Academic literature on the topic 'Aircraft spotting'

We analysed the influence of wildfire area, topography, fuel, surface weather and upper-level weather conditions on long-distance spotting during wildfires. The analysis was based on a large dataset of 338 observations, from aircraft-acquired optical line scans, of spotting wildfires in south-east Australia between 2002 and 2018. Source fire area (a measure of fire activity) was the most important predictor of maximum spotting distance and the number of long-distance spot fires produced (i.e. >500m from a source fire). Weather (surface and upper-level), vegetation and topographic variables had important secondary effects. Spotting distance and number of long-distance spot fires increased strongly with increasing source fire area, particularly under strong winds and in areas containing dense forest and steep slopes. General vegetation descriptors better predicted spotting compared with bark hazard and presence variables, suggesting systems that measure and map bark spotting potential need improvement. The results from this study have important implications for the development of predictive spotting and wildfire behaviour models.

To improve the ability of aircraft sortie generation, we propose a genetic method to model the aircraft spotting allocation optimal problem, and transform it to a constrained optimal problem. Sortie path and time from parking spot to catapult are calculated by pseudospectral method, and then the genetic algorithm is given in detail. Finally, an aircraft sortie scenario is given to prove our method. Simulation results testify our method satisfies the requirement of scheduling optimal and can help commanders on flight deck to control aircraft spot allocation.


 
 
 Thanks to developments in machine learning (ML), particularly deep learning, which now has the greatest performance among algorithms, narrow artificial intelligence, often known as "weak AI," has progressed during the past few years. further machine learning for deep learning to provide potent model parameters that can forecast the occurrence of certain events in the future, massive volumes of data, also referred to as "big data” and must be rapidly collected. Such a big damage event dataset is not accessible in many other fields, such as visual inspection of aeroplanes, and this makes it difficult to train deep learning algorithms to work effectively. Good at spotting physical damage to aircraft structures. In order to reach this human-level intelligence in aircraft damage inspection, it is possible to include inductive bias into deep learning. This paper provides an illustration of how to incorporate expertise in aircraft engineering into the creation of deep learning algorithms. The effectiveness of our method, which builds a deep convolutional neural network that categorises crack lengths based on break propagation curves acquired from fatigue testing, was shown on aerospace grade aluminium samples.
 
 

Pacific madrone leaf blight (PMLB) is a contributing agent to the decline of Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) trees. Multiple fungal pathogens cause PMLB, resulting in leaf spotting that can eventually kill leaves, increasing stress in individuals, and leaving them more susceptible to deadly cankers. Spores transmit via air and water droplets, particularly during wet Spring months. Unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) technologies are in their relative infancy, but UAS are becoming more affordable and accessible. UAS promise increased efficiency in forest health monitoring applications, providing a safer aerial data collection method at a relatively-low cost when compared to occupied aircraft. In this study, we develop and present a UAS methodology to detect PMLB with a multispectral sensor. This methodology combines orthomosaic products derived from high-resolution (~4 cm) multirotor platform UAS multispectral imagery with machine learning and ground assessment of PMLB to classify visual presence of blight at the individual tree-level during multiple site revisits. The resulting model detected PMLB infection status of 29 field surveyed madrone trees with a kappa coefficient of , a balanced accuracy of 0.85, and a true positive rate of 0.92. The method presented here can be readily scaled to efficiently cover a much larger extent with a beyond-line-of-site capable UAS and minimal field sampling. The increased efficiency of this approach may be critical to characterizing PMLB in the near future as it is anticipated that PMLB prevalence will continue to increase as a result of climate change.

Adie’s tonic pupil is a benign, usually unilateral, pupillary syndrome, in which a larger than normal pupil responds minimally, if at all, to light, but constricts slowly and tonically to a near stimulus (light-near dissociation) and has cholinergic super-sensitivity. It induces impaired near vision, glare, photophobia, and difficulty with dark adaptation, which may not be conducive in a flying environment. A Weapon System Operator of a fighter aircraft with an isolated dilated pupil was assessed over approximately 3 years – right from the beginning until his condition became stable. His condition was not considered an absolutely disabling condition for aviation and he was finally retained in flying in the restricted medical category. The important aspects considered in the aeromedical assessment were – neurological assessment; ophthalmic issues such as tolerance to glare and visual acuity; anisocoria and the executive report on flying concerning visual response to bright sunlight, ability to read maps and MFDs, and ability to identify ground features and spot another ac in bright light conditions. The aviator did not have any neurological, traumatic, or systemic condition/Adie’s syndrome. The tonic pupil stabilized at 4 mm and there was an anisocoria of 2 mm. Light-near dissociation persisted. His executive report was uncomplimentary concerning spotting another aircraft in bright sunlight in the air-superiority fighter (which flies at a max speed of 2120 kmph) as his eyes were getting shut by the glare. However, he could read MFDs, maps, and pick up ground features comfortably and satisfactorily. Hence, considering that Navigation in a transport ac was his parent branch (max speed 452 kmph), he was advised a trial on that ac to assess his capabilities in performing Flt Nav duties. If successful, the organization could revert him back to his parent branch and original ac, thereby avoiding attrition of a valuable human resource. This case demonstrates that Adie’s tonic pupil is not always a disabling condition for military flying. Nevertheless, it has to be analyzed on a case to case basis. Aeromedical disposal of a potentially disqualifying case, having no reference in the available aeromedical guidelines.

We show how microscopic modelling techniques such as Cellular Automata linked with detailed geographical information systems (GIS) and meteorological data can be used to efficiently predict the evolution of fire fronts on mountainous and heterogeneous wild forest landscapes. In particular, we present a lattice-based dynamic model that includes various factors, ranging from landscape and earth statistics, attributes of vegetation and wind field data to the humidity of the fuel and the spotting transfer mechanism. We also attempt to model specific fire suppression tactics based on air tanker attacks utilising technical specifications as well as operational capabilities of the aircrafts. We use the detailed model to approximate the dynamics of a large-scale fire that broke out in a region on the west flank of the Greek National Park of Parnitha Mountain in June of 2007. The comparison between the simulation and the actual results showed that the proposed model predicts the fire-spread characteristics in an adequate manner. Finally, we discuss how such a detailed model can be exploited in order to design and develop, in a systematic way, fire risk management policies.

Remote vehicle operators (RVO) work within a sensory deprived environment. A reduction or absence of sensory cueing like auditory feedback, combined with variable workload has been attributed to a number of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) accidents. Therefore, this research sought to understand the relationship between workload and dynamic auditory feedback on remote vehicle operator task performance. Twenty-four participants completed a counterbalanced series of decision-making (spatial orientation accuracy) and perception (spotting accuracy) tasks in an automated Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) environment, under varying workload and auditory volume levels. The management style employed by participants in dealing with the auditory information was also measured and compared with decision-making performance. A relative decline in spatial orientation accuracy was evident when auditory feedback was considered ‘soft’ or ‘loud’ (+/- 10dBA) compared to a participant-defined comfortable volume level, but contingent on an adequate level of workload experienced concurrently. From an applied perspective, these findings support the inclusion of adaptive auditory systems in future RPAS design.

Any means of public transportation (aircraft, ships, and buses) may carry potentially covid19 positive individuals thus, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) should be implemented to avoid further spread. The present study focused on tracing the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from holding tanks of national and international route buses, as well as the drainage system at the bus station. Testing was performed by the RT-PCR protocol established by the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 8.88% of the wastewater samples from buses and drainage systems (4 of 45). Positives samples were sequenced, and Delta and Omicron were among the variants most prevalent. Our results show that WBE provides a reliable and sensitive tool for spotting the possible presence of COVID-19-positive individuals arriving by bus to a city. Also, the WBE coupled with Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) may serve as an early warning to trace and display preventative measures upon the introduction of variants of concern.

Due to the great Romanian inventors, such as Vuia Traian, Aurel Vlaicu and Henri Coanda, Romania was one ofthe first countries possessing military aircraft capable of military operations during the First World War.Providing military aviation was a continuing concern during the period between late 1912 and the end of1913. While planning during this period did lead to an increased number of planes, it failed to provide significantcombat potential.The contribution of Romanian pilots in World War I was substantial and they acted in the field with greattactical agility, providing ground troops with important, often vital, information. During the First World War theRomanian pilots demonstrated their high soldierly virtues. In total they logged 8160 flight hours. These included703 adjustments for the Romanian and Russian artillery, 6981 aerial photographs, 560 combat air missions,and dozens of bombing missions, from which 61, 8 tons of bombs were dropped on enemy targets. They alsoconducted over 80 link missions and 6 special air missions (launching the manifestos). In the two years of war, theenemy lost 41 aircraft, 31 being shot down by Romanian, French and British pilots, and 10 by the anti-aircraftartillery guns.At the time of entry into the war, the aircraft owned by the Romanian state were old model planes which werenot armed. However, the aircraft were still used in combat missions, which led to heavy losses during the earlydays of the war.The lack of an aviation industry was acutely felt, and the equipping of the squadrons with planes was onlypossible after the arrival of the aircraft ordered in France or delivered by the Allies, according to the militaryagreement signed in August 1916.The Romanian Air Force had a particularly important role in the campaign during the summer of 1917, whenthe Moldavian front managed to stop the German offensive which aimed at removing Romania from the war andto strengthen the economy of the Central Powers.Reconnaissance aviation – centered on the discovery of enemy artillery positions and other depth targets,and military flight schools – which provided the optimum conditions for teaching aviation personnel – played animportant role during the campaigns of 1916 and 1917.The successful use of aviation during the 1916–1918 campaign had direct consequences for the developmentof this weapon in the near future, and for its recognition as an elite weapon, able to respond rapidly to threats thatwere looming on the eastern and western borders of unified Romania.The changing world political, social and geographical situation, led to a development boom in science andculture in post-war Romania, and created a framework in which the further development of aviation was also a part.Aviation appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century. During this period of world aviation birth,which coincides with the beginnings of Romanian aviation, the creative genius of our people was manifestedboldly in the domain of mechanical flight, emerging internationally, primarily through its representatives TraianVuia, Aurel Vlaicu and Henri Coanda. Their achievements have contributed to the conception and developmentof global aviation. As a result, they occupy a well deserved place among the pioneers of aviation. The originalityof their ideas, which they applied to building aircraft, along with the efforts and achievements of other Romanianmanufacturers in the same period or later – give us the right to say that Romania is a country with a great traditionin the field of aircraft construction.It should be noted that the rise of aviation and its entry into the industrial age took place along with thepreparation and the conduct of World War I. The plane was transformed from a curiosity into a powerful warmachine; first used to observe the enemy and to conduct artillery spotting, and then for air combat missions forthe destruction of living forces and military equipment, including the elimination of enemy aircraft.

The whole problem of speaking about the end…is that you have to speak of what lies beyond the end and also, at the same time, of the impossibility of ending. Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End(110) Jean Baudrillard’s insights into finality demonstrate that “ends” always prompt cultures to speculate on what can or will happen after these terminations and to fear those traumatic ends, in which the impossible actually occurs, may only be the beginning of chaos. In the absence of “rational” explanations for catastrophic ends and in the whirlwind of emotional responses that are their after-effects, the search for beginnings and origins – the antitheses of Baudrillard’s finality – characterises human response to tragedy. Strangely, Baudrillard’s engagement with the end is linked to an articulation predicated on our ability “to speak” events into existence, to conjure and to bridle those events in terms of recognisable, linear, and logical arrangements of words. Calling this verbal ordering “the poetry of initial conditions” (Baudrillard 113) in which memory imposes a structure so that the chaotic/catastrophic may be studied and its elements may be compared, Baudrillard suggests that this poetry “fascinates” because “we no longer possess a vision of final conditions” (113). The images of contemporary catastrophes and their subsequent visualisation serve as the ultimate reminders that we, as viewers and survivors, were not there – that visualisation itself involves a necessary distance between the horrified viewer and the viewed horror. In the case of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre, the need to “be there,” to experience vicariously a trauma as similarly as possible to those who later became its victims, perhaps explains why images of the planes first slamming into each of the towers were played and repeated ad nauseam. As Baudrillard suggests, “it would be interesting to know whether…effects persist in the absence of causes … whether something can exist apart from any origin and reference” (111). The ongoing search for these causes – particularly in the case of the World Trade Centre’s obliteration – has manifested itself in a persistent cycle of image production and consumption, prompting those images to serve as the visible/visual join between our own survival and the lost lives of the attacks or as surrogates for those whose death we could not witness. These images frequently allowed the West to legitimise its mourning, served as the road map by which we could (re-)explore the halcyon days prior to September 11, and provided the evidence needed for collective retribution. Ultimately, images served as the fictive embodiments of unseen victims and provided the vehicle by which mourning could be transformed from an isolated act to a shared experience. Visitors on the Rooftop: Visualising Origins and the Moments before Destruction It goes without saying that most have seen the famous photograph of the bundled-up tourist standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Centre with one of the jets ready to strike the tower shortly thereafter (see Figure 1). Though the photograph was deemed a macabre photo-manipulation, it reached thousands of e-mail inboxes almost two weeks following the horrific attacks and led many to ponder excitedly whether this image truly was the “last” image of a pre-September 11 world. Many openly debated why someone would fabricate such an image, yet analysts believe that its creation was a means to heal and to return to the unruffled days prior to September 11, when terrorism was thought to be a phenomenon relegated to the “elsewhere” of the Middle East. A Website devoted to the analysis of cultural rumours, Urban Legends, somewhat melodramatically suggested that the photograph resurrects what recovery efforts could not re-construct – a better understanding of the moments before thousands of individuals perished: The online world is fraught with clever photo manipulations that often provoke gales of laughter in those who view them, so we speculate that whoever put together this particular bit of imaging did so purely as a lark. However, presumed lighthearted motives or not, the photo provokes sensations of horror in those who view it. It apparently captures the last fraction of a second of this man’s life ... and also of the final moment of normalcy before the universe changed for all of us. In the blink of an eye, a beautiful yet ordinary fall day was transformed into flames and falling bodies, buildings collapsing inwards on themselves, and wave upon wave of terror washing over a populace wholly unprepared for a war beginning in its midst…The photo ripped away the healing distance brought by the nearly two weeks between the attacks and the appearance of this digital manipulation, leaving the sheer horror of the moment once again raw and bared to the wind. Though the picture wasn’t real, the emotions it stirred up were. It is because of these emotions the photo has sped from inbox to inbox with the speed that it has. (“The Accidental Tourist”) While the photograph does help the viewer recall the times before our fears of terrorism, war, and death were realised, this image does not episodically capture “the last fraction of a second” in a man’s life, nor does it give credibility to the “blink-of-an-eye” shifts between beautiful and battered worlds. The photographic analysis provided by Urban Legends serves as a retrospective means of condensing the space of time in which we must imagine the inevitable suffering of unseen individuals. Yet, the video of the towers, from the initial impacts to their collapse, measured approximately 102 minutes – a massive space of time in which victims surely contemplated escape, the inevitability of escape, the possibility of their death, and, ultimately, the impossibility of their survival (“Remains of a Day” 58). Post-traumatic visualising serves as the basis for constructing the extended horror as instantaneous, a projection that reflects how we hoped the situation might be for those who experienced it, rather than an accurate representation of the lengthy period of time between the beginning and end of the attacks. The photograph of the “accidental tourist” does not subscribe to the usual tenets of photography that suggest the image we see is, to quote W.J.T. Mitchell, “a purely objective transcript of reality” (Mitchell 281). Rather, this image invites a Burginian “inva[sion] by language in the very moment it is looked at: in memory, in association, [where] snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other” (Burgin 51). One sees the tourist in the photograph as a smiling innocent, posing at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Through that ascription, viewers may justify their anger and melancholy as this singular, visible body (about to be harmed) stands in for countless, unseen others awaiting the same fate. Its discrepancies with the actual opening hours of the WTC observation deck and the positioning of the aircraft largely ignored, the “accidental tourist” photo-manipulation was visualised by countless individuals and forwarded to a plethora of in-boxes because September 11 realities could not be shared intimately on that day, because the death of aircraft passengers, WTC workers, and rescue personnel was an inevitable outcome that could not be visualised as even remotely “actual” or explainable. Computer-based art and design have shown us that approximations to reality often result in its overall conflation. Accordingly, our desperate hope that we have seen glimpses of the moments before tragedy is ultimately dismantled by an acknowledgement of the illogical or impossible elements that go against the basic rules of visualisation. The “accidental tourist” is a phenomenon that not only epitomises Baudrillard’s search for origins in the wake of catastrophic effects, but underscores a collective need to visualise bodies as once-living rather than presently and inevitably dead. Faces in the Smoke: Visualising the Unseen Although such photo-manipulations were rampant in the days and weeks following the attack, many people constructed their own realities in the untouched images that the media streamed to them. The World Trade Centre disaster seemed to implore photography, in particular, to resurrect both the unseen, unremembered moments prior to the airliners’ slamming into the building and to perform two distinct roles as the towers burned: to reaffirm the public’s perception of the attack as an act of evil and to catalyse a sense of hope that those who perished were touched by God or ushered peacefully to their deaths. Within hours of the attacks, photographic stills captured what many thought to be the image of Satan – complete with horns, face, eyes, nose, and mouth – within the plumes of smoke billowing from one of the towers (see Figure 2 and its detail in Figure 3). The Associated Press, whose footage was most frequently used to reference this visual phenomenon, quickly dismissed the speculation; as Vin Alabiso, an executive photo editor for AP, observed: AP has a very strict policy which prohibits the alteration of the content of a photo in any way…The smoke in this photo combined with light and shadow has created an image which readers have seen in different ways. (“Angel or Devil?”) Although Alabiso’s comments defended the authenticity of the photographs, they also suggested the ways in which visual representation and perception could be affected by catastrophic circumstances. While many observers openly questioned whether the photographs had been “doctored,” others all too willingly invested these images with ethereal qualities by asking if the “face” they saw was that of Satan – a question mirroring their belief that such an act of terrorism was clear evidence of evil masterminding. If, as Mitchell has theorised, photographs function through a dialogical exchange of connotative and denotative messages, the photographs of the burning towers instead bombarded viewers with largely connotative messages – in other words, nothing that could precisely link specific bodies to the catastrophe. The visualising of Satan’s face happens not because Satan actually dwells within the plumes of smoke, but because the photograph resists Mitchell’s dialogue with the melancholic eye. The photograph refuses to “speak” for the individuals we know are suffering behind the layers of smoke, so our own eye constructs what the photograph will not reveal: the “face” of a reality we wish to be represented as deplorably and unquestionably evil. Barthes has observed that such “variation in readings is not … anarchic, [but] depends on the different types of knowledge … invested in the image…” (Barthes 46). In traumatic situations, one might amend this analysis to state that these various readings occur because of gaps in this knowledge and because visualisation transforms into an act based on knowledge that we wish we had, that we wish we could share with victims and fellow mourners. These visualisations highlight a desperate need to bridge the viewer’s experience of survival and their concomitant knowledge of others’ deaths and to link the “safe” visualisation of the catastrophic with the utter submission to catastrophe likely felt by those who died. Explaining the faces in the smoke as “natural indentations” as Alabiso did may be the technical and emotionally neutral means of cataloguing these images; however, the spotting of faces in photographic stills is a mechanism of visualisation that humanises a tragedy in which physical bodies (their death, their mutilation) cannot be seen. Other people who saw photographic stills from other angles and degrees of proximity were quick to highlight the presence of angels in the smoke, as captured by WABC from a perspective entirely different from that in Figure 2 (instead, see Figure 3). In either scenario, photography allows the visual personification of redemptive or evil influences, as well as the ability to visualise the tragedy not just as the isolated destruction of an architectural marvel, but as a crime against humanity with cosmic importance. Sharing the Fall: Desperation and the Photographing of Falling Bodies Perhaps what became even more troubling than the imagistic conjuring of human forms within the smoke was the photographing of bodies falling from the upper floors of the North Tower (see Figure 5). Though newspapers (re-)published photographs of the debris and hysteria of the attacks and television networks (re-)broadcast video sequences of the planes’ crashing into the towers and their collapse, the pictures of people jumping from the building were rarely circulated by the media. Dennis Cauchon and Martha T. Moore characterised these consequences of the terrorist attacks as “the most sensitive aspect of the Sept. 11 tragedy … [that] shocked the nation” (Cauchon and Moore). A delicate balance certainly existed between the media’s desire to associate faces with the feelings of desperation we know those who died must have experienced and a now-numb general public who ascribed to the photographs an unequivocal “too-muchness.” To read about those who jumped to escape smoke and flames reveals a horrific and frightfully swift narrative of panic: For those who jumped, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just less than 150 miles per hour – not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but fast enough to ensure instant death on impact. People jumped from all four sides of the north tower. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups. (Cauchon and Moore) The text contextualises these leaps to death in terms that are understandable to survivors who read the story and later discover these descriptions can never approximate the trauma of “being there”: Why did they jump? How fast were they travelling? Did they feel anything when their bodies hit the ground? Were they conscious during their jump? Did they die alone? These questions and their answers put into motion the very moment that the photograph of the jumping man has frozen. Words act as extensions of the physical boundaries of the photograph and underscore the horror of that image, from the description of the conditions that prompted the jump to the pondering of the death that was its consequence. If, as Jonathan Crary’s analysis of photographic viewing might intimate, visualisation prompts both an “autonomy of vision” and a “standardisation and regulation of the observer” (Crary 150), the photograph of a man plummeting to his death fashions the viewer’s eye as autonomous and alive because the image he/she views is the undeniable representation of a now-deceased Other. Yet, as seen in the often-hysterical responses to the threats of terrorism in the days following September 11, this “Other” embodies the very possibility of our own demise. Suddenly, the man we see in mid-air becomes the visualised “Every(wo)man” whose photographic representation also represents our unacknowledged vulnerabilities. Thus, trauma is shared through a poignant visual negotiation of dying: the certainty of the photographed man’s death juxtaposed with the newly realised or conjured threat of the viewer’s own death. In terms of humanness, those who witnessed these falls firsthand recall the ways in which the falling people became objectified – their fall seemingly robbing them of any visible sense of humanity. Eric Thompson, an employee on the seventy-seventh floor of the South Tower, shared an instantaneous moment with one of the victims: Thompson looked the man in the face. He saw his tie flapping in the wind. He watched the man’s body strike the pavement below. “There was no human resemblance whatsoever,” Thompson says. (Cauchon and Moore) Obviously, the in-situ experience of viewing these individuals hopelessly jumping to their deaths served as the prompt to run away, to escape, but the photograph acts as the frozen-in-time re-visitation and sharing of – a turning back toward – this scenario. The act of viewing the photographs reinstates the humanness that the panic of the moment seemingly removed; yet, the disparity between the photograph’s foreground (the jumping man) and its background (the building’s façade) remains its greatest disconcerting element. Unlike those photographic portraits that script behaviours and capture us in our most presentable states of being, this photograph reveals the unwilling subject – he who has not consented to share his state of being with the camera. Though W.J.T. Mitchell suggests that “[p]hotographs…seem necessarily incomplete in their imposition of a frame that can never include everything that was there to be…‘taken’” (Mitchell 289), the eye in times of catastrophe shifts between its desire to maintain the frame (that does not visually engage the inferno from which the man jumped or the concrete upon which he died) and its inability to do so. This photograph, as Mitchell might assert, “speaks” because visualisation allows its total frame of reference to extend beyond its physical boundaries and, as evidenced by post-September 11 phobias and our responses to horrific images, to affect the very means by which catastrophe is imagined and visualised. Technically speaking, the negotiated balance between foreground and background in the photograph is lost: the desperation of the falling man juxtaposed with a seemingly impossible background that should not have been there. Lost, too, is the viewer’s ability to “connect” visually with – literally, to share – that experience, to see oneself within the contexts of that particular visual representation. This inability to see the viewing self in the photograph is an ironic moment of experiential possibility that lingers still in the Western world’s fears surrounding terrorism: when the supposedly impossible act is finally visualised, territorialised, and rendered as possible. Dead Art: The Destructions and Resurrections of Works by Rodin In many ways, the photographing of those experiences so divorced from our own contributed to intense discussions of perspective in visualisation: the viewer’s witnessing of trauma by means of a camera and photographer that captured the image from a “safe” distance. However, the recovery of artwork that actually suffered damage as a result of the World Trade Centre collapse prompted many art historians and theorists to ponder the possibilities of art’s death and to contemplate the fate of art that is physically victimised. In an anticipatory vein, J.M. Bernstein suggests that “art ends as it becomes progressively further distanced from truth and moral goodness, as it loses its capacity to speak the truth about our most fundamental categorical engagements…” (Bernstein 5). If Bernstein’s theory is applied to those works damaged at the World Trade Centre site, the sculptures of Rodin, so famously photographed in the weeks of excavation that followed September 11, could be categorised as “dead” – distanced from the “truth” of human form that Rodin cast, even further from the moral goodness and the striving toward global peace that the Cantor Fitzgerald collection aimed to embrace. While many art critics believed that the destroyed works should not be displayed again, many (including Fritz Koenig, who designed The Sphere, which was damaged in the terrorist attacks) believe that such “dead art” deserves, even requires, resuscitation (see Figure 6). Much like the American flags that survived the infernos at the World Trade Centre and Pentagon site, these lost and re-discovered artworks have served as rallying points to accomplish both the sharing of trauma and an artistically inspired foundation for the re-development of the lower Manhattan site. In the case of Rodin’s The Thinker, which was recovered at the site and later presumed stolen, the statue’s discovery alongside aircraft parts and twisted steel girders served as a unique and rare survival story, almost as the surrogate representative body for those human bodies that were never found, never seen. Dan Barry and William K. Rashbaum recall that in the days following the sculpture’s disappearance, “investigators have been at Fresh Kills [landfill] and at ground zero in recent weeks, flashing a photograph of ‘The Thinker’ and asking, in effect: Have you seen this symbol of humanity” (Barry and Rashbaum)? Given such symbolic weight, sculpture most certainly took on superhuman proportions. Yet, in the days that followed the discovery of artwork that survived the attacks, only passing references were made to those figurative paintings and drawings by Picasso, Hockney, Lichtenstein, and Miró that were lost – perhaps because their subject matter or manner of artistic representation did not (or could not) reflect a “true” infliction of damage and pain the way a three-dimensional, human-like sculpture could. Viewers visualised not only the possibility of their own cultural undoing by seeing damaged Rodins, but also the embodiment of unseen victims’ bodies that could not be recovered. In a rousing speech about September 11 as an attack upon the humanities and the production of culture, Bruce Cole stated that “the loss of artifacts and art, no matter how priceless and precious, is dwarfed by the loss of life” (Cole). Nevertheless, the visualisation of maimed, disfigured art was the lens through which many individuals understood the immensity of that loss of life and the finality of their loved ones’ disappearances. What the destruction and damaging of artwork on September 11 created was an atmosphere in which art, traditionally conjured as the studied and inanimate subject, transformed from a determined to a determining influence, a re-working of Paul Smith’s theory in which “the ‘subject’ … is determined – the object of determinant forces; whereas ‘the individual’ is assumed to be determining” (Smith xxxiv). Damaged sculptures gave representative form to the thousands of victims we, as a visualising public, knew were inside the towers, but their survival spoke to larger artistic issues: the impossibility of art’s end and the foiling of its death. Baudrillard’s notion of the “impossibility of ending” demonstrates that the destruction of art (in the capitalistic sense that is contingent on its undamaged condition and its prescribed worth and “value”) does not equate to the destruction of meaning as such, but that the new and re-negotiated meanings deployed by injured art frighteningly implicate us – viewers who once assigned meaning becoming the subjects who long to be assigned something, anything, be it solace, closure, or retribution. Importantly, the latest plans for the re-vitalised World Trade Centre site indicate that the damaged Rodin and Koenig sculptures will semiotically mediate the significations established when the original World Trade Centre was a vital nexus of activity in lower Manhattan, the shock and pain experienced when the towers collapsed and individuals were searching for meaning in art’s destruction and survival, and the hope many have invested in the new buildings and their role in the maintenance and recovery of memory. A Concluding Thought Digital manipulation, photography, and the re-contextualisation of artistic “masterpieces” from their hermetic placement in the gallery to their brutal dumping in a landfill have served as the humanistic prompts that actively determined the ways in which culture grappled with and shared unimaginable horror. Images have transformed in purpose from static re(-)presentations of reality to active, changing conduits by which pasts can be remembered, by which the intangibility of death can be given substance, by which unshared moments can be more intimately considered. Oddly, visualisation has performed simultaneously two disparate functions: separating the living from the dead through a panoply of re-affirming visual experiences and permitting the re-visitation of those times, events, and people that the human eye could not see itself. Ultimately, what the manipulations, misinterpretations, and destructions of art show us is that the conveyance of meaning between individuals, whether dead or alive, whether seen or unseen, is the image’s most pressing and difficult charge. Works Cited “Angel or Devil? Viewers See Images in Smoke.” Click on Detroit. 17 Sep. 2001. 10 February 2003 <http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-96283920010917-120936.php>. Barry, Dan, and William K. Rashbaum. “Rodin Work from Trade Center Survived, and Vanished.” New York Times. 20 May 2002: B1. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Baudrillard, Jean. The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Bernstein, J.M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Burgin, Victor. The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Post-Modernity. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1986. Cauchon, Dennis and Martha T. Moore. “Desperation Drove Sept. 11 Victims Out World Trade Center Windows.” Salt Lake Tribune Online. 4 September 2002. 19 Jan. 2003 <http://www.sltrib.com/2002/sep/09042002/nation_w/768120.htm>. Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1994. “Remains of a Day.” Time 160.11 (9 Sep. 2002): 58. Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. “The Accidental Tourist.” Urban Legends. 20 Nov. 2001. 21 Feb. 2003 <http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/crash.htm>. Links http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-96283920010917-120936.html http://www.sltrib.com/2002/sep/09042002/nation_w/768120.htm http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/crash.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Smith, Royce W.. "The Image Is Dying" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/09-imageisdying.php>. APA Style Smith, R. W. (2003, Apr 23). The Image Is Dying. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/09-imageisdying.php>

Thesis (M.S. in Information Systems Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2002.<br>Thesis advisor(s): Alex Bordetsky, Glenn Cook. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.<br>This thesis will evaluate system and process elements to initiate requirements modeling necessary for the next generation Digitized Aircraft Spotting (Ouija) Board for use on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers to track and plan aircraft movement. The research will examine and evaluate the feasibility and suitability of transforming the existing two-dimensional static board to an electronic, dynamic display that will enhance situational awareness by using sensors and system information from various sources to display a comprehensive operational picture of the current flight and hangar decks aboard aircraft carriers. The authors will evaluate the current processes and make recommendations on elements the new system would display. These elements include what information is displayed, which external systems feed information to the display, and how intelligent agents could be used to transform the static display to a powerful decision support tool. Optimally, the Aircraft Handler will use this system to effectively manage the Flight and Hangar decks to support the projection of air power from U.S. aircraft carriers.

Special Interest Tourism (SIT) is characterized by bespoke travel experiences tailored to the unique passions and interests of individuals. Within this context, the article explores whether "Aviation Enthusiasm" merits a distinct classification within SIT. Aviation enthusiasts, colloquially termed "avgeeks," demonstrate a fervent passion for all facets of aviation, from aircraft and airlines to historical events and technological advancements. Their travel patterns often diverge from mainstream tourism, with journeys centered around airshows, aviation museums, plane spotting at iconic airports, or experiencing specific inaugural flights. This niche yet growing segment has prompted the travel industry to acknowledge and cater to its demands, evidenced by tailored packages, exclusive airport viewing areas, and event-specific itineraries. Drawing parallels with established categories within SIT, such as wine tourism or eco-tourism, this article delves into the nuances of aviation-centric travels. It argues for the recognition of Aviation Enthusiasm as a valid and emerging category within Special Interest Tourism, emphasizing its economic potential, cultural significance, and distinct identity. As the lines between traditional and niche tourism blur, understanding and catering to specific interests like aviation can pave the way for a more inclusive and diverse travel landscape.