Investigation of Flight Test Methods for measuring the performance of general aviation aircraft

A theoretical and experimental investigation of methods for measuring the performance of general aviation airplanes was conducted using relatively simple instrumentation currently available and data extraction techniques established from efforts in other disciplines. The possibilities of improving flight test data by use of improved modern instrumentation and digital data recording and data analysis were considered

Educating Family Caregivers for Older Adults About Delirium: A Systematic Review

Background Delirium in older adults is considered a medical emergency; it contributes to a cascade of functional decline and to increased mortality. Early recognition of delirium symptoms is critical to prevent these negative consequences. Family caregivers who are educated about delirium could partner with nurses and other healthcare professionals in early recognition of delirium symptoms. Before implementing such partnership models, it is important to examine the effectiveness of educating family caregivers about delirium. Aims To examine whether providing education on delirium to family caregivers improved their knowledge, emotional state, or response in reducing the incidence of delirium in older adults. Methods For this systematic review, we conducted literature searches in CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Social Sciences in ProQuest, Dissertations and Theses, and the Virginia Henderson Global Nursing eRepository for studies published in the English language between January 2000 and June 2015. Criteria for inclusion were: (a) primary focus on educating family caregivers for older adults about delirium; (b) use of experimental, quasi-experimental, or comparative design; (c) measured family caregiver outcomes of delirium knowledge, emotional state, or response in reducing delirium incidence in older adults; and (d) published in the English language. Articles were appraised using Melnyk\u27s rapid critical appraisal guides. Results Seven studies met the review criteria. Four studies found that family caregivers’ delirium knowledge increased; two noted that delirium incidence in older adults declined; and one study reported less distress following receipt of education. Linking Evidence to Action Providing family caregivers with information about delirium can be beneficial for both family caregivers and older adults. However, rigorous evaluation of education programs for family caregivers about delirium is needed

Design Parameters in Multimodal Games for Rehabilitation

Published under the Liebert "Open Option"Objectives: The repetitive and sometimes mundane nature of conventional rehabilitation therapy provides an ideal opportunity for development of interactive and challenging therapeutic games that have the potential to engage and motivate the players. Certain game design parameters that may encourage patients to actively participate by making the games more enjoyable have been identified. In this article, we describe a formative study in which we designed and evaluated some of these parameters with healthy subjects. Materials and Methods: The ‘‘operant conditioning’’ and ‘‘scoring’’ design parameters were incorporated in a remake of a classic labyrinth game, ‘‘Marble Maze.’’ A group of participants (n = 37) played the game twice: Once in the control condition without both modalities and then with either one of the parameters or with both. Measures of game duration and number of fails in the game were recorded along with survey questionnaires to measure player perceptions of intrinsic motivation on the game. Results: Longer playtimes, higher levels of interest/enjoyment, and effort to play the game were recorded with the introduction of these parameters. Conclusions: This study provides an understanding on how game design parameters can be used to motivate and encourage people to play longer. With these positive results, future aims are to test the parameters with stroke patients, providing much clearer insight as to what influences these parameters have on patients un- dergoing therapy. The ultimate goal is to utilize game design in order to maintain longer therapeutic interaction between a patient and his or her therapy medium.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Reconstructing cosmic growth with kSZ observations in the era of Stage IV experiments

Future ground-based CMB experiments will generate competitive large-scale structure datasets by precisely characterizing CMB secondary anisotropies over a large fraction of the sky. We describe a method for constraining the growth rate of structure to sub-1% precision out to $z\approx 1$, using a combination of galaxy cluster peculiar velocities measured using the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, and the velocity field reconstructed from galaxy redshift surveys. We consider only thermal SZ-selected cluster samples, which will consist of $\mathcal{O}(10^4-10^5)$ sources for Stage 3 and 4 CMB experiments respectively. Three different methods for separating the kSZ effect from the primary CMB are compared, including a novel blind "constrained realization" method that improves signal-to-noise by a factor of $\sim 2$ over a commonly-used aperture photometry technique. Measurements of the integrated tSZ $y$-parameter are used to break the kSZ velocity-optical depth degeneracy, and the effects of including CMB polarization and SZ profile uncertainties are also considered. A combination of future Stage 4 experiments should be able to measure the product of the growth and expansion rates, $\alpha\equiv f H$, to better than 1% in bins of $\Delta z = 0.1$ out to $z \approx 1$ -- competitive with contemporary redshift-space distortion constraints from galaxy surveys.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Quintessence in a quandary: prior dependence in dark energy models

The archetypal theory of dark energy is quintessence: a minimally coupled scalar field with a canonical kinetic energy and potential. By studying random potentials we show that quintessence imposes a restricted set of priors on the equation of state of dark energy. Focusing on the commonly-used parametrisation, $w(a)\approx w_0+w_a(1-a)$, we show that there is a natural scale and direction in the $(w_0, w_a)$ plane that distinguishes quintessence as a general framework. We calculate the expected information gain for a given survey and show that, because of the non-trivial prior information, it is a function of more than just the figure of merit. This allows us to make a quantitative case for novel survey strategies. We show that the scale of the prior sets target observational requirements for gaining significant information. This corresponds to a figure of merit FOM$\gtrsim 200$, a requirement that future galaxy redshift surveys will meet.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. For the busy reader, Fig. 1 is the money plot. v2: Minor changes, matches published version. Code open source at gitorious.org/random-quintessenc