Reduction of trimmed drag

Methods are reported for reducing the aircraft drag coefficient for a given aircraft lift coefficient, or speed. The emphasis is placed in determining the load distribution between the wing-body combination and the tail which reduces overall drag coefficient. Furthermore, a technique is presented which allows the determination of various aerodynamic and geometric parameters to permit the best location to satisfy inherent stability requirements. Included in the method is the calculation of sensitivity coefficients which indicate the importance of various parameters in achieving specified goals. Preliminary results indicate that such an approach is feasible

Applications of the calculus of variations to aircraft performance

Variational calculus used to describe optimum aircraft flight trajectorie

VideoPoetry: Integrating Video, Poetry and History in the Classroom

VideoPoetry integrates video and poetry to explore historical or geographic subjects. VideoPoetry is both a process and a product. This paper will use a short VideoPoem, Mary Hallock Foote at Stone House, to demonstrate how students of all educational levels can become engaged in creating VideoPoetry. Each VideoPoem offers students a cross-disciplinary experience that involves research, analysis of information, imaginative writing and video composition leading to a classroom presentation of the final product. As a process VideoPoetry requires the investigation of a subject, in this case, Mary Hallock Foote, artist and illustrator of the Western United States. Based on the historical research including her published reminiscences, one of the authors wrote a narrative poem imagining Foote\u27s reflections on her life at Stone House. The poem evoked mental images which we brought into the video through historical photographs, Foote\u27s woodblock drawings and present-day video footage of the landscape. Spoken by a woman narrator, the poem along with appropriate sound effects became the soundtrack and structuring element for the VideoPoem. Preceding the VideoPoem is an introduction which uses an objective voice to establish the historical context. As a product, this VideoPoem expresses an interpretation of the life and thoughts of an historical person and the place where she lived. The pictures both illustrate the poem and extend its evocative quality. As such Mary Hallock Foote at Stone House is an example of Imaginative Writing, an instructional strategy that encourages students to use their imaginations to create valid contexts in which historical figures lived and acted. For viewers, VideoPoetry conveys both historical information and a sense of what it was like to live in another era. VideoPoetry expands the possibilities of studying history by providing a multi-media and multi-sensory experience

Microhabitats of benthic foraminifera - a static concept or a dynamic adaption to optimize food aquisition?

In situ observations of microhabitat preferences of living benthic foraminifera are presented from sediments of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, the upwelling area off northwestern Africa and the shallow-water Kiel Bight (Baltic Sea). Certain foraminiferal species (e.g.Cibicidoides wuellerstorfi andRupertina stabilis) can be regarded as strictly epibenthic species, colonizing elevated habitats that are strongly affected by bottom water hydrodynamics. Large epibenthic foraminifera (e.g.Rhabdammina abyssorum andHyperammina crassatina) colonize the sediment surface in areas where strong bottom currents occur and might have by virtue of their own size an impact on the small-scale circulation patterns of the bottom water. Motile species changing from epifaunal to infaunal habitats (e.g.Pyrgo rotalaria, Melonis barleeanum, Elphidium excavatum clavatum, Elphidium incertum, Ammotium cassis andSphaeroidina bulloides) are regarded here as highly adaptable to changes in food availability and/or changing environmental conditions. This flexible behaviour is regarded as a dynamic adaptation to optimize food acquisition, rather than a static concept leading to habitat classification of these ubiquitous rhizopods