Success in tutoring electronic troubleshooting

Two years ago Dr. Sherrie Gott of the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory described an avionics troubleshooting tutor being developed under the Basic Job Skills Research Program. The tutor, known as Sherlock, is directed at teaching the diagnostic procedures necessary to investigate complex test equipment used to maintain F-15 fighter aircraft. Since Dr. Gott's presentation in 1987, the tutor has undergone field testing at two Air Force F-15 flying wings. The results of the field test showed that after an average of 20 hours on the tutor, the 16 airmen in the experimental group (who average 28 months of experience) showed significant performance gains when compared to a control group (having a mean experience level of 37 months) who continued participating in the existing on-the-job training program. Troubleshooting performance of the tutored group approached the level of proficiency of highly experienced airmen (averaging approximately 114 months of experience), and these performance gains were confirmed in delayed testing six months following the intervention. The tutor is currently undergoing a hardware and software conversion form a Xerox Lisp environment to a PC-based environment using an object-oriented programming language. Summarized here are the results of the successful field test. The focus is on: (1) the instructional features that contributed to Sherlock's success; and (2) the implementation of these features in the PC-based version of the avionics troubleshooting tutor

Connecting the Supply and Need for Buprenorphine Treatment in Kentucky Counties

Abstract Background: Prescription opioid drug overdose mortality rates have surpassed those of motor vehicle accidents in Kentucky. While opioid overdose plagues the state, buprenorphine is an FDA approved medication that has proven effective in treating opioid dependence. Objectives: This study examined the supply of licensed buprenorphine providers and community treatment centers in each county of Kentucky along with the need for treating opioid use disorder in each county. Methods: Licensed buprenorphine physicians and community treatment centers prescribing buprenorphine were identified through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration online treatment locator. The need for treatment was measured by calculating the crude opioid overdose hospitalization rates in each county, year 2008 through 2012. Results: Results of this study conclude Eastern Kentucky has the greatest need for opioid treatment along with a small pocket of Northern Kentucky. Forty six percent of Kentucky counties (n=56) have at least one licensed buprenorphine physician and eight counties house community treatment centers prescribing buprenophine. Discussion: The need for treatment is greater than the current supply of physicians and treatment centers. Figures included in this study illustrate clearly where current treatment providers are located and where need is most prevalent. Conclusion: Future policy must address gaps in treatment supply and treatment needs to identify treatment solutions and curb opioid dependence. Buprenorphine is the gold-star standard in opioid dependence treatment and requires significantly less resources then other types of opioid treatment

Politics and Pigskins: Leader Political Support and Doug Williams’s Termination from Grambling State University

Management research long has benefitted from the examination of sport teams and organizations to inform its theories. Similarly, sport management research can benefit from the investigation of business organization research concepts. In the present study, a narrative case study approach is taken to review Doug Williams’s second tenure as Grambling State University’s head football coach. Archival data (i.e., media reports, university communications, and court documents) indicated that Grambling University was an environment ripe for political behavior. Further, the data reveal that Williams’s social capital and political will led to his demonstration of political support for his players, and that this behavior created loyalty and commitment from Williams’s followers (i.e., his players), but simultaneously generated anger and resentment among his superiors (i.e., the university president and athletic director), and resulted in Williams’s termination. Thus, the presently reviewed case indicates politics is a viable area of future exploration for in sport organization research

Error-Driven Retrieval in Agreement Attraction Does not Lead to Misinterpretation

Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb’s number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject–verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun matching the number marking on the verb (‘The bed by the lamps were…’), giving rise to an effect known as ‘agreement attraction’. Here we ask to what extent the error-driven retrieval process underlying the illusory licensing alters the structural and thematic representation of the sentence. We use a novel dual-task paradigm that combines self-paced reading with a speeded forced choice task to investigate whether agreement attraction leads comprehenders to erroneously interpret the attractor as the thematic subject, which would indicate structural reanalysis. Participants read sentence fragments (‘The bed by the lamp/lamps was/were undoubtedly quite’) and completed the sentences by choosing between two adjectives (‘comfortable’/’bright’) which were either compatible with the subject’s head noun or with the attractor. We found the expected agreement attraction profile in the self-paced reading data but the interpretive error occurs on only a small subset of attraction trials, suggesting that in agreement attraction agreement checking rarely matches the thematic relation. We propose that illusory licensing of an agreement violation often reflects a low-level rechecking process that is only concerned with number and does not have an impact on the structural representation of the sentence. Interestingly, this suggests that error-driven repair processes can result in a globally inconsistent final sentence representation with a persistent mismatch between the subject and the verb

Experimental transonic flutter characteristics of two 72 deg-sweep delta-wing models

Transonic flutter boundaries are presented for two simple, 72 deg. sweep, low-aspect-ratio wing models. One model was an aspect-ratio 0.65 delta wing; the other model was an aspect-ratio 0.54 clipped-delta wing. Flutter boundaries for the delta wing are presented for the Mach number range of 0.56 to 1.22. Flutter boundaries for the clipped-delta wing are presented for the Mach number range of 0.72 to 0.95. Selected vibration characteristics of the models are also presented

Do Potential Fields Develop Current Sheets Under Simple Compression or Expansion?

The recent demonstration of current singularity formation by Low et al. assumes that potential fields will remain potential under simple expansion or compression (Low 2006, 2007; Janse & Low 2009). An explicit counterexample to their key assumption is constructed. Our findings suggest that their results may need to be reconsidered.Comment: Submitted to AP

Effects of Line-tying on Magnetohydrodynamic Instabilities and Current Sheet Formation

An overview of some recent progress on magnetohydrodynamic stability and current sheet formation in a line-tied system is given. Key results on the linear stability of the ideal internal kink mode and resistive tearing mode are summarized. For nonlinear problems, a counterexample to the recent demonstration of current sheet formation by Low \emph{et al}. [B. C. Low and \AA. M. Janse, Astrophys. J. \textbf{696}, 821 (2009)] is presented, and the governing equations for quasi-static evolution of a boundary driven, line-tied magnetic field are derived. Some open questions and possible strategies to resolve them are discussed.Comment: To appear in Phys. Plasma

Fragmentation Instability of Molecular Clouds: Numerical Simulations

We simulate fragmentation and gravitational collapse of cold, magnetized molecular clouds. We explore the nonlinear development of an instability mediated by ambipolar diffusion, in which the collapse rate is intermediate to fast gravitational collapse and slow quasistatic collapse. Initially uniform stable clouds fragment into elongated clumps with masses largely determined by the cloud temperature, but substantially larger than the thermal Jeans mass. The clumps are asymmetric, with significant rotation and vorticity, and lose magnetic flux as they collapse. The clump shapes, intermediate collapse rates, and infall profiles may help explain observations not easily fit by contemporary slow or rapid collapse models.Comment: 25pp, 20 small eps figures, in press ApJ, April 1, 200