Aviation safety : enhanced requirements can improve commuter pilot training : report to the honorable Robert C. Byrd, U.S. Senate /

"B-228633"--P. 1.

Industry wage survey.

Description based on: Sept. 1980.

Coast pilot manual

Mode of access: Internet.

The FAA international, answer book : answers to commonly asked questions about FAA regulations and procedures /

"January 1995."

Two NextGen Air Safety Tools: An ADS-B Equipped UAV and a Wake Turbulence Estimator

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

A stress and coping approach to organisational change: Evidence from three field studies

In this paper, a stress and coping perspective is used to outline the processes that determine employee adaptation to organisational change. A theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the effects of event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies, and coping resources is reviewed, Three empirical investigations of organisational change that have tested various components of the model are then presented. In the first study, there was evidence linking event characteristics, situational appraisals, coping strategies and coping resources to levels of employee adjustment in a sample of pilots employed in a newly merged airline company. In a more focused test of the model with a sample of employees experiencing a restructuring process in their Organisation it was found that the provision of change-related information enhanced levels of efficacy to deal with the change process which, in turn, predicted psychological wellbeing, client engagement, and job satisfaction. In a study of managers affected by a new remuneration scheme, there was evidence to suggest that managers who received change-specific information and opportunities to participate in the change process reported higher levels of change readiness. Managers who reported higher levels of readiness for change also reported higher levels of psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. These studies highlight ways in which managers and change agents can help employees to cope during times of organisational change.

Designing a Computer Vision System for Underwater Robotic Interventions

This thesis deals with the challenging problem of designing systems able to perceive objects in underwater environments. In the last few decades research activities in robotics have advanced the state of art regarding intervention capabilities of autonomous systems. State of art in fields such as localization and navigation, real time perception and cognition, safe action and manipulation capabilities, applied to ground environments (both indoor and outdoor) has now reached such a readiness level that it allows high level autonomous operations. On the opposite side, the underwater environment remains a very difficult one for autonomous robots. Water influences the mechanical and electrical design of systems, interferes with sensors by limiting their capabilities, heavily impacts on data transmissions, and generally requires systems with low power consumption in order to enable reasonable mission duration. Interest in underwater applications is driven by needs of exploring and intervening in environments in which human capabilities are very limited. Nowadays, most underwater field operations are carried out by manned or remotely operated vehicles, deployed for explorations and limited intervention missions. Manned vehicles, directly on-board controlled, expose human operators to risks related to the stay in field of the mission, within a hostile environment. Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) currently represent the most advanced technology for underwater intervention services available on the market. These vehicles can be remotely operated for long time but they need support from an oceanographic vessel with multiple teams of highly specialized pilots. Vehicles equipped with multiple state-of-art sensors and capable to autonomously plan missions have been deployed in the last ten years and exploited as observers for underwater fauna, seabed, ship wrecks, and so on. On the other hand, underwater operations like object recovery and equipment maintenance are still challenging tasks to be conducted without human supervision since they require object perception and localization with much higher accuracy and robustness, to a degree seldom available in Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). This thesis reports the study, from design to deployment and evaluation, of a general purpose and configurable platform dedicated to stereo-vision perception in underwater environments. Several aspects related to the peculiar environment characteristics have been taken into account during all stages of system design and evaluation: depth of operation and light conditions, together with water turbidity and external weather, heavily impact on perception capabilities. The vision platform proposed in this work is a modular system comprising off-the-shelf components for both the imaging sensors and the computational unit, linked by a high performance ethernet network bus. The adopted design philosophy aims at achieving high flexibility in terms of feasible perception applications, that should not be as limited as in case of a special-purpose and dedicated hardware. Flexibility is required by the variability of underwater environments, with water conditions ranging from clear to turbid, light backscattering varying with daylight and depth, strong color distortion, and other environmental factors. Furthermore, the proposed modular design ensures an easier maintenance and update of the system over time. Performance of the proposed system, in terms of perception capabilities, has been evaluated in several underwater contexts taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the MARIS national project. Design issues like energy power consumption, heat dissipation and network capabilities have been evaluated in different scenarios. Finally, real-world experiments, conducted in multiple and variable underwater contexts, including open sea waters, have led to the collection of several datasets that have been publicly released to the scientific community. The vision system has been integrated in a state of the art AUV equipped with a robotic arm and gripper, and has been exploited in the robot control loop to successfully perform underwater grasping operations.

Feelings of vulnerability and effects on driving behaviour:a qualitative study

Feelings of vulnerability in driving can be considered an emotional response to risk perception and the coping strategies adopted could have implications for continued mobility. In a series of focus groups with 48 licensed drivers aged 18-75 years, expressions of vulnerability in driver coping behaviours were examined. Despite feelings of vulnerability appearing low, qualitative thematic analysis revealed a complex array of coping strategies in everyday driving including planning, use of 'co-pilots', self-regulation, avoidance and confrontive coping, i.e. intentional aggression toward other road users. The findings inform future intervention studies to enable appropriate coping strategy selection and prolong independent mobility in older adults. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quasi-pilot aided phase noise estimation for coherent optical OFDM systems

In this letter, a novel phase noise estimation scheme has been proposed for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems, the quasi-pilot-aided method. In this method, the phases of transmitted pilot subcarriers are deliberately correlated to the phases of data subcarriers. Accounting for this correlation in the receiver allows the required number of pilots needed for a sufficient estimation and compensation of phase noise to be reduced by a factor of 2 in comparison with the traditional pilot-aided phase noise estimation method. We carried out numerical simulation of a 40 Gb/s single polarization transmission system, and the outcome of the investigation indicates that by applying quasi-pilot-aided phase estimation, only four pilot subcarriers are needed for effective phase noise compensation. © 2014 IEEE.

Techniques for noise and nonlinear impairments compensation in CO-OFDM transmission

In this paper, we discuss recent advances in digital signal processing techniques for compensation of the laser phase noise and fiber nonlinearity impairments in coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) transmission. For laser phase noise compensation, we focus on quasi-pilot-aided (QPA) and decision-directed-free blind (DDF-blind) phase noise compensation techniques. For fiber nonlinearity compensation, we discuss in details the principle and performance of the phase-conjugated pilots (PCP) scheme.

Optical and digital phase conjugation techniques for fiber nonlinearity compensation

We discuss recent progress on the use of optical and digital phase conjugation techniques for nonlinearity compensation in optical fiber links. We compare the achievable performance gain of phase conjugated twin wave applied in two polarization states and time segments with mid-link optical phase conjugation and digital back propagation. For multicarrier transmission scheme such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, two recently proposed schemes, namely phase-conjugated pilots and phase-conjugated subcarrier coding are reviewed.

Advanced digital signal processing for coherent optical OFDM transmissions

Coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) has been actively considered as a potential candidate for long-haul transmission and 400 Gb/s to 1 Tb/s Ethernet transport because of its high spectral efficiency, efficient implementation, flexibility and robustness against linear impairments such as chromatic dispersion and polarization mode dispersion. However, due to the long symbol duration and narrow subcarrier spacing, CO-OFDM systems are sensitive to laser phase noise and fibre nonlinearity induced penalties. As a result, the development of CO-OFDM transmission technology crucially relies on efficient techniques to compensate for the laser phase noise and fibre nonlinearity impairments. In this thesis, high performance and low complexity digital signal processing techniques for laser phase noise and fibre nonlinearity compensation in CO-OFDM transmissions are demonstrated. For laser phase noise compensation, three novel techniques, namely quasipilot-aided, decision-directed-free blind and multiplier-free blind are introduced. For fibre nonlinear compensation, two novel techniques which are referred to as phase conjugated pilots and phase conjugated subcarrier coding, are proposed. All these abovementioned digital signal processing techniques offer high performances and flexibilities while requiring relatively low complexities in comparison with other existing phase noise and nonlinear compensation techniques. As a result of the developments of these digital signal processing techniques, CO-OFDM technology is expected to play a significant role in future ultra-high capacity optical network. In addition, this thesis also presents preliminary study on nonlinear Fourier transform based transmission schemes in which OFDM is a highly suitable modulation format. The obtained result paves the way towards a truly flexible nonlinear wave-division multiplexing system that allows the current nonlinear transmission limitations to be exceeded.

The choice not to use computers: A case study of community college faculty who do not use computers in teaching

The primary purpose of this investigation is to study the motives of community college faculty who decide not to use computers in teaching. In spite of the fact that many of the environmental blocks that would otherwise inhibit the use of the computers have been eliminated at many institutions, many faculty do not use a computer beyond its word-processing function. For the purpose of the study non-adoption of computers in teaching is defined as not using computers for more than word-processing. ^ The issues in the literature focus on resistance and assume a pro-innovation and pro-adoption bias. Previous research on the questions is primarily surveys with narrowly focused assumptions. This qualitative research directly asks the participants about their feelings, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors in regard to computers in teaching. Through the interview process a number of other correlated issues emerge. ^ The investigation was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College, a large urban multicampus institution, in Miami-Dade, Florida. It was conducted through a series of in-depth phenomenological interviews. There were nine interviews; eight within the profile; two were pilots; and one was an extreme opposite of the profile. Each participant was interviewed three times for about 45 minutes. ^ The results indicate that the computer conflicts with the participants' values in regard to their teaching and their beliefs in regard to the nature of knowledge, learning, and the relationship that they wish to maintain with students. Computers require significant changes in the values, beliefs, and consequent behaviors. These are changes that the participants are not willing to make without overwhelming evidence that they are worth the sacrifice. For the participants, this worth is only definable as it positively improves learning. For even the experts the evidence is not there. Unlike the innovator, the high end computer user, these participants are not willing to adopt the computer on faith. ^

Managing Strategic Change

The essay - Managing Strategic Change – by K. Michael Haywood, Associate Professor, School of Hotel and Food Administration, University of Guelph, is initially characterized by Haywood as: “The ability to manage strategic change is critical for hospitality industry executives today. Executives must be capable of creating a vision of the future and implementing its direction. The author gives avenues for that management process.” “The effective management of strategic change is the major challenge confronting hospitality executives,” says Associate Professor Haywood. “Responding to a rapidly changing business environment and constantly evolving competitive threats and opportunities requires executives who can anticipate and plan for change.” According to Professor Haywood, the management of strategic change is a future imperative for hospitality executives. Implementing those changes will be even more difficult. “Survival and growth for many hospitality firms during the next decade will depend on the development of new strategic visions which can provide significant competitive advantages,” he says. “Strategies for managing costs and technology will be central to this task,” Haywood expands the thought. Haywood suggests two primary types of change hospitality executives should be aware of. First, is change that is anticipated, anticipatory change. Second, is the other more crucial type of change, strategic change in the face of crisis, or simply stated, reactive change. Professor Haywood describes the distinction between the two. In describing the approach that should be implemented in responding to an anticipatory change, Haywood says, “If time permits, and change is to be introduced gradually, pilots and trials should be run to assess the impact of the new strategy on the organization. These trials are used to create pockets of commitment throughout the corporation, build comfort levels with the new approach, and neutralize or win over potential opposition.” There are the obvious advantages to using an approach like the one described above, but there are disadvantages as well. Haywood discusses both. In addressing reactive change, Haywood offers that the process is a more - time is of the essence – condition, and that strong leadership and a firm hand on employee control is imperative. “Personal leadership, tough-mindedness, the willingness to ruthlessly abandon the familiar and the past, and the use of informal strategic levers are the hallmarks of sterling executive performance in such periods,” he says. “All these changes involve substantial technical, financial, and human risks,” Haywood wants you to know. “In order to make them, and still remain competitive, hospitality and travel-related corporations require executives capable of creating a vision of the future, able to sell that vision to their employees, and tough-minded enough to implement strategies to make the vision a reality.”

The relationship between higher education curricular variables and human flight performance in a preliminary flying training program

The ability of the United States Air Force (USAF) to sustain a high level of operational ability and readiness is dependent on the proficiency and expertise of its pilots. Recruitment, education, training, and retention of its pilot force are crucial factors in the USAF's attainment of its operational mission: defense of this nation and its allies. Failure of a student pilot during a training program does not only represent a loss of costly training expenditures to the American public, but often consists of loss of human life, aircraft, and property. This research focused on the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps' (AFROTC) selection method for student pilots for the light aircraft training (LATR) program. The LATR program is an intense 16 day flight training program that precedes the Air Force's undergraduate pilot training (UPT) program. The study subjects were 265 AFROTC cadets in the LATR program. A variety of independent variables from each subject's higher education curricular background as well as results of preselection tests, participation in varsity athletics, prior flying experience and gender were evaluated against subsequent performance in LATR. Performance was measured by a quantitative performance score developed by this researcher based on 28 graded training factors as well as overall pass or fail of the LATR program. Study results showed participation in university varsity athletics was very significantly and positively related to performance in the LATR program, followed by prior flying experience and to a very slight degree portions of the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test. Not significantly related to success in the LATR program were independent variables such as grade point average, scholastic aptitude test scores, academic major, gender and the AFROTC selection and ranking system.