Civil aircraft advanced avionics architectures - an insight into saras avionics, present and future perspective

Traditionally, the avionics architectures being implemented are of federated nature, which means that each avionics function has its own independent, dedicated fault-tolerant computing resources. Federated architecture has great advantage of inherent fault containment and at the same time envelops a potential risk of massive use of resources resulting in increase in weight, looming, cost and maintenance as well. With the drastic advancement in the computer and software technologies, the aviation industry is gradually moving towards the use of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) for civil transport aircraft, potentially leading to multiple avionics functions housed in each hardware platform. Integrated Modular Avionics is the most important concept of avionics architecture for next generation aircrafts. SARAS avionics suite is purely federated with almost glass cockpit architecture complying to FAR25. The Avionics activities from the inception to execution are governed by the regulations and procedures under the review of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Every phase of avionics activity has got its own technically involvement to make the system perfect. In addition the flight data handling, monitoring and analysis is again a thrust area in the civil aviation industry leading to safety and reliability of the machine and the personnel involved. NAL has been in this area for more than two decades and continues to excel in these technologies

From Fibonacci to the mathematics of cows and quantum circuitry

The Fibonacci sequence is a famously well-known integer sequence from the thirteenth century which has transcended its original motivation. It possesses many interested and varied applications within architecture, engineering and science. Less well known is the Narayana sequence which itself has interesting and wide-ranging Fibonacci-type connections. In this paper, we shall recall Narayana's original motivation that gives rise to the sequence bearing his name. We also provide an interesting application of this sequence to the construction to quantum gate circuitry used in quantum computation

The Presence and Consequences of Abortion Aversion in Scientific Research Related to Alcohol Use during Pregnancy.

Recent research has found that most U.S. state policies related to alcohol use during pregnancy adversely impact health. Other studies indicate that state policymaking around substance use in pregnancy-especially in the U.S.-appears to be influenced by an anti-abortion agenda rather than by public health motivations. This commentary explores the ways that scientists' aversion to abortion appear to influence science and thus policymaking around alcohol and pregnancy. The three main ways abortion aversion shows up in the literature related to alcohol use during pregnancy include: (1) a shift from the recommendation of abortion for "severely chronic alcoholic women" to the non-acknowledgment of abortion as an outcome of an alcohol-exposed pregnancy; (2) the concern that recommendations of abstinence from alcohol use during pregnancy lead to terminations of otherwise wanted pregnancies; and (3) the presumption of abortion as a negative pregnancy outcome. Thus, abortion aversion appears to influence the science related to alcohol use during pregnancy, and thus policymaking-to the detriment of developing and adopting policies that reduce the harms from alcohol during pregnancy

CO2 plume evolution in a depleted natural gas reservoir: Modeling of conformance uncertainty reduction over time

Uncertainty in the long-term fate of CO2 injected for geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) is a significant barrier to the adoption of GCS as a greenhouse-gas emission-mitigation for industry and regulatory agencies alike. We present a modeling study that demonstrates that the uncertainty in forecasts of GCS site performance decreases over time as monitoring data are used to update operational models. We consider a case study of GCS in a depleted natural gas reservoir, with CO2 injection occurring over 20 years, with a 50-year post-injection site care period. We constructed a detailed model to generate the actual model output, which is considered synthetic observation data. A series of simpler operational models based on limited data and assumptions about how an operator would model such a site are then run and compared against actual model output at specific monitoring points after one year, two years, etc. The operational model is updated and improved using the synthetic observation data from the actual model at the same time intervals. Model parameter values and model features needed to be updated over time to improve matches to the actual model. These kinds of model adjustments would be a normal part of reservoir engineering and site management at GCS sites. Uncertainty in two key measures related to site performance decreases with time: extent of the CO2 plume up-dip migration, and radial extent of the pressure pulse. This conclusion should help allay the concerns of industry and regulators about uncertainty in long-term fate of CO2 at GCS sites

Fixed Point Polynomials of Permutation Groups

In this paper we study, given a group $G$ of permutations of a finite set, the so-called fixed point polynomial $\sum_{i=0}^{n}f_{i}x^{i}$, where $f_{i}$ is the number of permutations in $G$ which have exactly $i$ fixed points. In particular, we investigate how root location relates to properties of the permutation group. We show that for a large family of such groups most roots are close to the unit circle and roughly uniformly distributed round it. We prove that many families of such polynomials have few real roots. We show that many of these polynomials are irreducible when the group acts transitively. We close by indicating some future directions of this research. A corrigendum was appended to this paper on 10th October 2014. </jats:p

‘To be or not to be?’ The African Union and its Member States Parties' Participation as High Contracting States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998)

This article examines, under the light of international law, African States’ fascination and fall-out with the ICC. It examines the challenge to international institutions and to international justice for high crimes posed by the quasi-supranational African Union’s (AU) emergent practice of ordering its Member States Parties not to co-operate with ICC Arrest Warrants against African Heads of States/Governments. The legal substance of AU claims and the AU’s own interpretations of the standards of sovereign immunity and universal jurisdiction are also examined. The article shows that emergent AU recalcitrance to ICC orders is difficult to dismiss even though it may be contrary to current international law on the Law of Treaties which nullifies resort to domestic local law as a justification for breach of the strictures of international law. In particular, AU claims that universal jurisdiction and sovereign immunity should be redefined to suit their concerns contradict recent international efforts to combat impunity for international crimes

Breaking the MBA delivery mould: A multi-group international MBA / practitioner virtual collaborative project

The marketing education project presented here brings together a major UK financial institution in the banking sector and a selection of its high value clients (B-to-B) via e-mail, telephone, video conferencing and other web-based technologies, with two geographically dispersed MBA classes in the UK and the US. Student groups were set up in virtual teams to target critical customer issues, analyzing gaps in the client-company interface. The two MBA courses included Customer Management & Quality Systems delivered at the University of Manchester, Manchester Business School (UK) and International Marketing, delivered at Missouri State University (US). The groups worked as a "think tank" collaborating to solve important customer service issues