Time maintenance of user clocks via the tracking and data relay satellite system

A system is described which uses the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) itself to compare the user satellite clock with a clock at the White Sands station that is referenced to Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). No command of the spacecraft by the system is required, and actual on-board clock corrections are made by the spacecraft control center at its discretion. Computer models were constructed using basic orbital parameters for user and TDRS satellites. With only first-order corrections and simple averaging techniques for constant clock rates, error measurement precision of better than one microsecond was obtained. More sophisticated computations should allow considerable improvement over this

Mars: Seasonally variable radar reflectivity

The 1971/1973 Mars data set acquired by the Goldstone Solar System Radar was analyzed. It was established that the seasonal variations in radar reflectivity thought to occur in only one locality on the planet (the Solis Lacus radar anomaly) occur, in fact, over the entire subequatorial belt observed by the Goldstone radar. Since liquid water appears to be the most likely cause of the reflectivity excursions, a permanent, year-round presence of subsurface water (frozen or thawed) in the Martian tropics can be inferred

An evaluation: The potential of discarded tires as a source of fuel

The destructive distillation of rubber tire samples was studied by thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, combustion calorimetry, and mass spectroscopy. The decomposition reaction was found to be exothermic and produced a mass loss of 65 percent. The gas evolution curves that were obtained indicate that a variety of organic materials are evolved simultaneously during the decomposition of the rubber polymer

Evidence-based Approach to Establish Space Suit Carbon Dioxide Limits

A literature survey was conducted to assess if published data (evidence) could help inform a space suit carbon dioxide (CO2) limit. The search identified more than 120 documents about human interaction with elevated CO2. Until now, the guiding philosophy has been to drive space suit CO2 as low as reasonably achievable. NASAs EVA Office requested an evidencebased approach to support a new generation of exploration-class extravehicular activity (EVA) space suits. Specific literature data about CO2 are not available for EVA in microgravity because EVA is an operational activity and not a research platform. However, enough data from groundbased research are available to facilitate a consensus of expert opinion on space suit CO2 limits. The compilation of data in this report can answer many but not all concerns about the consequences of hypercapnic exercise in a space suit. Inspired partial pressure of CO2 (PICO2) and not dry-gas partial pressure of CO2 (PCO2) is the appropriate metric for hypercapnic dose to establish space suit CO2 limits. The reduction of inspired gas partial pressures by saturation of the inspired gases with water vapor at 37C is a significant factor under conditions of hypobaric space suit operation. Otherwise healthy EVA astronauts will exhibit wide variability in responses to acute hypercapnia while at rest and during exercise. What is clear from the literature is the absence of prospective (objective) accept or reject criteria for CO2 exposure in general, and no such criteria exist for operating a space suit. There is no absolute Gold Standard for an acceptable acute hypercapnic limit, just a gradual decrease in performance as CO2 increases. Acceptable CO2 exposure limits are occupation, situation (learned or novel tasks), and personspecific. Investigators who measured hypercapnic physiology rarely correlated those changes to neurocognitive symptoms, and those that measured hypercapnic neurocognition rarely correlated those changes with physiology. Some answers about changes in neurocognition and functional EVA performance during hypercapnic exercise in a space suit await new research

The declining representativeness of the British party system, and why it matters

In a recent article, Michael Laver has explained ‘Why Vote-Seeking Parties May Make Voters Miserable’. His model shows that, while ideological convergence may boost congruence between governments and the median voter, it can reduce congruence between the party system and the electorate as a whole. Specifically, convergence can increase the mean distance between voters and their nearest party. In this article we show that this captures the reality of today’s British party system. Policy scale placements in British Election Studies from 1987 to 2010 confirm that the pronounced convergence during the past decade has left the Conservatives and Labour closer together than would be optimal in terms of minimising the policy distance between the average voter and the nearest major party. We go on to demonstrate that this comes at a cost. Respondents who perceive themselves as further away from one of the major parties in the system tend to score lower on satisfaction with democracy. In short, vote-seeking parties have left the British party system less representative of the ideological diversity in the electorate, and thus made at least some British voters miserable

Poor school attendance and exclusion: A systematic review protocol on educational risk factors for self-harm and suicidal behaviours

This is the final version. Available from BMJ Publishing Group via the DOI in this record.Introduction Schools have an important role in recognising and preventing self-harm and suicidal behaviour in their students, however little is known about which educational factors are associated with heightened risk We will systematically review the existing evidence on two key educational performance indicators that are routinely collected by school administrative systems: School attendance and exclusion We will investigate their association with self-harm and suicidal behaviour in school-age children and adolescents Knowledge of this association could help inform suicide prevention strategies at clinical, school and population levels Methods and analysis We will conduct a systematic search of Medline, EMBASE, PsycINFO, British Education Index and Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC) from 1 January 1990, and conduct a manual search for additional references We aim to identify studies that explore the association between poor school attendance or exclusion and self-harm or suicidal behaviours in school-age children and adolescents Two independent reviewers will screen titles, abstracts and full-text documents and independently extract relevant data for analysis Study quality will be assessed using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale A descriptive analysis will be performed, and where appropriate, results will be combined in meta-analyses Ethics and dissemination This is a systematic review of published literature, and therefore ethical approval will not be sought We will publish reports in health and education journals, present our work at conferences focused on school mental health and communicate our findings to practitioners and managers in public health, education and child mental health.Wellcome TrustMedical Research Council (MRC)National Institute of Health Research (NIHR

Rapid Quantification of Molecular Diversity for Selective Database Acquisition

There is an increasing need to expand the structural diversity of the molecules investigated in lead-discovery programs. One way in which this can be achieved is by acquiring external datasets that will enhance an existing database. This paper describes a rapid procedure for the selection of external datasets using a measure of structural diversity that is calculated from sums of pairwise intermolecular structural similarities

Heavy metal content of vegetables irrigated with mixtures of wastewater and sewage sludge in Zimbabwe: Implications for human health

There is growing public concern in Zimbabwe over the illegal cultivation of vegetables on soils amended with sewage sludge or irrigated with admixtures of sewage and sewage sludge. Excessive accumulation of heavy metals in agricultural soils may not only result in environmental contamination, but lead to elevated heavy metal uptake by crops, which may affect food quality and safety. The work reported here studied heavy metal concentrations in crops irrigated with sewage sludge and sewage/sewage sludge admixtures at Firle Municipal Farm in Harare. The crops analysed in this study are heavily contaminated with the four regulated elements Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn. This contamination is at its highest in two of the staple dietary crops maize and tsunga. Tsunga leaves contained 3.68 mg kg-1 Cd, over 18 times the permissible level by the EU standards (0.2 mg kg-1); Cu concentrations were 111 mg kg-1, 5 times the EU Standard (20 mg kg-1); concentrations of Pb were 6.77 mg kg-1, over 22 times the permissible levels allowed by both EU standards and UK guidelines (0.3 mg kg-1); Zn concentrations were 221 mg kg-1, over 4 times the guideline value (50 mg kg-1). The other plants (beans, maize, peppers and sugarcane) also contained concentrations of heavy metals above the permissible levels. Furthermore the concentrations observed in this study were higher than those reported by other workers who have examined vegetation from other contaminated sites. This study highlights the potential risks involved in the cultivation and consumption of vegetables on plots irrigated with sewage sludge, a practice which may place at risk the health of the urban population who consume these vegetables

Ab initio studies of phonon softening and high pressure phase transitions of alpha-quartz SiO2

Density functional perturbation theory calculations of alpha-quartz using extended norm conserving pseudopotentials have been used to study the elastic properties and phonon dispersion relations along various high symmetry directions as a function of bulk, uniaxial and non-hydrostatic pressure. The computed equation of state, elastic constants and phonon frequencies are found to be in good agreement with available experimental data. A zone boundary (1/3, 1/3, 0) K-point phonon mode becomes soft for pressures above P=32 GPa. Around the same pressure, studies of the Born stability criteria reveal that the structure is mechanically unstable. The phonon and elastic softening are related to the high pressure phase transitions and amorphization of quartz and these studies suggest that the mean transition pressure is lowered under non-hydrostatic conditions. Application of uniaxial pressure, results in a post-quartz crystalline monoclinic C2 structural transition in the vicinity of the K-point instability. This structure, intermediate between quartz and stishovite has two-thirds of the silicon atoms in octahedral coordination while the remaining silicon atoms remain tetrahedrally coordinated. This novel monoclinic C2 polymorph of silica, which is found to be metastable under ambient conditions, is possibly one of the several competing dense forms of silica containing octahedrally coordinated silicon. The possible role of high pressure ferroelastic phases in causing pressure induced amorphization in silica are discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figs., 8 Table