Facilities for meteorological research at NASA Goddard/Wallops Flight Facility

The technical characteristics of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Facility, the improvements being made to the instrumentation there which will enhance its usefulness in atmospheric research, and several of the on-going research programs are described. Among the area of atmospheric research discussed are clouds and precipitation, lightning, ozone, wind, and storms. Meteorological instruments including Doppler radar, spectrophotometers, and ozone sensors are mentioned. Atmospheric research relevant to aircraft design and COMSTAR communication satellites is briefly discussed

The experience and impact of team coaching: a dual case study

Team coaching is a relatively new phenomenon in the business world and there has been minimal research conducted on the experience of participants undergoing team coaching. Some of the recent writings on team coaching are more practice based and grounded in face validity rather than solid research. There is even less written on leadership team coaching. This is a dual case analysis of two independent case studies based on actual leadership teams operating in two contexts; one government and one corporate team. Each researcher was an external coach and implemented a similar evidence based team coaching intervention with her respective team. The researchers provide a comprehensive review of the team coaching literature to date. They assessed team coaching readiness, and conducted pre-assessments using the Team Diagnostic Survey, a style instrument, and interviews. Each team received coaching over a period of six to eleven months from one of the coaches, followed by semistructured interviews conducted by the other researcher. This study adds to the literature with a comparison between the two case studies to document what participants identified as critical turning points, outcomes, and least and most valuable elements in the team coaching. The findings indicated that both teams identified overall improvements in team effectiveness as a result of the coaching. Specifically, both teams discussed improvements in collaboration and productivity, relationships, personal learning and change, communication and participation, and impact beyond their own leadership teams. Both teams identified valuable elements in the coaching, which included the coach’s manners and actions, a team launch, coaching structure and follow-up, team leader modelling and support, and various other specific coaching assessments and activities. The researchers propose a new high performance team coaching model for leaders and team coaches that incorporates these findings and those of other team effectiveness and team coaching authors

Unbinding of giant vortices in states of competing order

Funding: EPSRC (UK) via Grants No. EP/I031014/1 and No. EP/H049584/1.We consider a two-dimensional system with two order parameters, one with O(2) symmetry and one with O(M), near a point in parameter space where they couple to become a single O(2+M) order. While the O(2) sector supports vortex excitations, these vortices must somehow disappear as the high symmetry point is approached. We develop a variational argument which shows that the size of the vortex cores diverges as 1/root Delta and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperature of the O(2) order vanishes as 1/1n(1/Delta), where Delta denotes the distance from the high-symmetry point. Our physical picture is confirmed by a renormalization group analysis which gives further logarithmic corrections, and demonstrates full symmetry restoration within the cores.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Near-Critical Gravitational Collapse and the Initial Mass Function of Primordial Black Holes

The recent discovery of critical phenomena arising in gravitational collapse near the threshold of black hole formation is used to estimate the initial mass function of primordial black holes (PBHs). It is argued that the universal scaling relation between black hole mass and initial perturbation found for a variety of collapsing space-times also applies to PBH formation, indicating the possibility of the formation of PBHs with masses much smaller than one horizon mass. Owing to the natural fine-tuning of initial conditions by the exponential decline of the probability distribution for primordial density fluctuations, sub-horizon mass PBHs are expected to form at all epochs. This result suggests that the constraints on the primordial fluctuation spectrum based on the abundance of PBHs at different mass scales may have to be revisited.Comment: 4 pages, uses revtex, also available at http://bigwhirl.uchicago.edu/jcn/pub_pbh.html . To appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Comparison of porcine thorax to gelatine blocks for wound

Published online first in International Journal of Legal Medicine. The support of EPSRC and The Home Office are recognised. Open Access, this article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http:/ /creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Tissue simulants are typically used in ballistic testing as substitutes for biological tissues. Many simulants have been used, with gelatine amongst the most common. While two concentrations of gelatine (10 and 20 %) have been used extensively, no agreed standard exists for the preparation of either. Comparison of ballistic damage produced in both concentrations is lacking. The damage produced in gelatine is also questioned, with regards to what it would mean for specific areas of living tissue. The aim of the work discussed in this paper was to consider how damage caused by selected pistol and rifle ammunition varied in different simulants. Damage to gelatine blocks 10 and 20 % in concentration were tested with 9 mm Luger (9 × 19 full metal jacket; FMJ) rounds, while damage produced by .223 Remington (5.56 × 45 Federal Premium® Tactical® Bonded®) rounds to porcine thorax sections (skin, underlying tissue, ribs, lungs, ribs, underlying tissue, skin; backed by a block of 10 % gelatine) were compared to 10 and 20 % gelatine blocks. Results from the .223 Remington rifle round, which is one that typically expands on impact, revealed depths of penetration in the thorax arrangement were significantly different to 20 % gelatine, but not 10 % gelatine. The level of damage produced in the simulated thoraxes was smaller in scale to that witnessed in both gelatine concentrations,though greater debris was produced in the thoraxes.The support of EPSRC and The Home Office are recognised

Critical collapse and the primordial black hole initial mass function

It has normally been assumed that primordial black holes (PBHs) always form with mass approximately equal to the mass contained within the horizon at that time. Recent work studying the application of critical phenomena in gravitational collapse to PBH formation has shown that in fact, at a fixed time, PBHs with a range of masses are formed. When calculating the PBH initial mass function it is usually assumed that all PBHs form at the same horizon mass. It is not clear, however, that it is consistent to consider the spread in the mass of PBHs formed at a single horizon mass, whilst neglecting the range of horizon masses at which PBHs can form. We use the excursion set formalism to compute the PBH initial mass function, allowing for PBH formation at a range of horizon masses, for two forms of the density perturbation spectrum. First we examine power-law spectra with $n>1$, where PBHs form on small scales. We find that, in the limit where the number of PBHs formed is small enough to satisfy the observational constraints on their initial abundance, the mass function approaches that found by Niemeyer and Jedamzik under the assumption that all PBHs form at a single horizon mass. Second, we consider a flat perturbation spectrum with a spike at a scale corresponding to horizon mass $\sim 0.5 M_{\odot}$, and compare the resulting PBH mass function with that of the MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects) detected by microlensing observations. The predicted mass spectrum appears significantly wider than the steeply-falling spectrum found observationally.Comment: 8 pages RevTeX file with ten figures incorporated (uses RevTeX and epsf). Minor changes to dicussion onl

Growth of primordial black holes in a universe containing a massless scalar field

The evolution of primordial black holes in a flat Friedmann universe with a massless scalar field is investigated in fully general relativistic numerical relativity. A primordial black hole is expected to form with a scale comparable to the cosmological apparent horizon, in which case it may go through an initial phase with significant accretion. However, if it is very close to the cosmological apparent horizon size, the accretion is suppressed due to general relativistic effects. In any case, it soon gets smaller than the cosmological horizon and thereafter it can be approximated as an isolated vacuum solution with decaying mass accretion. In this situation the dynamical and inhomogeneous scalar field is typically equivalent to a perfect fluid with a stiff equation of state $p=\rho$. The black hole mass never increases by more than a factor of two, despite recent claims that primordial black holes might grow substantially through accreting quintessence. It is found that the gravitational memory scenario, proposed for primordial black holes in Brans-Dicke and scalar-tensor theories of gravity, is highly unphysical.Comment: 24 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Study of process variables associated with manufacturing hermetically sealed nickel-cadium cells Quarterly report, 23 May - 23 Aug. 1970

Separator materials, ceramic to metal seals, cell plate polarization and impregnation processes, and plaque sintering data for study of variables in manufacture of nickel cadmium cell