Simulation investigation of the effect of the NASA Ames 80-by 120-foot wind tunnel exhaust flow on light aircraft operating in the Moffett field trafffic pattern

A preliminary study of the exhaust flow from the Ames Research Center 80 by 120 Foot Wind Tunnel indicated that the flow might pose a hazard to low-flying light aircraft operating in the Moffett Field traffic pattern. A more extensive evaluation of the potential hazard was undertaken using a fixed-base, piloted simulation of a light, twin-engine, general-aviation aircraft. The simulated aircraft was flown through a model of the wind tunnel exhaust by pilots of varying experience levels to develop a data base of aircraft and pilot reactions. It is shown that a light aircraft would be subjected to a severe disturbance which, depending upon entry condition and pilot reaction, could result in a low-altitude stall or cause damage to the aircraft tail structure

Technology, ethics and religious language: early Anglophone Christian reactions to “cyberspace”

The very recent past has seen an upswing of scholarly interest not so much in the Internet and Web themselves but in the terms in which they have been discussed and understood. This article examines a remarkable effusion of writing in the 1990s that addressed the spiritual and ethical implications of “cyberspace”. Christian critics reacted in different ways to prophecies of technological revolution. Some saw ethical challenges in relation to economic and social exclusion and the nature of interpersonal relations. Others elaborated a semi-mystical evolutionary understanding of the Web as an ontologically concrete “space”. Others again revived older anxieties about the challenge apparently posed to human uniqueness and autonomy posed by computerisation more generally, which cyberspace threatened to magnify. However, this thinking did not occur in isolation from the sweep of Anglophone social thought. I suggest instead that the wider discourse about the ethics of the Internet and Web, both learned and popular, was infused at every level with religious imagery. As such, the article contributes to the ongoing debate on the extent to which the cultures of the UK and North America have been secularised: even if religious observance has declined, the English language still bears the marks of its Christian past

Cameron’s Conservative Party, social liberalism and social justice

Social liberalism has consistently been highlighted as arguably the defining feature of David Cameron’s project to modernise the Conservative Party. However, this article challenges the perception that modernisation has fundamentally transformed the position of social liberalism in contemporary conservatism, questioning the extent to which the Conservatives under Cameron have deviated from their socially conservative Thatcherite ideological inheritance. Two key aspects of social liberalism are explored: an inclusive approach to ‘equality issues’, and a commitment to the idea of positive freedom or ‘freedom to’. The extent to which positioning under Cameron’s leadership has reflected these themes is then considered in relation to two flagship ‘modernised’ policy areas. The first is the issue of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, and the second is the party’s approach to poverty and social justice. We suggest that Cameron’s success in transforming Conservative attitudes and policies in a socially liberal direction has been very limited, challenging the widespread characterisation of the Coalition as a fundamentally ‘liberal’ government

The Social Contract and Beyond in Broadcast Media Policy

This article undertakes an institutionalist analysis of broadcast media policy, analyzing sources of both stability and change over time. It draws attention to the distinctive features of broadcast licenses as a form of soft property and the significance of policy settlements as ways in which regulators in different countries have managed the relationship between private ownership and public interest. It traces the development of broadcast media policy in Australia from the 1950s to the present in this light, arguing that continuities in policy over time that have favored incumbent commercial interests have been the prevailing pattern of policy outcomes. The article concludes by raising issues about whether a social democratic approach to media policy should support the introduction of greater market competition in a multiplatform environment rather than seek to maintain the existing broadcasting order and draws on so-called new public interest literature to make this argument

Segment duration as a cue to word boundaries in spoken-word recognition

Item does not contain fulltextIn two eye-tracking experiments, we examined the degree to which listeners use acoustic cues to word boundaries. Dutch participants listened to ambiguous sentences in which stop-initial words (e.g., pot, jar) were preceded by eens (once); the sentences could thus also refer to cluster-initial words (e.g., een spot, a spotlight). The participants made fewer fixations to target pictures (e.g., a jar) when the target and the preceding [s] were replaced by a recording of the cluster-initial word than when they were spliced from another token of the target-bearing sentence (Experiment 1). Although acoustic analyses revealed several differences between the two recordings, only [s] duration correlated with the participants' fixations (more target fixations for shorter [s]s). Thus, we found that listeners apparently do not use all available acoustic differences equally. In Experiment 2, the participants made more fixations to target pictures when the [s] was shortened than when it was lengthened. Utterance interpretation can therefore be influenced by individual segment duration alone.16 p