The 1981 current research on aviation weather (bibliography)

Current and ongoing research programs related to various areas of aviation meteorology are presented. Literature searches of major abstract publications, were conducted. Research project managers of various government agencies involved in aviation meteorology research provided a list of current research project titles and managers, supporting organizations, performing organizations, the principal investigators, and the objectives. These are tabulated under the headings of advanced meteorological instruments, forecasting, icing, lightning and atmospheric electricity; fog, visibility, and ceilings; low level wind shear, storm hazards/severe storms, turbulence, winds, and ozone and other meteorological parameters. This information was reviewed and assembled into a bibliography providing a current readily useable source of information in the area of aviation meteorology

Look-ahead value ordering for constraint satisfaction problems

Looking ahead during search is often useful when solving constraint satisfaction problems. Previous studies have shown that looking ahead helps by causing dead-ends to occur earlier in the search, and by providing information that is useful for dynamic variable ordering. In this paper, we show that another benefit of looking ahead is a useful domain value ordering heuristic, which we call look-ahead value ordering or LVO. LVO counts the number of times each value of the current variable conflicts with some value of a future variable, and the value with the lowest number of conflicts is chosen first. Our experiments show that look-ahead value ordering can be of substantial benefit, especially on hard constraint satisfaction problems.

Study of adsorption of biological and nanoparticle solutions at the solid-liquid interface

Master of ScienceDepartment of PhysicsBruce M. LawWith advances in micromechanical machining and nanotechnology, the sample volume needed for biological research and other analysis decreases. With small volume, sample-surface interactions including adsorption must be considered. These adsorption effects can be observed by analyzing light reflected from the solid-liquid interface, and the contact angle of a solution on the surface. Presented is the design and construction of an ellipsometer, a device used to analyze light reflected off of a solid-liquid interface to find interfacial properties, including thickness of a thin film formed by adsorption. The taq enzyme is shown to have a large change in contact angle from seventy degrees to about ten degrees over a short (ten minute) time period when placed on an SU-8 substrate, indicating a change in energy at the interface and a large amount of adsorption. Silane substrates are found to produce similar results. Ellipticity of a colloidal gold nanoparticle solution on a glass substrate is also observed, whose results are difficult to interpret due to bulk shifts in the sample. With the ellipsometer running correctly, it can be used for a number of experiments, including spectroscopic ellipsometry and Brewster angle microscopy, with some modifications

The MgSiO_3 system at high pressure: Thermodynamic properties of perovskite, postperovskite, and melt from global inversion of shock and static compression data

We present new equation-of-state (EoS) data acquired by shock loading to pressures up to 245 GPa on both low-density samples (MgSiO_3 glass) and high-density, polycrystalline aggregates (MgSiO_3 perovskite + majorite). The latter samples were synthesized using a large-volume press. Modeling indicates that these materials transform to perovskite, postperovskite, and/or melt with increasing pressure on their Hugoniots. We fit our results together with existing P-V-T data from dynamic and static compression experiments to constrain the thermal EoS for the three phases, all of which are of fundamental importance to the dynamics of the lower mantle. The EoS for perovskite and postperovskite are well described with third-order Birch-Murnaghan isentropes, offset with a Mie-Grüneisen-Debye formulation for thermal pressure. The addition of shock data helps to distinguish among discrepant static studies of perovskite, and for postperovskite, constrain a value of K' significantly larger than 4. For the melt, we define for the first time a single EoS that fits experimental data from ambient pressure to 230 GPa; the best fit requires a fourth-order isentrope. We also provide a new EoS for Mg_2SiO_4 liquid, calculated in a similar manner. The Grüneisen parameters of the solid phases decrease with pressure, whereas those of the melts increase, consistent with previous shock wave experiments as well as molecular dynamics simulations. We discuss implications of our modeling for thermal expansion in the lower mantle, stabilization of ultra-low-velocity zones associated with melting at the core-mantle boundary, and crystallization of a terrestrial magma ocean

‘Looking both ways’: place, space, and left-wing activism in Croydon after 1956

This thesis places the history of left-wing activism and activists within a specific suburban context. Focusing on Croydon, which predominantly elected Conservative MPs and a Conservative�controlled council until the 1990s, this study contributes to understanding left-wing politics in places where it was not necessarily electorally successful but where many activists grew up, lived, and have returned to. In the process, it explores the ways left-wing activists made sense of, and contributed to, the complex and contradictory experiences of Croydon and the suburban in a ‘suburban nation’ and ‘suburban century’. ‘Writing from within’ and drawing upon a combination of oral history interviews, archival research, and Croydon’s appearances in popular culture, this thesis adds to recent scholarship in contemporary political history and (sub)urban studies and enters conversation with the work of scholars including, but not limited to, Raymond Williams, Henri Lefebvre, and Stuart Hall. Through an innovative fourfold structure, this study presents an activist history of a place which was always in flux, internally fragmented, and understood through reference to elsewhere – whether the leafy suburbs of Surrey, ‘blitzed cities’ like Coventry, the shining skyscrapers of Manhattan, or the ageing ‘inner city’ of its Brixton neighbour. By exploring the processes of hope, frustration, and compromise through which Croydon and the suburbs were formed, this thesis argues that its late twentieth-century left-wing activists were ‘looking both ways’ between ‘town’ and ‘country’, between entering older spaces and opening new ones, and between disappointing pasts and optimistic futures – processes of suburbanisation which have rendered Croydon alternately a site of nostalgia, shame, pride, and mourning. In taking Croydon as its vantage point, it suggests an alternative perspective on the politics and culture of England in the late twentieth-century, highlighting the importance of struggles in and over, but not bounded by, space and place to contemporary left-wing activists

Just in Time: Personal Temporal Insights for Altering Model Decisions

The interpretability of complex Machine Learning models is coming to be a critical social concern, as they are increasingly used in human-related decision-making processes such as resume filtering or loan applications. Individuals receiving an undesired classification are likely to call for an explanation -- preferably one that specifies what they should do in order to alter that decision when they reapply in the future. Existing work focuses on a single ML model and a single point in time, whereas in practice, both models and data evolve over time: an explanation for an application rejection in 2018 may be irrelevant in 2019 since in the meantime both the model and the applicant's data can change. To this end, we propose a novel framework that provides users with insights and plans for changing their classification in particular future time points. The solution is based on combining state-of-the-art algorithms for (single) model explanations, ones for predicting future models, and database-style querying of the obtained explanations. We propose to demonstrate the usefulness of our solution in the context of loan applications, and interactively engage the audience in computing and viewing suggestions tailored for applicants based on their unique characteristic