Development of pilot training requirements for Personal Aerial Vehicles

This paper describes research activities conducted at the University of Liverpool as part of the myCopter project into the development of training requirements for pilots of Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs). The work has included a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) to determine the skills required of a PAV pilot and the evaluation of a training programme that covers the development of the skills identified by the TNA. The effectiveness of the training programme has been assessed using the first three Levels of Kirkpatrick's method. The evaluation showed that the developed training programme was effective, in terms of engaging the trainees with the subject, and in terms of developing the skills required to fly a series of PAV-mission related tasks in a flight simulator

Towards the Development of a Flight Training Programme for Future Personal Aerial Vehicle Users

Interest in personal aerial vehicles (PAVs) is resurgent with several flying prototypes made possible through advances in the relevant technologies. Whilst the perceived wisdom is that these vehicles will be highly automated or autonomous, the current regulatory framework assumes that a human will always be able to intervene in the operation of the flight. This raises the possibility of manually operated PAVs and the requirement for an occupant flying training programme. This paper describes the development of training requirements for PAV pilots. The work includes a training needs analysis (TNA) for a typical PAV flight. It then describes the development of a training programme to develop the skills identified by the TNA. Five participants with no real flying experience, but varying levels of driving experience, undertook the training programme. Four completed the programme through to a successful simulation flight test of a commuter flight scenario. These participants evaluated the effectiveness of the training programme using the first three Levels of Kirkpatrick’s method. The evaluation showed that the developed training programme was effective, in terms of both trainee engagement and development of the handling skills necessary to fly PAV mission-related tasks in a flight simulator. The time required for the four successful participants to develop their core flying skills was less than 5 h. This duration indicates that future simulation PAV training would be commensurate with the training duration for current personal transportation modes

Field measurement of the interactions between heat pumps and attic duct systems in residential buildings

Research efforts to improve residential heat-pump performance have tended to focus on laboratory and theoretical studies of the machine itself, with some limited field research having been focused on in-situ performance and installation issues. One issue that has received surprisingly little attention is the interaction between the heat pump and the duct system to which it is connected. This paper presents the results of a field study that addresses this interaction. Field performance measurements before and after sealing and insulating the duct systems were made on three heat pumps. From the pre-retrofit data it was found that reductions in heat-pump capacity due to low outdoor temperatures and/or coil frosting are accompanied by lower duct-system energy delivery efficiencies. The conduction loss reductions, and thus the delivery temperature improvements, due to adding duct insulation were found to vary widely depending on the length of the particular duct section, the thermal mass of that duct section, and the cycling characteristics of the heat-pump. In addition, it was found that the use of strip-heat back-up decreased after the retrofits, and that heat-pump cycling increased dramatically after the retrofits, which respectively increase and decrease savings due to the retrofits. Finally, normalized energy use for the three systems which were operated consistently pre- and post-retrofit showed an average reduction of 19% after retrofit, which corresponds to a chance in overall distribution-system efficiency of 24%

Evaluation of the phase-aggression criterion for PIO detection in real-time

This paper presents the results of a pilot-in-the-loop experiment performed to investigate the efficacy of a pilot-induced oscillation (PIO) or adverse rotorcraft-pilot coupling (RPC) real-time detection method, to be implemented as an in-cockpit warning system. A test pilot performed a number of simulated flights inside the Heliflight-R simulator at the University of Liverpool. Two handling qualities (HQ) mission task element (MTE) maneuvers were chosen, namely Precision Hover and Lateral Reposition. The baseline dynamics were those of a FLIGHTLAB BO105-like helicopter model, as used in previous tests; changes in rate limits were introduced to induce the pilot-vehicle system (PVS) to be more RPC/PIO prone, and to observe pilot's adaptation to these variations causing system instabilities during the chosen MTEs. To objectively measure the severity of the PIO encountered during the tests, the Phase-Aggression Criterion (PAC) has been used. This method has been developed to allow for real-time PIO detection in order to provide the information inside the cockpit. In addition, pilot subjective ratings were collected, by using the HQs, PIO and Pilot Workload rating scales. Overall, the results show a good correlation between objective and subjective evaluations, and that it is possible to detect PIOs in real-time. The information can be provided to the pilot by means of visual, aural or haptic cues, which is the work the authors are currently carrying out

Antimicrobial Stewardship in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Call to Action

Antimicrobial resistance is a global public health crisis and a national security threat to the United States, as stated in an executive order signed by the president in September 2014. This crisis is a result of indiscriminant antimicrobial use, which promotes selection for resistant organisms, increases the risk of adverse drug events, and renders patients vulnerable to drug-resistant infections. Antimicrobial stewardship is a key measure to combat antimicrobial resistance and specifically seeks to do this by improving antimicrobial use. Antimicrobial stewardship compliments infection control practices and it is important to note that these 2 disciplines are distinct and cannot be discussed interchangeably. Antimicrobial stewardship promotes the appropriate diagnosis, drug, dose, and duration of treatment. The appropriate diagnosis falls into the hands of the prescriber and clinical staff. Optimal antimicrobial drug selection, dosing strategy, and duration of treatment, however, often require expertise in antimicrobial therapy, such as an infectious disease–trained physician or pharmacist. Therefore, successful antimicrobial stewardship programs must be comprehensive and interdisciplinary. Most antimicrobial stewardship programs focus on hospitals; yet, in long-term care, up to 75% of antimicrobial use is inappropriate or unnecessary. Thus, one of the most pressing areas in need for antimicrobial stewardship is in long-term care facilities. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that describes effective antimicrobial stewardship interventions in this setting. This review discusses the need for and barriers to antimicrobial stewardship in long-term care facilities. Additionally, this review describes prior interventions that have been implemented and tested to improve antimicrobial use in long-term care facilities

Prediction and Simulator Verification of Roll/Lateral Adverse Aeroservoelastic Rotorcraft–Pilot Couplings

The involuntary interaction of a pilot with an aircraft can be described as pilot-assisted oscillations. Such phenomena are usually only addressed late in the design process when they manifest themselves during ground/flight testing. Methods to be able to predict such phenomena as early as possible are therefore useful. This work describes a technique to predict the adverse aeroservoelastic rotorcraft–pilot couplings, specifically between a rotorcraft’s roll motion and the resultant involuntary pilot lateral cyclic motion. By coupling linear vehicle aeroservoelastic models and experimentally identified pilot biodynamic models, pilot-assisted oscillations and no-pilot-assisted oscillation conditions have been numerically predicted for a soft-in-plane hingeless helicopter with a lightly damped regressive lead–lag mode that strongly interacts with the roll modeat a frequency within the biodynamic band of the pilots. These predictions have then been verified using real-time flight-simulation experiments. The absence of any similar adverse couplings experienced while using only rigid-body models in the flight simulator verified that the observed phenomena were indeed aeroelastic in nature. The excellent agreement between the numerical predictions and the observed experimental results indicates that the techniques developed in this paper can be used to highlight the proneness of new or existing designs to pilot-assisted oscillation

¿Cómo influye la riqueza genética de los abetos pirenaicos en su respuesta al cambio climático?

Noticia publicada por la Agencia Sinc: El Servicio de Información y Noticias Científicas (SINC) es la primera agencia pública de ámbito estatal especializada en información sobre ciencia, tecnología e innovación en español. En la página web de iAguaUn estudio demuestra que los abetares más antiguos son más tolerantes a condiciones de aumento de temperatura y disminución de precipitación. El mantenimiento de la diversidad ayuda a los expertos a contar con individuos adaptados, idóneos en las restauraciones, que eviten el decaimiento de la especie.N