Using a large sample of related individuals, including twins, siblings, and parents and children, the researchers first assessed individuals for their propensity for fear using standardized clinically administered interviews. Looking at subjects who were related to one another, the researchers were able to identify influences such as environment and personal experience and found that some individuals also possessed a genetic propensity for a higher level of baseline fear. Such individuals are more prepared to experience fear in general at lower levels of threat or provocation.


Next, the researchers surveyed the sample for their attitudes toward out-groups — immigrants in this case — as well as toward segregation. Participants were also ranked on a liberal-conservative partisanship scale depending on how they self-reported their political attitudes.

The research indicates a strong correlation between social fear and anti-immigration, pro-segregation attitudes. While those individuals with higher levels of social fear exhibited the strongest negative out-group attitudes, even the lowest amount of social phobia was related to substantially less positive out-group attitudes.

“It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative. People who are scared of novelty, uncertainty, people they don’t know, and things they don’t understand, are more supportive of policies that provide them with a sense of surety and security,” McDermott said.

August 1998 - " In August 1998, Aerosonde " Laima" flew into the record books by making the first crossing of the North Atlantic by a robotic aircraft and becoming the smallest aircraft to make the crossing."

...

The first UA to cross the Atlantic was the Aerosonde Mark I “Laima” flying from Bell Cross Airport in the USA to the DERA Benbecula Range in the Outer Hebrides, covering 3,270 Km in 26 hours 45 minutes at an altitude of 1,680 m, using only 5.6 Kg of fuel.

" Laima" , named after the LatvianGoddess of good fortune, was one of three Mk I Aerosondes built in Melbourne, Australia by Environmental Systems and Services (ES& S) for the University of Washington, under a contract from the US Office of Naval Research. The Mk I Aerosonde, first defined by Holland, McGeer and Youngren (1992), was developed to operational status by a consortium consisting of ES& S, The Insitu Group from Washington State and The Australian Bureau of Meteorology."