Pilot Fatigue in Aviation Essay Example for Free

Pilot Fatigue in Aviation Essay Aviation transport is said to be the safest transportation method by man but is challenged by incidents and accidents that resulted to tragic loss of lives and damage to properties. One very important reason that is being looked upon by aviation and concerned authorities like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is of man’s physiological limitation which is fatigue. Pilot fatigue is highly blamed in most aviation accidents over the years. The risk of accident is said to be high if the pilot is deprived of sleep. Sleep is a vital physiological function, and obtaining even one hour less than required can increase waking sleepiness (Air Line Pilot, November 1994, page 22). Sleep loss can be acute and if continued over time may result in a cumulative sleep debt. Cumulative sleep loss and disruption of 24-hour biological, or circadian rhythms can lead to decreased waking alertness, impaired performance, and altered mood. Fatigue is the symptom often reported to characterize the sum of these negative experiences. Sleep-deprived personnel lose approximately 25% to 30% of their ability to perform useful mental work with each 24-hour period of sleep loss (Johnston III, S. L. , 2005). In fact, a 2003 study on the impact of fatigue on F-117 pilots revealed that 27-33 hours of sleep deprivation (1 night of sleep loss) degrade basic piloting skills by more than 40% below normal (Johnston III, S. L, 2005). For this reason, NASA and FAA has collaborated to do research programs on this safety concern. The NASA Ames Fatigue/Jet Lag Program (now the Fatigue Countermeasures Program) was jointly funded by the FAAs Human Factors Research Program for many years (Mann, M. B. , www. hq. nasa. gov). The results of its research have determined that fatigue is really needed to be addressed to maintain the safety of aviation personnel to prevent loss of lives and properties. How to address then fatigue as a safety concern? It is unfortunate that there is no one simple solution because fatigue has multitudes of causes. For NASA’s Fatigue Countermeasures Program, the approach is said to be multi-faceted and comprehensive yet must be an integrated approach. Accordingly, it should have at least the following components: education and training, hours of service, sound scheduling practices, effective countermeasures, incorporation of appropriate design and technologies, and research (Mann, M. B. , www. hq. nasa. gov). Education and Training. Education establishes the knowledge base for the successful acceptance of all other activities. In 1994, NASA has developed an education and training module on alertness management in flight operation. This module was in use by already at least 149 organizations reaching more than 116,000 crewmembers in 1998 (Mann, M. B. , www. hq. nasa. gov). Hours of Service. Principles and guidelines for duty and rest scheduling must be developed. The latest scientific research on fatigue must be incorporated and reflected to these guidelines and principles as needed. Sound Scheduling Practices. Sound scheduling practices should include scientific information about sleep, fatigue, and circadian rhythms, in addition to other factors, in creating and evaluating flight crew schedules. Countermeasures. An integrated approach calls for making full use of personal, corporate, and even regulatory countermeasure strategies. These strategies can be implemented preventively, using them before duty and on layovers to reduce the effects of fatigue, sleep loss, and circadian disruption during flight operations. As per study by the Fatigue Countermeasures Program, Flight crews receiving brief hourly activity breaks (involving mild physical activity and social interaction) showed improved physiological alertness for at least 15 minutes relative to a control group, while reporting significantly greater alertness for up to 25 minutes post-break. Design and Technology. The aviation industry must tap advances in design and technology to address this safety concern of fatigue. It is said that technology has changed or evolved dramatically over the past decades but man’s need for sleep did not. Good system design incorporates information about human physiology, its limitations and strengths, early in the process. Technological approaches that use this information can take many forms, including flight crew scheduling algorithms (i. e. , the methodology of choosing flight crews) and alertness monitoring/management systems (Mann, M. B. , www. hq. nasa. gov). . Research. Continues research on this area of concern must be done. More research is needed to fully understand the capabilities and limitations of the human sleep and circadian systems. With the advent of technological devices claiming to detect fatigue, a focused research is needed to ascertain the sensitivity, the reliability and the validity of these devices. Continued research is also essential to address regulatory, scheduling, and countermeasure questions. It has been said that decision making and policy is guided by a valid and empirical data obtained through research (Mann, M. B. , www. hq. nasa. gov). Pilot fatigue then in aviation, if not completely eliminated, is greatly reduced to obtain peak performance of pilots by integrating the above suggested components. With peak performance of pilots, safety in aviation is greatly improved. . References Air Line Pilot, November 1994, Fatigue in Aviation, page 22, by the Flight Management and Human Factors Division, NASA Ames Research Center. Retrieved June 9, 2009, http://cf. alpa. org/internet/projects/ftdt/alpmag/FATIGUE. html Johnston III, S. L. Societal and Workplace Consequences of Insomnia, Sleepiness, and Fatigue. (Sept. 29, 2005). Retrieved June 9, 2009. http://cme. medscape. com/viewarticle/513572_print Mann, M. B. , â€Å"Hearing on Pilot Fatigue†. Retrieved June 9, 2009 http://www. hq. nasa. gov/office/legaff/mann8-3. html

Communication Devices :: essays research papers

Recently, while enjoying a sunny afternoon with some friends, a few baby boomers I know were relating some experiences that seem quite pertinent to the subject of how communication is or will change. Young Aaron, the son of a guest, was at a loss when told to call home. It seems our young guest had never had to use a rotary telephone. Confronted with this icon of past technology, Aaron went away with a new experience to relate. Another guest, upon hearing of Aaron's plight, related a similar experience. It seems that Diane had given her son a watch for Christmas. It seems that this wristwatch, complete with hands and a face was foreign to this young child who has had the time electronically flashed at him in numeric form for all of his life, without need of knowing how to tell time conventionally. So it seems in this day and age, that the old continues to be replaced by the newer and faster technology. We in turn are caused to learn newer and faster ways of dealing with these new technologies. Technology grows exponentially, meaning that the more it grows the faster it grows, yet in dealing with this technology we can in turn learn how to decrease our work time while increasing our productivity. We have definitely come a long way from the pony express and telegraph, yet it is not so long ago that we do not still use their predecessors, surface mail and telephones. With current technological advancements it is now possible to communicate across the planet instantaneously, thanks to wide-band technology, fiber optics, and satellites all of which make possible this possible. With the invention of the printing press by Gutenburg in 1434, and subsequently the first book in print, he can be credited as the father of the information age. Accompanying the birth of the information age came an explosion of new technological advances designed to improve how we communicate. These advancement have had many glitches and shortcomings which have been improved upon again and again. in the years since, yet they were always time consuming, Overcoming these time constraints has been the goal of assorted scientists and inventors. Painstakingly they moved forward with limited progress until the twentieth century. With the birth of the twentieth century we see a drastic increase in advancements, which have grown by leaps and

Pavlov vis-à-vis Piaget Essay

Looking at the history, many names flourished in the area of psychology in the desire to learn about man and behavior.   These names have contributions that are of significance even to the present-day studies in the field of psychology. This paper deals with two of the notable names in this realm – Ivan Pavlov and Jean Piaget. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian psychologist, physician, and physiologist. He had substantial contributions to the various fields of neurology and physiology. His researches were mostly focused on conditioning, temperament and involuntary reflex actions. He bagged the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his researchers and experiments on digestion which became the foundation of a more extensive research on the digestive system. In his work on involuntary reactions to stress and pain, he broadened the description of the four temperament types: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic. The study of TMI or transmarginal inhibition was also started by Pavlov and his researchers. TMI is the body’s instinctive reaction of shutting down when exposed to overwhelming stress or pain. Of his contributions, Pavlov is widely recognized for his demonstration of classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning started while he was working on his study of the digestive process in dogs. He observed that the dogs salivated before they received their food. Even just at the sight of the lab attendant, the dogs salivated. He called this phenomenon ‘psychic secretion.’ He made an experiment on this and used a bell and meat powder. He hit the bell and followed the ring with the meat powder. At the onset, only the meat powder made the dog salivate, but after repeating the practice, the ring of the bell made the dog salivate. Even when the meat powder was eliminated, the dog continued to salivate at the ring of the bell. In this theory, a living being learns to correlate one stimulus with one another. It is learned that the first stimulus is an indicator for the second stimulus. In the above experiment, the ring of the bell cued the dog that food might be coming. The following are the key concepts of Classical Conditioning:  · Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) – a stimulus that can already elicits a response, like the food in the experiment.  · Unconditioned Response (UR) – response that is elicited by the unconditioned stimulus, like the salivation of the dog in the experiment.  · Conditioned Stimulus (CS) – a new and neutral stimulus that when matched up with a UCS elicits a similar response, like the bell in the experiment.  · Condition Response (CR) – the learned response when the neutral CS is paired with the UCS, like the salivation of the dog to the ring of the bell after repeated pairing of it with the food. (www.niu.edu) Although many evaluators criticize Pavlov’s theory as being tested only to animals, classical conditioning can actually be observed to a person’s behavior, even without the purpose. A person who experienced a traumatic vehicular accident would be frantic about the sound of screeching tires even at a normal situation. That person’s mind was condition that screeching tires mean accident. Jean Piaget was a biologist who was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland in 1896. He originally was studying mollusks but shifted to the study of developmental psychology and human intelligence from which he became a significant experimenter and theorist. At the age of 10 he published his first paper and at the young age of 22 he received his Ph.D. in science from the University of Neuchatel. Although he was technically a biologist and a philosopher, he regarded himself as a â€Å"genetic epistemologist.’ His interest was mainly focused on how an individual comes to know things. The thought process that lies beneath reasoning was his interest, particularly in the development of thinking.   Piaget believed that children have different way in responding compared to adults because of the difference in reasoning.   He started observing children of various ages and began working on his theory on the process of cognitive development. According to his theory, the development of children’s thinking is not a smooth process.   Before children learn new areas and abilities, there are particular stages at which it â€Å"takes off† and move to those new learning. These transitions transpire at about 18 months, 7 years and 11 or 12 years. Piaget’s key ideas include: schema, assimilation, accommodation, adaptation, egocentrism, and equilibrium. Schema are the set of sensori-motor skills which dictate the manner in which an infant discover his environment resulting to gaining more information of the world and more complicated exploratory skills.   These are the â€Å"representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together.† (www.learningandteaching.info) Assimilation is â€Å"the process by which a person takes material into their mind from the environment, which may mean changing the evidence of their senses to make it fit.† (www.learningandteaching.info) Accommodation is â€Å"the difference made to one’s mind or concepts by the process of assimilation.† (www.learningandteaching.info) Adaptation is â€Å"learning† in layman’s term. Piaget believed that adaptation or learning is a biological process from which the two sides are assimilation and accommodation. Egocentrism is a part of the early stage of psychological development. It is a â€Å"belief that you are the center of the universe and everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to see the world as someone else does and adapt to it.† (www.learningandteaching.info) According to his theory, there are four stages of cognitive development: sensori-motor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. The first stage, sensori-motor stage, lasts from birth to about 2 years of age. In this stage, the infant makes use of his motor abilities and senses to grasp his environment. During the end of this stage, the infant develops more complicated combinations of his sensori-motor skills. The second stage, pre-operational stage, lasts from about 2 until about seven years old. Because of the child’s new abilities, this is a short step to symbol usage. The child now has a clear idea of past and future. This is the stage, though, that a child is egocentric, seeing things only from his point of view. The third stage, concrete operational, lasts from about 7 to about 11. Aside from the representational use of symbols, a child already has the ability to manipulate those symbols sensibly in the context of tangible situations. In this stage is also where a child develops the skill to conserve length, number and liquid volume. The fourth stage, formal operations stage, takes place from about 12 and up. This is the stage where a child develops hypothetical thinking, or the use of logical operations in the abstract, instead of the concrete. Both of these theories talk about learning. Basically, Pavlov and Piaget believe that learning can be directly influenced by the stimuli found in the environment of an individual. Both of them also imply that an individual has an innate and natural response to a stimulus, the unconditioned response (UR) for Pavlov and the schema for Piaget. What differs one from another is the processes and methods of how an individual learns. In Pavlov’s theory, a new learning is acquired through mind conditioning. A normal response of an individual to a normal stimulus can be altered through introduction of another stimulus from which the normal stimulus can be associated to, like what transpire to his experiment with the dog. In Piaget’s theory, on the other hand, learning can also be acquired through exposure to the environment, but at a certain stage, especially to children. A child, for example, won’t have an idea of what is past and future until he reaches the age of around 2, which is called the pre-operational stage. Piaget’s theory implies that the extent of a child’s learning is restricted to the stage or the age of the child. During the early stage of a child, he is said to be egocentric. Having this characteristic, a child’s health and physical condition is put at risk. The schema of grab and thrust is applied by a child to any object, oblivious of any harm that it may cause. He may be used to grabbing his rattle and thrusting it in his mouth, but once he came across a new object, he may use this schema to it, like a small animal or a pointed thing. These two theories are bases of more comprehensive studies of human behavior. Both of them are true in the sense that they can be observed and applied. It is proper to say that these theories are two of the most significant concepts in the world of psychology.

The latter part of the 19th century (1870-1900) is...

The latter part of the 19th century (1870-1900) is generally viewed as a dark time in American History. Called the â€Å"Gilded Age† this was a time in which increasing wealth was plagued by many problems under the surface. The Gilded Age saw increasing industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and the problems associated with them. Many people during this time period blamed these problems on the government for being â€Å"laissez-faire;† for not taking steps against industry in order to benefit the interests of the people. Although the people were correct in the fact that the government was not taking steps in order to benefit them, the claim that the government during the Gilded Age was laissez-faire is completely false. Through their†¦show more content†¦Thus, through the acquisition of wealth for the wealthy, the poor are able to obtain the necessities of life, and society is advanced. While The Theory of Moral Sentiments deals mainly with the moral ar gument for laissez-faire, The Wealth of Nations justifies the usage of laissez-faire at the national level through economic arguments. In Book 4 of The Wealth of Nations (Of systems of political Economy), Smith argued that government restrictions hindered industrial expansion and thus, harmed the economy in the long run (in earlier books, Smith had equated the growth of industry to the wealth of a nation and its individuals through historical analysis). Specifically, he stated that protectionist tariffs served against the interests of a nation by causing increasing prices of foreign and domestic goods, that export duties harm the economy by diminishing the goods that a company can ship overseas, that trade treaties harm the economy by giving a foreign nation a trade monopoly over an industry (since the other country will only be trading with them for that particular good), and that by restricting theShow MoreRelatedHealthcare Essay18323 Words   |  74 Pagesdifferently from the systems in Europe. American values and the social, political, and economic antecedents on which the US system is based have led to the formation of a unique system of health care delivery, as described in Chapter 1. This chapter discusses how these forces have been instrumental in shaping the current structure of medical services and how they are likely to shape its future. The evolutionary changes discussed here illustrate the American beliefs and values (discussed in ChapterRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagesand Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited David M. Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography Allida M. Black, ed., Modern American Queer History Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past Sharon Hartman Strom, Political Woman: Florence Luscomb and the Legacy of Radical Reform Read MoreOrganisational Theory230255 Words   |  922 Pagesunderstanding of organizations. Professor Tomas Mà ¼llern, Jà ¶nkà ¶ping International Business School, Sweden . McAuley, Duberley and Johnson’s Organizational Theory takes you on a joyful ride through the developments of one of the great enigmas of our time – How should we understand the organization? Jan Ole Similà ¤, Assistant Professor, Nord-Trà ¸ndelag University College, Norway I really enjoyed this new text and I am sure my students will enjoy it, too. It combines rigorous theoretical argument with