Ductile mandrel and parting compound facilitate tube drawing

Refractory tubing is warm drawn over a solid ductile mandrel with a powder parting compound packed between mandrel and the tubes inner surface. This method applies also to the coextrusion of a billet and a ductile mandrel

Non-circular features in Saturn's D ring: D68

D68 is a narrow ringlet located only 67,627 km (1.12 planetary radii) from Saturn's spin axis. Images of this ringlet obtained by the Cassini spacecraft reveal that this ringlet exhibits persistent longitudinal brightness variations and a substantial eccentricity (ae=25+/-1 km). By comparing observations made at different times, we confirm that the brightness variations revolve around the planet at approximately the local orbital rate (1751.6 degrees/day), and that the ringlet's pericenter precesses at 38.243+/-0.008 degrees/day, consistent with the expected apsidal precession rate at this location due to Saturn's higher-order gravitational harmonics. Surprisingly, we also find that the ringlet's semi-major axis appears to be decreasing with time at a rate of 2.4+/-0.4 km/year between 2005 and 2013. A closer look at these measurements, along with a consideration of earlier Voyager observations of this same ringlet, suggests that the mean radius of D68 moves back and forth, perhaps with a period of around 15 Earth years or about half a Saturn year. These observations could place important constraints on both the ringlet's local dynamical environment and the planet's gravitational field.Comment: 39 Pages, 11 Figures accepted for publication in Icarus Text slightly modified to match corrections to proof

Fabrication techniques developed for small- diameter, thin-wall tungsten and tungsten alloy tubing

Report describes methods for the fabrication of tungsten and tungsten alloys into small-diameter, thin-wall tubing of nuclear quality. The tungsten, or tungsten alloy tube blanks are produced by double extrusion. Plug-drawing has emerged as an excellent secondary fabrication technique for the reduction of the overall tube dimensions

Solid metabolic waste transport and stowage investigation

The basic Waste Collection System (WCS) design under consideration utilized air flow to separate the stool from the WCS user and to transport the fecal material to a slinger device for subsequent deposition on a storage bowel. The major parameters governing stool separation and transport were found to be the area of the air inlet orifices, the configuration of the air inlet orifice and the transport air flow. Separation force and transport velocity of the stool were studied. The developed inlet orifice configuration was found to be an effective design for providing fecal separation and transport. Simulated urine tests and female user tests in zero gravity established air flow rates between 0.08 and 0.25 cu sm/min (3 and 9 scfm) as satisfactory for entrapment, containment and transport of urine using an urinal. The investigation of air drying of fecal material as a substitute for vacuum drying in a WCS breadboard system showed that using baseline conditions anticipated for the shuttle cabin ambient atmosphere, flow rates of 0.14 cu sm/min (5 cfm) were adequate for drying and maintaining biological stability of the fecal material

Accurate measurement of telemetry performance

Performance of high rate telemetry stations used in the Deep Space Network is verified. Measurement techniques are discussed

The Minimum Wiener Connector

The Wiener index of a graph is the sum of all pairwise shortest-path distances between its vertices. In this paper we study the novel problem of finding a minimum Wiener connector: given a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set $Q\subseteq V$ of query vertices, find a subgraph of $G$ that connects all query vertices and has minimum Wiener index. We show that The Minimum Wiener Connector admits a polynomial-time (albeit impractical) exact algorithm for the special case where the number of query vertices is bounded. We show that in general the problem is NP-hard, and has no PTAS unless $\mathbf{P} = \mathbf{NP}$. Our main contribution is a constant-factor approximation algorithm running in time $\widetilde{O}(|Q||E|)$. A thorough experimentation on a large variety of real-world graphs confirms that our method returns smaller and denser solutions than other methods, and does so by adding to the query set $Q$ a small number of important vertices (i.e., vertices with high centrality).Comment: Published in Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Dat

Youth Development Approaches in Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Projects

Youth development (YD) strategies in conjunction with appropriate age-graded sexuality and family life education programs/curricula may have an important role to play in formulating convincing answers to these questions. Youth development approaches help youth enhance their assets rather than concentrating on their difficulties. They focus on where youth are going, helping them develop a belief in a viable future and in their ability to take actions that will bring that future about. The commitment to a future that would be disrupted by a pregnancy during adolescence is about the only thing that Zabin and her colleagues (1986) found to differentiate among Baltimore adolescents using teen clinics who did and did not get pregnant. Teens without a strong reason to avoid pregnancy got pregnant at the same rate as those who wanted to get pregnant; the only teens who were successful at avoiding pregnancy were those who had a future goal that a pregnancy would disrupt. Thus, incorporating youth development principles along with some specific techniques into the work of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs' (OAPP) abstinence-oriented programs would seem to be an important program enhancement with potentially valuable impacts

Wakefield damping for the CLIC crab cavity

A crab cavity is required in the CLIC to allow effective head-on collision of bunches at the IP. A high operating frequency is preferred as the deflection voltage required for a given rotation angle and the RF phase tolerance for a crab cavity are inversely proportional to the operating frequency. The short bunch spacing of the CLIC scheme and the high sensitivity of the crab cavity to dipole kicks demand very high damping of the inter-bunch wakes, the major contributor to the luminosity loss of colliding bunches. This paper investigates the nature of the wakefields in the CLIC crab cavity and the possibility of using various damping schemes to suppress them effectively

Emotional Strategies as Catalysts for Cooperation in Signed Networks

The evolution of unconditional cooperation is one of the fundamental problems in science. A new solution is proposed to solve this puzzle. We treat this issue with an evolutionary model in which agents play the Prisoner's Dilemma on signed networks. The topology is allowed to co-evolve with relational signs as well as with agent strategies. We introduce a strategy that is conditional on the emotional content embedded in network signs. We show that this strategy acts as a catalyst and creates favorable conditions for the spread of unconditional cooperation. In line with the literature, we found evidence that the evolution of cooperation most likely occurs in networks with relatively high chances of rewiring and with low likelihood of strategy adoption. While a low likelihood of rewiring enhances cooperation, a very high likelihood seems to limit its diffusion. Furthermore, unlike in non-signed networks, cooperation becomes more prevalent in denser topologies.Comment: 24 pages, Accepted for publication in Advances in Complex System

Minimum Requirements for Detecting a Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Using Pulsars

We assess the detectability of a nanohertz gravitational wave (GW) background with respect to additive red and white noise in the timing of millisecond pulsars. We develop detection criteria based on the cross-correlation function summed over pulsar pairs in a pulsar timing array. The distribution of correlation amplitudes is found to be non-Gaussian and highly skewed, which significantly influences detection and false-alarm probabilities. When only white noise and GWs contribute, our detection results are consistent with those found by others. Red noise, however, drastically alters the results. We discuss methods to meet the challenge of GW detection ("climbing mount significance") by distinguishing between GW-dominated and red or white-noise limited regimes. We characterize detection regimes by evaluating the number of millisecond pulsars that must be monitored in a high-cadence, 5-year timing program for a GW background spectrum $h_c(f) = A f^{-2/3}$ with $A = 10^{-15}$ yr$^{-2/3}$. Unless a sample of 20 super-stable millisecond pulsars can be found --- those with timing residuals from red-noise contributions $\sigma_r \lesssim 20$ ns --- a much larger timing program on $\gtrsim 50 - 100$ MSPs will be needed. For other values of $A$, the constraint is $\sigma_r \lesssim 20 {\rm ns} (A/10^{-15} {\rm yr}^{-2/3})$. Identification of suitable MSPs itself requires an aggressive survey campaign followed by characterization of the level of spin noise in the timing residuals of each object. The search and timing programs will likely require substantial fractions of time on new array telescopes in the southern hemisphere as well as on existing ones.Comment: Submitted to the Astrophysical Journa