Pilot Sleep Behavior across Time during Ultra-Long-Range Flights

Fatigue risk to the pilot has been a deterrent for conducting direct flights longer than 12 h under normal conditions, but such flights were a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty (N = 20) pilots flying across five humanitarian missions between Brazil and China wore a sleep-tracking device (the Zulu watch), which has been validated for the estimation of sleep timing (sleep onset and offset), duration, efficiency, and sleep score (wake, interrupted, light, or deep Sleep) throughout the mission period. Pilots also reported sleep timing, duration, and subjective quality of their in-flight rest periods using a sleep diary. To our knowledge, this is the first report of commercial pilot sleep behavior during ultra-long-range operations under COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Moreover, these analyses provide an estimate of sleep score during in-flight sleep, which has not been reported previously in the literature.

Sleep Depth and Patterns of In-Flight Sleep Behavior Across Time During Global Pandemic Conditions

Fatigue risk to commercial pilots operating under global pandemic conditions had not been in-vestigated prior to COVID-19. Examining how pilots slept during COVID-19 pandemic-specific flights can provide a precedent for estimating fatigue risk for future public health emergencies. Twenty (n=20) pilots flying across five COVID-19 humanitarian missions between Brazil and China wore a sleep-tracking device (the Zulu watch), which has been validated for the estimation of sleep timing (sleep onset and offset), duration, efficiency, and sleep depth (Wake, Interrupted, Light, or Deep Sleep) throughout the mission period. Pilots also reported sleep timing, duration and subjective quality of their in-flight rest periods using a sleep diary. To our knowledge, this is the first report of commercial pilot sleep behavior during ultra-long-range operations under COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Moreover, these analyses provide an estimate of sleep depth during in-flight sleep, which has not been reported previously in the literature.

FIELD VALIDATION OF ICESAT-2 DATA ALONG CHINARE ROUTE IN EAST ANTARCTICA

A field validation of the ICESat-2 elevation data has been conducted along the CHINARE (CHINese Antarctic Research Expedition) route near the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica from December 2019 to February 2020. The study area covers a 520 km traverse from the coastal Zhongshan Station to the inland Taishan Station. We deployed two roof-mounted GNSS receivers to collect elevation data along the traverse and reduced them to the ice surface height with measured boresight parameters. The comparison of the ICESat-2 data (Release 003) with the high-precision ground-based GNSS along the traverse shows that the elevations of ATL06 ice surface products are accurate to 1.5 cm with 9.1 cm precision, and the elevations of ATL03 photon events are accurate to 4.3 cm with 8.5 cm precision. The validation results indicated high accuracy of 1.5–4.3 cm of ICESat-2 data, which provides the potentials to observe and evaluate the low-level mass changes in East Antarctica. The methodology and hardware system can be improved to execute a continuous assessment of ICESat-2 data in the following mission period.

Copernicus POD Service - Orbit reprocessing for Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites

<p>The Copernicus Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission consists of two satellites A and B launched in April 2014 and April 2016, respectively. The Copernicus POD (Precise Orbit Determination) Service is responsible for the generation of precise orbital products of the mission requiring a high orbit accuracy of 5 cm in 3D RMS in the comparison to external processing facilities.</p><p>The operational POD setup at the Copernicus POD Service has passed through several updates during the last years. For instance the ITRF update from ITRF08 to ITRF14 at the end of January 2017, the fundamental background model update in May 2020, and the switch to updated GPS antenna reference point coordinates together with the introduction of carrier phase ambiguity fixing at the end of July 2020 have been done to mention just the major changes in the processing. To provide a homogeneous and up-to-date orbit time series for the two satellites a reprocessing of the full mission period is done.  </p><p>The quality control of the reprocessed Copernicus Sentinel-1 orbits is done by analysing processing metrics and by comparing the results to orbits, which were independently reprocessed by members of the Copernicus POD Quality Working Group (QWG).</p><p>Results from the full Copernicus Sentinel-1 POD reprocessing campaign are presented together with the accuracy and quality assessment of the orbits.</p>

EXPLORING THE GUALE VILLAGE AND SPANISH MISSION OCCUPATIONS AT THE SAPELO SHELL RING COMPLEX THROUGH BAYESIAN ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon (14C) dates in North American archaeology is increasing, especially among archaeologists working in deeper time. However, historical archaeologists have been slow to embrace these new techniques, and there have been only a few examples of the incorporation of calendar dates as informative priors in Bayesian models in such work in the United States. To illustrate the value of Bayesian approaches to sites with both substantial earlier Native American occupations as well as a historic era European presence, we present the results of our Bayesian analysis of 14C dates from the earlier Guale village and the Mission period contexts from the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex (9MC23) in southern Georgia. Jefferies and Moore have explored the Spanish Mission period deposits at this site to better understand the Native American interactions with the Spanish during the 16th and 17th centuries along the Georgia Coast. Given the results of our Bayesian modeling, we can say with some degree of confidence that the deposits thus far excavated and sampled contain important information dating to the 17th-century mission on Sapelo Island. In addition, our modeling of new dates suggests the range of the pre-Mission era Guale village. Based on these new dates, we can now say with some degree of certainty which of the deposits sampled likely contain information that dates to one of the critical periods of Mission period research, the AD 1660–1684 period that ushered in the close of mission efforts on the Georgia Coast.

Design and task management of a mobile solar station for charging flying drones

This paper provides design and task management of the first stage of a project entitled “Fall-Army Worm (FAW) insect killer”. The project has three main stages: design and energy management stage, flying control of drone stage and detecting and killing FAW stage. The goal of this project is to detect and kill; without chemical methods; a harmful FAW insect which is rapidly spreading in Africa and Asia. This paper focuses on design of the first stage of the system, getting maximum power and controlling the energy of the system. A Photo Voltaic system with energy storage devices is proposed to be the source of power. A new algorithm to control the time scheduling of the killing and detection mission is proposed and its effects on the system’s energy and mission period are studied. A comparison between different methods for tracking the maximum power from PV panels is performed to choose the best (less time and high accuracy) method. The results of simulation indicate the effectiveness of the proposed maximum power tracking and task management system.

Aerial Cooperative Jamming for Cellular-Enabled UAV Secure Communication Network: Joint Trajectory and Power Control Design

To improve the secrecy performance of cellular-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks, this paper proposes an aerial cooperative jamming scheme and studies its optimal design to achieve the maximum average secrecy rate. Specifically, a base station (BS) transmits confidential messages to a UAV and meanwhile another UAV performs the role of an aerial jammer by cooperatively sending jamming signals to oppose multiple suspicious eavesdroppers on the ground. As the UAVs have the advantage of the controllable mobility, the objective is to maximize the worst-case average secrecy rate by the joint optimization of the two UAVs’ trajectories and the BS’s/UAV jammer’s transmit/jamming power over a given mission period. The objective function of the formulated problem is highly non-linear regarding the optimization variables and the problem has non-convex constraints, which is, in general, difficult to achieve a globally optimal solution. Thus, we divide the original problem into four subproblems and then solve them by applying the successive convex approximation (SCA) and block coordinate descent (BCD) methods. Numerical results demonstrate that the significantly better secrecy performance can be obtained by using the proposed algorithm in comparison with benchmark schemes.

Christianity as a Majority Religion of the Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar: Exploring Triple Dialogue in the Currents of World Christianity

It is common to say that Christianity is a minority religion in Asia. Yet this article argues that Christianity is a majority religion of the ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia in general and Myanmar in particular and that one dimension of dialogue is not adequate in an age of world Christianity. Using a ‘triple dialogue’ as a methodology, the article explores three of the most salient issues of Myanmar ethnic minorities in the currents of world Christianity. First, the article revisits a cross-cultural relationship between foreign missionaries and locals in a colonial period and how Western mission impacts on Christians’ relationship with people of other faiths. Second, it explores the current issues of interreligious relationship between Christians and Buddhists and how Christian-Buddhist interaction plays a role in developing Christianity as a Myanmar local religion in a postcolonial mission period. Finally, it examines an intercultural hospitality between the ethnic Christian migrants and Western Christians and a ‘glocal’ relationship between migrants and their homeland Christians in a post-Western Christian period.