34,426 research outputs found
Space shuttle digital flight control system
The space shuttle digital, fly by wire, flight control system presents an interesting challenge in avionics system design. In residence in each of four redundant general purpose computers at lift off are the guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for the entire flight. The mission is divided into several flight segments: first stage ascent, second stage ascent; abort to launch site, abort once around; on orbit operations, entry, terminal area energy management; and approach and landing. The FCS is complicated in that it must perform the functions to fly the shuttle as a boost vehicle, as a spacecraft, as a reentry vehicle, and as a conventional aircraft. The crew is provided with both manual and automatic modes of operations in all flight phases including touchdown and rollout
The southern dust pillars of the Carina Nebula
We present preliminary results from a detailed study towards four previously
detected bright mid-infrared sources in the southern part of the Carina Nebula:
G287.73--0.92, G287.84--0.82, G287.93--0.99 and G288.07--0.80. All of these
sources are located at the heads of giant dust pillars that point towards the
nearby massive star cluster, Trumpler 16. It is unclear if these pillars are
the prime sites for a new generation of triggered star formation or if instead
they are the only remaining parts of the nebula where ongoing star fromation
can take place.Comment: 2 pages, to appear in the proceedings of "Hot Star Workshop III: The
Earliest Phases of Massive Star Birth" (ed. P.A. Crowther
Parrondo-like behavior in continuous-time random walks with memory
The Continuous-Time Random Walk (CTRW) formalism can be adapted to encompass
stochastic processes with memory. In this article we will show how the random
combination of two different unbiased CTRWs can give raise to a process with
clear drift, if one of them is a CTRW with memory. If one identifies the other
one as noise, the effect can be thought as a kind of stochastic resonance. The
ultimate origin of this phenomenon is the same of the Parrondo's paradox in
game theoryComment: 8 pages, 3 figures, revtex; enlarged and revised versio
Universal Phase Diagram for High-Piezoelectric Perovskite Systems
Strong piezoelectricity in the perovskite-type PbZr(1-x)TixO3 (PZT) and
Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PZN-PT) systems is generally associated with the
existence of a morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) separating regions with
rhombohedral and tetragonal symmetry. An x-ray study of PZN-9%PT has revealed
the presence of a new orthorhombic phase at the MPB, and a near-vertical
boundary between the rhombohedral and orthorhombic phases, similar to that
found for PZT between the rhombohedral and monoclinic phases. We discuss the
results in the light of a recent theoretical paper by Vanderbilt and Cohen,
which attributes these low-symmetry phases to the high anharmonicity in these
oxide systems.Comment: REVTeX file. 4 pages,=A0 4 figures embedde
Mediation of Long Range Charge Transfer by Kondo Bound States
We present a theory of non-equilibrium long range charge transfer between
donor and acceptor centers in a model polymer mediated by magnetic exciton
(Kondo) bound states. Our model produces electron tunneling lengths easily
exceeding 10, as observed recently in DNA and organic charge transfer
systems. This long ranged tunneling is effective for weak to intermediate
donor-bridge coupling, and is enhanced both by weak to intermediate strength
Coulomb hole-electron attraction (through the orthogonality catastrophe) and by
coupling to local vibrational modes.Comment: Revised content (broadened scope, vibrations added), submitted to
Phys Rev Lett, added autho
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