Project Management in NASA: The system and the men

An analytical description of the NASA project management system is presented with emphasis on the human element. The NASA concept of project management, program managers, and the problems and strengths of the NASA system are discussed

The XYZs of Charmonium at BES

This contribution reviews some recent developments in charmonium spectroscopy, and discusses related theoretical predictions. The spectrum of states, strong decays of states above open charm threshold, electromagnetic transitions, and issues related to the recent discoveries of the "XYZ" states are discussed. Contributions that BES can make to our understanding of charmonium and related states are stressed in particular.Comment: 5 pages, 1 eps figure. Invited contribution to the International Workshop on Tau-Charm Physics Charm2006 (5-7 June 2006, Beijing, China

Exploring relationships between touch perception and surface physical properties

This paper reports a study of materials for confectionery packaging. The aim was to explore the touch perceptions of textures and identify their relationships with the surfaces' physical properties. Thirty-seven tactile textures were tested including 22 cardboards, nine flexible materials and six laminate boards. Semantic differential questionnaires were administered to assess responses to touching the textures against six word pairs: warm-cold, slippery-sticky, smooth,-rough, hard-soft, bumpy-flat, and wet-dry. Four physical measurements were conducted to characterize the surfaces' roughness, compliance, friction, and the rate of cooling of an artificial finger when touching the surface. Correlation and regression analyses were carried out to identify the relationships between the people's responses and the physical measurements. Results show that touch perception is often associated with more than one physical property, and the strength and form of the combined contribution can be represented by a regression model. © 2009 Chen, Shao, Barnes, Childs, & Henson

Microtonal procedures in 'Sailing to Byzantium'

This short paper introduces and categorises the mictrotonal writing in my composition Sailing to Byzantium for solo recorder player (1999, published Chipping Norton 2016: Composers Edition). It was delivered at UK Microsoft 1 (Riverside Arts Centre, Walton-on-Thames, 15 October 2005), with live musical excerpts performed by Rachel Barnes. (In the text version of the paper these are rendered as musical illustrations from the manuscript facsimile score). Introductory material covers sources of inspiration for the piece and the use of microtones in it, including the poetry of W B Yeats, the Sequenzas of Luciano Berio, the communicable language of Olivier Messiaen, and Tibetan chant. Three categories of microtonal procedure are then identified: those used structurally using special alternative fingerings; 'bent' pitches used colouristically; and written-out glissandi. Six examples are provided in total, covering all three categories. Pitch-divisions are generally limited to quarter-tones, but eighth-tones are also deployed on occasion. Quarter-tone fingerings are based on Michael Vetter's Blockflütencshcule (Vienna 1983: Universal Edition); eighth-tone fingerings were extrapolated from Vetter's chart via an empirical process of trial-and-error

Spin-other-orbit matrix elements for f sup 4 configurations

Data for spin orbit matrix elements for f to 4th power configuratio