Effects of Verbal vs Graphical Weather Information on a Pilot’s Decision Making During Preflight

Advancements in technology has made obtaining a graphical/textual preflight weather briefing easier than a traditional verbal briefing. This study compared weather briefings delivered in a verbal format (i.e., written narrative) to those delivered in a graphical format (i,e., radar map plus textual data) in a within-subjects study that altered the order in which participants received each format. Thirty-six pilot participants read and responded to weather briefings for two flight scenarios that when put together, created a simulated multi-leg flight. Each pilot’s decision making and confidence in their decision was captured via Likert-scale and open-ended questions following each scenario. Decision making response was measured based on whether participants made a “go” or “no-go” decision, along with ratings of decision confidence. This paper will present the study methods and results, as well as a discussion on weather briefing design and delivery

Airline Marketing Preferences

The aim of this research is to assess airline marketing strategies providing consumer preferences to better target potential customers. The airline industry has transformed over the years, and cost and amenities have been impacted in the airline evolution. There has been consideration of whether flight cost, or flight amenities and passenger experience should be analyzed to result in enhanced marketing in the airline industry. An online survey was issued to examine which flight amenities potential customers preferred. Furthermore, the length of the flight was examined to determine if consumer preferences changed for domestic versus international flights. The survey findings are discussed in addition to future research opportunities

Discussion forum rubrics: Using rubrics to enhance and increase project management students' participation in online discussions

This paper examines the impact of using a discussion forum grading rubric to encourage and enhance discussions (posts) in an online introduction to project management course. The study consists of 53 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students enrolled in three sections of the course from October 2010 to May 2011. A control group of 20 students was compared to two experimental groups of 16 and 17 students respectively. The two experimental groups were given the specific grading rubric and instructions designed to encourage online conversation; the control group was not. The results indicate that there was a statistical difference in average postings per student between the two experimental groups and the control group but no statistical difference between the two experimental groups. The results suggest that the use of a rubric specifically designed to engage the student and expand the student's learning experience can increase online classroom participation and, as a consequence, enhance the educational experience for the online project management student and strengthen the university's MBA program

Examining Pilot Decision Making in Information-Rich Cockpits

Pilots are faced with making decisions based on a range of different information sources. One challenge pilots often face is the presentation of conflicting information between sources. This effort examined pilot decision making with conflicting information by conducting structured interviews with 13 pilots, including seven airline, three corporate, and three GA pilots. Pilots were asked questions regarding their experience with conflicting sources of weather, traffic, and navigation information on the flight deck or cockpit. Further, they were asked to describe how they responded to the information conflict, including which source they trusted, which source they ultimately acted on, and why they acted on that source. This paper describes the methods, results and implications for commercial and military aviation

uC: Ubiquitous Collaboration Platform for Multimodal Team Interaction Support

A human-centered computing platform that improves teamwork and transforms the “human- computer interaction experience” for distributed teams is presented. This Ubiquitous Collaboration, or uC (“you see”), platform\u27s objective is to transform distributed teamwork (i.e., work occurring when teams of workers and learners are geographically dispersed and often interacting at different times). It achieves this goal through a multimodal team interaction interface realized through a reconfigurable open architecture. The approach taken is to integrate: (1) an intuitive speech- and video-centric multi-modal interface to augment more conventional methods (e.g., mouse, stylus and touch), (2) an open and reconfigurable architecture supporting information gathering, and (3) a machine intelligent approach to analysis and management of heterogeneous live and stored sensor data to support collaboration. The system will transform how teams of people interact with computers by drawing on both the virtual and physical environment

Accuracy of Commercially-Available Speech Recognition Systems in Identifying PIREP Terminology

Pilot Reports (PIREPs) are an important source of information that aids, other pilots, air traffic control, and operational aviation meteorologists in terms of forecasting and updating weather advisories such as SIGMETs. Pilots rely upon PIREPs so they can avoid hazardous weather and fly their aircraft in the safest manner possible. However, many PIREPs are not successfully submitted or transmitted to the many end users which impedes their ability to be used to keep the NAS safe. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made several recommendations for increasing the effectiveness and distribution of PIREPs, including receiving PIREPs from pilots directly and automatically (NTSB, 2017). We recruited eighty-four native-speaking participants to read a short, average, and long PIREP scripts in order to test the performance of various speech recognition systems (SRSs). The spoken PIREPs were transcribed by SRSs and compared to the original PIREP scripts. The words that were deleted, substituted, and inserted were identified and used to calculate the word error rate (WER) and word information loss (WIL). The WERs and WILs were separately analyzed with a repeated-measures marginal model to compare the accuracy between each of the SRSs. Also, the interaction between each SRS and gender was analyzed. The results demonstrated that Google, LilySpeech, and Transcribe had the same and superior performance when transcribing the average-length PIREPs than Braina and Dragon. All SRSs had equal performance at transcribing the short-length PIREPs. Dragon, Google, LilySpeech, and Transcribe had the same performance and superior when transcribing the long-length PIREPs than Braina. Additionally, we found that the short, average, and long-length transcriptions for all 5 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) SRSs provided readable information for flight service stations (FSS) to enter valuable weather information into the PIREP system

GA Pilot Perceptions of Speech Systems to Transcribe and Submit PIREPs

Flying into hazardous weather can be a cause of aviation incidents and accidents. Accidents involving general aviation (GA) pilots who are not instrument rated who fly into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) are often fatal. Pilot weather reports (PIREPs) can increase the accuracy and timeliness of current and forecasted weather conditions. They are an essential tool used by pilots to avoid flying into hazardous weather as well as meteorologists to develop and update aviation forecasts. Thus, a large number of accurate PIREPs with the best source of current weather coming from pilots and air traffic controllers are needed. Pilots are often unable to make PIREPs because of workload in the cockpit or because it is cumbersome to leave the air traffic control (ATC) frequency to contact flight the flight service station (FSS). Currently, air traffic controllers must solicit and disseminate PIREPs. However, air traffic controllers’ primary obligation is to provide traffic separation and traffic alerts. During poor weather, when PIREPs are needed the most, controllers are often too busy to solicit and disseminate PIREPs (NTSB, 2017a). This study administered a descriptive survey to inquire about how likely pilots would be to use a speech recognition system (SRS) to transcribe and submit PIREPs automatically while flying in three distinct flight regimes: instrument flight rules (IFR), visual flight rules (VFR) with flight following, and VFR without flight following. The survey employed cross-section design and included Likert scale questions. For each flight regime, additional information was obtained through an open-ended follow-up question. The Likert scale responses indicated that pilots were neutral about using a SRS to transcribe and submit PIREPs in each flight regime.Spradley’s (1979) domain analysis was used to identify common themes and patterns from the open-ended responses. Major findings from flying IFR were that pilots found it easier to speak directly to air traffic control, or pilots were too busy to submit PIREPs while flying IFR. Major findings from flying VFR with flight following were that pilots thought it was easier to report PIREPs directly to air traffic control or to a flight service station, and it was more accurate to report PIREPs directly to an aviation professional. However, they were willing to try a SRS. Major findings from flying VFR without flight following were that pilots wanted the opportunity to review a PIREP submission for accuracy and were willing to try the system. Significant differences were determined by making a comparison between the three groups

7-Deazaguanine modifications protect phage DNA from host restriction systems

Genome modifications are central components of the continuous arms race between viruses and their hosts. The archaeosine base (G+), which was thought to be found only in archaeal tRNAs, was recently detected in genomic DNA of Enterobacteria phage 9g and was proposed to protect phage DNA from a wide variety of restriction enzymes. In this study, we identify three additional 2′-deoxy-7-deazaguanine modifications, which are all intermediates of the same pathway, in viruses: 2′-deoxy-7-amido-7-deazaguanine (dADG), 2′-deoxy-7-cyano-7-deazaguanine (dPreQ0) and 2′-deoxy-7- aminomethyl-7-deazaguanine (dPreQ1). We identify 180 phages or archaeal viruses that encode at least one of the enzymes of this pathway with an overrepresentation (60%) of viruses potentially infecting pathogenic microbial hosts. Genetic studies with the Escherichia phage CAjan show that DpdA is essential to insert the 7-deazaguanine base in phage genomic DNA and that 2′-deoxy-7-deazaguanine modifications protect phage DNA from host restriction enzymes

Eureka and beyond: mining's impact on African urbanisation

This collection brings separate literatures on mining and urbanisation together at a time when both artisanal and large-scale mining are expanding in many African economies. While much has been written about contestation over land and mineral rights, the impact of mining on settlement, notably its catalytic and fluctuating effects on migration and urban growth, has been largely ignored. African nation-states’ urbanisation trends have shown considerable variation over the past half century. The current surge in ‘new’ mining countries and the slow-down in ‘old’ mining countries are generating some remarkable settlement patterns and welfare outcomes. Presently, the African continent is a laboratory of national mining experiences. This special issue on African mining and urbanisation encompasses a wide cross-section of country case studies: beginning with the historical experiences of mining in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), followed by more recent mineralizing trends in comparatively new mineral-producing countries (Tanzania) and an established West African gold producer (Ghana), before turning to the influence of conflict minerals (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone)

Patient Safety Technology Gap: Minimizing Errors in Healthcare through Technology Innovation

In a world of ever increasing technological advances, users of technology are at risk for exceeding human memory limitations. A gap analysis was conducted through reviewing literature in the field of human error or specifically transition errors in emergency room (ER) operations to identify the current state of technology available. The gap analysis revealed the technological needs of ER healthcare workers. The findings indicate the need for technology such as knowledge management or decision support systems in ERs to reduce the potential for error, enhance patient safety, and improve the overall quality of care for the patient