Helicopter Pilot Performance for Discrete-maneuver Flight Tasks

This paper describes a current study of several basic helicopter flight maneuvers. The data base consists of in-flight measurements from instrumented helicopters using experienced pilots. The analysis technique is simple enough to apply without automatic data processing, and the results can be used to build quantitative matah models of the flight task and some aspects of the pilot control strategy. In addition to describing the performance measurement technqiue, some results are presented which define the aggressiveness and amplitude of maneuvering for several lateral maneuvers including turns and sidesteps

Helicopter roll control effectiveness criteria program summary

A study of helicopter roll control effectiveness is summarized for the purpose of defining military helicopter handling qualities requirements. The study is based on an analysis of pilot-in-the-loop task performance of several basic maneuvers. This is extended by a series of piloted simulations using the NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator and selected flight data. The main results cover roll control power and short-term response characteristics. In general the handling qualities requirements recommended are set in conjunction with desired levels of flight task and maneuver response which can be directly observed in actual flight. An important aspect of this, however, is that vehicle handling qualities need to be set with regard to some quantitative aspect of mission performance. Specific examples of how this can be accomplished include a lateral unmask/remask maneuver in the presence of a threat and an air tracking maneuver which recognizes the kill probability enhancement connected with decreasing the range to the target. Conclusions and recommendations address not only the handling qualities recommendations, but also the general use of flight simulators and the dependence of mission performance on handling qualities

How Will the Use of Technology in Translation and Testing Affect Language Learning?

Technology has an ever increasing impact on how we work and live. Article adressed the issue of the impact of technology in two key areas of language learning. On the one side learners increasingly used technology to translate. Given this trend, was there any real need to learn a language. On the other side, educational institutions increasingly used technology to rate language proficiency. Given this trend, would the work of the teacher become less and less important. The survey was conducted by using quantitative method. The respondents' age range was 18-25. There were 53 respondents, 35% were male and 65% were female. The instrument was a questionaire having 9 questions describing the students' reliance on computer in translation. It can be concluded that learners of English indicate that they accept and welcome the role of technology in language learning, but there is a doubt that the role and participation of humans in the learning process will be completely replaced. The human element remains an important ingredient. (EE

Exact vortex nucleation and cooperative vortex tunneling in dilute BECs

With the imminent advent of mesoscopic rotating BECs in the lowest Landau level (LLL) regime, we explore LLL vortex nucleation. An exact many-body analysis is presented in a weakly elliptical trap for up to 400 particles. Striking non-mean field features are exposed at filling factors >>1 . Eg near the critical rotation frequency pairs of energy levels approach each other with exponential accuracy. A physical interpretation is provided by requantising a mean field theory, where 1/N plays the role of Planck's constant, revealing two vortices cooperatively tunneling between classically degenerate energy minima. The tunnel splitting variation is described in terms of frequency, particle number and ellipticity.Comment: 4 pages,4 figure

Survey on the use of buprenorphine patches in the palliative care practice

Transdermal buprenorphine is a new formulation of the old drug available for the treatment of cancer and non-cancer pain. The drug offers number of interesting new features and was found effective in clinical trials in cancer patients with pain. We performed a survey of the use of buprenorphine patches for one year. In the survey we included 58 admitted patients (67 admission periods), whose clinical records and drug charts were subjected to analysis. Opioid naive patients were started either on 5 or 10 μg/hour. Mean buprenorphine dose was 22.3 μg/hour (95% CI: 16–28.6), increased on day 8 to 25.4 μg/hour (95% CI: 18.6–32) and ended up at the dose of 31.3 μg/hour (95% CI: 20.9–41.6) on the last day of treatment; day 19 (95% CI: 14.5–23.5). The overall dose increase was approximately 2% per day. Approximately half of the patients needed beside buprenorphine other opioids either in a slow release or immediate release form, usually morphine or oxycodone. Swapping from morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl to buprenorphine was without problems in all of the cases. The doses of all opioids administered calculated as oral morphine equivalents showed insignificant decreases for morphine and oxycodone to buprenorphine swaps. In case of fentanyl the oral morphine equivalents of opioids were significantly lower after swap (p = 0.0039). No signs of antagonism between the drugs were observed. In conclusion: buprenorphine patches appear to be useful in the treatment of cancer pain, either as monotherapy or in combination with other opioids. Swap from fentanyl to buprenorphine offers perspective of achievement of pain control with much less toxicity and should be investigated in more detail. Adv. Pall. Med. 2010; 9, 2: 39–44Transdermal buprenorphine is a new formulation of the old drug available for the treatment of cancer and non-cancer pain. The drug offers number of interesting new features and was found effective in clinical trials in cancer patients with pain. We performed a survey of the use of buprenorphine patches for one year. In the survey we included 58 admitted patients (67 admission periods), whose clinical records and drug charts were subjected to analysis. Opioid naive patients were started either on 5 or 10 μg/hour. Mean buprenorphine dose was 22.3 μg/hour (95% CI: 16–28.6), increased on day 8 to 25.4 μg/hour (95% CI: 18.6–32) and ended up at the dose of 31.3 μg/hour (95% CI: 20.9–41.6) on the last day of treatment; day 19 (95% CI: 14.5–23.5). The overall dose increase was approximately 2% per day. Approximately half of the patients needed beside buprenorphine other opioids either in a slow release or immediate release form, usually morphine or oxycodone. Swapping from morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl to buprenorphine was without problems in all of the cases. The doses of all opioids administered calculated as oral morphine equivalents showed insignificant decreases for morphine and oxycodone to buprenorphine swaps. In case of fentanyl the oral morphine equivalents of opioids were significantly lower after swap (p = 0.0039). No signs of antagonism between the drugs were observed. In conclusion: buprenorphine patches appear to be useful in the treatment of cancer pain, either as monotherapy or in combination with other opioids. Swap from fentanyl to buprenorphine offers perspective of achievement of pain control with much less toxicity and should be investigated in more detail. Adv. Pall. Med. 2010; 9, 2: 39–4

Implementation principles - turning intentions into outcomes

Companies sometimes fail to take effective action even when they know what they should do. Recent research shows that this surprising situation is more common than one would expect. How can the track record of companies in achieving the outcomes targeted by manufacturing strategy be improved? This article proposes a set of eight principles to improve the chances of taking effective action to turn intentions into outcomes. Rooted in the literature, the principles have also surfaced in case based research and commented on in the context of international consulting activities

The computation of multiple roots of a Bernstein basis polynomial

This paper describes the algorithms of Musser and Gauss for the computation of multiple roots of a theoretically exact Bernstein basis polynomial ˆ 5 f(y) when the coefficients of its given form f(y) are corrupted by noise. The exact roots of f(y) can therefore be assumed to be simple, and thus the problem reduces to the calculation of multiple roots of a polynomial f˜(y) that is near f(y), such that the backward error is small. The algorithms require many greatest common divisor (GCD) computations and polynomial deconvolutions, both of which are implemented by a structure-preserving matrix method. The motivation of these algorithms arises from the unstructured and structured condition numbers of a multiple root of a polynomial. These condition numbers have an elegant interpretation in terms of the pejorative manifold of ˆ 12 f(y), which allows the geometric significance of the GCD computations and polynomial deconvolutions to be considered. A variant of the Sylvester resultant matrix is used for the GCD computations because it yields better results than the standard form of this matrix, and the polynomial deconvolutions can be computed in several different ways, sequentially or simultaneously, and with the inclusion or omission of the preservation of the structure of the coefficient matrix. It is shown that Gauss’ algorithm yields better results than Musser’s algorithm, and the reason for these superior results is explained