Live Virtual Constructive Distributed Test Environment Characterization Report

This report documents message latencies observed over various Live, Virtual, Constructive, (LVC) simulation environment configurations designed to emulate possible system architectures for the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project integrated tests. For each configuration, four scenarios with progressively increasing air traffic loads were used to determine system throughput and bandwidth impacts on message latency

Use of Prescription Medication by Individuals Who Died by Suicide in Northern Ireland

OBJECTIVES/: To understand medication use prior to suicide in relation to patterns, polypharmacy and adherence. METHODS: 1,371 suicide cases were coded and latent class analysis used to identify combinations of medications prescribed prior to death. RESULTS: Two thirds had been prescribed medication with 30.7% prescribed three or more. Latent class analysis revealed three classes: Mixed medication use, primarily mental medication use, and baseline/low medication use. There are potentially high rates of medication non-adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Both medication use but also non-adherence rates were high in this sample of individuals who died by suicide. Potential implications and areas for future research are discussed

Beginning Farmers: Will They Face Up to Safety and Health Hazards?

The study reported here assessed the farm safety and health training needs of beginning farmers in Pennsylvania to help educators develop training workshops and materials to meet those needs. Results of the online survey indicate that participants highly value farm safety, consider themselves to have mostly minimal to moderate skills relative to the safe operation of farms, and are willing to attend safety training workshops. The results of the study provide direction to Extension educators in designing farm safety and health training for this growing constituent group

Physical Activity for ADL Performance in Older Adults with Dementia: A Systematic Review

PURPOSE: An estimated 5.8 million people in the United States live with dementia. By the year 2060, this number is expected to climb as high as 14 million people (CDC, 2019). Performance and participation in activities of daily living (ADLs) is a primary goal of occupational therapy. Exercise intervention is an occupational therapy approach for individuals with dementia that will increase ADL performance (Giebel et al., 2015). The present study examined the effects of physical exercise to maintain or improve activities of daily living performance for adults with dementia. DESIGN: This systematic review of systematic reviews examined whether physical activity interventions maintained or improved ADL performance among older adults with dementia. METHOD: Inclusion criteria for this study were systematic reviews and meta-analyses written in English and published from 2012-2024 with participants that were adults over eighteen years old who had dementia at the time of data collection, used physical exercise as an intervention measure, and reported an ADL outcome measure. The exclusion criteria for this study were reviews containing greater than or equal to half of studies identical to another systematic review. We screened 337 titles and abstracts from four literature databases: CINAHL, Pubmed, Cochrane Library and Scopus. We retrieved and reviewed 33 full-text articles. Two researchers reviewed each abstract, which led to full-text reviews of papers that appeared to meet the inclusion criteria. Two reviewers then read each full-text article to determine inclusion. Disagreements were resolved through consensus. Seven articles met inclusion criteria. We examined the effects of exercise frequency, duration, and intensity (high intensity included strength training, dance, brisk walking; low intensity exercise included yoga, Tai Chi, walking). The US Preventative Services Task Force levels of certainty and grade definitions were used to describe the strength of evidence. RESULTS: This study demonstrated a general improvement in ADL performance when low-intensity or high-intensity exercise were used. Four studies had positive outcomes related to ADLs and three reported mixed outcomes. There was strong evidence supporting routine use of low-intensity, long duration exercise (\u3e 30 mins per session), over less frequent (≤ 3 times per week), and a longer intervention period ( \u3e 8 weeks) to improve or maintain ADL performance among adults with dementia. There was less evidence supporting high-intensity, short duration (≤ 30 mins per session), over a more frequent (\u3e 3 times a week), and shorter intervention period (≤ 8-week). CONCLUSION: This study found strong support for low-intensity, long duration, less frequent exercise over a longer period of time to improve ADL performance among adults with dementia. This systematic review may guide practitioners in making physical activity dosage recommendations to improve performance in ADLs. Future research could address how dementia severity and medical comorbidities interact with exercise characteristics and ADL performance. REFERENCES: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, August 20). Minorities and Women Are at Greater Risk for Alzheimer\u27s Disease. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/Alz-Greater-Risk.html Giebel, C. M., Sutcliffe, C., & Challis, D. (2015). Activities of daily living and quality of life across different stages of dementia: a UK study. Aging & Mental Health, 19(1), 63–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2014.915920https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/cahp_ot_sysrev/1000/thumbnail.jp

Flight Test Overview for UAS Integration in the NAS Project

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is conducting a series of flight tests intended to support the reduction of barriers that prevent unmanned aircraft from flying without the required waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration. The most recent testing supported two separate test configurations. The first investigated the timing of Detect and Avoid (DAA) alerting thresholds using a radar-equipped unmanned vehicle and multiple live intruders flown at varying encounter geometries. The second configuration included a surrogate unmanned vehicle (flown from a ground control station, with a safety pilot on board) flying a mission in a virtual air traffic control airspace sector using research pilot displays and DAA advisories to maintain separation from live and virtual aircraft. The test was conducted over a seven-week span in the summer of 2015. The data from over 100 encounter sorties will be used to inform the RTCA Phase 1 Detect and Avoid and Command and Control Minimum Operating Performance Standards (MOPS) intended to be completed by the summer of 2016. Follow-on flight-testing is planned for the spring of 2016 to capture remaining encounters and support validation of the MOPS

Aerodynamic Effects of Simulated Ice Accretion on a Generic Transport Model

An experimental research effort was begun to develop a database of airplane aerodynamic characteristics with simulated ice accretion over a large range of incidence and sideslip angles. Wind-tunnel testing was performed at the NASA Langley 12-ft Low-Speed Wind Tunnel using a 3.5 percent scale model of the NASA Langley Generic Transport Model. Aerodynamic data were acquired from a six-component force and moment balance in static-model sweeps from alpha = -5deg to 85deg and beta = -45 deg to 45 deg at a Reynolds number of 0.24 x10(exp 6) and Mach number of 0.06. The 3.5 percent scale GTM was tested in both the clean configuration and with full-span artificial ice shapes attached to the leading edges of the wing, horizontal and vertical tail. Aerodynamic results for the clean airplane configuration compared favorably with similar experiments carried out on a 5.5 percent scale GTM. The addition of the large, glaze-horn type ice shapes did result in an increase in airplane drag coefficient but had little effect on the lift and pitching moment. The lateral-directional characteristics showed mixed results with a small effect of the ice shapes observed in some cases. The flow visualization images revealed the presence and evolution of a spanwise-running vortex on the wing that was the dominant feature of the flowfield for both clean and iced configurations. The lack of ice-induced performance and flowfield effects observed in this effort was likely due to Reynolds number effects for the clean configuration. Estimates of full-scale baseline performance were included in this analysis to illustrate the potential icing effects

Ball pen probe in strongly magnetised RF plasmas

A study of ball pen probes (BPPs) in a rf strongly magnetised plasma is reported for the first time. These probes have been successfully used in fusion plasmas, with magnetic fields up to 2.5 T, to measure the plasma potential. In this paper experimental results of various ball pen designs (2 and 4 mm diameter with flat and conical collectors) are presented up to 0.5 T in a low pressure capacitively coupled rf plasma. A theory of the BPP is developed, showing that the increase of the collector potential and plateau region, with collector retraction, requires the electron current to decrease faster than the ion current. Experimentally, it is found that to develop effective electron screening the electron Larmor radius should be smaller than the tunnel internal diameter. Smaller tunnels improve screening due to the tunnel entrance wall sheaths. Inside the tunnel a plateau region forms at 81 mT reducing to a broad peak at higher field strengths. Ion shielding and surface losses (for small tunnel diameters) reduce the collector peak width and maximum potential with increasing magnetic field. Conical collectors were found to increase the length of the plateau region and broaden the peak. Particle in cell simulations were in good agreement with the experimental results. The electron shielding and plateau regions were reproduced but not the broad peak at higher field strengths. Good agreement between both 2 mm BPPs and an emissive probe was found only at 81 mT to within 3 V or 1.3 electron temperatures (T e). For all BPPs at higher field strengths (≥ 250 mT) the maximum collector potential underestimated the emissive probe by more than 2.7 T e (7 V). At these field strengths all BPPs agree with each other to within 1.5 T e (4.1 V). Possible reasons for these disagreements are discussed