19,633 research outputs found
Electronic integrator for gyro rate output voltages
Circuit which integrates spacecraft gyro output voltages to provide analog position signals has been developed. Accurate integration is provided by all solid state system which uses no choppers and takes advantage of commercially available flight qualified components
MRI and clinical resolution of a suspected intracranial toxoplasma granuloma with medical treatment in a domestic short hair cat
A two-year-old cat was presented with a left paradoxical vestibular syndrome. MRI of the brain revealed an extra-axial homogenously contrast enhancing mass in the region of the left caudal cerebellar peduncle. Toxoplasma serology was consistent with active infection and the lesion was suspected to be a toxoplasma granuloma. Following eight weeks of tapering oral prednisolone and 11 weeks of oral clindamycin treatment, repeat MRI revealed resolution of the lesion. Eighteen months after initial diagnosis, the cat remained neurologically normal. Differential diagnoses for a solitary, extra-axial, contrast enhancing mass lesion in the feline brain should include toxoplasma granuloma, which can undergo MRI and clinical resolution with medical treatment
The spatial distribution and time evolution of impact-generated magnetic fields
The production of magnetic fields was revealed by laboratory hypervelocity impacts in easily vaporized targets. As quantified by pressure measurements, high frame-rate photography, and electrostatic probes, these impacts tend to produce large quantities of slightly ionized vapor, which is referred to as impact-generated plasma. Nonaligned electron density and temperature gradients within this plasma may lead to production of the observed magnetic fields. Past experiments were limited to measuring a single component of the impact-generated magnetic fields at only a few locations about the developing impact crater and consequently gave little information about the field production mechanism. To understand this mechanism, the techniques were extended to map the three components of the magnetic field both in space and time. By conducting many otherwise identical experiments with arrayed magnetic detectors, a preliminary 3-D picture was produced of impact-generated magnetic fields as they develop through time
Enhanced magnetic field production during oblique hypervelocity impacts
The natural remanent magnetization of the lunar surface as displayed in returned lunar samples and the data returned by the Apollo subsatellite magnetometer has an unexpectedly high magnitude and exhibits spatial variation at all scales. The origin of the lunar remanent fields may be due to crustal remanence of a core dynamo field occurring early in lunar history prior to extensive modification by impact or remanence of transient fields, particularly associated with impacts, occurring on a local scale throughout lunar history. The presence of an early core dynamo field would have strong consequences for the formation and early evolution of the Moon, yet to deconvolve the role that an internally generated core dynamo field may have had, it is necessary to understand how the magnetic state of the lunar surface has developed through time. Impact-induced magnetism may be an important component of the present magnetic state of the lunar surface. New theoretical considerations suggest that transient magnetic fields within plasma produced by hypervelocity meteorite impacts may have greater significance at larger scales than previously thought
Scaling and singularities in the entrainment of globally-coupled oscillators
The onset of collective behavior in a population of globally coupled
oscillators with randomly distributed frequencies is studied for phase
dynamical models with arbitrary coupling. The population is described by a
Fokker-Planck equation for the distribution of phases which includes the
diffusive effect of noise in the oscillator frequencies. The bifurcation from
the phase-incoherent state is analyzed using amplitude equations for the
unstable modes with particular attention to the dependence of the nonlinearly
saturated mode on the linear growth rate . In general
we find where is the
diffusion coefficient and is the mode number of the unstable mode. The
unusual factor arises from a singularity in the cubic term of
the amplitude equation.Comment: 11 pages (Revtex); paper submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Recommended from our members
Petrography and bulk composition of Miller Range 05035: a new lunar VLT gabbro
Miller Range (MIL) 05035 is a crystalline lunar mare gabbroic meteorite collected in Antarctica in 2005 [1]. It is an important new sample in the lunar meteorite (LM) collection as it is only one of ~8 to be classified as basaltic in nature. MIL 05035 is coarsely grained with large pyroxene grains ( 8mm) subophitically enclosing plagioclase grains ( 6mm), and accessory ilmenite, spinel, silica and sulphide phases
Elastomer Compound Developed for High Wear Applications
The U.S. Army is currently spending 300 million dollars per year replacing rubber track pads. An experimental rubber compound has been developed which exhibits 2 to 3 times greater service life than standard production pad compounds. To improve the service life of the tank track pads various aspects of rubber chemistry were explored including polymer, curing and reinforcing systems. Compounds that exhibited superior physical properties based on laboratory data were then fabricated into tank pads and field tested. This paper will discuss the compounding studies, laboratory data and field testing that led to the high wear elastomer compound
An empirical temperature calibration for the Delta a photometric system. II. The A-type and mid F-type star
With the Delta a photometric system, it is possible to study very distant
galactic and even extragalactic clusters with a high level of accuracy. This
can be done with a classical color-magnitude diagram and appropriate
isochrones. The new calibration presented in this paper is a powerful
extension. For open clusters, the reddening is straightforward for an
estimation via Isochrone fitting and is needed in order to calculate the
reddening-free, temperature sensitive, index (g1-y)0. As a last step, the
calibration can be applied to individual stars. Because no a-priori
reddening-free photometric parameters are available for the investigated
spectral range, we have applied the dereddening calibrations of the Stromgren
uvbybeta system and compared them with extinction models for the Milky Way. As
expected from the sample of bright stars, the extinction is negligible for
almost all objects. As a next step, already established calibrations within the
Stromgren uvbybeta, Geneva 7-color, and Johnson UBV systems were applied to a
sample of 282 normal stars to derive a polynomial fit of the third degree for
the averaged effective temperatures to the individual (g1-y)0 values with a
mean of the error for the whole sample of Delta T(eff) is 134K, which is lower
than the value in Paper I for hotter stars. No statistically significant effect
of the rotational velocity on the precision of the calibration was found.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted by A&
Cystatins as calpain inhibitors: Engineered chicken cystatin- and stefin B-kininogen domain 2 hybrids support a cystatin-like mode of interaction with the catalytic subunit of μ-calpain
Within the cystatin superfamily, only kininogen domain 2 (KD2) is able to inhibit μ- and m-calpain. In an attempt to elucidate the structural requirements of cystatins for calpain inhibition, we constructed recombinant hybrids of human stefin B (an intracellular family 1 cystatin) with KD2 and Delta L110 deletion mutants of chicken cystatin-KD2 hybrids. Substitution of the N-terminal contact region of stefin B by the corresponding KD2 sequence resulted in a calpain inhibitor of K-i = 188 nM. Deletion of L110, which forms a beta -bulge in family 1 and 2 cystatins but is lacking in KD2, improved inhibition of mu -calpain 4- to 8-fold. All engineered cystatins were temporary inhibitors of calpain due to slow substrate-like cleavage of a single peptide bond corresponding to Gly9-Ala10 in chicken cystatin. Biomolecular interaction analysis revealed that, unlike calpastatin, the cystatin-type inhibitors do not bind to the calmodulin-like domain of the small subunit of calpain, and their interaction with the mu -calpain heterodimer is completely prevented by a synthetic peptide comprising subdomain B of calpastatin domain 1. Based on these results we propose that (i) cystatin-type calpain inhibitors interact with the active site of the catalytic domain of calpain in a similar cystatin-like mode as with papain and (ii) the potential for calpain inhibition is due to specific subsites within the papain-binding regions of the general cystatin fold
- …