The halteres of flies are mechanosensory organs that provide information about body rotations during flight. We measured haltere movements in a range of fly taxa during free walking and tethered flight. We find a diversity of wing-haltere phase relationships in flight, with higher variability in more ancient families and less in more derived families. Diverse haltere movements were observed dur...

Introduction: An estimated 3.8 billion passengers traveled on commercial aircraft in 2016, of whom close to 1.5 billion crossed international boundaries. Modern commercial aircrafts can carry up to 800 passengers and can fly more than 18 hours. Although not very common, in-flight medical incidents can result in flight diversions that are costly and extremely inconvenient. The a...

A new aerial platform has risen recently for image acquisition, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This article describes the technical specifications and configuration of a UAV used to capture remote images for early season site- specific weed management (ESSWM). Image spatial and spectral properties required for weed seedling discrimination were also evaluated. Two different sensors, a still ...

We describe two schemes for scheduling an integrated flight and propulsion control system for an experimental vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft concept in the acceleration from hover (0–120 kn) flight phase. Multivariable integrated flight and propulsion controllers are designed at several points over the V/STOL envelope and implemented as exact plant observers with state fe...

Skeletal muscle innervation differs between vertebrates and insects. Insect muscle fibers exhibit graded electrical potentials and are innervated by excitatory, inhibitory, and also neuromodulatory motoneurons. The latter form a unique class of unpaired neurons with bilaterally symmetrical axons that release octopamine to alter the efficacy of synaptic transmission and regulate muscle energy me...

This paper discusses a process for validating the Airspace Concept Evaluation System using real world historical flight operational data. ACES inputs are generated from select real world data and processed to create a realistic reproduction of a single day’s operations within the National Airspace System. ACES outputs are then compared to real world operational metrics and delay statistics for ...

The phases of quantum interference effects in charged lepton production by neutrinos (neutrino oscillations) following pion decay at rest and in flight, muon decay and nuclear β−decay at rest as well as for ‘muon oscillations’ following pion decay at rest and in flight are calculated. The same phase is found for neutrino and muon oscillations following pion decay at rest. The results found disa...

An increasing number of flight research and airborne science experiments now contain networkready systems that could benefit from a high-rate bidirectional air-to-ground network link. A prototype system, the High-Rate Wireless Airborne Network Demonstration, was developed from commercial off-the-shelf components while leveraging the existing telemetry infrastructure on the Western Aeronautical ...

This paper describes an experimental study investigating pilots' manual flying skills. In today's line oriented flight training, basic flying skills are neglected frequently. So, the study examines the manual flying skills of commercial airline pilots under the influence of several performance shaping factors like training, practice or fatigue in a landing scenario. The landing phase shows a di...