A real-time digital program for estimating aircraft stability and control parameters from flight test data by using the maximum likelihood method

A computer program (Langley program C1123) has been developed for estimating aircraft stability and control parameters from flight test data. These parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation procedure implemented on a real-time digital simulation system, which uses the Control Data 6600 computer. This system allows the investigator to interact with the program in order to obtain satisfactory results. Part of this system, the control and display capabilities, is described for this program. This report also describes the computer program by presenting the program variables, subroutines, flow charts, listings, and operational features. Program usage is demonstrated with a test case using pseudo or simulated flight data

Lightning current waveform measuring system

An apparatus is described for monitoring current waveforms produced by lightning strikes which generate currents in an elongated cable. These currents are converted to voltages and to light waves for being transmitted over an optical cable to a remote location. At the remote location, the waves are reconstructed back into electrical waves for being stored into a memory. The information is stored within the memory with a timing signal so that only different signals need be stored in order to reconstruct the wave form

A Stochastic Budgeting Analysis of Three Alternative Scenarios to Convert from Beef-Cattle Farming to Game Ranching

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the profitability and financial feasibility of three alternative scenarios to convert from beef-cattle farming to game ranching. The analyses acknowledge the importance of quantifying the probability of failure or success when making investment decisions. Risk is incorporated into a standard net present value analysis using risk simulation. De-trended historical auction prices of live game and on-the-hoof prices of weaner cattle were used to quantify price variability. The stochastic net present value analyses indicate that game ranching is more profitable than cattle farming. Although an investment in a limited number of common game species is financially feasible, the cash flow analysis indicates a decreasing probability of making more money with game when annual cash flows are compared to those generated by means of cattle farming. Both the high-value game species scenarios are financially unfeasible during the first five years. These infeasibilities stem from a high probability of not covering instalments to finance game purchases, the extent to which these instalments are not covered, and the high probability of shortfalls in consecutive years.Game ranching, profitability, financial feasibility, risk simulation, Agricultural Finance, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries,

The Implementation and Evaluation of the Spiritual Leadership Curriculum Joshua\u27s Men in the Williamsport Pennsylvania Seventh-day Adventist Church

Problem. In order for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to continue to be effective in its mission to its communities, new leaders must be developed in the local church. While there are many ways to impart skills to potential leaders, developing them as spiritual leaders is a unique task. One program, designed and written by Dr. Dan Reiland seems to fulfill this task. Joshua’s Men is a spiritual leadership curriculum which uses mentoring to develop leaders in the local church. The first edition was published in 1996. Reiland wrote a second edition which was released in 2006. Is this program effective? Does it develop spiritual leaders in the church? Can it be implemented in a small-sized church, where there is a restricted pool of potential leaders? This project evaluates Reiland’s second edition of the Joshua’s Men spiritual leadership curriculum to determine its effectiveness in developing spiritual leaders in the local church. Method. The method used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Joshua’s Men spiritual leadership curriculum in implementing the second edition of the program was measuring the effect it had on the lives of the participants. Four men from the Williamsport Seventh-day Adventist Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania participated in this project. Three tools were used to measure the results: interviews, a monthly survey and a Personal Leadership Assessment. Results. The results showed the effectiveness of the program in developing these four men as spiritual leaders. The monthly evaluations, interviews and the Personal Leadership Assessment revealed that the topics, monthly presentations and the reading material used, as a whole, were valuable. The participants also indicated they were applying in their everyday lives what they had learned. This was confirmed in the year end interviews with both the participants and their spouses, which noted that spiritual growth had occurred as a result of their involvement in the program. Conclusions. Joshua’s Men is an effective spiritual leadership curriculum which helps facilitate the development of spiritual leaders in the local church. The success of this curriculum is found not only in its relevant topics and easy implementation but also in the fact that it uses mentoring as its basis. This combination of strengths makes Joshua’s Men a very effective tool in developing spiritual leaders in the local church

Discretizations & Efficient Linear Solvers for Problems Related to Fluid Flow

Numerical solutions to fluid flow problems involve solving the linear systems arising from the discretization of the Stokes equation or a variant of it, which often have a saddle point structure and are difficult to solve. Geometric multigrid is a parallelizable method that can efficiently solve these linear systems especially for a large number of unknowns. We consider two approaches to solve these linear systems using geometric multigrid: First, we use a block preconditioner and apply geometric multigrid as in inner solver to the velocity block only. We develop deal.II tutorial step-56 to compare the use of geometric multigrid to other popular alternatives. This method is found to be competitive in serial computations in terms of performance and memory usage. Second, we design a special smoother to apply multigrid to the whole linear system. This smoother is analyzed as a Schwarz method using conforming and inf-sup stable discretization spaces. The resulting method is found to be competitive to a similar multigrid method using non-conforming finite elements that were studied by Kanschat and Mao. This approach has the potential to be superior to the first approach. Finally, expanding on the research done by Dannberg and Heister, we explore the analysis of a three-field Stokes formulation that is used to describe melt migration in the earth\u27s mantle. Multiple discretizations were studied to find the best one to use in the ASPECT software package. We also explore improvements to ASPECT\u27s linear solvers for this formulation utilizing block preconditioners and algebraic multigrid