Prolonged wakefulness is the root cause of significant incidents and accidents across numerous shift-working industries. Laboratory research has indicated that exposure to short-wavelength (visibly blue) light enhances alertness and performance, and shifts circadian phase. The strategic use of short-wavelength light may be a suitable fatigue countermeasure to decrease the risk of accidents in demanding occupations. Despite many laboratory studies demonstrating the efficacy of blue light, little work has been done to investigate the translation of such strategies in an occupational setting, where workers are more likely to experience confounding factors that could dampen the effectiveness of lighting countermeasures. One area where lighting countermeasures could be useful is among pilots who must awaken early to begin flying in the early morning hours. Our research aims to investigate the efficacies of integrating fatigue countermeasures in time-sensitive operations to bolster work safety and performance. We conducted a randomized, cross-over study to determine whether blue-enriched lighting could be used to shift circadian phase and sleep, and improve performance among airline pilots working early shifts using 6-sulfatoxymelatonin (aMT6s) concentrations as a default for circadian cycle. Volunteer participants working for a short-haul airline completed a fixed-pattern design (FPD) roster schedule and aMT6s collection protocol outlined in the methods section. The aMT6s data were subjected to a best-fit cosinor analysis to determine the acrophase. Analyses are underway to determine whether circadian phase shifts occurred following the blue-enriched lighting condition.

This research attempt proposes a novel approach to processing and utilizing aerial imagery and data for mapping. With the advancement of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), airborne data has gained considerable momentum in recent decades, revolutionizing methodologies of geographic research, law enforcement, agriculture, and mapping. Specifically, advances in consumer electronics significantly eased access to UAS and development in parallel computing has enabled machine learning on large data sets. This paper proposes an alternative method to the current practice of processing airborne data sets. Instead of obtaining aerial imagery of an object and merely presenting those objects as pixels on a map, the proposed method uses machine learning techniques to recognize the object, assign parameters to the object and render the object in a fashion that is most efficient and understandable to the end user. The object is no longer merely a set of pixels but a list of classified objects with associated parameters, an abstraction analogous to cognitive processes. This approach allows a single data set to be used in multiple fashions. For example, the data can be used to simulate changes in the environment or render the environment in different scenarios. This paper explores the methodology for collecting airborne data sets for this process and presents several cases of this using flight test data.

Nuclear fusion power is one of the best candidates for the next generation of energy. It has many desirable properties such as producing more energy than fossil fuels per kilogram of fuel, zero carbon emission, and producing no long-lived radioactive waste. Therefore, nuclear fusion power is worth pursuing and it has been studied for decades. One of the critical issues in nuclear fusion research is the impurity contamination. The impurities released from plasma-facing components through various plasma-wall interactions can lead to dilution of the fusion fuel. Therefore, it is very important to study impurity content and behavior. The impurity level is an important parameter in the research of magnetically confined plasma and can be quantified by the ion effective charge, Z_eff. Ion effective charge can be derived from bremsstrahlung emissivity from the visible spectrum radiation of plasma. The objective of this project is to set up a calibrated system that yields high precision in measuring bremsstrahlung emissivity. It is important to absolutely calibrate the system because impreciseness of bremsstrahlung emissivity measurements gives the inaccurate values of Z_eff. In our calibration, a Stabilized Halogen Light Source (SHLS), integrating sphere, and a photodiode are used. We collimate the light from SHLS and send it to the integrating sphere through fiber optics. The light in the integrating sphere is captured by a photodiode and a telescope and is transferred to current and voltage signal respectively. Our goal is to get the correct calibration factor that will give us correct values of bremsstrahlung emissivity measurements.

Carbon fiber-reinforced composites are widely used in the aerospace industry due to their light weight, high strength, and fatigue resistance. However, these materials are expensive due to the painstaking manufacturing processes involved and the inability to recycle. There is growing interest in discontinuous fiber composites (DFC), which are made from small chips of unidirectional prepreg fiber, distributed at random. However, its material properties and behaviors are not well understood. An investigation of DFC was performed to characterize the effect of platelet size on the fracture behavior of the material in various structure sizes. A manufacturing process leveraging computer numerical control fiber cutting and a heated platen press was developed to produce test specimens composed of randomly-oriented platelets from unidirectional carbon fiber prepregs. Three different platelet sizes (25x4, 50x8, and 75×12 mm) were investigated. Single-edge notched tension tests showed that in larger structure sizes, the material exhibited a reduction in strength along with increasing brittleness and notch sensitivity. It was found that decreasing platelet sizes shortened the critical notch length at which this embrittlement of the material occurred. These findings indicate that while minimizing platelet dimensions may be advantageous in the fabrication of complex DFC parts, proper design will require an optimal compromise between manufacturability and structural integrity.