NASA ExoPAG Study Analysis Group 11: Preparing for the WFIRST Microlensing Survey

NASA's proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission will discover thousands of exoplanets with separations from the habitable zone out to unbound planets, using the technique of gravitational microlensing. The Study Analysis Group 11 of the NASA Exoplanet Program Analysis Group was convened to explore scientific programs that can be undertaken now, and in the years leading up to WFIRST's launch, in order to maximize the mission's scientific return and to reduce technical and scientific risk. This report presents those findings, which include suggested precursor Hubble Space Telescope observations, a ground-based, NIR microlensing survey, and other programs to develop and deepen community scientific expertise prior to the mission.Comment: 35 pages, 5 Figures. A brief overview of the findings is presented in the Executive Summary (2 pages

How analysis and synthesis have been understood in design

In the disciplines related to the design of products and services, such as New Product Development and Design Science, there is a lack of a commonly accepted theoretical and methodical basis. This papers starts with the proposition that the ancient method of analysis and synthesis, developed originally by Greek geometers, is the basis of models that have been used to classify and describe the ill structured design problem. In this paper, we examine the possibility of improving our understanding of the design process and therefore lean design management by bringing to light a discussion about the concepts of analysis and synthesis and how these have been interpreted through time. Also, how this concept has been used within engineering design methods. To do so, we investigate how analysis and synthesis have been understood in the literature, indicating similarities and differences between ancient and current understandings

The ARIEL Instrument Control Unit design for the M4 Mission Selection Review of the ESA's Cosmic Vision Program

The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission (ARIEL) is one of the three present candidates for the ESA M4 (the fourth medium mission) launch opportunity. The proposed Payload will perform a large unbiased spectroscopic survey from space concerning the nature of exoplanets atmospheres and their interiors to determine the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems. ARIEL will observe a large number (>500) of warm and hot transiting gas giants, Neptunes and super-Earths around a wide range of host star types, targeting planets hotter than 600 K to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres. It will exploit primary and secondary transits spectroscopy in the 1.2-8 um spectral range and broad-band photometry in the optical and Near IR (NIR). The main instrument of the ARIEL Payload is the IR Spectrometer (AIRS) providing low-resolution spectroscopy in two IR channels: Channel 0 (CH0) for the 1.95-3.90 um band and Channel 1 (CH1) for the 3.90-7.80 um range. It is located at the intermediate focal plane of the telescope and common optical system and it hosts two IR sensors and two cold front-end electronics (CFEE) for detectors readout, a well defined process calibrated for the selected target brightness and driven by the Payload's Instrument Control Unit (ICU).Comment: Experimental Astronomy, Special Issue on ARIEL, (2017

An Object-Oriented Model for Extensible Concurrent Systems: the Composition-Filters Approach

Applying the object-oriented paradigm for the development of large and complex software systems offers several advantages, of which increased extensibility and reusability are the most prominent ones. The object-oriented model is also quite suitable for modeling concurrent systems. However, it appears that extensibility and reusability of concurrent applications is far from trivial. The problems that arise, the so-called inheritance anomalies are analyzed and presented in this paper. A set of requirements for extensible concurrent languages is formulated. As a solution to the identified problems, an extension to the object-oriented model is presented; composition filters. Composition filters capture messages and can express certain constraints and operations on these messages, for example buffering. In this paper we explain the composition filters approach, demonstrate its expressive power through a number of examples and show that composition filters do not suffer from the inheritance anomalies and fulfill the requirements that were established

Shape predominant effect in pattern recognition of geometric figures of rhesus monkey

AbstractThree monkeys were trained successively with discrimination, concurrent matching to sample, and sameness–difference judgment tasks in which learning curves were compared. Then, the display duration for the stimuli was shortened to 100, 50, and 30 ms respectively to test the changes in accuracy and reaction time. All results in three experimental paradigms suggested consistently that the geometric shape (triangle, circle, and square) plays a more predominant role than topological features (the hole inside of a figure and the hole numbers) in monkey figure recognition. The results are different from the experiment by human subjects who presented hole predominant in figure recognition. Therefore, the precedence in perception depends on subject species, stimulus set, and ecological significance of the perceiving process

Integrated Project Support Study Group : findings

The challenges of the LHC project have lead CERN to produce a comprehensive set of project management tools covering engineering data management, project scheduling and costing, event management and document management. Each of these tools represents a significant and world-recognised advance in their respective domains. Reviewing the offering on the eve of LHC commissioning one can identify three major challenges: 1. How to integrate the tools to provide a uniform and integrated full-product lifecycle solution 2. How to evolve the functionality in certain areas to address weaknesses identified with our experience in constructing the LHC and integrate emerging industry best practices 3. How to coherently package the offering not just for future projects in CERN, but moreover in the context of providing a centre of excellence for worldwide collaboration in future HEP projects

Coating for prevention of titanium combustion

A limited number of coating options for titanium gas turbine engine components were explored with the objective of minimizing potential combustion initiation and propagation without adversely affecting component mechanical properties. Objectives were met by two of the coatings, ion-plated platinum plus electroplated copper plus electroplated nickel and ion vapor deposited aluminum

On the works of Euler and his followers on spherical geometry

We review and comment on some works of Euler and his followers on spherical geometry. We start by presenting some memoirs of Euler on spherical trigonometry. We comment on Euler's use of the methods of the calculus of variations in spherical trigonometry. We then survey a series of geometrical resuls, where the stress is on the analogy between the results in spherical geometry and the corresponding results in Euclidean geometry. We elaborate on two such results. The first one, known as Lexell's Theorem (Lexell was a student of Euler), concerns the locus of the vertices of a spherical triangle with a fixed area and a given base. This is the spherical counterpart of a result in Euclid's Elements, but it is much more difficult to prove than its Euclidean analogue. The second result, due to Euler, is the spherical analogue of a generalization of a theorem of Pappus (Proposition 117 of Book VII of the Collection) on the construction of a triangle inscribed in a circle whose sides are contained in three lines that pass through three given points. Both results have many ramifications, involving several mathematicians, and we mention some of these developments. We also comment on three papers of Euler on projections of the sphere on the Euclidean plane that are related with the art of drawing geographical maps.Comment: To appear in Ganita Bharati (Indian Mathematics), the Bulletin of the Indian Society for History of Mathematic