Using The Flight-Number Flashing Feature to Enhance the Air Traffic Controller\u27s Performance and Situation Awareness on Radar Display

In the Air Traffic Control (ATC) world, controllers face enormous challenges while separating the traffic, especially in congested airspace. Every day, the number of aircraft passengers tremendously increase. Consequently, the number of air carriers also increases. The more flights in the air, the more radio occupation time and verbal communication between pilots and controllers may increase. These extra calls will cause more workload and fatigue for both pilots and controllers. Therefore, enhancing the controllers\u27 performance and situation awareness, very essential to maintain a safe airspace operation. An experimental research study has conducted to enhance the controllers’ performance and situation awareness on the radar display. The main idea of this experiment was to add a new feature to the radar system makes the aircraft flight number to flash or blink on the radar screen, each time a pilot presses the radio button to speak. A simulation software similar to the radar system is designed, especially for this experiment. The results were very successful and beneficial for both pilots and controllers. The latest outcome for this experiment expected that applying this new feature on the radar system could reduce the verbal communication between pilots and controllers by 57.6% while maintaining safe operation. Keeping in mind that preserving a single second in aviation could make a difference and may save people\u27s lives

Rural Fishermen Benefit From the Activities of Cooperative Societies in Aswan Governorate, Egypt

The research aimed to identify the degree of benefit and satisfaction of rural fishermen with the activities and services provided by cooperative societies for rural fishermen in Aswan Governorate. The research carried out on a random sample of rural fishermen which consisting of 302 respondents. Data were collected by personal interview questionnaire. Percentages, frequency distribution, graph and weighted average were used to show and describe the research data. Excel was used to prepare the graphs. Spearman’s correlation coefficient for ranks was used to determine the relationship between the search variables by SPSS. Results were showed that: The most beneficial activities were: lending to fishermen and their families, establishing and managing fish farms, establishing centers for collecting fish, which are arranged in descending order with a weighted average respectively (2.85, 2.82, 2.71). The degree of satisfaction of the respondents was high with one of the services provided by cooperative societies were: issuing official papers, with a weighted average of 2.69. The degree of benefit of the respondents was positively related to years of work in fishing, age, and the number of years of education. The degree of respondents' satisfaction was positively correlated with age, years of education, level of ambition, years of work in fishing at the significant level 0.01, 0.05. The most important suggestions for activating the role of fishermen's cooperative societies were: the necessity of insuring fishermen and their boats (99.7%), providing protection for fishermen's families (99.3%), and helping to solve problems (98%)

Split-Dose Polyethylene Glycol Is Superior to Single Dose for Colonoscopy Preparation: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial

Background. The efficacy of colonoscopy in detecting abnormalities within the colon is highly dependent on the adequacy of the bowel preparation. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of PEG lavage and split-dose PEG lavage with specific emphasis on the cleanliness of the right colon. Methods. The study was a prospective, randomized, two-arm, controlled trial of 237 patients. Patients between the age of 50 and 75 years were referred to an outpatient university screening clinic for colonoscopy. Patients were allocated to receive either a single 4 L PEG lavage or a split-dose PEG lavage. Results. Overall, the bowel preparation was superior in the split-dose group compared with the single-dose group (mean Ottawa score 3.50 ± 2.89 versus 5.96 ± 3.53; < 0.05) and resulted in less overall fluid in the colon. This effect was observed across all segments of the colon assessed. Conclusions. The current study supports use of a split-dose PEG lavage over a single large volume lavage for superior bowel cleanliness, which may improve polyp detection. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT01610856

September 2018 School of Graduate Studies Newsletter

Notes from the Associate Dean: Reaching the Finish Line SGS Hiring MSA Thesis Defense Dissertation Defenses Student Opportunity SGS Announcementshttps://commons.erau.edu/db-sgs-newletter/1015/thumbnail.jp

Hardware design to accelerate PNG encoder for binary mask compression on FPGA

International audiencePNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless compression method for real-world pictures. Since its specification, it continues to attract the interest of the image processing community. Indeed, PNG is an extensible file format for portable and well-compressed storage of raster images. In addition, it supports all of Black and White (binary mask), grayscale, indexed-color, and truecolor images. Within the framework of the Demat+ project which intend to propose a complete solution for storage and retrieval of scanned documents, we address in this paper a hardware design to accelerate the PNG encoder for binary mask compression on FPGA. For this, an optimized architecture is proposed as part of an hybrid software and hardware cooperating system. For its evaluation, the new designed PNG IP has been implemented on the ALTERA " Arria II GX EP2AGX125EF35 " FPGA. The experimental results show a good match between the achieved compression ratio, the computational cost and the used hardware resources

Stratégie de parallélisme d'une méthode de segmentation des vaisseaux rétiniens sur architecture parallèle à mémoire partagée

International audienceLa segmentation des vaisseaux sanguins dans l'image du fond d'oeil est une étape primordiale pour la détection de plusieurs pathologies oculaires. Une méthode de segmentation a été proposée dans [12]. Le traitement de la méthode est composé de trois étapes dépendantes: Fournir deux images binaires pour extraire les vaisseaux larges, calculer les caractéristiques des pixels afin d'extraire les vaisseaux fins, puis combiner les vaisseaux larges et fins. Cette méthode aboutit à une performance importante en matière de taux de détection. Cependant, Le temps d'exécution de la segmentation est entre 3 à 12 secondes lors de l'exécution sur des images rétiniennes ayant des résolutions comprises entre 768 * 584 et 999 * 960. En outre, les rétinographes actuellement utilisées fournissent des images avec des résolutions nettement supérieures, ce qui engendrent une augmentation similaire dans les temps d'exécution de la méthode de segmentation. Ce critère présente un facteur limitant pour la mise en pratique de la technique de segmentation dans les systèmes automatiques de traitement des images rétiniennes. Dans cet article, nous proposons une stratégie de parallélisme de l'approche de segmentation pour l'implémentation sur des architectures parallèles à mémoires partagées. Premièrement, les deux images binaires sont générées en parallèle. Par la suite, les traitements liés à l'extraction des caractéristiques des pixels sont réparties sur des ensembles en fonction de leurs complexités. Ensuite, chaque ensemble est ordonnancé vers une unité de calcul.. Par la suite, les images de vaisseaux larges et de vaisseaux fins sont subdivisées en sous-images dans l'objectif de les combiner en parallèle. La stratégie parallèle est mise en oeuvre à l'aide d'OpenCV, puis évaluée sur des ensembles de données publiques STARE. Des analyses expérimentales du temps d'exécution et de l'efficacité sont présentées et discutées