Advanced water iodinating system

Potable water stores aboard manned spacecraft must remain sterile. Suitable sterilization techniques are needed to prevent microbial growth. The development of an advanced water iodinating system for possible application to the shuttle orbiter and other advanced spacecraft, is considered. The AWIS provides a means of automatically dispensing iodine and controlling iodination levels in potable water stores. In a recirculation mode test, simulating application of the AWIS to a water management system of a long term six man capacity space mission, noniodinated feed water flowing at 32.2 cu cm min was iodinated to 5 + or - ppm concentrations after it was mixed with previously iodinated water recirculating through a potable water storage tank. Also, the AWIS was used to successfully demonstrate its capability to maintain potable water at a desired I2 concentration level while circulating through the water storage tank, but without the addition of noniodinated water

Flares in Open Clusters with K2. I. M45 (Pleiades), M44 (Praesepe) and M67

The presence and strength of a stellar magnetic field and activity is rooted in a star's fundamental parameters such as mass and age. Can flares serve as an accurate stellar "clock"? To explore if we can quantify an activity-age relation in the form of a flaring-age relation, we measured trends in the flaring rates and energies for stars with different masses and ages. We investigated the time-domain photometry provided by Kepler's follow-up mission K2 and searched for flares in three solar metallicity open clusters with well-known ages, M45 (0.125 Gyr), M44 (0.63 Gyr), and M67 (4.3 Gyr). We updated and employed the automated flare finding and analysis pipeline Appaloosa, originally designed for Kepler. We introduced a synthetic flare injection and recovery subroutine to ascribe detection and energy recovery rates for flares in a broad energy range for each light curve. We collected a sample of 1 761 stars, mostly late-K to mid-M dwarfs and found 751 flare candidates with energies ranging from $4\cdot10^{32}$ erg to $6\cdot10^{34}$ erg, of which 596 belong to M45, 155 to M44, and none to M67. We find that flaring activity depends both on $T_\mathrm{eff}$, and age. But all flare frequency distributions have similar slopes with $\alpha \approx2.0-2.4$, supporting a universal flare generation process. We discuss implications for the physical conditions under which flares occur, and how the sample's metallicity and multiplicity affect our results.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, appendix. Accepted to A&

The cryogenic wind tunnel concept for high Reynolds number testing

Theoretical considerations indicate that cooling the wind-tunnel test gas to cryogenic temperatures will provide a large increase in Reynolds number with no increase in dynamic pressure while reducing the tunnel drive-power requirements. Studies were made to determine the expected variations of Reynolds number and other parameters over wide ranges of Mach number, pressure, and temperature, with due regard to avoiding liquefaction. Practical operational procedures were developed in a low-speed cryogenic tunnel. Aerodynamic experiments in the facility demonstrated the theoretically predicted variations in Reynolds number and drive power. The continuous-flow-fan-driven tunnel is shown to be particularly well suited to take full advantage of operating at cryogenic temperatures

Analysis of validation tests of the Langley pilot transonic cryogenic tunnel

A pilot transonic cryogenic pressure tunnel has recently been developed and proof tested at the NASA Langley Research Center. In addition to providing an attractive method for obtaining high Reynolds number results at moderate aerodynamic loadings and tunnel power, this unique tunnel allows the independent determination of the effects of Reynolds number, Mach number, and dynamic pressure (aeroelasticity) on the aerodynamic characteristics of the model under test. The proof of concept experimental and theoretical studies are briefly reviewed. Experimental results obtained on both two- and three-dimensional models have substantiated that cryogenic test conditions can be set accurately and that cryogenic gaseous nitrogen is a valid test medium

Role of substrate induced electron–phonon interactions in biased graphitic bilayers

Bilayers of graphitic materials have potential applications in field effect transistors (FETs). A potential difference applied between certain ionic bilayers made from insulating graphitic materials such as BN, ZnO and AlN could reduce gap sizes, turning them into useful semiconductors. On the other hand, opening of a small semiconducting gap occurs in graphene bilayers under applied field. The aim here is to investigate to what extent substrate induced electron–phonon interactions (EPIs) modify this gap change. We examine EPIs in several lattice configurations of graphitic bilayers, using a perturbative approach. The typical effect of EPIs on the ionic bilayers is an undesirable gap widening. The size of this gap change varies considerably with lattice structure and the magnitude of the bias. When bias is larger than the non-interacting gap size, EPIs have the smallest effect on the bandgap, especially in configurations with $A{{A}^{\prime}}$ and $AB$ structures. Thus careful selection of substrate, lattice configuration and bias strength to minimise the effects of EPIs could be important for optimising the properties of electronic devices. We use parameters related to BN in this article. In practice, the results presented here are broadly applicable to other graphitic bilayers, and are likely to be qualitatively similar in metal dichalcogenide bilayers such as MoS2, which are already of high interest for their use in FETs

Portable headset microphone checker

Simple and reliable test system gives go/no-go indication of output level of headset microphones. Portable system has its own internal battery power supply and can be used in field or in laboratory with wide variety of headset types

Phase separation and electron pairing in repulsive Hubbard clusters

Exact thermal studies of small (4-site, 5-site and 8-site) Hubbard clusters with local electron repulsion yield intriguing insight into phase separation, charge-spin separation, pseudogaps, condensation, in particular, pairing fluctuations away from half filling (near optimal doping). These exact calculations, carried out in canonical (i.e. for fixed electron number N) and grand canonical (i.e. fixed chemical potential $\mu$) ensembles, monitoring variations in temperature T and magnetic field h, show rich phase diagrams in a T-$\mu$ space consisting of pairing fluctuations and signatures of condensation. These electron pairing instabilities are seen when the onsite Coulomb interaction U is smaller than a critical value U$_c$(T) and they point to a possible electron pairing mechanism. The specific heat, magnetization, charge pairing and spin pairing provide strong support for the existence of competing (paired and unpaired) phases near optimal doping in these clusters as observed in recent experiments in doped La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_{4+y}$ high T$_c$ superconductors.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure