Optimal design of gas adsorption refrigerators for cryogenic cooling

The design of gas adsorption refrigerators used for cryogenic cooling in the temperature range of 4K to 120K was examined. The functional relationships among the power requirement for the refrigerator, the system mass, the cycle time and the operating conditions were derived. It was found that the precool temperature, the temperature dependent heat capacities and thermal conductivities, and pressure and temperature variations in the compressors have important impacts on the cooling performance. Optimal designs based on a minimum power criterion were performed for four different gas adsorption refrigerators and a multistage system. It is concluded that the estimates of the power required and the system mass are within manageable limits in various spacecraft environments

Feasibility study of using a two-plate model to approximate the TDRSS solar pressure effects

An investigation was performed to determine the feasibility of using a two plate model to approximate the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) in orbit propagation, taking into account the effects of solar radiation pressure. The two plate model comprises one plate which always points to the Earth, and the other which is hinged to an axis normal to the orbital plane and is always rotated so that its normal makes a minimum angle with the direction of the sun. The results indicate that it is sufficient to take three parameters, the areas of the two plates and the reflectivity of the Earth pointing plate, to achieve an accuracy of one meter during a 24 hour orbit propagation

Pre-Congestion Notification Encoding Comparison

DiffServ mechanisms have been developed to support Quality of Service (QoS). However, the level of assurance that can be provided with DiffServ without substantial over-provisioning is limited. Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN) investigates the use of per-flow admission control to provide the required service guarantees for the admitted traffic. While admission control will protect the QoS under\ud normal operating conditions, an additional flow termination mechanism is necessary in the times of heavy congestion (e.g. caused by route changes due to link or node failure).\ud Encoding and their transport are required to carry the congestion and pre-congestion information from the congestion and pre-congestion points to the decision points. This document provides a survey of\ud several encoding methods, using comparisons amongst them as a way to explain their strengths and weaknesses.\u

Workfare in the undemocratic states: the case of China

This article examines the problems caused by workfare in China. It is found that China’s public assistance scheme is managed mainly by volunteers and government officials who do not necessarily possess relevant qualifications. Also, welfare claimants’ benefits can be ceased without going through a rigorous procedure; they can hardly challenge the decisions of the authority because China’s judicial system is interfered by central and local senior officials. This article concludes that workfare is a product of Western democratic countries; its implementation in undemocratic states will only increase power abuses among welfare bureaucrats and threaten the rights of claimants. </jats:p

Instability of three dimensional conformally dressed black hole

The three dimensional black hole solution of Einstein equations with negative cosmological constant coupled to a conformal scalar field is proved to be unstable against linear circularly symmetric perturbations.Comment: 5 pages, REVTe

A Convex Model for Edge-Histogram Specification with Applications to Edge-preserving Smoothing

The goal of edge-histogram specification is to find an image whose edge image has a histogram that matches a given edge-histogram as much as possible. Mignotte has proposed a non-convex model for the problem [M. Mignotte. An energy-based model for the image edge-histogram specification problem. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 21(1):379--386, 2012]. In his work, edge magnitudes of an input image are first modified by histogram specification to match the given edge-histogram. Then, a non-convex model is minimized to find an output image whose edge-histogram matches the modified edge-histogram. The non-convexity of the model hinders the computations and the inclusion of useful constraints such as the dynamic range constraint. In this paper, instead of considering edge magnitudes, we directly consider the image gradients and propose a convex model based on them. Furthermore, we include additional constraints in our model based on different applications. The convexity of our model allows us to compute the output image efficiently using either Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers or Fast Iterative Shrinkage-Thresholding Algorithm. We consider several applications in edge-preserving smoothing including image abstraction, edge extraction, details exaggeration, and documents scan-through removal. Numerical results are given to illustrate that our method successfully produces decent results efficiently

The ER-2 meteorological measurement system

The objectives of ER-2 Meteorological Measurement System (MMS) are: (1) to measure the meteorological parameters (pressure, temperature, and the three dimensional wind vector) accurately; (2) to provide high resolution data on atmospheric state variables and aircraft flight track to ER-2 investigators on a timely basis; and (3) to conduct collaborative research in atmospheric dynamics and chemistry. A summary of progress and results are presented