Pilot reliability investigation: final report on agreement PD/28/035/ADM

The feasibility of constructing a device to give a measure of pilot reliability has been investigated. A rig to meet the proposals made by BLEU has been designed and basic circuits constructed and tested for accuracy of operation and reliability. An estimate of the materials required and the cost of construction has been made. The rig has been designed to be subject operated for twentyfour tests before requiring attention, and devices have been incorporated to indicate unserviceability and prevent operation if starting cond4 tions are not correct. Switching sequences typical of the final period of an autoland approach are demanded verbally by magnetic tape replay equipment and the performance of the subject measured. The test consists of two phases; a preparatory or "unloaded" phase, and a "loaded" phase during which the subject performs a tracking task in addition to the switching sequence. The performance of the subject is recorded on veeder counters for both phases of the test in the form of actions demanded, actions taken and actions taken during a memory period. A measure of performance of the tracking task is also given by veeder counter

On the pathwidth of almost semicomplete digraphs

We call a digraph {\em $h$-semicomplete} if each vertex of the digraph has at most $h$ non-neighbors, where a non-neighbor of a vertex $v$ is a vertex $u \neq v$ such that there is no edge between $u$ and $v$ in either direction. This notion generalizes that of semicomplete digraphs which are $0$-semicomplete and tournaments which are semicomplete and have no anti-parallel pairs of edges. Our results in this paper are as follows. (1) We give an algorithm which, given an $h$-semicomplete digraph $G$ on $n$ vertices and a positive integer $k$, in $(h + 2k + 1)^{2k} n^{O(1)}$ time either constructs a path-decomposition of $G$ of width at most $k$ or concludes correctly that the pathwidth of $G$ is larger than $k$. (2) We show that there is a function $f(k, h)$ such that every $h$-semicomplete digraph of pathwidth at least $f(k, h)$ has a semicomplete subgraph of pathwidth at least $k$. One consequence of these results is that the problem of deciding if a fixed digraph $H$ is topologically contained in a given $h$-semicomplete digraph $G$ admits a polynomial-time algorithm for fixed $h$.Comment: 33pages, a shorter version to appear in ESA 201

Information requirements for enterprise systems

In this paper, we discuss an approach to system requirements engineering, which is based on using models of the responsibilities assigned to agents in a multi-agency system of systems. The responsibility models serve as a basis for identifying the stakeholders that should be considered in establishing the requirements and provide a basis for a structured approach, described here, for information requirements elicitation. We illustrate this approach using a case study drawn from civil emergency management

Shades of Grey: Ethical Dilemmas

No abstract available

Influence of 100% and 40% oxygen on penumbral blood flow, oxygen level, and T2*-weighted MRI in a rat stroke model

Accurate imaging of the ischemic penumbra is a prerequisite for acute clinical stroke research. T2* magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) combined with an oxygen challenge (OC) is being developed to detect penumbra based on changes in blood deoxyhemoglobin. However, inducing OC with 100% O2 induces sinus artefacts on human scans and influences cerebral blood flow (CBF), which can affect T2* signal. Therefore, we investigated replacing 100% O2 OC with 40% O2 OC (5 minutes 40% O2 versus 100% O2) and determined the effects on blood pressure (BP), CBF, tissue pO2, and T2* signal change in presumed penumbra in a rat stroke model. Probes implanted into penumbra and contralateral cortex simultaneously recorded pO2 and CBF during 40% O2 (n=6) or 100% O2 (n=8) OC. In a separate MRI study, T2* signal change to 40% O2 (n=6) and 100% O2 (n=5) OC was compared. Oxygen challenge (40% and 100% O2) increased BP by 8.2% and 18.1%, penumbra CBF by 5% and 15%, and penumbra pO2 levels by 80% and 144%, respectively. T2* signal significantly increased by 4.56%±1.61% and 8.65%±3.66% in penumbra compared with 2.98%±1.56% and 2.79%±0.66% in contralateral cortex and 1.09%±0.82% and −0.32%±0.67% in ischemic core, respectively. For diagnostic imaging, 40% O2 OC could provide sufficient T2* signal change to detect penumbra with limited influence in BP and CBF