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For the crews and assets of the European Union’s (EU’s) Joint Operations available today, but a vast area in the Mediterranean Sea to monitor, detection of small boats and rafts in distress can take up to several days or even fail at all. This study aims to outline how an energy-autonomous swarm of Unmanned Aerial System can help to increase the monitored sea area while minimizing human resource demand.

A concept for an unattended swarm of solar powered, unmanned hydroplanes is proposed. A swarm operations concept, vehicle conceptual design and an initial vehicle sizing method is derived. A microscopic, multi-agent-based simulation model is developed. System characteristics and surveillance performance is investigated in this delimited environment number of vehicles scale. Parameter variations in insolation, overcast and system design are used to predict system characteristics. The results are finally used for a scale-up study on a macroscopic level.

Miniaturization of subsystems is found to be essential for energy balance, whereas power consumption of subsystems is identified to define minimum vehicle size. Seasonal variations of solar insolation are observed to dominate the available energy budget. Thus, swarm density and activity adaption to solar energy supply is found to be a key element to maintain continuous aerial surveillance.

This research was conducted extra-occupationally. Resources were limited to the available range of literature, computational power number and time budget.

A proposal for a probable concept of operations, as well as vehicle preliminary design for an unmanned energy-autonomous, multi-vehicle system for maritime surveillance tasks, are presented and discussed. Indications on path planning, communication link and vehicle interaction scheme selection are given. Vehicle design drivers are identified and optimization of parameters with significant impact on the swarm system is shown.

The proposed system can help to accelerate the detection of ships in distress, increasing the effectiveness of life-saving rescue missions.

For continuous surveillance of expanded mission theatres by small-sized vehicles of limited endurance, a novel, collaborative swarming approach applying in situ resource utilization is explored.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

This research aims to present an aero-propulsive interaction model applied to conceptual aircraft design with distributed electric propulsion (DeP). The developed model includes a series of electric ducted fans integrated into the wing upper trailing edge, taking into account the effect of boundary layer ingestion (BLI). The developed model aims to estimate the aerodynamic performance of the wing with DeP using an accurate low-order computational model, which can be easily used in the overall aircraft design's optimization process.

First, the ducted fan aerodynamic performance is investigated using a low-order computational model over a range of angle of attack required for conventional flight based on ducted fan design code program and analytical models. Subsequently, the aero-propulsive coupling with the wing is introduced. The DeP location chordwise is placed at the wing's trailing edge to have the full benefits of the BLI. After that, the propulsion integration process is introduced. The nacelle design's primary function is to minimize the losses due to distortion. Finally, the aerodynamic forces of the overall configuration are estimated based on Athena Vortex Lattice program and the developed ducted fan model.

The ducted fan model is validated with experimental measurements from the literature. Subsequently, the overall model, the wing with DeP, is validated with experimental measurements and computational fluid dynamics, both from the literature. The results reveal that the currently developed model successfully estimates the aerodynamic performance of DeP located at the wing trailing edge.

The developed model's value is to capture the aero-propulsive coupling accurately and fast enough to execute multiple times in the overall aircraft design's optimization loop without increasing runtime substantially.

The purpose of this study is to explore audit procedure disclosures related to key audit risks, during the prior year and the initial year of the COVID-19 outbreak, by reporting on matters published in over 3,000 Australian statutory audit reports during 2019 and 2020.

This study partially uses latent semantic analysis methods to apply textual and readability analyses to external audit reports in Australia. The authors measure the tone of the audit reports using the Loughran and McDonald (2011) approach.

The authors find that 3% of audit procedures undertaken during 2020 were designed to address audit risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As a percentage of total audit procedures undertaken during 2020, the authors find that smaller practitioners reported much less audit procedures related to COVID-19 audit risks than most larger audit firms. Finally, the textual analysis further found differences in the sentiment or tone of words used by different auditors in 2020, but differences in sentiment or tone were not found when 2020 was compared to the prior year 2019.

This study provides early evidence on whether auditors designed audit procedures to deal specifically with audit risks that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic and on the extent and nature of those audit procedures. The study will help policymakers to better understand whether Key Audit Matters provided informational value to investors during a time of global crisis.

The purpose of this study is to understand how the new reforms related to key audit matters (KAM) disclosures in Australia may have impacted audit quality by eliciting the perceptions of key stakeholders in the audit and assurance services market.

The study uses a qualitative approach and New Institutional Sociology (NIS) to explain how auditors have responded to the KAM reforms. Interviews were conducted with 20 individuals representing identified groups of stakeholders in the market for audit and assurance services in Australia.

The study finds there is little consensus between some stakeholder groups on whether the KAM reforms may have improved audit quality, based on the perceptions shared. The findings conveyed that the auditors and regulators, standard setters acknowledge that KAM disclosures are either costly and/or time-consuming to implement. The Big Four auditors indicate these reforms led to changes mainly around internal consultations and independent reviews, whereas the non-Big Four auditors highlighted increased interactions with audit clients.

This is one of the first studies to examine the perceived post-implementation impacts on audit quality of the KAM reforms (ISA 701) after the initial two years of implementation and how auditors have responded, explored through the lens of institutional logic.

This research chapter argues lawyers, not just bankers, for good and bad have been involved in all aspects of the current financial crisis. Indeed after examining and assessing various civil causes of action related to the “Mortgage Meltdown” and its aftermath, it appears if lawyers had been less involved or had raised warnings about legal risks as well as economic ones, whether the financial impact would have been so disastrous and widespread. Indeed by raising cautionary flags earlier, lawyers might have better served both the clients’ and the public's long-term interests. This view thus complements issues related to criminally prosecuting mortgage fraud that has also seen explosive growth and where lawyers have again played central roles. Lawyers have been involved at the back end too in terms of legislation or resolving issues such as bankruptcies and foreclosures.

The chapter examines several causes of action the media have reported being raised by various parties and how they illustrate the role lawyers, regulations, and legislation have played in the origins and evolution of the current crisis. The cases explored involve individual parties and class actions. The chapter also analyzes in detail a case representing opposite ends of the origination and foreclosure closure spectrum by describing a derivative shareholder suit against corporate officers and directors actively involved in creating the subprime mess, who were then sued for covering up the inevitable results from failed loans in the reports to shareholders. It thus illustrates the legal complexities emerging from the abuse of complex financial and organizational structures impacting many investors. Finally the chapter concludes by arguing there is a public policy need not only for financial regulatory reform but also for a tightening in the professional standards and regulatory penalties imposed on lawyers involved in such transactions.

Effective teaching, while supplemented by best practice methods and assessments, is rooted in accurate, age-appropriate, and engaging content. As a foundation for history content, elementary educators rely strongly on textbooks and children’s literature, both fiction and non-fiction. While many researchers have examined the historical accuracy of textbook content, few have rigorously scrutinized the historical accuracy of children’s literature. Those projects that carried out such examination were more descriptive than comprehensive due to significantly smaller data pools. I investigate how children’s non-fiction and fiction books depict and historicize a meaningful and frequently taught history topic: Christopher Columbus’s accomplishments and misdeeds. Results from a comprehensive content analysis indicate that children’s books are engaging curricular supplements with age-appropriate readability yet frequently misrepresent history in eight consequential ways. Demonstrating a substantive disconnect between experts’ understandings of Columbus, these discouraging findings are due to the ways in which authors of children’s books recurrently omit relevant and contentious historical content in order to construct interesting, personalized narratives.

Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council and Publications of other similar Research Bodies as issued.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.