Technology for large space systems: A bibliography with indexes (supplement 22)

This bibliography lists 1077 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System between July 1, 1989 and December 31, 1989. Its purpose is to provide helpful information to the researcher or manager engaged in the development of technologies related to large space systems. Subject areas include mission and program definition, design techniques, structural and thermal analysis, structural dynamics and control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, and propulsion

Large space structures and systems in the space station era: A bibliography with indexes (supplement 05)

Bibliographies and abstracts are listed for 1363 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1, 1991 and July 31, 1992. Topics covered include technology development and mission design according to system, interactive analysis and design, structural and thermal analysis and design, structural concepts and control systems, electronics, advanced materials, assembly concepts, propulsion and solar power satellite systems

Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

Victory over Chaos? Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Ekistics 1945-1975

Constantinos A. Doxiadis (1913-1975) was an important figure in the realm of postwar urbanism, and yet his contribution has been largely neglected. This study reviews his trajectory and analyzes key projects related to different phases of his career: the housing programs of the Ministry of Reconstruction developed during the Greek Civil War and with Marshall Plan funds; the National Housing Program of Iraq in the context of the Third World modernization; and the Urban Detroit Area project developed against the suburbanization of the American city and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Each one of these episodes is examined against the background of the opposing but interacting “processes” that characterized the forging of the postwar world: the efforts to internationalism and the schism of the Cold War. The first two projects reveal Doxiadis’ persistence on the importance of housing as a motor of economic development and his seminal contribution to aided self-help programs. In parallel, I examine his ideas on urban-regional development in relation to the modernization theory, namely the doctrine that advanced the development of Third World countries according to the paradigm of the West. Finally, his connections with the Ford Foundation and his participation in events organized by the Congress for Cultural Freedom offer an opportunity to examine his oeuvre in relation to the Cold War cultural policies. The second half of the thesis broadly coincides with the period 1960-1975 and focuses on ekistics, an action-oriented interdisciplinary approach to global urbanization problems that Doxiadis coined the science of human settlements. It examines the emergence of the ekistic movement, the establishment of the Athens Center of Ekistics as a hub in the European periphery “operating” between East and West, the intellectual forum of the Delos Symposia, and the journal Ekistics. In a parallel line, the analysis of the ekistic research programs aims to assess Doxiadis’ efforts to unite two different cultures of planning, that is, the sociological perspective with the calculative spirit of mathematics and statistics. The study of Doxiadis’ plan for Detroit reveals the flaws of his comprehensive approach and discusses the ekistic methodologies in reference to the systems approach to planning. Altogether, Doxiadis and ekistics epitomize the transition from the heroic modernism to the visionary approaches that explored the consequences of a world turning into a global village. Doxiadis, however, sought to plan the city of the future as part of a global urban system. In his eyes, facing the urban crisis was an attainable ideal. Eventually, the contradictions between his work and theory were the outcome of his commitment to plan an inevitable development and his anxiety to put order in the urban chaos.Constantinos A. Doxiadis (1913-1975) fue una figura importante en el ámbito de la planificación urbana de la posguerra, y sin embargo, su contribución ha sido descuidada en gran medida. El presente estudio repasa su trayectoria analizando los principales proyectos que corresponden a diferentes etapas de su carrera: la Reconstrucción de Europa, la modernización del Tercer Mundo, la suburbanización de la ciudad estadounidense y la Gran Sociedad de Lyndon Johnson. Cada uno de estos episodios está estrechamente vinculado a las transformaciones geopolíticas que se entienden como la Guerra Fría. Doxiadis comenzó su carrera en el sector público dirigiendo los programas de reconstrucción de Grecia. Su profesionalidad y la alineación ideológica con el intervencionismo estadounidense fueron fundamentales para su colaboración con las misiones de ayuda internacional y su posterior carrera. Despedido de su cargo, Doxiadis fundó Doxiadis Associates (DA) a principios de los años cincuenta. En pocos años, DA ha obtenido numerosos proyectos de vivienda en el mundo en desarrollo, convirtiéndose en una de las empresas más grandes de ingeniería y consultoría en el ámbito internacional. El punto de partida fue el Programa de Vivienda Nacional de Irak, contratado en 1955.El Plan Maestro de Bagdad vino después .El análisis de estos proyectos se centra en el modelo de planificación llamado Dynápolis - es decir, la respuesta de Doxiadis tanto al crecimiento urbano como a la conservación de la ciudad histórica - y la aplicación de la "comunidad humana”, una versión de la Unidad Vecinal. A mediados de 1960, Doxiadis fue encargado del proyecto Urban Detroit Area (UDA), un plan integral y exhaustivo que prácticamente examinó el desarrollo de la región de Michigan. Aunque no llegó a implementarse, el UDA fue uno de los mayores retos en la carrera de Doxiadis. En primer lugar, porque se desarrolló de acuerdo con su teoría y metodologías sistémicas. En segundo lugar, porque el avance del plan coincidió con el cambio de paradigma en la arquitectura moderna y el final de la década el desarrollo. En una línea paralela esta tesis examina ekistics, un enfoque holístico que contemplaba los problemas de urbanización global, y que Doxiadis nombró la ciencia de los asentamientos humanos .Ekistics fue concebido como un campo interdisciplinario que combinaba los conocimientos de otras áreas como la economía, la sociología, la estadística, la arquitectura y la geografía. Su objetivo era proporcionar un marco integral para planificar la ciudad del futuro, la llamada Ecumenópolis. Para desarrollar y difundir sus ideas, Doxiadis fundó el Athens Center of Ekistics (ACE) y puso en marcha diversas actividades institucionales. Las más importantes fueron la organización de los Simposios de Delos, y la publicación de la prestigiosa revista Ekistics. Esta tesis revisará el ACE como un centro de planificación en la periferia europea y los Simposios de Delos como un foro independiente entre el Este y el Oeste. Por otro lado, y para ofrecer una perspectiva crítica sobre los esfuerzos intelectuales de Doxiadis, la tesis analiza la "Ciudad del Futuro" y el proyecto de investigación de "la Comunidad Humana". Ambos apuntaban a la consolidación de ekistics ya la legitimación científica de los modelos de planificación y estrategias de diseño de Doxiadis. En total, la tesis utiliza el trabajo y la teoría de Doxiadis para revisar la redefinición de la planificación urbana y la arquitectura frente a los fenómenos y las transformaciones que marcaron las tres primeras décadas de la posguerra. Según Doxiadis los problemas de la ciudad contemporánea eran globales, mientras el futuro era urbano, universal e inevitable. Al final, su pensamiento estaba imbuido tanto con la ansiedad de enfrentar la crisis universal que con el optimismo de la década de desarrollo. Sin duda, Doxiadis fue uno de los últimos modernos.Postprint (published version

Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression

Unravelling the role of parliament in developing network industries: comparative case of ICT sector reform in Kenya and South Africa

Several scholars have identified institutional and regulatory conditions under which Information Communication Technologies (ICT) reforms can accomplish positive public policy outcomes. This literature pays little attention, however, to the role of parliaments in these reforms. The institutional factors determining the degree and nature of parliamentary participation in ICT sector reforms in Africa is what this thesis examines. Drawing from the political economy tradition, this thesis explores the interplay between the executive, the parliament and the various sectoral interests that determine ICT sector reforms in developing countries. It does so by placing parliament in a conceptual framework that combines the concept of ICT as a complex ecosystem with that of a constellation of institutions. The gathered empirical evidence is studied through this conceptual lens to build the cases of parliamentary participation in Kenya and South Africa - two of the most dynamic ICT markets in sub-Saharan Africa - which are then analysed comparatively. Some of the information is gathered through a self-assessment survey by members of the ICT parliamentary committees and complemented by high-level interviews with the main sector players. The findings are triangulated with those from an extensive document analysis. This thesis contextualises institutional analysis in specific political circumstances of the two countries in order to understand the relevance of parliament in sector reforms. The findings have important implications for our understanding of structural and institutional constraints on parliaments in developing countries and nascent democracies. Parliaments lack capacity to simply fulfill their legislative and oversight roles, let alone creating an enabling environment for innovative public policy, sector investment and public interest outcomes as required by this dynamic sector in any modern, globalised economy. Systematic coding of the data revealed national governance and institutional arrangements as key determinants of an ICT ecosystem that adapts to local and international conditions, confirming parliament as not simply a neutral legal structure but a significant power broker, reflecting competing interests at play. The formal legal system in both countries is uneven and underutilized, ineffective in achieving robustly-contested public interest outcomes. In order to manage political interests, parliament structures and serves principal agent-relationships, vetoes ICT policy and decision-making processes, links interest groups to government and party agendas, resolves conflicts and, sometimes, builds consensus among key players. The examination of institutional designs of both parliaments identifies critical capacity deficits that are at the heart of the negative outcomes in national legislative and oversight processes. In South Africa, the reason for these deficits is primarily that the parliamentary system promotes political party and executive dominance, which undermine multi-party and participatory structure of parliamentary processes to achieve party preferences and control outcomes. In Kenya, whilst the combination of distinct separation of powers and a constituency-based electoral system provides a legal basis for greater parliamentary accountability, the highly fragmented sector arrangements compounded by lack of internal capacity to utilize parliamentary instruments and mechanisms constrain parliament's participation. These weak institutional arrangements and designs, in both Kenya and South Africa, limit independence of parliament from the executive and sometimes industry, compromising the parliamentary oversight and visionary leadership expected from specialized portfolio committees. This calls for a transformation of arrangements to uphold and reinforce constitutional mandates that give parliament the power and ability to fulfill its role in policy reforms

The Final Proceedings of the DOE/NASA Solar Power Satellite Program Review

The solar power satellite (SPS) concept defined as 'placing gigantic satellites in geosynchronous orbit to capture sunlight, changing the energy into an appropriate form for transmission to Earth, and introducing the energy into the electric power grid' is evaluated in terms of costs and benefits. The concept development and evaluation program is reviewed in four general areas: systems definition; environmental; societal; and comparative assessments. Specific factors addressed include: transportation, construction in space, methods of conversion of sunlight into energy, transmission to Earth, maintenance in orbit and decommissioning of satellites; environmental, political, and economic effects; and comparison of SPS to other forms of power generation, both terrestrial and in space

Space station data system analysis/architecture study. Task 3: Trade studies, DR-5, volume 1

The primary objective of Task 3 is to provide additional analysis and insight necessary to support key design/programmatic decision for options quantification and selection for system definition. This includes: (1) the identification of key trade study topics; (2) the definition of a trade study procedure for each topic (issues to be resolved, key inputs, criteria/weighting, methodology); (3) conduct tradeoff and sensitivity analysis; and (4) the review/verification of results within the context of evolving system design and definition. The trade study topics addressed in this volume include space autonomy and function automation, software transportability, system network topology, communications standardization, onboard local area networking, distributed operating system, software configuration management, and the software development environment facility

Information technology and military performance

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 519-544).Militaries have long been eager to adopt the latest technology (IT) in a quest to improve knowledge of and control over the battlefield. At the same time, uncertainty and confusion have remained prominent in actual experience of war. IT usage sometimes improves knowledge, but it sometimes contributes to tactical blunders and misplaced hubris. As militaries invest intensively in IT, they also tend to develop larger headquarters staffs, depend more heavily on planning and intelligence, and employ a larger percentage of personnel in knowledge work rather than physical combat. Both optimists and pessimists about the so-called "revolution in military affairs" have tended to overlook the ways in which IT is profoundly and ambiguously embedded in everyday organizational life. Technocrats embrace IT to "lift the fog of war," but IT often becomes a source of breakdowns, misperception, and politicization. To describe the conditions under which IT usage improves or degrades organizational performance, this dissertation develops the notion of information friction, an aggregate measure of the intensity of organizational struggle to coordinate IT with the operational environment. It articulates hypotheses about how the structure of the external battlefield, internal bureaucratic politics, and patterns of human-computer interaction can either exacerbate or relieve friction, which thus degrades or improves performance. Technological determinism alone cannot account for the increasing complexity and variable performances of information phenomena. Information friction theory is empirically grounded in a participant-observation study of U.S. special operations in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. To test the external validity of insights gained through fieldwork in Iraq, an historical study of the 1940 Battle of Britain examines IT usage in a totally different structural, organizational, and technological context.(cont.) These paired cases show that high information friction, and thus degraded performance, can arise with sophisticated IT, while lower friction and impressive performance can occur with far less sophisticated networks. The social context, not just the quality of technology, makes all the difference. Many shorter examples from recent military history are included to illustrate concepts. This project should be of broad interest to students of organizational knowledge, IT, and military effectiveness.by Jon Randall Lindsay.Ph.D

Space Communications: Theory and Applications. Volume 3: Information Processing and Advanced Techniques. A Bibliography, 1958 - 1963

Annotated bibliography on information processing and advanced communication techniques - theory and applications of space communication