Performance deterioration: An airline perspective

Certain features of engine design and installation are clearly demonstrating important advantages in engine performance retention. Bearing arrangement no doubt has an important role in performance retention. Four bearings seem to be insufficient while six are probably more than are required. A well designed five-bearing system would seem to be an optimum configuration. Bearings with over-hung components such as fans, should be designed to minimize such over-hang to limit associated wobble, which in turn leads to shroud rub, or to allow closer running clearances. Almost any effort to improve stiffness and generally reduce flexing of the engine structure will pay off significantly in performance retention, even at a weight penalty. For this reason cowl load sharing to provide additional rigidity at a low cost in additional weight and complexity is favored

Some Simple ML Estimators in Stochastic Differential Equations

For many stochastic differential equations often met in financial theory, it is the drift and the dispersion which are the principal parameters of the model. In such cases it is shown that the parameters can be estimated by ordinary methods from normal distribution theory.Stochastic differential equations; ML estimates; financial models

The zinc isotopic composition of siliceous marine sponges: investigating nature's sediment traps

The Zinc (Zn) content and isotopic composition of marine biogenic opal has the potential to yield information about the nutrient availability, utilisation and export of particulate organic matter from surface to deep waters. Here, we report the first measurements of the Zn isotopic composition of deep-sea marine sponge skeletal elements – spicules - collected in the Southern Ocean. Our results highlight different Zn uptake and isotopic fractionation behaviour between the two major siliceous sponge clades (hexactinellids and demosponges), which is most likely linked to sponge feeding strategy. Hexactinellid spicule Zn isotopic compositions are not fractionated with respect to seawater, most likely due to Zn transport via the open internal structure of the sponges. In contrast, demosponge spicules exhibit a wide range of Zn isotopic compositions that are related to the opal Zn concentration, most likely reflecting variable Zn isotope compositions in the organic matter particles on which they feed, and internal fractionation processes

Modeling a striped pseudogap state

We study the electronic structure within a system of phase-decoupled one-dimensional superconductors coexisting with stripe spin and charge density wave order. This system has a nodal Fermi surface (Fermi arc) in the form of a hole pocket and an antinodal pseudogap. The spectral function in the antinodes is approximately particle-hole symmetric contrary to the gapped regions just outside the pocket. We find that states at the Fermi energy are extended whereas states near the pseudogap energy have localization lengths as short as the inter-stripe spacing. We consider pairing which has either local d-wave or s-wave symmetry and find similar results in both cases, consistent with the pseudogap being an effect of local pair correlations. We suggest that this state is a stripe ordered caricature of the pseudogap phase in underdoped cuprates with coexisting spin-, charge-, and pair-density wave correlations. Lastly, we also model a superconducting state which 1) evolves smoothly from the pseudogap state, 2) has a signature subgap peak in the density of states, and 3) has the coherent pair density concentrated to the nodal region.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, extended discussion, added references; v3, added figure of antinodal spectra for normal/pseudo/sc state

Hybrid HVDC for supply of power to offshore oil platforms

A HVDC hybrid system, comprising a line commutated thyristor HVDC converter and a STATCOM, is proposed in this paper for supplying power to offshore oil platforms that do not have their own generation. The proposed system combines the robust performance, low capital cost and low power loss of a line commutated HVDC converter, with the fast dynamic performance of an equivalent VSC Transmission system. The paper describes the principles and control strategies of the proposed system. PSCAD/EMTDC simulations are presented to demonstrate the robust performance of the system using case studies of various operating conditions such as black-start, load perturbations, AC fault conditions and disturbance caused by the starting of large local induction machines

Herbage intake in Danish Jersey and Danish Holstein steers on perennial ryegrass/white clover pasture

The objective of this study was to estimate herbage intake in Danish Friesian and Danish Jersey steers at an age of 8-9 months on ryegrass / white clover pasture. The steers were turned out on pasture in late April and herbage intake was estimated in June in steers of a mean live weight (± S.D.) of 264 ± 14 kg and 185 ± 25 kg for Danish Friesian and Danish Jersey respectively. Faeces and herbage samples were analysed for alkanes to estimate herbage dry matter intake, dry matter digestibility (DMD) and botanical composition of intake. The weight gains at the time of herbage intake estimation in June (kg/day) were 1.142 ± 265 kg/day and 0.927 ± 168 kg/day for Danish Friesian and Danish Jersey respectively. Daily herbage intake (kg dry matter (DM)) estimated by alkanes C32 /C33 was 8.33 ± 0.97 and 6.28 ± 0.61 per day (P<0.001) and 3.15 ± 0.32 and 3.43 ± 0.30 per 100 kg liveweight (LW) (P<0.05) for Danish Friesian and Danish Jersey respectively. The botanical composition of the diet was the same for Danish Friesian and Danish Jersey with about half of the diet being grass leaves and the other half clover leaves. It is concluded that Danish Jersey steers have higher herbage intake per 100 kg LW than Danish Friesian steers of the same age, but herbage intake per kg metabolic LW is not different between the two breeds

Antiferromagnetic correlations and impurity broadening of NMR linewidths in cuprate superconductors

We study a model of a d-wave superconductor with strong potential scatterers in the presence of antiferromagnetic correlations and apply it to experimental nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) results on Zn impurities in the superconducting state of YBCO. We then focus on the contribution of impurity-induced paramagnetic moments, with Hubbard correlations in the host system accounted for in Hartree approximation. We show that local magnetism around individual impurities broadens the line, but quasiparticle interference between impurity states plays an important role in smearing out impurity satellite peaks. The model, together with estimates of vortex lattice effects, provides a semi-quantitative description of the impurity concentration dependence of the NMR line shape in the superconducting state, and gives a qualitative description of the temperature dependence of the line asymmetry. We argue that impurity-induced paramagnetism and resonant local density of states effects are both necessary to explain existing experiments.Comment: 15 pages, 23 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Time-Dependent Random Walks and the Theory of Complex Adaptive Systems

Motivated by novel results in the theory of complex adaptive systems, we analyze the dynamics of random walks in which the jumping probabilities are {\it time-dependent}. We determine the survival probability in the presence of an absorbing boundary. For an unbiased walk the survival probability is maximized in the case of large temporal oscillations in the jumping probabilities. On the other hand, a random walker who is drifted towards the absorbing boundary performs best with a constant jumping probability. We use the results to reveal the underlying dynamics responsible for the phenomenon of self-segregation and clustering observed in the evolutionary minority game.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure