19,852 research outputs found
Approximate theoretical performance evaluation for a diverging rocket
A simplified combustion model, which is motivated by available performance studies on the diverging rocket reactor, has been used as basis for an engine performance
evaluation. Comparison with conventional rocket configurations shows that an upper performance limit for the diverging reactor is comparable with performance
estimates for engines using an adiabatic work cycle. Development of the diverging reactor for engine applications may, however, offer some advantages for very hot, high-energy, propellant systems
Toward the next generation of research into small area effects on health : a synthesis of multilevel investigations published since July 1998.
To map out area effects on health research, this study had the following aims: (1) to inventory multilevel investigations of area effects on self rated health, cardiovascular diseases and risk factors, and mortality among adults; (2) to describe and critically discuss methodological approaches employed and results observed; and (3) to formulate selected recommendations for advancing the study of area effects on health. Overall, 86 studies were inventoried. Although several innovative methodological approaches and analytical designs were found, small areas are most often operationalised using administrative and statistical spatial units. Most studies used indicators of area socioeconomic status derived from censuses, and few provided information on the validity and reliability of measures of exposures. A consistent finding was that a significant portion of the variation in health is associated with area context independently of individual characteristics. Area effects on health, although significant in most studies, often depend on the health outcome studied, the measure of area exposure used, and the spatial scale at which associations are examined
Shock enhancement and control of hypersonic mixing and combustion
The possibility that shock enhanced mixing can
substantially increase the rate of mixing between
coflowing streams of hydrogen and air has been
studied in experimental and computational investigations.
Early numerical computations indicated that
the steady interaction between a weak shock in air
with a coflowing hydrogen jet can be well approximated
by the two-dimensional time-dependent interaction
between a weak shock and an initially circular
region filled with hydrogen imbedded in air. An experimental
investigation of the latter process has been
carned out in the Caltech 17 Inch Shock Tube in experiments
in which the laser induced fluorescence of
byacetyl dye is used as a tracer for the motion of the
helium gas after shock waves have passed across the
helium cylinder. The flow field has also been studied
using an Euler code computation of the flow field.
Both investigations show that the shock impinging
process causes the light gas cylinder to split into two
parts. One of these mixes rapidly with air and the
other forms a stably stratified vortex pair which mixes
more slowly; about 60% of the light gas mixes rapidly
with the ambient fluid. The geometry of the flow field
and the mixing process and scaling parameters are
discussed here. The success of this program encouraged
the exploration of a low drag injection system in
which the basic concept of shock generated streamwise
vorticity could be incorporated in an injector for
a Scramjet combustor at Mach numbers between 5
and 8. The results of a substantial computational
program and a description of the wind tunnel model and preliminary experimental results obtained in the
High Reynolds Number Mach 6 Tunnel at NASA Langley
Research Center are given here
Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language
On the validity of the reduced Salpeter equation
We adapt a general method to solve both the full and reduced Salpeter
equations and systematically explore the conditions under which these two
equations give equivalent results in meson dynamics. The effects of constituent
mass, angular momentum state, type of interaction, and the nature of
confinement are all considered in an effort to clearly delineate the range of
validity of the reduced Salpeter approximations. We find that for
the solutions are strikingly similar for all
constituent masses. For zero angular momentum states the full and reduced
Salpeter equations give different results for small quark mass especially with
a large additive constant coordinate space potential. We also show that
corrections to heavy-light energy levels can be accurately
computed with the reduced equation.Comment: Latex (uses epsf macro), 24 pages of text, 12 postscript figures
included. Slightly revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Interaction of vortices in superconductors with kappa close to 2^(-1/2)
Using a perturbative approach to the infinitely degenerate Bogomolnyi vortex
state for a superconductor with kappa = 2^(-1/2), T -> T_c, we calculate the
interaction of vortices in a superconductor with kappa close to 2^(-1/2). We
find, numerically and analytically, that depending on the material the
interaction potential between the vortices varies with decreasing kappa from
purely repulsive (as in a type-II superconductor) to purely attractive (as in a
type-I superconductor) in two different ways: either vortices form a bound
state and the distance between them changes gradually from infinity to zero, or
this transition occurs in a discontinuous way as a result of a competition
between minima at infinity and zero. We study the discontinuous transition
between the vortex and Meissner states caused by the non-monotonous vortex
interaction and calculate the corresponding magnetization jump.Comment: v1:original submit v2:changed formate of images (gave problems to
some) v3:corrected fig v4v6 (was -v4v6) orthographic corrections (and
U_lat/int) mismatch v4:more small orthographic corrections v5:converted to
revtex4 and bibTex v6:Renamed images to submit to pr
The effect of turbulent flow structures on saltation sand transport in the atmospheric boundary layer
Shape of a liquid front upon dewetting
We examine the profile of a liquid front of a film that is dewetting a solid
substrate. Since volume is conserved, the material that once covered the
substrate is accumulated in a rim close to the three phase contact line.
Theoretically, such a profile of a Newtonian liquid resembles an exponentially
decaying harmonic oscillation that relaxes into the prepared film thickness.
For the first time, we were able to observe this behavior experimentally. A
non-Newtonian liquid - a polymer melt - however, behaves differently. Here,
viscoelastic properties come into play. We will demonstrate that by analyzing
the shape of the rim profile. On a nm scale, we gain access to the rheology of
a non-Newtonian liquid.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
A Monte Carlo Method for Modeling Thermal Damping: Beyond the Brownian-Motion Master Equation
The "standard" Brownian motion master equation, used to describe thermal
damping, is not completely positive, and does not admit a Monte Carlo method,
important in numerical simulations. To eliminate both these problems one must
add a term that generates additional position diffusion. He we show that one
can obtain a completely positive simple quantum Brownian motion, efficiently
solvable, without any extra diffusion. This is achieved by using a stochastic
Schroedinger equation (SSE), closely analogous to Langevin's equation, that has
no equivalent Markovian master equation. Considering a specific example, we
show that this SSE is sensitive to nonlinearities in situations in which the
master equation is not, and may therefore be a better model of damping for
nonlinear systems.Comment: 6 pages, revtex4. v2: numerical results for a nonlinear syste
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