11,994 research outputs found
Requirements and Capabilities for Planetary Missions: Mariner Encke Ballistic Flyby 1980
This mission will provide a broad-based fast reconnaissance of comet Encke, building a data base for subsequent more detailed comet investigations, including rendezvous. After a 3 month flight, the spacecraft will encounter the comet at a nominal range of about 500 km. Flyby velocity will be 7 to 28 km/sec depending on choice of arrival data (0 to 35 days before Encke perihelion) and launch vehicle. The spacecraft will be similar to the MVM 73 spacecraft, with scan platform and 117 kbps encounter data rate, and designed to survive the thermal environment of 0.34 to 0.8 AU
Requirements and capabilities for planetary missions. Volume 2: Mars polar orbiter penetrator 1981
The Mars Polar Orbiter/Penetrator 1981 mission, intended to investigate the manner in which Mars has evolved, and which surveys its geochemistry, performs climatological investigations, and attempts to determine the planet's gravitational field, was described. The spacecraft, modified from the Viking Orbiter design, carries a new remote-sensing payload and six penetrators. The penetrators are released from a 2.46-h, 1000-km sun synchronous circular orbit and interrogated daily throughout the 2-year orbital mission. X-band telemetry is used to increase data return
Partitioning of energy in highly polydisperse granular gases
A highly polydisperse granular gas is modeled by a continuous distribution of
particle sizes, a, giving rise to a corresponding continuous temperature
profile, T(a), which we compute approximately, generalizing previous results
for binary or multicomponent mixtures. If the system is driven, it evolves
towards a stationary temperature profile, which is discussed for several
driving mechanisms in dependence on the variance of the size distribution. For
a uniform distribution of sizes, the stationary temperature profile is
nonuniform with either hot small particles (constant force driving) or hot
large particles (constant velocity or constant energy driving). Polydispersity
always gives rise to non-Gaussian velocity distributions. Depending on the
driving mechanism the tails can be either overpopulated or underpopulated as
compared to the molecular gas. The deviations are mainly due to small
particles. In the case of free cooling the decay rate depends continuously on
particle size, while all partial temperatures decay according to Haff's law.
The analytical results are supported by event driven simulations for a large,
but discrete number of species.Comment: 10 pages; 5 figure
Microcanonical entropy inflection points: Key to systematic understanding of transitions in finite systems
We introduce a systematic classification method for the analogs of phase
transitions in finite systems. This completely general analysis, which is
applicable to any physical system and extends towards the thermodynamic limit,
is based on the microcanonical entropy and its energetic derivative, the
inverse caloric temperature. Inflection points of this quantity signal
cooperative activity and thus serve as distinct indicators of transitions. We
demonstrate the power of this method through application to the long-standing
problem of liquid-solid transitions in elastic, flexible homopolymers.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Two-way coupling of FENE dumbbells with a turbulent shear flow
We present numerical studies for finitely extensible nonlinear elastic (FENE)
dumbbells which are dispersed in a turbulent plane shear flow at moderate
Reynolds number. The polymer ensemble is described on the mesoscopic level by a
set of stochastic ordinary differential equations with Brownian noise. The
dynamics of the Newtonian solvent is determined by the Navier-Stokes equations.
Momentum transfer of the dumbbells with the solvent is implemented by an
additional volume forcing term in the Navier-Stokes equations, such that both
components of the resulting viscoelastic fluid are connected by a two-way
coupling. The dynamics of the dumbbells is given then by Newton's second law of
motion including small inertia effects. We investigate the dynamics of the flow
for different degrees of dumbbell elasticity and inertia, as given by
Weissenberg and Stokes numbers, respectively. For the parameters accessible in
our study, the magnitude of the feedback of the polymers on the macroscopic
properties of turbulence remains small as quantified by the global energy
budget and the Reynolds stresses. A reduction of the turbulent drag by up to
20% is observed for the larger particle inertia. The angular statistics of the
dumbbells shows an increasing alignment with the mean flow direction for both,
increasing elasticity and inertia. This goes in line with a growing asymmetry
of the probability density function of the transverse derivative of the
streamwise turbulent velocity component. We find that dumbbells get stretched
referentially in regions where vortex stretching or bi-axial strain dominate
the local dynamics and topology of the velocity gradient tensor.Comment: 20 pages, 10 Postscript figures (Figures 5 and 10 in reduced quality
Rift Valley fever virus lacking NSm proteins retains high virulence in vivo and may provide a model of human delayed onset neurologic disease
AbstractRift Valley fever virus is a significant human and veterinary pathogen responsible for explosive outbreaks throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Severe acute disease in humans includes rapid onset hepatic disease and hemorrhagic fever or delayed onset encephalitis. A highly efficient reverse genetics system was developed which allowed generation of recombinant RVF viruses to assess the role of NSm protein in virulence in a rat model in which wild-type RVF virus strain ZH501 (wt-ZH501) results in 100% lethal hepatic disease 2–3 days post infection. While extensive genomic analysis indicates conservation of the NSm coding capability of diverse RVF viruses, and viruses deficient in NSs proteins are completely attenuated in vivo, comparison of wt-ZH501, a reverse genetics generated wt-ZH501 virus (R-ZH501), and R-ZH501 virus lacking the NSm proteins (R-ΔNSm-ZH501) demonstrated that the NSm proteins were nonessential for in vivo virulence and lethality. Surprisingly, while 44% of R-ΔNSm-ZH501 infected animals quickly developed lethal hepatic disease similar to wt- and R-ZH501, 17% developed delayed onset neurologic disease (lethargy, head tremors, and ataxia) at 13 days post infection. Such infections may provide the basis for study of both RVF acute hepatic disease and delayed onset encephalitic disease in humans
Stress Tensors of Multiparticle Collision Dynamics Fluids
Stress tensors are derived for the multiparticle collision dynamics
algorithm, a particle-based mesoscale simulation method for fluctuating fluids,
resembling those of atomistic or molecular systems. Systems with periodic
boundary conditions as well as fluids confined in a slit are considered. For
every case, two equivalent expressions for the tensor are provided, the
internal stress tensor, which involves all degrees of freedom of a system, and
the external stress, which only includes the interactions with the confining
surfaces. In addition, stress tensors for a system with embedded particles are
determined. Based on the derived stress tensors, analytical expressions are
calculated for the shear viscosity. Simulations illustrate the difference in
fluctuations between the various derived expressions and yield very good
agreement between the numerical results and the analytically derived expression
for the viscosity
Discretization of the velocity space in solution of the Boltzmann equation
We point out an equivalence between the discrete velocity method of solving
the Boltzmann equation, of which the lattice Boltzmann equation method is a
special example, and the approximations to the Boltzmann equation by a Hermite
polynomial expansion. Discretizing the Boltzmann equation with a BGK collision
term at the velocities that correspond to the nodes of a Hermite quadrature is
shown to be equivalent to truncating the Hermite expansion of the distribution
function to the corresponding order. The truncated part of the distribution has
no contribution to the moments of low orders and is negligible at small Mach
numbers. Higher order approximations to the Boltzmann equation can be achieved
by using more velocities in the quadrature
Filling some black holes: modeling the connection between urbanization, infrastructure, and global service intensity
This empirical article combines insights from previous research on the level of knowledge-intensive service in metropolitan areas with the aim to develop an understanding of the spatial structure of the global service economy. We use a stepwise regression model with the Globalization and World Cities research network's measure of globalized service provisioning as the dependent variable and a range of variables focusing on population, infrastructure, urban primacy, and national regulation as independent variables. The discussion of the results focuses on model parameters as well as the meaning of outliers and is used to explore some avenues for future research
The nature of the highest energy cosmic rays
Ultra high energy gamma rays produce electron--positron pairs in interactions
on the geomagnetic field. The pair electrons suffer magnetic bremsstrahlung and
the energy of the primary gamma ray is shared by a bunch of lower energy
secondaries. These processes reflect the structure of the geomagnetic field and
cause experimentally observable effects. The study of these effects with future
giant air shower arrays can identify the nature of the highest energy cosmic
rays as either gamma-rays or nuclei.Comment: 15 pages of RevTeX plus 6 postscript figures, tarred, gzipped and
uuencoded. Subm. to Physical Review
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