Flight Testing Small UAVs for Aerodynamic Parameter Estimation

A flight data acquisition system was developed to aid unmanned vehicle designers in verifying the vehicle\u27s design performance. The system is reconfigurable and allows the designer to choose the correct combination of complexity, risk, and cost for a given flight test. The designer can also reconfigure the system to meet packaging and integration requirements. System functionality, repeatbility, and accuracy was validated by collecting data during multiple flights of a radio-controlled aircraft. Future work includes sensor fusion, thrust prediction methods, stability and control derivative estimation, and growing Cal Poly\u27s small-scale component aerodynamic database

SD-MCAN: A Software-Defined Solution for IP Mobility in Campus Area Networks

Campus Area Networks (CANs) are a subset of enterprise networks, comprised of a network core connecting multiple Local Area Networks (LANs) across a college campus. Traditionally, hosts connect to the CAN via a single point of attachment; however, the past decade has seen the employment of mobile computing rise dramatically. Mobile devices must obtain new Internet Protocol (IP) addresses at each LAN as they migrate, wasting address space and disrupting host services. To prevent these issues, modern CANs should support IP mobility: allowing devices to keep a single IP address as they migrate between LANs with low-latency handoffs. Traditional approaches to mobility may be difficult to deploy and often lead to inefficient routing, but Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides an intriguing alternative. This thesis identifies necessary requirements for a software-defined IP mobility system and then proposes one such system, the Software-Defined Mobile Campus Area Network (SD-MCAN) architecture. SD-MCAN employs an OpenFlow-based hybrid, label-switched routing scheme to efficiently route traffic flows between mobile hosts on the CAN. The proposed architecture is then implemented as an application on the existing POX controller and evaluated on virtual and hardware testbeds. Experimental results show that SD-MCAN can process handoffs with less than 90 ms latency, suggesting that the system can support data-intensive services on mobile host devices. Finally, the POX prototype is open-sourced to aid in future research

Do The Risk Factors For Pathological Gambling Predict Temporal Discounting?

Weatherly and Dixon (2007) proposed that gambling was related to the increase in how individuals discount delayed (monetary) consequences and that several of the known risk factors for pathological gambling may serve as establishing operations or setting events that lead to such changes. The present study tested these predictions by having participants complete a paper-and-pencil discount-ing task involving hypothetical monetary consequences and determining wheth-er self-reported measures of the known risk factors would significantly predict participants’ rate of discounting. None of the risk factors served as significant predictors of discounting. Interestingly, however, the rate of discounting varied systematically as a function of the number of preference reversals participants displayed at particular delays. The present findings suggest that, if Weatherly and Dixon’s proposal is correct, then it likely needs to be assessed using a more diverse sample than college freshmen. The results also suggest that measures of discounting may vary systematically as a function of procedure, which may call for a reevaluation of how discounting data are interpreted

APGEN Version 5.0

Activity Plan Generator (APGEN), now at version 5.0, is a computer program that assists in generating an integrated plan of activities for a spacecraft mission that does not oversubscribe spacecraft and ground resources. APGEN generates an interactive display, through which the user can easily create or modify the plan. The display summarizes the plan by means of a time line, whereon each activity is represented by a bar stretched between its beginning and ending times. Activities can be added, deleted, and modified via simple mouse and keyboard actions. The use of resources can be viewed on resource graphs. Resource and activity constraints can be checked. Types of activities, resources, and constraints are defined by simple text files, which the user can modify. In one of two modes of operation, APGEN acts as a planning expert assistant, displaying the plan and identifying problems in the plan. The user is in charge of creating and modifying the plan. In the other mode, APGEN automatically creates a plan that does not oversubscribe resources. The user can then manually modify the plan. APGEN is designed to interact with other software that generates sequences of timed commands for implementing details of planned activities

Chemical Equilibrium Abundances in Brown Dwarf and Extrasolar Giant Planet Atmospheres

We calculate detailed chemical abundance profiles for a variety of brown dwarf and extrasolar giant planet atmosphere models, focusing in particular on Gliese 229B, and derive the systematics of the changes in the dominant reservoirs of the major elements with altitude and temperature. We assume an Anders and Grevesse (1989) solar composition of 27 chemical elements and track 330 gas--phase species, including the monatomic forms of the elements, as well as about 120 condensates. We address the issue of the formation and composition of clouds in the cool atmospheres of substellar objects and explore the rain out and depletion of refractories. We conclude that the opacity of clouds of low--temperature ($\le$900 K), small--radius condensibles (specific chlorides and sulfides), may be responsible for the steep spectrum of Gliese 229B observed in the near infrared below 1 \mic. Furthermore, we assemble a temperature sequence of chemical transitions in substellar atmospheres that may be used to anchor and define a sequence of spectral types for substellar objects with T$_{eff}$s from $\sim$2200 K to $\sim$100 K.Comment: 57 pages total, LaTeX, 14 figures, 5 tables, also available in uuencoded, gzipped, and tarred form via anonymous ftp at www.astrophysics.arizona.edu (cd to pub/burrows/chem), submitted to Ap.

Longitudinal Study of Body Mass Index in Young Males and the Transition to Fatherhood.

Despite a growing understanding that the social determinants of health have an impact on body mass index (BMI), the role of fatherhood on young men's BMI is understudied. This longitudinal study examines BMI in young men over time as they transition from adolescence into fatherhood in a nationally representative sample. Data from all four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health supported a 20-year longitudinal analysis of 10,253 men beginning in 1994. A "fatherhood-year" data set was created and changes in BMI were examined based on fatherhood status (nonfather, nonresident father, resident father), fatherhood years, and covariates. Though age is positively associated with BMI over all years for all men, comparing nonresident and resident fathers with nonfathers reveals different trajectories based on fatherhood status. Entrance into fatherhood is associated with an increase in BMI trajectory for both nonresident and resident fathers, while nonfathers exhibit a decrease over the same period. In this longitudinal, population-based study, fatherhood and residence status play a role in men's BMI. Designing obesity prevention interventions for young men that begin in adolescence and carry through young adulthood should target the distinctive needs of these populations, potentially improving their health outcomes

Adolescent Reproductive Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs and Future Fatherhood.

PurposeWith a growing focus on the importance of men's reproductive health, including preconception health, the ways in which young men's knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs (KAB) predict their reproductive paths are understudied. To determine if reproductive KAB predicts fatherhood status, timing and residency (living with child or not).MethodsReproductive KAB and fatherhood outcomes were analyzed from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a 20-year, nationally representative study of individuals from adolescence into adulthood. Four measures of reproductive KAB were assessed during adolescence in waves I and II. A generalized linear latent and mixed model predicted future fatherhood status (nonfather, resident/nonresident father, adolescent father) and timing while controlling for other socio-demographic variables.ResultsOf the 10,253 men, 3,425 were fathers (686 nonresident/2,739 resident) by wave IV. Higher risky sexual behavior scores significantly increased the odds of becoming nonresident father (odds ratio [OR], 1.30; p < .0001), resident father (OR, 1.07; p = .007), and adolescent father (OR, 1.71; p < .0001); higher pregnancy attitudes scores significantly increased the odds of becoming a nonresident father (OR, 1.20; p < .0001) and resident father (OR, 1.11; p < .0001); higher birth control self-efficacy scores significantly decreased the odds of becoming a nonresident father (OR, .72; p < .0001) and adolescent father (OR, .56; p = .01).ConclusionsYoung men's KAB in adolescence predicts their future fatherhood and residency status. Strategies that address adolescent males' reproductive KAB are needed in the prevention of unintended reproductive consequences such as early and nonresident fatherhood

Flavor-singlet light-cone amplitudes and radiative Upsilon decays in SCET

We study the evolution of flavor-singlet, light-cone amplitudes in the soft-collinear effective theory (SCET), and reproduce results previously obtained by a different approach. We apply our calculation to the color-singlet contribution to the photon endpoint in radiative Upsilon decay. In a previous paper, we studied the color-singlet contributions to the endpoint, but neglected operator mixing, arguing that it should be a numerically small effect. Nevertheless the mixing needs to be included in a consistent calculation, and we do just that in this work. We find that the effects of mixing are indeed numerically small. This result combined with previous work on the color-octet contribution and the photon fragmentation contribution provides a consistent theoretical treatment of the photon spectrum in radiative Upsilon decay.Comment: 19 pages with 8 figure