No abstract

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) training program seeks to safely integrate virtual tracks (display symbols that represent aircraft flown by pilots in simulators) and constructive tracks (symbols that represent computer-generated aircraft) into live F/A-18 E/F/G radar and cockpit sensor system displays to reduce resource demands and support new capability requirements in air combat training. In a preceding effort, the researchers identified a number of aircrew concerns about the design of LVC training technology and its potential effects on air combat training quality and realism. Based on these findings, the researchers conducted an exploratory survey to better establish and gauge LVC fidelity requirements. Thirty air combat training professionals completed the survey. The survey results, presented herein, will be used to guide LVC engineering decision-making and design trade-offs.

Introducing the Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) training paradigm into live air combat training means introducing significant changes into a complex and established training system. To facilitate the transition, research was performed to identify possible new hazards that might emerge as a result of the changes and to assess the ability of the live training system to withstand them. Aircrew interviews were conducted and submitted to qualitative analysis, the results of which were further assessed by air combat experts, to identify both potential hazards and mechanisms the training system uses to withstand, or be resilient to, hazards. This paper focuses on those system resilience mechanisms and their adequacy for protecting system effectiveness and aircrew safety in the face of changes associated with the adoption of LVC training.

In the U.S. Navy’s proposed Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) air combat training system, live F/A-18 aircraft will fly alongside virtual aircraft flown by pilots in simulators and constructive aircraft generated by computers. The Navy is using a human-centered, gradual, iterative, and research-based strategy to transition to LVC training. Part of this strategy entails a multi-year effort to preemptively identify and mitigate potential safety concerns associated with LVC training. Two cycles of event-driven interviews with 31 Navy aircrew and training professionals, followed by extensive review by two naval air combat subject-matter experts and other stakeholders, produced a list of LVC-related safety concerns. Researchers assessed the safety risk level of each concern to prioritize mitigation efforts. The latest cycle of data collection and subject-matter expert review, reported herein, focused on developing mitigations for the safety concerns and identifying characteristics of the current naval air combat training system that protect against LVC-induced perturbations.

Palaeontologists increasingly use large datasets of observations collected from museum specimens to address broad-scale questions about evolution and ecology on geological timescales. One such question is whether information from fossil organisms can be used as a robust proxy for atmospheric carbon dioxide through time. Here, we present the citizen science branch of ‘Fossil Atmospheres’, a project designed to refine stomatal index of Ginkgo leaves as a palaeo-CO 2 proxy by involving citizen scientists in data collection through the Zooniverse website. Citizen science helped to overcome a barrier presented by the time taken to count cells in Ginkgo samples; however, a new set of challenges arose as a result. A beta-testing phase with Zooniverse volunteers provided an opportunity to improve instructions to ensure high fidelity data. Exploration of citizen scientists' estimates shows that volunteer counts of stomata are accurate with respect to counts made by the project's lead scientist. However, counts of epidermal cells have a wide range, and mean values tend to underestimate expert counts. We demonstrate a variety of approaches to reducing the inaccuracy in the calculated stomatal index that this variation causes. Zooniverse serves as an ideal tool for collection of palaeontological data where the distribution of fossils would be impossible, but where specimens can be easily imaged. Such an approach facilitates the collection of a large palaeontological dataset, as well as providing an opportunity for citizens to engage with climate research. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Biological collections for understanding biodiversity in the Anthropocene’.