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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1990

Effects of competition on video-task performance in monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

The effects of competition on performance of a video-formatted task were examined in a series of experiments. Two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to manipulate a joystick to shoot at moving targets on a computer screen. The task was made competitive by requiring both animals to shoot at the same target and by rewarding only the animal that hit the target first each trial. The competitive task produced a significant and robust speed-accuracy trade-off in performance. The monkeys hit the target in significantly less time on contested than on uncontested trials. However, they required significantly more shots to hit the target on contested trials in relation to uncontested trials. This effect was unchanged when various schedules of reinforcement were introduced in the uncontested trials. This supports the influence of competition qua competition on performance, a point further bolstered by other findings of behavioral contrast presented here.

Washburn, David A.↗
NASA NTRS2003

High-school Student Teams in a National NASA Microgravity Science Competition

The Dropping In a Microgravity Environment or DIME competition for high-school-aged student teams has completed the first year for nationwide eligibility after two regional pilot years. With the expanded geographic participation and increased complexity of experiments, new lessons were learned by the DIME staff. A team participating in DIME will research the field of microgravity, develop a hypothesis, and prepare a proposal for an experiment to be conducted in a NASA microgravity drop tower. A team of NASA scientists and engineers will select the top proposals and then the selected teams will design and build their experiment apparatus. When completed, team representatives will visit NASA Glenn in Cleveland, Ohio to operate their experiment in the 2.2 Second Drop Tower and participate in workshops and center tours. NASA participates in a wide variety of educational activities including competitive events. There are competitive events sponsored by NASA (e.g. NASA Student Involvement Program) and student teams mentored by NASA centers (e.g. For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Robotics Competition). This participation by NASA in these public forums serves to bring the excitement of aerospace science to students and educators.Researchers from academic institutions, NASA, and industry utilize the 2.2 Second Drop Tower at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio for microgravity research. The researcher may be able to complete the suite of experiments in the drop tower but many experiments are precursor experiments for spaceflight experiments. The short turnaround time for an experiment's operations (45 minutes) and ready access to experiment carriers makes the facility amenable for use in a student program. The pilot year for DIME was conducted during the 2000-2001 school year with invitations sent out to Ohio- based schools and organizations. A second pilot year was conducted during the 2001-2002 school year for teams in the six-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The third year for DIME was conducted during the 2002-2003 school year for teams from the fifty United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. An annual national DIME program is planned for the foreseeable future. Presented in this paper will be a description of DIME, an overview of the planning and execution of such a program, results from the first three years, and lessons learned from the first national competition.

DeLombard, Richard↗
NASA NTRS2000

Competitive displacement among post-Paleozoic cyclostome and cheilostome bryozoans

Encrusting bryozoans provide one of the few systems in the fossil record in which ecological competition can be observed directly at local scales. The macroevolutionary history of diversity of cyclostome and cheilostome bryozoans is consistent with a coupled-logistic model of clade displacement predicated on species within clades interacting competitively. The model matches observed diversity history if the model is perturbed by a mass extinction with a position and magnitude analogous to the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary event, Although it is difficult to measure all parameters in the model from fossil data, critical factors are intrinsic rates of extinction, which can be measured. Cyclostomes maintained a rather low rate of extinction, and the model solutions predict that they would lose diversity only slowly as competitively superior species of cheilostomes diversified into their environment. Thus, the microecological record of preserved competitive interactions between cyclostome and cheilostome bryozoans and the macroevolutionary record of global diversity are consistent in regard to competition as a significant influence on diversity histories of post-Paleozoic bryozoans.

NASA Discipline Exobiology↗
NASA NTRS2010

Lunabotics Mining Competition

This slide presentation describes a competition to design a lunar robot (lunabot) that can be controlled either remotely or autonomously, isolated from the operator, and is designed to mine a lunar aggregate simulant. The competition is part of a systems engineering curriculum. The 2010 competition winners in five areas of the competition were acknowledged, and the 2011 competition was announced.

Mueller, Rob↗
NASA NTRS2011

NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition for Universities: Results and Lessons Learned

Space Mining for resources such as water ice, and regolith, which contain many elements in the form of metals, minerals, volatiles and other compounds, is a necessary step in Space Resource Utilization. One of the primary goals is to extract propellants from the regolith such as oxygen and hydrogen which could then be used for in-space transportation. In addition, the space mining system can be used for various construction tasks that can benefit human and robotic exploration as well as scientific investigations based on the exposed topography. The National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) Lunabotics Mining Competition is a university-level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). NASA will directly benefit from the competition by encouraging the development of innovative lunar excavation concepts from universities which may result in clever ideas and solutions which could be applied to an actual lunar excavation device or payload. The challenge is for students to design and build a remote controlled or autonomous excavator, called a lunabot, that can collect and deposit a minimum of 10 kilograms of lunar simulant within 15 minutes. The complexities of the challenge include the abrasive characteristics of the lunar simulant, the weight and size limitations of the lunabot, and the ability to control the lunabot from a remote control center. This paper will present the results of the first and second annual Lunabotics Mining Competitions held in May 2010 and May 2011. In 2010, 22 United States (US) universities competed, and in May 2011 the competition was opened to international participation, with 46 Universities expected to attend. There are 12 international teams and 34 US teams. This combined total directly inspired an estimated 544 university students. More students and the public were engaged via internet broadcasting and social networking media. The various designs will be cataloged and categorized to provide information to future Lunabotics mining robot designers and competitors. It is also expected to be of value for actual future space missions, as knowledge is gained from testing many innovative prototypes in simulated lunar regolith.

Mueller, Robert P.↗
NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Robotics Mining Competition Provides Undergraduates Full Life Cycle Systems Engineering Experience

NASA has held an annual robotic mining competition for teams of university/college students since 2010. This competition is yearlong, suitable for a senior university engineering capstone project. It encompasses the full project life cycle from ideation of a robot design to actual tele-operation of the robot in simulated Mars conditions mining and collecting simulated regolith. A major required element for this competition is a Systems Engineering Paper in which each team describes the systems engineering approaches used on their project. The score for the Systems Engineering Paper contributes 25% towards the team's score for the competition's grand prize. The required use of systems engineering on the project by this competition introduces the students to an intense practical application of systems engineering throughout a full project life cycle.

Stecklein, Jonette↗
NASA NTRS1998

Spatial Aspects of Interspecific Competition

Using several variants of a stochastic spatial model introduced by Silvertown et al., we investigate the effect of spatial distribution of individuals on the outcome of competition. First, we prove rigorously that if one species has a competitive advantage over each of the others, then eventually it takes over all the sites in the system. Second, we examine tradeoffs between competition and dispersal distance in a two-species system. Third, we consider a cyclic competitive relationship between three types. In this case, a nonspatial treatment leads to densities that follow neutrally stable cycles or even unstable spiral solutions, while a spatial model yields a stationary distribution with an interesting spatial structure.

Durrett, Rick↗
NASA NTRS1999

National General Aviation Design Competition Guidelines 1999-2000 Academic Year

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory are sponsoring a National General Aviation Design Competition for students at U.S. aeronautical and engineering universities for the 1999-2000 academic year. The competition challenges individuals and teams of undergraduates and/ or graduate students, working with faculty advisors, to address design challenges for general aviation aircraft. Now in its sixth year, the competition seeks to increase the involvement of the academic community in the revitalization of the U.S. general aviation industry while providing real-world design and development experiences for students. It allows university students to participate in a major national effort to rebuild the U.S. general aviation sector while raising student awareness of the value of general aviation for business and personal use , and its economic relevance. Faculty and student participants have indicated that the open-ended design challenges offered by the competition have provided the basis for quality educational experiences.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2002

NASA Microgravity Science Competition for High-school-aged Student Teams

NASA participates in a wide variety of educational activities including competitive events. There are competitive events sponsored by NASA and student teams which are mentored by NASA centers. This participation by NASA in public forums serves to bring the excitement of aerospace science to students and educators. A new competition for highschool-aged student teams involving projects in microgravity has completed two pilot years and will have national eligibility for teams during the 2002-2003 school year. A team participating in the Dropping In a Microgravity Environment will research the field of microgravity, develop a hypothesis, and prepare a proposal for an experiment to be conducted in a microgravity drop tower facility. A team of NASA scientists and engineers will select the top proposals and those teams will then design and build their experiment apparatus. When the experiment apparatus are completed, team representatives will visit NASA Glenn in Cleveland, Ohio for operation of their facility and participate in workshops and center tours. Presented in this paper will be a description of DIME, an overview of the planning and execution of such a program, results from the first two pilot years, and a status of the first national competition.

DeLombard, Richard↗
NASA NTRS2003

The Impact of Total Liberalization of Domestic Air Transport on the Social Welfare and on the Dynamic of Competition: Comparison Between the United States and the European Union

Since the lst of April 1997 date of the implementation of the third package of the liberalization, air transport, within the european Union has become totally liberalized. In the United States the deregulation of domestic air traffic was earlier and faster since it took place in October 1978 after the adoption of the only act of deregulation. This paper, in its first part, deals with the liberalization of the industry of air traffic in the european union. After a comparison with US system based on market demand, fare policy and network restrictions, we present our descriptive results coming from treatments on the OAG data. These results present several aspects such as the evolution of the competitive structure of the intra-european routes, the level of airport dominance and the growth of hub structure. The second part of the paper presents models of entry in the airline industry. As profitability" of route flown explains correctly decisions taken by airlines to serve or not a route, the paper focuses on the specification and the estimation of the determinants of city, pair profitability in the european union. Treatments done on the OAG data show a rapid development of leasing space agreement (partial and total) and code sharing practices between 1995 and 2000 in Europe that's why we differentiate first between the two type of competitive strategy of entry(direct entry and leasing space agreement) and second between the competitive strategy of entry and the alliance strategy of code sharing. So the estimation of model will be able to answer the question if the european air transport market is contestable and in case not to see if the decision of entry is more directed by the level of airport dominance (as in the domestic United States market)or essentially by the competitive structure of the routes. We try to explain the nature of entry(directleasing or code sharing) by the different levels of these two determinants.

Zbidi, Karim↗
NASA NTRS1972

The Economic Effect of Competition in the Air Transportation Industry

The air transportation industry has been described as a highly-competitive, regulated oligopoly or as a price-regulated cartel with blocked entry, resulting in excessive service and low load factors. The current structure of the industry has been strongly influenced by the hypotheses that increased levels of competition are desirable per se, and that more competing carriers can be economically supported in larger markets, in longer haul markets, with lower unit costs, and with higher fare levels. An elementary application of competition/game theory casts doubt on the validity of these hypotheses, but rather emphasizes the critical importance of the short-term non-variable costs in determining economic levels of competition.

Hubbard, H. B.↗
NASA NTRS1975

Space station interior design: Results of the NASA/AIA space station interior national design competition

The results of the NASA/AIA space station interior national design competition held during 1971 are presented in order to make available to those who work in the architectural, engineering, and interior design fields the results of this design activity in which the interiors of several space shuttle size modules were designed for optimal habitability. Each design entry also includes a final configuration of all modules into a complete space station. A brief history of the competition is presented with the competition guidelines and constraints. The first place award entry is presented in detail, and specific features from other selected designs are discussed. This is followed by a discussion of how some of these design features might be applied to terrestrial as well as space situations.

Haines, R. F.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Strategies for Revitalizing Organizations: Regaining the Competitive Edge

During the last decade, the United States has lost competitive stature in the world. Challenged daily by a technically sophisticated and vitalized global economy, industry and Government are examining quality and productivity initiatives with which to meet the foreign competitive challenge. At stake are our quality of life and our standard of living for the remainder of this century and beyond. Being competitive is an ongoing process, tuned to an awareness and understanding of the dynamics of the world marketplace and to the changing nature of the work environment. Solutions to America's quality and productivity problems do not exist independently within any organization or industry or at any given level of society. Success depends on commitment, partnership, meshing of goals and responsibilities, mutual respect and understanding, and a desire to be first. A change in organizational management culture is required. Traditional authoritarian management practices must give way to enlightened leadership initiatives that stress employee involvement and participation. There must be a lessening of adversarial relationships between management and labor and between industry and Government. Quality and productivity are understood to be the end result of an integrated process which begins with vigorous, committed leadership and ends with a satisfied customer. The essential elements in the revitalization process are organized in this report into seven strategies which represent the major findings of the Second NASA Symposium on Quality and Productivity. Each strategy is then broken down into its principal themes which are presented as recommendations. No one strategy can stand apart from any other; all are interrelated and work together.

Nysmith, C. Robert↗
NASA NTRS1998

Enhancing Global Competitiveness: Benchmarking Airline Operational Performance in Highly Regulated Environments

Enhancing competitiveness in the global airline industry is at the forefront of attention with airlines, government, and the flying public. The seemingly unchecked growth of major airline alliances is heralded as an enhancement to global competition. However, like many mega-conglomerates, mega-airlines will face complications driven by size regardless of the many recitations of enhanced efficiency. Outlined herein is a conceptual model to serve as a decision tool for policy-makers, managers, and consumers of airline services. This model is developed using public data for the United States (U.S.) major airline industry available from the U/S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, and other public and private sector sources. Data points include number of accidents, pilot deviations, operational performance indicators, flight problems, and other factors. Data from these sources provide opportunity to develop a model based on a complex dot product equation of two vectors. A row vector is weighted for importance by a key informant panel of government, industry, and consumer experts, while a column vector is established with the factor value. The resulting equation, known as the national Airline Quality Rating (AQR), where Q is quality, C is weight, and V is the value of the variables, is stated Q=C[i1-19] x V[i1-19]. Looking at historical patterns of AQR results provides the basis for establishment of an industry benchmark for the purpose of enhancing airline operational performance. A 7 year average of overall operational performance provides the resulting benchmark indicator. Applications from this example can be applied to the many competitive environments of the global industry and assist policy-makers faced with rapidly changing regulatory challenges.

Bowen, Brent D.↗
NASA NTRS1999

The Integrated Airport Competition Model, 1998

This paper addresses recent model development by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Hague Consulting Group (HCG) concerning long-distance travel, Long-distance travel demand is growing very quickly and raising a great deal of economic and policy issues. There is increasing competition among the main Western European airports, and smaller, regional airports are fighting for market share. New modes of transport, such as high speed rail, arc also coming into the picture and affect the mode split for medium distance transport within Europe. Developments such as these are demanding the attention of policy makers and a tool is required for their analysis. For DGCA, Hague Consulting Group has developed a model system to provide answers to the policy questions posed by these expected trends, and to identify areas where policy makers can influence the traveller choices. The development of this model system, the Integrated Airport Competition Model/Integral Luchthaven Competitive Model (ILCM), began in 1992. Since that time the sub-models, input data and user interface have been expanded, updated and improved. HCG and DGCA have transformed the ILCM from a prototype into an operational forecasting tool.

Veldhuis, J.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Using the Web for Competitive Intelligence (CI) Gathering

Businesses use the Internet as a way to communicate company information as a way of engaging their customers. As the use of the Web for business transactions and advertising grows, so too, does the amount of useful information for practitioners of competitive intelligence (CI). CI is the legal and ethical practice of information gathering about competitors and the marketplace. Information sources like company webpages, online newspapers and news organizations, electronic journal articles and reports, and Internet search engines allow CI practitioners analyze company strengths and weaknesses for their customers. More company and marketplace information than ever is available on the Internet and a lot of it is free. Companies should view the Web not only as a business tool but also as a source of competitive intelligence. In a highly competitive marketplace can any organization afford to ignore information about the other players and customers in that same marketplace?

Rocker, JoAnne↗
NASA NTRS2003

JAL/JAS Integration: Toward a New Era of Competition

On October 2, 2002, JAL and JAS established a new holding company after obtaining the necessary approval from the government bodies. Full integration is planned to take place in April 2004. This paper will primarily explain how JAL/JAS integration will enable JAL to compete effectively with ANA, the giant in the domestic market, and how it will reinforce JAL's competitiveness through further cost reduction and revenue enhancement. In addition, the paper will explain how the keener domestic competition brought about by this integration could resolve the following two issues for the first time in the Japanese aviation history. Those two issues are: (1) providing better service to domestic customers, and (2) making Japanese airlines more competitive against foreign airlines in the international market. As a result, the paper will argue that such an integration, a logical outcome of the post-war civil aviation history of Japan, will significantly benefit customers, Japanese aviation industry and Japanese society as a whole.

Kanenari, Hideyuki↗
NASA NTRS2006

Tools for Tomorrow's Science and Technology Workforce: MATE's 2006 ROV Competition Sets Students' Sights on Ocean Observing Systems

Teams participating in the 2006 ROV competition organized by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center and the Marine Technology Society's (MTS) ROV Committee experienced first-hand the scientific and technical challenges that many ocean scientists, technicians, and engineers face every day. The competition tasked more than 1,000 middle and high school, college, and university students from Newfoundland to Hong Kong with designing and building ROVs to support the next generation of ocean observing systems. Teaming up with the National Office for Integrated and Sustained Ocean Observations, Ocean. US, and the Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION) Program, the competition highlighted ocean observing systems and the careers, organizations, and technologies associated with ocean observatories. The student teams were challenged to develop vehicles that can deploy, install, and maintain networks of instruments as well as to explore the practical applications and the research questions made possible by observing systems.

OCEANOGRAPHERS↗