV at 511 keV) to resolve a cosmic positron annihilation line from the strong background annihilation line from beta-decays induced by cosmic ray impacts on the instrument, if the cosmic line is Doppler-shifted by this amount. Such lines (blueshifted) are predicted from nucleosynthesis in classical novae. We have searched the entire TGRS database for 1995-1997 for this line, with negative results. In principle such a search could yield an unbiased upper limit on the highly-uncertain Galactic nova rate. We carefully examined the times around the known nova events during this period, also with negative results. The upper limit on the nova line flux in a 6-hr interval is typically <3.8 E-3 photon/(cm2 s) at 4.6 sigma. We performed the same analysis for times around the outburst of Nova Vel 1999, obtaining a worse limit due to recent degradation of the detector response caused by cosmic ray induced damage.Comment: 5 pp. inc. 3 figs. Proc. 5th Compton Symposium (AIP Conf. Series), ed. M. McConnell, in pres

    High-throughput functional analysis provides novel insight into type VII secretion in <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em>

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    \ua9 2024 The Authors.Successful colonization by the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus depends on its ability to interact with other microorganisms. Staphylococcus aureus strains harbour a T7b subtype of type VII secretion system (T7SSb), a protein secretion system found in a wide variety of Bacillota, which functions in bacterial antagonism and virulence. Assessment of T7SSb activity in S. aureus has been hampered by low secretion activity under laboratory conditions and the lack of a sensitive assay to measure secretion. Here, we have utilized NanoLuc binary technology to develop a simple assay to monitor protein secretion via detection of bioluminescence. Fusion of the 11 amino acid NanoLuc fragment to the conserved substrate EsxA permits its extracellular detection upon supplementation with the large NanoLuc fragment and luciferase substrate. Following miniaturization of the assay to 384-well format, we use high-throughput analysis to demonstrate that T7SSb-dependent protein secretion differs across strains and growth temperature. We further show that the same assay can be used to monitor secretion of the surface-associated toxin substrate TspA. Using this approach, we identify three conserved accessory proteins required to mediate TspA secretion. Co-purification experiments confirm that all three proteins form a complex with TspA

    Does the Supreme Court Follow the Economic Returns? A Response to A Macrotheory of the Court

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    Today, there is a widespread idea that parents need to learn how to carry out their roles as parents. Practices of parental learning operate throughout society. This article deals with one particular practice of parental learning, namely nanny TV, and the way in which ideal parents are constructed through such programmes. The point of departure is SOS family, a series broadcast on Swedish television in 2008. Proceeding from the theorising of governmentality developed in the wake of the work of Michel Foucault, we analyse the parental ideals conveyed in the series, as an example of the way parents are constituted as subjects in the ‘advanced liberal society’ of today. The ideal parent is a subject who, guided by the coach, is constantly endeavouring to achieve a makeover. The objective of this endeavour, however, is self-control, whereby the parents will in the end become their own coaches.
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