Anforderungen für das Situationsbewusstsein von Kampfflugzeugpiloten bei der Luftbetankung mit dem Probe-and-Drogue-Verfahren

Die Luftbetankung mit Sonde und Fangtrichter ist ein fliegerischer Vorgang mit einer sehr hohen Arbeitsbelastung für Piloten von Kampfflugzeugen. Der nahe Formationsflug zum Tankerflugzeug, die erforderliche Präzision beim Herstellen des Kontaktes mit dem Betankungskorb, hoher zeitli-cher Druck und Umwelteinflüsse sind die Hauptgründe dafür. Das DLR forscht im Projekt F(AI)²R (Future Air-to-Air Refueling) an Assistenz- und Automatisierungssystemen zur Luftbetankung. Im Rahmen dieses Projektes wurde der Luftbetankungsprozess aus Sicht der Piloten im Empfänger-flugzeug detailliert analysiert, um deren Erfahrungen direkt in den Entwicklungsprozess entspre-chender Systeme zu integrieren. Hierzu wurde eine hierarchische Aufgabenanalyse (HTA) mittels Literaturrecherche und semistruk-turierten Interviews mit Piloten durchgeführt. Es wurden vier Testpiloten der Wehrtechnischen Dienststelle 61 sowie sechs Tornadopiloten und zehn Eurofighterpiloten der deutschen Luftwaffe befragt. Anschließend wurden aus der HTA die „Situational Awareness Requirements“ bestimmt, welche die relevanten Parameter für das Situationsbewusstsein darstellen. Ermittelt wurden insge-samt 64 Parameter, darunter zum Beispiel die Distanz oder die Annäherungsgeschwindigkeit von der Betankungssonde zum Korb. Die identifizierten Parameter wurden zusätzlich von den befrag-ten Piloten hinsichtlich deren Relevanz in den verschiedenen Phasen der Luftbetankung bewertet und in Ranglisten sortiert. Im Rahmen des Vortrages werden die angewendete Methodik sowie die Ergebnisse der Studie vorgestellt, welche bei der Entwicklung von Assistenz- und Automatisierungsfunktionen zur Luftbe-tankung genutzt werden. Parallel entsteht im Projekt F(AI)²R ein Kampfflugzeugsimulator, mit dem entsprechende Konzepte prototypisch umgesetzt und mit Testpiloten evaluiert werden sollen

Weltweiter Ausbruch von Affenpocken - Situationsbeschreibung des Robert Koch-Instituts für Deutschland, Datenstand 14.07.2022

Im Mai 2022 häuften sich nicht-reiseassoziierte Fälle von Affenpocken. Seitdem hat sich ein weltweiter Ausbruch mit über 11.000 Fällen in 69 Ländern entwickelt, von denen rund 80 % in Europa gemeldet wurden. In Deutschland sind 1.790 Fälle bekannt (Datenstand: 14.07.2022), das Ausbruchsgeschehen konzentriert sich hierbei hauptsächlich auf große Städte. Bis Kalenderwoche 25/2022 ist die Zahl der gemeldeten Fälle stark gestiegen, seitdem hat sich der Anstieg abgeflacht. Der im Epidemiologischen Bulletin 29/2022 veröffentlichte Bericht fasst die epidemiologische Lage des Ausbruchs und den Kenntnisstand zu Symptomen und Übertragungswegen zusammen, gibt einen Überblick über die umgesetzten Public Health-Maßnahmen inklusive Kommunikations- und Vorsichtsmaßnahmen, Impfung, Diagnostik sowie laufende Studien und bietet einen Ausblick in die Zukunft

Vascular tissue specific mirna profiles reveal novel correlations with risk factors in coronary artery disease

Funding Information: Acknowledgments: We wish to thank all individuals donating cardiovascular relevant tissue and data. We would like to thank the surgeons of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery and the KaBi-DHM (Cardiovascular Biobank of the German Heart Center) for collecting the surgical specimens. We further wish to thank the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) for financial support, the technical assistance team (Nicole Beck, Ulrike Weiß and Susanne Blachut) for wet lab and sequencing support. M.v.S. reported support by the Clinician Scientist Excellence Program of the DZHK, the German Society of Cardiology (DGK), the German Heart Foundation (Deutsche Herzstiftung e.V.), the Fondation Leducq (PlaqOmics) and the Corona Foundation (Junior Research Group Cardiovascular Diseases). Further, support was provided within the framework of DigiMed Bayern (www.digimed-bayern.de) funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Health and Care and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts through the DHM-MSRM Joint Research Center. Figures were prepared based on a BioRender’s Academic License using BioRender https://biorender.com/. Funding Information: Funding: Supported by the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), grant number 81X2100144 and by the BMBF (German Ministry of Education and Research). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Non-coding RNAs have already been linked to CVD development and progression. While microR-NAs (miRs) have been well studied in blood samples, there is little data on tissue-specific miRs in cardiovascular relevant tissues and their relation to cardiovascular risk factors. Tissue-specific miRs derived from Arteria mammaria interna (IMA) from 192 coronary artery disease (CAD) patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) were analyzed. The aims of the study were 1) to establish a reference atlas which can be utilized for identification of novel diagnostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets, and 2) to relate these miRs to cardiovascular risk factors. Overall, 393 individual miRs showed sufficient expression levels and passed quality control for further analysis. We identified 17 miRs–miR-10b-3p, miR-10-5p, miR-17-3p, miR-21-5p, miR-151a-5p, miR-181a-5p, miR-185-5p, miR-194-5p, miR-199a-3p, miR-199b-3p, miR-212-3p, miR-363-3p, miR-548d-5p, miR-744-5p, miR-3117-3p, miR-5683 and miR-5701–significantly correlated with cardiovascular risk factors (correlation coefficient >0.2 in both directions, p-value (p < 0.006, false discovery rate (FDR) <0.05). Of particular interest, miR-5701 was positively correlated with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes. In addition, we found that miR-629-5p and miR-98-5p were significantly correlated with acute myocardial infarction. We provide a first atlas of miR profiles in IMA samples from CAD patients. In perspective, these miRs might play an important role in improved risk assessment, mechanistic disease understanding and local therapy of CAD.Peer reviewe

Design and Assessment of Fighter Pilot Assistance Systems for Air-to-Air Refuelling with Probe-and-Drogue-Equipment

Air-to-air refuelling with a probe-and-drogue system is a highly demanding process for fighter pilots. In the frame of the project F(AI)²R (Future Air-to-Air Refuelling) DLR is designing concepts for assistance systems to support fighter pilots during this manoeuvre. The AAR-process was examined with a hierarchical task analysis (HTA) based on literature review and semi-structured interviews with Eurofighter-, Tornado- and test-pilots. “Situation Awareness Requirements (SAR)”, which represent relevant parameters for the situation awareness of the fighter pilot were derived from the HTA and rated by pilots according to their relevance. The collected data was then used to design different concepts of pilot assistance systems using a morphological box and a decision matrix. The concepts were visualised as storyboards, assessed by test pilots of WTD 61 and optimized based on their feedback. In this paper, the used methodology as well as results of the HTA and SAR analysis are presented. Besides that, storyboards for pilot assistance systems displaying the overtake speed and the “Contact Assistance, Status and Warning System” (CASWS) are described. Additionally, the planned implementation using a HoloLens 2 is explained and the strategy for the subsequent simulator study on the DLR fighter aircraft simulator MARS-FIT is described

Design and Assessment of Fighter Pilot Assistance Systems for Air-to-Air Refuelling with Probe-to-Drogue-Equipment

Air-to-air refuelling with a probe-and-drogue system is a highly demanding process for pilots of fighter jets. In the frame of the project F(AI)²R (Future Air-to-Air Refuelling) DLR is designing concepts for assistance and automation systems to support fighter pilots during air-to-air refuelling. The AAR-process was examined with a hierarchical task analysis (HTA) based on literature review and semi-structured interviews with four test pilots of the Bundeswehr Technical Center for Aircraft and Aeronautical Equipment (WTD 61), six Tornado pilots and ten Eurofighter pilots of the German Airforce. Furthermore, the so called "Situation Awareness Requirements", which represent relevant parameters for the situation awareness (SA) of the fighter pilot, were derived from the HTA and rated by pilots according to their relevance during each phase of the air-to-air refuelling process. The collected data were used to design different concepts of pilot assistance systems using a morphological box and a decision matrix. The different pilot assistance system concepts were visualised as storyboards. These storyboards were then assessed by test pilots of WTD 61 and optimized with their feedback. In this paper, the used methodology as well as first results of the task analysis and situation awareness requirements analysis are presented. Besides that, a concept storyboard for a pilot assistance system displaying the overtake speed for establishing contact is described. As an outlook the planned implementation of pilot assistance systems using the HoloLens 2 is explained and the planning for the subsequent simulator study on the DLR fighter aircraft simulator MARS-FIT is described

The trajectory of the functional excitation-inhibition balance in an autistic and allistic developmental sample

Imbalances between the brain’s excitatory (E) and inhibitory (I) systems can lead to structural and functional cortical deviances which have been associated with various developmental conditions including autism. However, the developmental trajectory of such EI imbalances across childhood and adolescence as well as its relationship to autism traits is not well understood yet. In this study, we determined a functional measure of the EI balance from resting-state electroencephalogram recordings of 92 autistic and 100 allistic children (6-17 years of age) and related it to behavioral assessments of autism traits and language ability. Our results revealed differential EI trajectories for the autistic compared to the allistic children. Moreover, the EI trajectories related to individual language ability in which elevated excitability in late childhood and early adolescence was linked to decreased listening comprehension. Our findings therefore show that the developmental trajectory of EI balance shares variance with autism trait development

Improving Aquatic Warbler Population Assessments by Accounting for Imperfect Detection

<div><p>Monitoring programs designed to assess changes in population size over time need to account for imperfect detection and provide estimates of precision around annual abundance estimates. Especially for species dependent on conservation management, robust monitoring is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of management. Many bird species of temperate grasslands depend on specific conservation management to maintain suitable breeding habitat. One such species is the Aquatic Warbler (<i>Acrocephalus paludicola</i>), which breeds in open fen mires in Central Europe. Aquatic Warbler populations have so far been assessed using a complete survey that aims to enumerate all singing males over a large area. Because this approach provides no estimate of precision and does not account for observation error, detecting moderate population changes is challenging. From 2011 to 2013 we trialled a new line transect sampling monitoring design in the Biebrza valley, Poland, to estimate abundance of singing male Aquatic Warblers. We surveyed Aquatic Warblers repeatedly along 50 randomly placed 1-km transects, and used binomial mixture models to estimate abundances per transect. The repeated line transect sampling required 150 observer days, and thus less effort than the traditional ‘full count’ approach (175 observer days). Aquatic Warbler abundance was highest at intermediate water levels, and detection probability varied between years and was influenced by vegetation height. A power analysis indicated that our line transect sampling design had a power of 68% to detect a 20% population change over 10 years, whereas raw count data had a 9% power to detect the same trend. Thus, by accounting for imperfect detection we increased the power to detect population changes. We recommend to adopt the repeated line transect sampling approach for monitoring Aquatic Warblers in Poland and in other important breeding areas to monitor changes in population size and the effects of habitat management.</p></div

Identifying the potential wintering sites of the globally threatened Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola using remote sensing

The Aquatic Warbler is a threatened Afro-Palaearctic migrant with a largely unknown distribution in the winter (non-breeding) season. Protection of wintering sites may be crucial for the conservation of the species. Previous studies have identified extensive areas of north-western sub-Saharan Africa that could potentially be occupied by the species during winter. However, these studies have not necessarily differentiated between potentially suitable and unsuitable  habitat types at a spatial resolution appropriate for targeting field surveys. To identify specific sites that could be occupied by non-breeding Aquatic Warblers  at a scale appropriate for targeted field surveys, we adopted a modelling  approach that combined recent sightings from Djoudj, Senegal, with land cover and climate data. We produced maps of potential distribution using three maximum entropy models. While a paucity of sightings prevented a full test of these maps on independent records, the areas that were predicted to be potentially occupied included areas around which there are historical records. We  suggest field surveys should be targeted towards sites in the Inner Niger Delta and a number of marshes along and away from the Niger River in Mali, and to sites in southern Mauritania.OSTRICH 2011, 82(2): 81–8

Outline of the study area in the Biebrza valley, Poland, indicating the location of 50 1-km transects along which singing male Aquatic Warblers were surveyed in 2011 and 2012.

<p>The outline represents the border of the Biebrza National Park, the grey shaded areas depict suitable Aquatic Warbler habitat that is surveyed during the ‘full count’ approach.</p