BACKGROUND Previously reported outbreaks of norovirus gastroenteritis associated with aircraft have been limited to transmission during a single flight sector. During October 2009, an outbreak of diarrhea and vomiting occurred among different groups of flight attendants who had worked on separate flight sectors on the same airplane. We investigated the cause of the outbreak and whether the illn...

The use of trademarks or names of manufacturers in this report is for accurate reporting and does not constitute an ocial endorsement, either expressed or implied, of such products or manufacturers by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Summary The Takeo Performance Monitoring System (TOPMS) has been developed at the Langley Research Center and ight tested on the Transport System...

Development of a next generation airplane, which cruises near sonic speed, received considerable attention in 2002. To investigate aerodynamic characteristics and validity of CFD codes as a design tool in this new cruise condition, detailed wind tunnel test and CFD validation study was conducted in near sonic regime about the NEXST-1, unpowered supersonic experimental vehicle as a cooperative r...

AbstractThis paper considered the problem of stabilization of longitudinal and lateral dynamics of an unmanned autonomous helicopter (UAH) for hovering flight mode in a gusty environment. The controllers design is based on generic linear model which successfully describe the behavior of most smallscale helicopters. A backstepping design procedure is used to design the adaptive controller for lo...

Adaptive flight control systems have the potential to be more resilient to extreme changes in airplane behavior. Extreme changes could be a result of a system failure or of damage to the airplane. A direct adaptive neural-network-based flight control system was developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NF-15B Intelligent Flight Control System airplane and subjected to an i...

The accumulation of ice on an airplane in flight is one of the leading contributing factors to general aviation accidents. To date, only relatively sophisticated methods based on detailed empirical data and flight data exist for its analysis. This paper develops amethodology and simulation tool for preliminary safety andperformance evaluations of airplane dynamic response and climb performance ...

Pneumocephalus associated with spinal problems is very rare. Association with encephalomeningitis secondary to a fistula after an infected elective lumbar spine fusion has not been previously reported. The authors report a case in which the clinical onset of pneumoencephalomeningitis occurred after an airplane flight. CT-scan and lumbar puncture were used to make diagnosis; the treatment was ba...

Traditional biology has focused on identifying individual genes, proteins and cells, and studying their specific functions. But that kind of research can yield relatively limited insights about the whole organisms, including the human body. As an analogy, if one wanted to study an airplane, and focused on identifying the engine, wings, and seat belts, and studied their specific functions, one w...