The Development and Use of A Piloted Flight Simulation Environment for Rotary-Wing Operation to the Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers

Flight simulation is being used to inform the First of Class Flight Trials for the UK’s new Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) aircraft carriers. The carriers will operate with the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft, i.e. the Advanced Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing variant of the F-35. The rotary wing assets that are expected to operate with QEC include Merlin, Wildcat, Chinook and Apache helicopters. An F-35B flight simulator has been developed and is operated by BAE Systems at Warton Aerodrome. The University of Liverpool is supporting this project by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to provide the unsteady air flow field that is required in a realistic flight simulation environment. This paper is concerned with a research project that is being conducted using the University’s research simulator, HELIFLIGHT-R, to create a simulation environment for helicopter operations to the QEC. The paper briefly describes how CFD has been used to model the unsteady airflow over the 280m long aircraft carrier and how this is used to create a realistic flight simulation environment. Results are presented from an initial simulation trial in which test pilots have used the HELIFLIGHT-R simulator to conduct simulated helicopter landings to two landing spots on the carrier, one in a disturbed air flow and the other in clean air. As expected, the landing to the spot in disturbed air flow requires a greater pilot workload, shows greater deviation in its positional accuracy and requires more control activity. This initial trial is the first of a planned series of simulated helicopter deck landings for different wind angles and magnitudes

Using piloted simulation to measure pilot workload of landing a helicopter on a small ship

When conducting landings to a ship's deck in strong winds, helicopter pilot workload is often dominated by the turbulence within the ship's airwake. Previous studies have shown that larger ships create more aggressive airwakes and simulated flight trials had shown that it can be easier to land to a smaller ship than a large one. However, there are helicopter-enabled ships that are less than 100m in length and these will have significantly greater ship motion in rough seas than a large ship. The study reported in this paper has used a motion-base flight simulator to evaluate the pilot workload when landing to three geometrically similar ships of lengths 100m, 150m and 200m. Ship motion software has been used to create realistic deck displacements for sea states 4, 5 and 6, which are consistent with the increasing wind speed over the deck. It has been shown that the 100m ship was the most difficult to land to, with deck motion being the limiting factor. The next most difficult ship to land to was the 200m ship, with airwake turbulence being the limiting factor. The 150m ship generated the lowest pilot workload. The study has demonstrated that when ship motion is excessive, as it will be with small ships in rough seas, pilot workload will be dominated by deck motion during a landing task, but as the ship gets larger and more stable, airwake disturbances will dominate. It is clear from this study that realistic ship motion is essential when using piloted flight simulation to conduct simulated ship-helicopter operations

The Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers: Airwake Modelling and Validation for ASTOVL Flight Simulation

This paper outlines progress towards the development of a high-fidelity piloted flight simulation environment for the UK’s Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) aircraft carriers which are currently under construction. It is intended that flight simulation will be used to de-risk the clearance of the F-35B Lightning-II to the ship, helping to identify potential wind-speeds/directions requiring high pilot workload or control margin limitations prior to First of Class Flight Trials. Simulated helicopter launch & recovery trials are also planned for the future. The paper details the work that has been undertaken at the University of Liverpool to support this activity, and which draws upon Liverpool’s considerable research experience into simulated launch and recovery of maritime helicopters to single-spot combat ships. Predicting the unsteady air flow over and around the QEC is essential for the simulation environment; the very large and complex flow field has been modelled using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and will be incorporated into the flight simulators at the University of Liverpool and BAE Systems Warton for use in future piloted simulation trials. The challenges faced when developing airwake models for such a large ship are presented together with details of the experimental setup being prepared to validate the CFD predictions. Finally, the paper describes experimental results produced to date for CFD validation purposes and looks ahead to the piloted simulation trials of aircraft launch and recovery operations to the carrier

Strategic Shift to a Diagnostic Model of Care in a Multi-Site Group Dental Practice.

BackgroundDocumenting standardized dental diagnostic terms represents an emerging change for how dentistry is practiced. We focused on a mid-sized dental group practice as it shifted to a policy of documenting patients' diagnoses using standardized terms in the electronic health record.MethodsKotter's change framework was translated into interview questions posed to the senior leadership in a mid-size dental group practice. In addition, quantitative content analyses were conducted on the written policies and forms before and after the implementation of standardized diagnosis documentation to assess the extent to which the forms and policies reflected the shift. Three reviewers analyzed the data individually and reached consensuses where needed.ResultsKotter's guiding change framework explained the steps taken to 97 percent utilization rate of the Electronic Health Record and Dental Diagnostic Code. Of the 96 documents included in the forms and policy analysis, 31 documents were officially updated but only two added a diagnostic element.ConclusionChange strategies established in the business literature hold utility for dental practices seeking diagnosis-centered care.Practical implicationsA practice that shifts to a diagnosis-driven care philosophy would be best served by ensuring that the change process follows a leadership framework that is calibrated to the organization's culture

MRI and Neuropsychological Correlates of Carbon Monoxide Exposure: A Case Report

A 45-year-old woman experienced long-term, chronic exposure to carbon monoxide in the restaurant kitchen where she was employed as a cook. After returning to the restaurant after 5 days off work, she noticed that her symptoms returned immediately; she then aired out the room and called the gas company. Approximately 6 hr after a leak was detected, the patient went to the hospital, where her carboxyhemoglobin was found to be within normal limits and results of a neurologic examination were described as normal. Based on her symptoms, the patient believed she had been exposed to CO for at least 1 year before the leak was discovered. Initially, she experienced flu-like symptoms, which eventually resolved. At the time of her first neuropsychological evaluation (17 months after the exposure was identified), her persisting complaints included difficulties in reading, writing, speaking and word retrieval. The test results were consistent with secondary frontal lobe dysfunction associated with subcortical disorders such as those seen after CO exposure. Results of a subsequent neuropsychological examination (29 months postexposure) showed slight improvement in performance, but her performance was still consistent with mild frontal/subcortical dysfunction. Although the initial screening of a brain magnetic resonance image (MRI) performed 15 months after the exposure was interpreted as being within normal limits, two subsequent blind reviews of the same scans identified multiple bilateral lesions in the basal ganglia, which were consistent with chronic CO exposure. We present this case as an example of the utility of MRI and neuropsychological examinations in detecting central nervous system dysfunction secondary to CO exposure

Diet quality and depressive symptoms in adolescence: no cross-sectional or prospective associations following adjustment for covariates.

OBJECTIVE: Adolescence is a critical period for development of depression and understanding of behavioural risk factors is needed to support appropriate preventive strategies. We examined associations between adolescent diet quality and depressive symptoms, cross-sectionally and prospectively, in a large community cohort, adjusting for behavioural and psychosocial covariates. DESIGN: Prospective community-based cohort study (ROOTS). SETTING: Secondary schools in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, UK. SUBJECTS: Study participants (n 603) who completed 4 d diet diaries at age 14 years and reported depressive symptoms (Moods and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ)) at 14 and 17 years of age. RESULTS: Diet data were processed to derive a Mediterranean diet score (MDS) and daily servings of fruit and vegetables, and fish. At age 14 years, a negative association between fruit and vegetable intake and MFQ score was seen in the unadjusted cross-sectional regression model (β=-0·40; 95 % CI -0·71,-0·10), but adjustment for behavioural covariates, including smoking and alcohol consumption, attenuated this association. Fish intake and MDS were not cross-sectionally associated with MFQ score. No prospective associations were found between MDS, fruit and vegetable intake or fish intake and later MFQ score. CONCLUSIONS: Diet quality was not associated with depressive symptoms in mid-adolescence. Previously reported associations in this age range may be due to confounding. Further longitudinal studies are needed that investigate associations between adolescent diet and depression across different time frames and populations, ensuring appropriate adjustment for covariates

DNA-interacting characteristics of the archaeal rudiviral protein SIRV2_Gp1

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Whereas the infection cycles of many bacterial and eukaryotic viruses have been characterized in detail, those of archaeal viruses remain largely unexplored. Recently, studies on a few model archaeal viruses such as SIRV2 (Sulfolobus islandicus rod-shaped virus) have revealed an unusual lysis mechanism that involves the formation of pyramidal egress structures on the host cell surface. To expand understanding of the infection cycle of SIRV2, we aimed to functionally characterize gp1, which is a SIRV2 gene with unknown function. The SIRV2_Gp1 protein is highly expressed during early stages of infection and it is the only protein that is encoded twice on the viral genome. It harbours a helix-turn-helix motif and was therefore hypothesized to bind DNA. The DNA-binding behavior of SIRV2_Gp1 was characterized with electrophoretic mobility shift assays and atomic force microscopy. We provide evidence that the protein interacts with DNA and that it forms large aggregates, thereby causing extreme condensation of the DNA. Furthermore, the N-terminal domain of the protein mediates toxicity to the viral host Sulfolobus. Our findings may lead to biotechnological applications, such as the development of a toxic peptide for the containment of pathogenic bacteria, and add to our understanding of the Rudiviral infection cycle.This research was supported by the Geconcerteerde Onderzoeks Actie grant ‘Phage Biosystems’ from the KULeuven (http://www.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/kernprojecten/goa.htm). T.E.F.Q. was supported by a FWO Pegasus Marie-Curie fellowship and a Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship. The Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo) and the European Space Agency (ESA) PRODEX program supported the work of RGW. E.P. was supported by start-up funds provided by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Direct observation of incommensurate magnetism in Hubbard chains

The interplay between magnetism and doping is at the origin of exotic strongly correlated electronic phases and can lead to novel forms of magnetic ordering. One example is the emergence of incommensurate spin-density waves with a wave vector that does not match the reciprocal lattice. In one dimension this effect is a hallmark of Luttinger liquid theory, which also describes the low energy physics of the Hubbard model. Here we use a quantum simulator based on ultracold fermions in an optical lattice to directly observe such incommensurate spin correlations in doped and spin-imbalanced Hubbard chains using fully spin and density resolved quantum gas microscopy. Doping is found to induce a linear change of the spin-density wave vector in excellent agreement with Luttinger theory predictions. For non-zero polarization we observe a decrease of the wave vector with magnetization as expected from the Heisenberg model in a magnetic field. We trace the microscopic origin of these incommensurate correlations to holes, doublons and excess spins which act as delocalized domain walls for the antiferromagnetic order. Finally, when inducing interchain coupling we observe fundamentally different spin correlations around doublons indicating the formation of a magnetic polaron

Hospital admissions for vitamin D related conditions and subsequent immune-mediated disease: record-linkage studies

PMCID: PMC3729414The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/11/171. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited