Investigating Ocean Carbonate System Changes Across Latitudes in the North Atlantic Basin with a Time-series Mooring System

The world ocean, specifically the Arctic, serves as one of the greatest mitigators for anthropogenic carbon dioxide release, making the study of high latitude ocean carbonate chemistry an increasingly important topic. While much work has been done concerning the science of acidification and future model projections, analyzing data to detect decadal anthropogenic trends and effects is also highly important. Aiming to add to this data pool, this study investigated the ocean carbonate system at three North Atlantic mooring locations at polar, subtropical, and tropical latitudes from 2013 - 2021. Time series datasets of the pH and pCO₂ of surface water along with boundary layer air pCO₂ from each mooring location were analyzed, and a partial pressure ratio (pCO₂sw/pCO₂air) was calculated to investigate saturation and flux more effectively. Important findings included decreasing pH, increasing seawater pCO₂ and increasing air pCO₂ at all three moorings, along with significant correlation between seawater pCO₂ and air-sea CO₂ flux direction across all latitudes. Comparison with past research indicated clearer trends likely occur with larger data availability and strong implications for future Arctic ocean carbon uptake

Paper to Electronic Questionnaires: Effects on Structured Questionnaire Forms

With the use of computers, paper questionnaires are being replaced by electronic questionnaires. The formats of traditional paper questionnaires have been found to effect a subject's rating. Consequently, the transition from paper to electronic format can subtly change results. The research presented begins to determine how electronic questionnaire formats change subjective ratings. For formats where subjects used a flow chart to arrive at their rating, starting at the worst and middle ratings of the flow charts were the most accurate but subjects took slightly more time to arrive at their answers. Except for the electronic paper format, starting at the worst rating was the most preferred. The paper and electronic paper versions had the worst accuracy. Therefore, for flowchart type of questionnaires, flowcharts should start at the worst rating and work their way up to better ratings

Using Simulation Speeds to Differentiate Controller Interface Concepts

This study investigated two concepts: (1) whether speeding a human-in-the-loop simulation (or the subject's "world") scales time stress in such a way as to cause primary task performance to reveal workload differences between experimental conditions and (2) whether using natural hand motions to control the attitude of an aircraft makes controlling the aircraft easier and more intuitive. This was accomplished by having pilots and non-pilots make altitude and heading changes using three different control inceptors at three simulation speeds. Results indicate that simulation speed does affect workload and controllability. The bank and pitch angle error was affected by simulation speed but not by a simulation speed by controller type interaction; this may have been due to the relatively easy flying task. Results also indicate that pilots could control the bank and pitch angle of an aircraft about equally as well with the glove as with the sidestick. Non-pilots approached the pilots ability to control the bank and pitch angle of an aircraft using the positional glove - where the hand angle is directly proportional to the commanded aircraft angle. Therefore, (1) changing the simulation speed lends itself to objectively indexing a subject s workload and may also aid in differentiating among interface concepts based upon performance if the task being studied is sufficiently challenging and (2) using natural body movements to mimic the movement of an airplane for attitude control is feasible

Adaptive Controller Adaptation Time and Available Control Authority Effects on Piloting

Adaptive control is considered for highly uncertain, and potentially unpredictable, flight dynamics characteristic of adverse conditions. This experiment looked at how adaptive controller adaptation time to recover nominal aircraft dynamics affects pilots and how pilots want information about available control authority transmitted. Results indicate that an adaptive controller that takes three seconds to adapt helped pilots when looking at lateral and longitudinal errors. The controllability ratings improved with the adaptive controller, again the most for the three seconds adaptation time while workload decreased with the adaptive controller. The effects of the displays showing the percentage amount of available safe flight envelope used in the maneuver were dominated by the adaptation time. With the displays, the altitude error increased, controllability slightly decreased, and mental demand increased. Therefore, the displays did require some of the subjects resources but these negatives may be outweighed by pilots having more situation awareness of their aircraft

Operator Trust Function for Predicted Drone Arrival

To realize the full benefit from autonomy, systems will have to react to unknown events and uncertain dynamic environments. The resulting number of behaviors is essentially infinite; thus, the system is effectively non-deterministic but an operator needs to understand and trust the actions of the autonomous vehicles. This research began to tackle non-deterministic systems and trust by beginning to develop a user trust function based on intent information displayed and the prescribed bounds on allowable behaviors/actions of the non-deterministic system. Linear regression shows promise on being able to predict a persons confidence of the machines prediction. Linear regression techniques indicated that subject characteristics, scenario difficulty, the experience with the system, and confidence earlier in the scenario account for approximately 60% of the variation in confidence ratings. This paper details the specifics of the liner regression model essentially a trust function for predicting a persons confidence

Usability Study of Two Collocated Prototype System Displays

Currently, most of the displays in control rooms can be categorized as status screens, alerts/procedures screens (or paper), or control screens (where the state of a component is changed by the operator). The primary focus of this line of research is to determine which pieces of information (status, alerts/procedures, and control) should be collocated. Two collocated displays were tested for ease of understanding in an automated desktop survey. This usability study was conducted as a prelude to a larger human-in-the-loop experiment in order to verify that the 2 new collocated displays were easy to learn and usable. The results indicate that while the DC display was preferred and yielded better performance than the MDO display, both collocated displays can be easily learned and used

Effects of historical and predictive information on ability of transport pilot to predict an alert

In the aviation community, the early detection of the development of a possible subsystem problem during a flight is potentially useful for increasing the safety of the flight. Commercial airlines are currently using twin-engine aircraft for extended transport operations over water, and the early detection of a possible problem might increase the flight crew's options for safely landing the aircraft. One method for decreasing the severity of a developing problem is to predict the behavior of the problem so that appropriate corrective actions can be taken. To investigate the pilots' ability to predict long-term events, a computer workstation experiment was conducted in which 18 airline pilots predicted the alert time (the time to an alert) using 3 different dial displays and 3 different parameter behavior complexity levels. The three dial displays were as follows: standard (resembling current aircraft round dial presentations); history (indicating the current value plus the value of the parameter 5 sec in the past); and predictive (indicating the current value plus the value of the parameter 5 sec into the future). The time profiles describing the behavior of the parameter consisted of constant rate-of-change profiles, decelerating profiles, and accelerating-then-decelerating profiles. Although the pilots indicated that they preferred the near term predictive dial, the objective data did not support its use. The objective data did show that the time profiles had the most significant effect on performance in estimating the time to an alert

Uncertainties that flight crews and dispatchers must consider when calculating the fuel needed for a flight

In 1993, fuel accounted for approximately 15 percent of an airline's expenses. Fuel consumption increases as fuel reserves increase because of the added weight to the aircraft. Calculating fuel reserves is a function of Federal Aviation Regulations, airline company policy, and factors that impact or are impacted by fuel usage enroute. This research studied how pilots and dispatchers determined the fuel needed for a flight and identified areas where improvements in methods may yield measurable fuel savings by (1) listing the uncertainties that contribute to adding contingency fuel, (2) obtaining the pilots' and dispatchers' perspective on how often each uncertainty occurred, and (3) obtaining pilots' and dispatchers' perspective on the fuel used for each occurrence. This study found that for the majority of the time, pilots felt that dispatchers included enough fuel. As for the uncertainties that flight crews and dispatchers account for, air traffic control accounts for 28% and weather uncertainties account for 58 percent. If improvements can be made in these two areas, a great potential exists to decrease the reserve required, and therefore, fuel usage without jeopardizing safety

NGC1277: a massive compact relic galaxy in the nearby Universe

As early as 10 Gyr ago, galaxies with more than 10^11 Msun in stars already existed. While most of these massive galaxies must have subsequently transformed through on-going star formation and mergers with other galaxies, a small fraction (<0.1%) may have survived untouched till today. Searches for such relic galaxies, useful windows to explore the early Universe, have been inconclusive to date: galaxies with masses and sizes like those observed at high redshift (M*>10^11 Msun; Re<1.5 kpc) have been found in the local Universe, but their stars are far too young for the galaxy to be a relic galaxy. This paper explores the first case of a nearby galaxy, NGC1277 (in the Perseus cluster at a distance of 73 Mpc), which fulfills all the criteria to be considered a relic galaxy. Using deep optical spectroscopy, we derive the star formation history along the structure of the galaxy: the stellar populations are uniformly old (>10 Gyr) with no evidence for more recent star formation episodes. The metallicity of their stars is super-solar ([Fe/H]=0.20+-0.04) and alpha enriched ([alpha/Fe]=0.4+-0.1). This suggests a very short formation time scale for the bulk of stars of this galaxy. This object also rotates very fast (Vrot~300 km/s) and has a large velocity dispersion (sigma>300 km/s). NGC1277 will allow future explorations in full detail of properties such as the structure, internal dynamics, metallicity, dust content and initial mass function at around 10-12 Gyr back in time when the first massive galaxies were built.Comment: 4 figures; Accepted for publication at ApJ Letter