BowScribe: Supporting the violinist's performance model

Musicians often learn about their vision of a piece through practicing it and listening to recordings. However, this does not always free the player to develop his or her own interpretation of the piece, especially when technique is lacking. We have developed software, the BowScribe markup language, that supports a violinist in creating a ``performance model'' of a piece currently beyond his or her playing skills, by allowing the player fine control over tempo, volume, and articulation, including playing of chords, at a level of expressiveness and flexibility that is significantly beyond the MIDI playback modes of popular music notation software. BowScribe has been used by the first author (who was trained as a prfessional violinist) to create a model of the entire Bach Chaconne (edited by Glamian), a long and demanding piece of music for solo violin that has many phrases that span groups of chords as well as melodic passages. The markup language specified chords to be rolled in two classic ways, as well as a wide variety of other strokes, including greater volume for individual notes in long slurs and small but essential variations in tempo

Simulations of the Population of Centaurs II: Individual Objects

Detailed orbit integrations of clones of five Centaurs -- namely, 1996 AR20, 2060 Chiron, 1995 SN55, 2000 FZ53 and 2002 FY36 -- for durations of 3 Myr are presented. One of our Centaur sample starts with perihelion initially under the control of Jupiter (1996 AR20), two start under the control of Saturn (Chiron and 1995 SN55) and one each starts under the control of Uranus (2000 FZ53) and Neptune (2002 FY36) respectively. A variety of interesting pathways are illustrated with detailed examples including: capture into the Jovian Trojans, repeated bursts of short-period comet behaviour, capture into mean-motion resonances with the giant planets and into Kozai resonances, as well as traversals of the entire Solar system. For each of the Centaurs, we provide statistics on the numbers (i) ejected, (ii) showing short-period comet behaviour and (iii) becoming Earth and Mars crossing. For example, Chiron has over 60 % of its clones becoming short-period objects, whilst 1995 SN55 has over 35 %. Clones of these two Centaurs typically make numerous close approaches to Jupiter. At the other extreme, 2000 FZ53 has roughly 2 % of its clones becoming short-period objects. In our simulations, typically 20 % of the clones which become short-period comets subsequently evolve into Earth-crossers.Comment: 10 pages, in press at MNRA

Defect Formation and Kinetics of Atomic Terrace Merging

Pairs of atomic scale terraces on a single crystal metal surface can be made to merge controllably under suitable conditions to yield steps of double height and width. We study the effect of various physical parameters on the formation of defects in a kinetic model of step doubling. We treat this manifestly non- equilibrium problem by mapping the model onto a 1-D random sequential adsorption problem and solving this analytically. We also do simulations to check the validity of our treatment. We find that our treatment effectively captures the dynamic evolution and the final state of the surface morphology. We show that the number and nature of the defects formed is controlled by a single dimensionless parameter $q$. For $q$ close to one we show that the fraction of defects rises linearly with $\epsilon \equiv 1-q$ as $0.284 \times \epsilon$. We also show that one can arrive at the final state faster and with fewer defects by changing the parameter with time.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. To be submitted to Phys. Rev.

The Populations of Comet-Like Bodies in the Solar system

A new classification scheme is introduced for comet-like bodies in the Solar system. It covers the traditional comets as well as the Centaurs and Edgeworth-Kuiper belt objects. At low inclinations, close encounters with planets often result in near-constant perihelion or aphelion distances, or in perihelion-aphelion interchanges, so the minor bodies can be labelled according to the planets predominantly controlling them at perihelion and aphelion. For example, a JN object has a perihelion under the control of Jupiter and aphelion under the control of Neptune, and so on. This provides 20 dynamically distinct categories of outer Solar system objects in the Jovian and trans-Jovian regions. The Tisserand parameter with respect to the planet controlling perihelion is also often roughly constant under orbital evolution. So, each category can be further sub-divided according to the Tisserand parameter. The dynamical evolution of comets, however, is dominated not by the planets nearest at perihelion or aphelion, but by the more massive Jupiter. The comets are separated into four categories -- Encke-type, short-period, intermediate and long-period -- according to aphelion distance. The Tisserand parameter categories now roughly correspond to the well-known Jupiter-family comets, transition-types and Halley-types. In this way, the nomenclature for the Centaurs and Edgeworth-Kuiper belt objects is based on, and consistent with, that for comets.Comment: MNRAS, in press, 11 pages, 6 figures (1 available as postscript, 5 as gif). Higher resolution figures available at http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/users/WynEvans/preprints.pd

Cryogenic fluid management experiment

The cryogenic fluid management experiment (CFME), designed to characterize subcritical liquid hydrogen storage and expulsion in the low-q space environment, is discussed. The experiment utilizes a fine mesh screen fluid management device to accomplish gas-free liquid expulsion and a thermodynamic vent system to intercept heat leak and control tank pressure. The experiment design evolved from a single flight prototype to provision for a multimission (up to 7) capability. A detailed design of the CFME, a dynamic test article, and dedicated ground support equipment were generated. All materials and parts were identified, and components were selected and specifications prepared. Long lead titanium pressurant spheres and the flight tape recorder and ground reproduce unit were procured. Experiment integration with the shuttle orbiter, Spacelab, and KSC ground operations was coordinated with the appropriate NASA centers, and experiment interfaces were defined. Phase 1 ground and flight safety reviews were conducted. Costs were estimated for fabrication and assembly of the CFME, which will become the storage and supply tank for a cryogenic fluid management facility to investigate fluid management in space

Dynamics and Steady States in excitable mobile agent systems

We study the spreading of excitations in 2D systems of mobile agents where the excitation is transmitted when a quiescent agent keeps contact with an excited one during a non-vanishing time. We show that the steady states strongly depend on the spatial agent dynamics. Moreover, the coupling between exposition time ($\omega$) and agent-agent contact rate (CR) becomes crucial to understand the excitation dynamics, which exhibits three regimes with CR: no excitation for low CR, an excited regime in which the number of quiescent agents (S) is inversely proportional to CR, and for high CR, a novel third regime, model dependent, here S scales with an exponent $\xi -1$, with $\xi$ being the scaling exponent of $\omega$ with CR

The spectrum of hot methane in astronomical objects using a comprehensive computed line list

Hot methane spectra are important in environments ranging from flames to the atmospheres of cool stars and exoplanets. A new spectroscopic line list, 10to10, for $^{12}$CH$_4$ containing almost 10 billion transitions is presented. This comprehensive line list covers a broad spectroscopic range and is applicable for temperatures up to 1 500 K. Previous methane data are incomplete leading to underestimated opacities at short wavelengths and elevated temperatures. Use of 10to10 in models of the bright T4.5 brown dwarf 2MASS 0559-14 leads to significantly better agreement with observations and in studies of the hot Jupiter exoplanet HD 189733b leads to up to a twentifold increase in methane abundance. It is demonstrated that proper inclusion of the huge increase in hot transitions which are important at elevated temperatures is crucial for accurate characterizations of atmospheres of brown dwarfs and exoplanets, especially when observed in the near-infrared.Comment: PNAS, Early Edition, June 16, 201

Strapdown calibration and alignment study. Volume 1 - Development document Final report

Calibration and alignment techniques for inertial sensing uni