No Turning Back: Exploring Sex Education in the United States

Sex education provides valuable information for young people to know and practice safe and appropriate sexual activities. Sex education also educates students on what healthy relationships look like, developing their emotional and psychological well-being. The United States has increasingly adopted sex education for adolescents, who are highly vulnerable age group. However, the programs often only focus on abstinence and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, and to some extent, offer a simplistic discussion around consent. Most however, do not adequately address complicated issues like personal responsibility, open communication, a deeper understanding of gender and gender relations and the incorporation of LGBTQQ education. This paper explores various practices for LGBTQQ-inclusive sex education to teach adolescents informed content in order to improve their health levels. Methods that have produced positive outcomes in teaching existing forms of sex education are useful in adopting LGBTQQ-inclusive programs. Some recommendable actions include the development of LGBTQQ-inclusive sex education to provide learning content and training teachers to ensure they are competent to teach different sexual orientations. There is also a need for increased budgets to fund LGBTQQ-inclusive learning activities. Also, a supportive and safe school environment is necessary for LGBTQQ teenagers to learn and thrive in. The paper also describes factors supporting the provision of sex education to adolescent, and pros and cons. U.S. schools need to support LGBTQQ education to promote the health of this group to be on par with heterosexual teenagers

Accuracy Analysis of Attitude Computation Based on Optimal Coning Algorithm

To accurately evaluate the applicability of optimal coning algorithms, the direct influence of their periodic components on attitude accuracy is investigated. The true value of the change of the rotation vector is derived from the classical coning motion for analytic comparison. The analytic results show that the influence of periodic components is mostly dominant in two types of optimal coning algorithms. Considering that the errors of periodic components cannot be simply neglected, these algorithms are categorized with simplified forms. A variety of simulations are done under the classical coning motion. The numerical results are in good agreement with the analytic deductions. Considering their attitude accuracy, optimal coning algorithms of the 4-subinterval and 5-subinterval algorithms optimized with angular increments are not recommended for use for real application.Defence Science Journal, 2012, 62(6), pp.361-368, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.62.143

A Novel Carrier Loop Based on Adaptive LM-QN Method in GNSS Receivers

A well-designed carrier tracking loop in a receiver of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is the premise of accurate positioning and navigation in an aircraft-based surveying and mapping system. To deal with the problems of Doppler estimation in high-dynamic maneuvers, the interest on maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) is increasing among the academic community. Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method is usually regarded as an effective and promising approach to obtain the solution of MLE, but the computation of Hessian matrix loads a great burden on the algorithm. Besides, a poor performance on convergency in final iterations is the common failing of LM implementations. To solve these problems, an LM method based on Gauss-Newton and a Quasi-Newton (QN) method based on Hessian approximation are derived, making the computation cost of Hessian decline from O(N) to O(1). Then, on the basis of these two methods, a closed carrier loop with adaptive LM-QN algorithm is further proposed which can switch between LM and QN adaptively according to a damping parameter. Besides, an ideal LM with super-linear convergence (SLM) is constructed and proved as a reference of the convergence analysis. Finally, through the analyses and experiments using aircraft data, the improvements on computation cost and convergence are verified. Compared with scalar tracking and vector tracking, results indicate a magnitude increase in the precision of LM-QN loop, even though more computation counts are needed by LM-QN.Peer reviewe

Vector-tracking-based GNSS/INS Deep Coupling and Experiment Platform for Urban Scenarios

Peer reviewe

Combined Tracking Strategy Based on Unscented Kalman Filter for Global Positioning System L2C CM/CL Signal

In a global positioning system receiver, the tracking algorithm plays a dominant role since the code delay and Doppler frequency shift need to be accurately estimated as well as their variation over time need to be continuously updated. Combine unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with CM/CL signal to improve the signal tracking precision is proposed. It allow weighting assignment between CM code and CL code incoming signal, masked by a mass of noise, and to describe a UKF tracking loop aiming at decreasing numerical errors. UKF here involves state and measuring equations which calculate absolute offsets to adjust initial code and carrier phase then dramatically decrease the tracking error. In particular, the algorithm is implemented in both open space and jammed environment to highlight the advantages of tracking approach, by comparing single code and combined code, UKF and EKF tracking loop. It proves that signal tracking based on UKF, with low energy dissipation as well as high precision, is particularly appealing for a software receiver implementation

Application of Adaptive Extended Kalman Smoothing on INS/WSN Integration System for Mobile Robot Indoors

The inertial navigation systems (INS)/wireless sensor network (WSN) integration system for mobile robot is proposed for navigation information indoors accurately and continuously. The Kalman filter (KF) is widely used for real-time applications with the aim of gaining optimal data fusion. In order to improve the accuracy of the navigation information, this work proposed an adaptive extended Kalman smoothing (AEKS) which utilizes inertial measuring units (IMUs) and ultrasonic positioning system. In this mode, the adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF) is used to improve the accuracy of forward Kalman filtering (FKF) and backward Kalman filtering (BKF), and then the AEKS and the average filter are used between two output timings for the online smoothing. Several real indoor tests are done to assess the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can reduce the error compared with the INS-only, least squares (LS) solution, and AEKF

Adaptive Iterated Extended Kalman Filter and Its Application to Autonomous Integrated Navigation for Indoor Robot

As the core of the integrated navigation system, the data fusion algorithm should be designed seriously. In order to improve the accuracy of data fusion, this work proposed an adaptive iterated extended Kalman (AIEKF) which used the noise statistics estimator in the iterated extended Kalman (IEKF), and then AIEKF is used to deal with the nonlinear problem in the inertial navigation systems (INS)/wireless sensors networks (WSNs)-integrated navigation system. Practical test has been done to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is effective to reduce the mean root-mean-square error (RMSE) of position by about 92.53%, 67.93%, 55.97%, and 30.09% compared with the INS only, WSN, EKF, and IEKF