Flight penetration of wind shear: Control strategies

Wind shear is a dangerous condition where there is a sharp change in the direction and magnitude of the wind velocity over a short distance or time. This condition is especially dangerous to aircraft during landing and takeoff and can cause a sudden loss of lift and thereby height at a critical time. A numerical simulation showed the effective performance of the Linear Quadratic Regulator and the Nonlinear Inverse Dynamics controllers. The major conclusions are listed and discussed

WEMo (Wave Exposure Model): Formulation, Procedures and Validation

This report describes the working of National Centers for Coastal Ocean Service (NCCOS) Wave Exposure Model (WEMo) capable of predicting the exposure of a site in estuarine and closed water to local wind generated waves. WEMo works in two different modes: the Representative Wave Energy (RWE) mode calculates the exposure using physical parameters like wave energy and wave height, while the Relative Exposure Index (REI) empirically calculates exposure as a unitless index. Detailed working of the model in both modes and their procedures are described along with a few sample runs. WEMo model output in RWE mode (wave height and wave energy) is compared against data collected from wave sensors near Harkers Island, North Carolina for validation purposes. Computed results agreed well with the wave sensors data indicating that WEMo can be an effective tool in predicting local wave energy in closed estuarine environments. (PDF contains 31 pages

Studies of silicon photoelectrochemical cells under high injection conditions

The behavior of Si/CH3OH-dimethylferrocene+/0 junctions has been investigated under high injection conditions. Open circuit voltages of (626±5) mV were obtained at short circuit photocurrent densities of 20 mA/cm^2 for samples with an n + -diffused back region, point contacts on the back surface, and with a base of thickness 390 µm and a 1 ms hole lifetime. The diode quality factor and recombination current density were 1.8±0.1 and (2.6±1.5)×10–8 A/cm^2, respectively. These data are consistent with recombination dominated by the base and back contact regions, and not at the Si/CH3OH interface

A Quantum Optical Spring

We study the dynamics of the quantum optical spring, i.e., a spring whose spring constant undergoes discreet jumps depending on the quantum state of another system. We show the existence of revivals and fractional revivals in the quantum dynamics reminiscent of similar dynamical features in cavity QED. We recover in the semi classical limit the results for an oscillator whose frequency undergoes a sudden change. The quantum optical spring is conceivable for example by a micromirror under the influence of radiation pressure by a field which is strictly quantum. Our work suggests that driven systems would in general exhibit a very different dynamics if the drive is replaced by a quantum source.Comment: 5 figure

Open problem: Tightness of maximum likelihood semidefinite relaxations

We have observed an interesting, yet unexplained, phenomenon: Semidefinite programming (SDP) based relaxations of maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) tend to be tight in recovery problems with noisy data, even when MLE cannot exactly recover the ground truth. Several results establish tightness of SDP based relaxations in the regime where exact recovery from MLE is possible. However, to the best of our knowledge, their tightness is not understood beyond this regime. As an illustrative example, we focus on the generalized Procrustes problem

Response Functions Improving Performance in Analog Attractor Neural Networks

In the context of attractor neural networks, we study how the equilibrium analog neural activities, reached by the network dynamics during memory retrieval, may improve storage performance by reducing the interferences between the recalled pattern and the other stored ones. We determine a simple dynamics that stabilizes network states which are highly correlated with the retrieved pattern, for a number of stored memories that does not exceed $\alpha_{\star} N$, where $\alpha_{\star}\in[0,0.41]$ depends on the global activity level in the network and $N$ is the number of neurons.Comment: 13 pages (with figures), LaTex (RevTex), to appear on Phys.Rev.E (RC

Primordial Non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background

In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the knowledge of what the universe is made of, to why the universe is the way it is. In this review paper we focus on primordial non-Gaussianity as a probe of the physics of the dynamics of the universe at the very earliest moments. We discuss 1) theoretical predictions from inflationary models and their observational consequences in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies; 2) CMB--based estimators for constraining primordial non-Gaussianity with an emphasis on bispectrum templates; 3) current constraints on non-Gaussianity and what we can hope to achieve in the near future; and 4) non-primordial sources of non-Gaussianities in the CMB such as bispectrum due to second order effects, three way cross-correlation between primary-lensing-secondary CMB, and possible instrumental effects.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures; Invited Review for the Journal "Advances in Astronomy"; references adde