Optimization of thermal systems with sensitive optics, electronics, and structures

A strategy was investigated by which thermal designers for spacecraft could devise an optimal thermal control system to maintain the required temperatures, temperature differences, changes in temperature, and changes in temperature differences for specified equipment and elements of the spacecraft's structure. Thermal control is to be maintained by the coating pattern chosen for the external surfaces and heaters chosen to supplement the coatings. The approach is to minimize the thermal control power, thereby minimizing the weight of the thermal control system. Because there are so many complex computations involved in determining the optimal coating design a computerized approach was contemplated. An optimization strategy including all the elements considered by the thermal designer for use in the early stages of design, where impact on the mission is greatest, and a plan for implementing the strategy were successfully developed. How the optimization process may be used to optimize the design of the Space Telescope as a test case is demonstrated

Studies relating to protein expression in the uterus of the cow

End of project reportEmbryo loss is a major cause of reproductive wastage in the cow. The majority of embryo loss occurs in the first 16 days after fertilisation when the embryo is critically dependent on the maternal uterine environment for survival. Despite the central role of uterine fluid in the normal growth and development of the embryo, there is limited information on the protein composition of these fluids. The main objectives of the studies in this thesis were to examine the protein composition of the bovine uterus during the oestrous cycle and to examine the relationship between the concentration of systemic progesterone and uterine protein expression in the cow. In the first study, the concentration of retinol-binding protein (RBP) in the bovine uterus was found to vary across the cycle and was 5-15-fold higher (P0.05) of the cycle, which was surprising given that previous studies have indicated that uterine RBP gene expression was positively associated with the concentration of systemic progesterone. In the second study, IGF binding protein 2 (IGFBP-2), IGFBP-3, IGFBP-4 and IGFBP-5 were identified in uterine fluid on days 3, 7, 11 and 15 of the oestrous cycle. There was a local effect on the concentration of IGFBPs where the concentration was greater on the ipsilateral side than that on the contralateral side for IGFBP-2 (P<0.05), 3 (P<0.01) and 5 (P<0.01) on day 15. This difference is a further indication of a local controlling mechanism regulating proteins between the uterine horns. Similar to RBP expression this study could find no significant relationship between the concentration of systemic progesterone and IGFBP concentrations on Day 7 of the oestrous cycle. In the third study, changes in the global pattern of uterine proteins between Days 3 and Day 15 of the oestrous cycle were examined using two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE). Six proteins were found to be upregulated on Day 15 compared to Day 3. Three proteins of these were identified as aldose reductase, plakoglobin and heat shock protein 27 while the other three proteins were identified as bovine serum albumin. Aldose reductase, an enzyme directly involved in the production of sorbitol and indirectly of fructose, was 10-fold higher (P<0.0001) on Day 15 compared to Day 3. Plakoglobin (Pg) was upregulated 2.3-fold (P<0.0001) on Day 15 compared to Day 3. Pg is a component of cellular junctions and its up-regulation may have a role in the uterine glandular epithelium. Heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27) was higher on Day 15 than on Day 3 (P<0.01) and Hsp27 was 1.4-fold higher in the ipsilateral compared to the contralateral uterine horn (P<0.01). Hsp27 may be secreted in response to potential stresses in the uterus or act as a molecular chaperone. On Day 7 there was no difference (P<0.05) in the pattern of proteins secreted between cows with low (2.7±0.10ng/ml) and high (4.8±0.13 ng/ml) concentrations of systemic progesterone on Day 7. The results of these studies have shown that dramatic changes occur in protein expression across the bovine oestrous cycle. Additionally, it emphasises the need for gene studies to be followed with protein studies as an adjunct or complementary tool. Proteins have a wide range of essential roles in the uterus and together these studies provide novel information on protein expression in the uterus of the cow

Electron shielding studies - Experimental program Technical summary report, 1 Aug. 1968 - 31 Dec. 1969

Electron shielding and bremsstrahlung energy spectra for tin, gold, and silve

On the Minimum Distance of Generalized Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes

Families of generalized spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (GSC-LDPC) code ensembles can be formed by terminating protograph-based generalized LDPC convolutional (GLDPCC) codes. It has previously been shown that ensembles of GSC-LDPC codes constructed from a protograph have better iterative decoding thresholds than their block code counterparts, and that, for large termination lengths, their thresholds coincide with the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the underlying generalized LDPC block code ensemble. Here we show that, in addition to their excellent iterative decoding thresholds, ensembles of GSC-LDPC codes are asymptotically good and have large minimum distance growth rates.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 201

Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes Constructed from Protographs

In this paper, we construct protograph-based spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes by coupling together a series of L disjoint, or uncoupled, LDPC code Tanner graphs into a single coupled chain. By varying L, we obtain a flexible family of code ensembles with varying rates and frame lengths that can share the same encoding and decoding architecture for arbitrary L. We demonstrate that the resulting codes combine the best features of optimized irregular and regular codes in one design: capacity approaching iterative belief propagation (BP) decoding thresholds and linear growth of minimum distance with block length. In particular, we show that, for sufficiently large L, the BP thresholds on both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGNC) saturate to a particular value significantly better than the BP decoding threshold and numerically indistinguishable from the optimal maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the uncoupled LDPC code. When all variable nodes in the coupled chain have degree greater than two, asymptotically the error probability converges at least doubly exponentially with decoding iterations and we obtain sequences of asymptotically good LDPC codes with fast convergence rates and BP thresholds close to the Shannon limit. Further, the gap to capacity decreases as the density of the graph increases, opening up a new way to construct capacity achieving codes on memoryless binary-input symmetric-output (MBS) channels with low-complexity BP decoding.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Control of visual imagery in mental disorder

Not availabl

A survey of the administration of extra-curricular activities and the extra-curricular activities of business teachers in the high schools of Massachusetts and Vermont having a pupil enrollment of two hundred or less in grades nine to twelve

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Quasi-Cyclic Asymptotically Regular LDPC Codes

Families of "asymptotically regular" LDPC block code ensembles can be formed by terminating (J,K)-regular protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes. By varying the termination length, we obtain a large selection of LDPC block code ensembles with varying code rates, minimum distance that grows linearly with block length, and capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds, despite the fact that the terminated ensembles are almost regular. In this paper, we investigate the properties of the quasi-cyclic (QC) members of such an ensemble. We show that an upper bound on the minimum Hamming distance of members of the QC sub-ensemble can be improved by careful choice of the component protographs used in the code construction. Further, we show that the upper bound on the minimum distance can be improved by using arrays of circulants in a graph cover of the protograph.Comment: To be presented at the 2010 IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Dublin, Irelan