1,214 research outputs found
Design study and evaluation of a hypergolic engine for a space power system, phase 2 Final report, 1 Jul. 1964 - 10 Feb. 1966
Design feasibility of hypergolic engine for space power syste
Gravitational Radiation from Triple Star Systems
We have studied the main features of the gravitational radiation generated by
an astrophysical system constituted of three compact objects attracting one
another (only via gravitational interaction) in such a manner that stable
orbits do exist. We have limited our analysis to systems that can be treated
with perturbative methods. We show the profile of the gravitational waves
emitted by such systems. These results can be useful within the framework of
the new gravitational astronomy which will be made feasible by means of the new
generation of gravitational detectors such as LISA in a no longer far future.Comment: 10 pages plus 9 postscript figures; revtex; accepted for publication
in Int. J. Mod. Phys.
Forum 2: The migrant climate: resilience, adaptation and the ontopolitics of mobility in the Anthropocene
While modernist or ‘top-down’, ‘command-and-control’ approaches to climate and migration worked at the surface or ontic level of the redistribution of entities in time and space, resilience approaches call for a different approach to mobility (for an extensive discussion of resilience as a distinctive governance regime see, for example, Grove, 2018; Chandler, 2014). These discourses construct mobilities that are more transformative, in fact, ones that question traditional liberal modernist notions of time and space and of entities with fixed essences. These mobilities do not concern moving entities in space but rethinking mobility in relation to space. Mobility then becomes more a matter of changing the understandings and practices relating to spaces and entities than of moving things from one place to another. Becoming ‘mobile’ thus would apply to the development of capabilities or ‘response-abilities’ (Haraway, 2016: 2) to sense, adapt, recompose, repurpose and reimagine problems and possibilities; taking responses to crises beyond the static and binary conceptions of mobility and space epitomised by The Clash lyrics in the epigraph
Dirac neutrino magnetic moment and a possible time evolution of the neutrino signal from a supernova
We analyze the influence of neutrino helicity conversion, ,
on the neutrino flux from a supernova caused by the interaction of the Dirac
neutrino magnetic moment with a magnetic field. We show that if the neutrino
has a magnetic moment in the interval and provided that a magnetic field of G exists in the supernova envelope, a peculiar kind of time evolution
of the neutrino signal from the supernova caused by the resonance transition
in the magnetic field of the envelope can appear. If a
magnetar with a poloidal magnetic field is formed in a supernova explosion,
then the neutrino signal could have a pulsating behavior, i.e., a kind of a
neutrino pulsar could be observed, when it rotates around an axis that does not
coincide with its magnetic moment and when the orientation of its rotation axis
is favourable for our observation.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 2 EPS figures, based on the talk presented by A.V.
Kuznetsov at the XVI International Seminar Quarks'2010, Kolomna, Moscow
Region, June 6-12, 2010, to appear in the Proceeding
SoundCloud and Bandcamp as alternative music platforms
We examine two ‘producer-oriented’ audio distribution platforms, SoundCloud and Bandcamp, that have been important repositories for the hopes of musicians, commentators and audiences that digital technologies and cultural platforms might promote democratisation of the cultural industries, and we compare their achievements and limitations in this respect. We show that the emancipatory elements enshrined in SoundCloud’s ‘bottom-up’ abundance are compromised by two elements that underpin the platform: the problematic ‘culture of connectivity’ of the social media systems to which it must remain integrally linked, and the systems of intellectual property that the firm has been increasingly compelled to enforce. By contrast, it seems that Bandcamp has been relatively stable in financial terms while being at odds with some key aspects of ‘platformization’, and we explore the possibility that some of the platform’s apparent success may derive from how its key features makes it attractive to indie musicians and fans drawn to an independent ethos. Nevertheless, we argue, even while in some respects Bandcamp acts more effectively as an ‘alternative’ than does SoundCloud, the former is also congruent economically and discursively with how platforms capitalise on the activity of self-managing, self-auditing, specialist, worker-users
Screening of Long-Range Leptonic Forces by Cosmic Background Neutrinos
The absence of dispersion effects of the SN~1987A neutrino pulse has been
used to constrain novel long-range forces between neutrinos and galactic
baryonic or non-baryonic matter. If these forces are mediated by vector bosons,
screening effects by the cosmic neutrino background invalidate the SN~1987A
limits and other related arguments.Comment: REVTeX 3.0 document, 6 pages, no figures
Delivery of sTRAIL variants by MSCs in combination with cytotoxic drug treatment leads to p53-independent enhanced antitumor effects
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are able to infiltrate tumor tissues and thereby effectively deliver gene therapeutic payloads. Here, we engineered murine MSCs (mMSCs) to express a secreted form of the TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), which is a potent inducer of apoptosis in tumor cells, and tested these MSCs, termed MSC.sTRAIL, in combination with conventional chemotherapeutic drug treatment in colon cancer models. When we pretreated human colorectal cancer HCT116 cells with low doses of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and added MSC.sTRAIL, we found significantly increased apoptosis as compared with single-agent treatment. Moreover, HCT116 xenografts, which were cotreated with 5-FU and systemically delivered MSC.sTRAIL, went into remission. Noteworthy, this effect was protein 53 (p53) independent and was mediated by TRAIL-receptor 2 (TRAIL-R2) upregulation, demonstrating the applicability of this approach in p53-defective tumors. Consequently, when we generated MSCs that secreted TRAIL-R2-specific variants of soluble TRAIL (sTRAIL), we found that such engineered MSCs, labeled MSC.sTRAIL DR5, had enhanced antitumor activity in combination with 5-FU when compared with MSC.sTRAIL. In contrast, TRAIL-resistant pancreatic carcinoma PancTu1 cells responded better to MSC.sTRAIL DR4 when the antiapoptotic protein XIAP (X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein) was silenced concomitantly. Taken together, our results demonstrate that TRAIL-receptor selective variants can potentially enhance the therapeutic efficacy of MSC-delivered TRAIL as part of individualized and tumor-specific combination treatments. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved
Resonant Spin-Flavor Conversion of Supernova Neutrinos and Deformation of the Electron Antineutrino Spectrum
The neutrino spin-flavor conversion of \bar\nu_e and \nu_\mu which is induced
by the interaction of the Majorana neutrino magnetic moment and magnetic fields
in the collapse-driven supernova is investigated in detail. We calculate the
conversion probability by using the latest precollapse models of Woosley and
Weaver (1995), and also those of Nomono and Hashimoto (1988), changing the
stellar mass and metallicity in order to estimate the effect of the
astrophysical uncertainties. Contour maps of the conversion probability are
given for all the models as a function of neutrino mass squared difference and
the neutrino magnetic moment times magnetic fields. It is shown that in the
solar metallicity models some observational effects are expected with \Delta
m^2 = 10^{-5}--10^{-1} [eV^2] and \mu_\nu >~ 10^{-12} (10^9 G / B_0) [\mu_B],
where B_0 is the strength of the magnetic fields at the surface of the iron
core. We also find that although the dependence on the stellar models or
stellar mass is not so large, the metallicity of precollapse stars has
considerable effects on this conversion. Such effects may be seen in a
supernova in the Large or Small Magellanic Clouds, and should be taken into
account when one considers an upper bound on \mu_\nu from the SN1987A data.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, using revtex. To appear in Phys. Rev. D. 16 figures
attatche
Potential for Supernova Neutrino Detection in MiniBooNE
The MiniBooNE detector at Fermilab is designed to search for oscillation appearance at and to make a
decisive test of the LSND signal. The main detector (inside a veto shield) is a
spherical volume containing 0.680 ktons of mineral oil. This inner volume,
viewed by 1280 phototubes, is primarily a \v{C}erenkov medium, as the
scintillation yield is low. The entire detector is under a 3 m earth
overburden. Though the detector is not optimized for low-energy (tens of MeV)
events, and the cosmic-ray muon rate is high (10 kHz), we show that MiniBooNE
can function as a useful supernova neutrino detector. Simple trigger-level cuts
can greatly reduce the backgrounds due to cosmic-ray muons. For a canonical
Galactic supernova at 10 kpc, about 190 supernova
events would be detected. By adding MiniBooNE to the international network of
supernova detectors, the possibility of a supernova being missed would be
reduced. Additionally, the paths of the supernova neutrinos through Earth will
be different for MiniBooNE and other detectors, thus allowing tests of
matter-affected mixing effects on the neutrino signal.Comment: Added references, version to appear in PR
Cliophysics: Socio-political Reliability Theory, Polity Duration and African Political (In)stabilities
Quantification of historical sociological processes have recently gained
attention among theoreticians in the effort of providing a solid theoretical
understanding of the behaviors and regularities present in sociopolitical
dynamics. Here we present a reliability theory of polity processes with
emphases on individual political dynamics of African countries. We found that
the structural properties of polity failure rates successfully capture the risk
of political vulnerability and instabilities in which 87.50%, 75%, 71.43%, and
0% of the countries with monotonically increasing, unimodal, U-shaped and
monotonically decreasing polity failure rates, respectively, have high level of
state fragility indices. The quasi-U-shape relationship between average polity
duration and regime types corroborates historical precedents and explains the
stability of the autocracies and democracies.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
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