3,246 research outputs found
Experiments with Ada
A 1200-line Ada source code project simulating the most basic functions of an operations control center was developed. We selected George Cherry's Process Abstraction Methodology for Embedded Large Applications (PAMELA) and DEC's Ada Compilation System (ACS) under VAX/VMS to build the software from requirements to acceptance test. The system runs faster than its FORTRAN implementation and was produced on schedule and under budget with an overall productivity in excess of 30 lines of Ada source code per day
Early experiences building a software quality prediction model
Early experiences building a software quality prediction model are discussed. The overall research objective is to establish a capability to project a software system's quality from an analysis of its design. The technical approach is to build multivariate models for estimating reliability and maintainability. Data from 21 Ada subsystems were analyzed to test hypotheses about various design structures leading to failure-prone or unmaintainable systems. Current design variables highlight the interconnectivity and visibility of compilation units. Other model variables provide for the effects of reusability and software changes. Reported results are preliminary because additional project data is being obtained and new hypotheses are being developed and tested. Current multivariate regression models are encouraging, explaining 60 to 80 percent of the variation in error density of the subsystems
The dependence of test-mass thermal noises on beam shape in gravitational-wave interferometers
In second-generation, ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave
detectors such as Advanced LIGO, the dominant noise at frequencies
Hz to Hz is expected to be due to thermal fluctuations in the
mirrors' substrates and coatings which induce random fluctuations in the shape
of the mirror face. The laser-light beam averages over these fluctuations; the
larger the beam and the flatter its light-power distribution, the better the
averaging and the lower the resulting thermal noise. In semi-infinite mirrors,
scaling laws for the influence of beam shape on the four dominant types of
thermal noise (coating Brownian, coating thermoelastic, substrate Brownian, and
substrate thermoelastic) have been suggested by various researchers and derived
with varying degrees of rigour. Because these scaling laws are important tools
for current research on optimizing the beam shape, it is important to firm up
our understanding of them. This paper (1) gives a summary of the prior work and
of gaps in the prior analyses, (2) gives a unified and rigorous derivation of
all four scaling laws, and (3) explores, relying on work by J. Agresti,
deviations from the scaling laws due to finite mirror size.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Class. Quantum Gra
Perspectives on Beam-Shaping Optimization for Thermal-Noise Reduction in Advanced Gravitational-Wave Interferometric Detectors: Bounds, Profiles, and Critical Parameters
Suitable shaping (in particular, flattening and broadening) of the laser beam
has recently been proposed as an effective device to reduce internal (mirror)
thermal noise in advanced gravitational wave interferometric detectors. Based
on some recently published analytic approximations (valid in the
infinite-test-mass limit) for the Brownian and thermoelastic mirror noises in
the presence of arbitrary-shaped beams, this paper addresses certain
preliminary issues related to the optimal beam-shaping problem. In particular,
with specific reference to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave
Observatory (LIGO) experiment, absolute and realistic lower-bounds for the
various thermal noise constituents are obtained and compared with the current
status (Gaussian beams) and trends ("mesa" beams), indicating fairly ample
margins for further reduction. In this framework, the effective dimension of
the related optimization problem, and its relationship to the critical design
parameters are identified, physical-feasibility and model-consistency issues
are considered, and possible additional requirements and/or prior information
exploitable to drive the subsequent optimization process are highlighted.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
On the Analytic Structure of a Family of Hyperboloidal Beams of Potential Interest for Advanced LIGO
For the baseline design of the advanced Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), use of optical cavities with
non-spherical mirrors supporting flat-top ("mesa") beams, potentially capable
of mitigating the thermal noise of the mirrors, has recently drawn a
considerable attention. To reduce the severe tilt-instability problems
affecting the originally conceived nearly-flat, "Mexican-hat-shaped" mirror
configuration, K. S. Thorne proposed a nearly-concentric mirror configuration
capable of producing the same mesa beam profile on the mirror surfaces.
Subsequently, Bondarescu and Thorne introduced a generalized construction that
leads to a one-parameter family of "hyperboloidal" beams which allows
continuous spanning from the nearly-flat to the nearly-concentric mesa beam
configurations. This paper is concerned with a study of the analytic structure
of the above family of hyperboloidal beams. Capitalizing on certain results
from the applied optics literature on flat-top beams, a physically-insightful
and computationally-effective representation is derived in terms of
rapidly-converging Gauss-Laguerre expansions. Moreover, the functional relation
between two generic hyperboloidal beams is investigated. This leads to a
generalization (involving fractional Fourier transform operators of complex
order) of some recently discovered duality relations between the nearly-flat
and nearly-concentric mesa configurations. Possible implications and
perspectives for the advanced LIGO optical cavity design are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, typos corrected, Eqs. (24) and (26) change
Moessbauer Spectroscopy for Lunar Resource Assessment: Measurement of Mineralogy and Soil Maturity
First-order assessment of lunar soil as a resource includes measurement of its mineralogy and maturity. Soils in which the mineral ilmenite is present in high concentrations are desirable feedstock for the production of oxygen at a lunar base. The maturity of lunar soils is a measure of their relative residence time in the upper 1 mm of the lunar surface. Increasing maturity implies increasing load of solar wind species (e.g., N, H, and He-3), decreasing mean grain size, and increasing glass content. All these physicochemical properties that vary in a regular way with maturity are important parameters for assessing lunar soil as a resource. For example, He-3 can be extracted and potentially used for nuclear fusion. A commonly used index for lunar soil maturity is I(sub s)/FeO, which is the concentration of fine-grained metal determined by ferromagnetic resonance (I(sub s)) normalized to the total iron content (as FeO). I(sub s)/FeO has been measured for virtually every soil returned by the Apollo and Luna missions to the Moon. Because the technique is sensitive to both oxidation state and mineralogy, iron Moessbauer spectroscopy (FeMS) is a viable technique for in situ lunar resource assessment. Its utility for mineralogy is apparent from examination of published FeMS data for lunar samples. From the data published, it can be inferred that FeMS data can also be used to determine soil maturity. The use of FeMS to determine mineralogy and maturity and progress on development of a FeMS instrument for lunar surface use are discussed
Unsupervised domain adaptation for mobile semantic segmentation based on cycle consistency and feature alignment
The supervised training of deep networks for semantic segmentation requires a huge amount of labeled real world data. To solve this issue, a commonly exploited workaround is to use synthetic data for training, but deep networks show a critical performance drop when analyzing data with slightly different statistical properties with respect to the training set. In this work, we propose a novel Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (UDA) strategy to address the domain shift issue between real world and synthetic representations. An adversarial model, based on the cycle consistency framework, performs the mapping between the synthetic and real domain. The data is then fed to a MobileNet-v2 architecture that performs the semantic segmentation task. An additional couple of discriminators, working at the feature level of the MobileNet-v2, allows to better align the features of the two domain distributions and to further improve the performance. Finally, the consistency of the semantic maps is exploited. After an initial supervised training on synthetic data, the whole UDA architecture is trained end-to-end considering all its components at once. Experimental results show how the proposed strategy is able to obtain impressive performance in adapting a segmentation network trained on synthetic data to real world scenarios. The usage of the lightweight MobileNet-v2 architecture allows its deployment on devices with limited computational resources as the ones employed in autonomous vehicles
A multi-color fast-switching microfluidic droplet dye laser
We describe a multi-color microfluidic dye laser operating in whispering gallery mode based on a train of alternating droplets containing solutions of different dyes; this laser is capable of switching the wavelength of its emission between 580 nm and 680 nm at frequencies up to 3.6 kHz -— the fastest among all dye lasers reported; it has potential applications in on-chip spectroscopy and flow cytometry
Prototype Backscatter Moessbauer Spectrometer for Measurement of Martian Surface Mineralogy
We have designed and successfully tested a prototype of a backscatter Moessbauer spectrometer (BaMS) targeted for use on the Martian surface to (1) determine oxidation states of iron, and (2) identify and determine relative abundances of iron-bearing mineralogies. No sample preparation is required to perform measurements; it is only necessary to bring sample and instrument into physical contact. The prototype meets our projected specification for a flight instrument in terms of mass, power, and volume. A Moessbauer spectrometer on the Martian surface would provide wide variety of information about the current state of the Martian surface, and this information is described
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