Flight experience with the Ogee wing at low speed

Flight test of ogee wing at low speeds - flight characteristics and landing approach speed evaluatio

Fornax compact object survey FCOS: On the nature of Ultra Compact Dwarf galaxies

The results of the Fornax Compact Object Survey (FCOS) are presented. The FCOS aims at investigating the nature of the Ultra Compact Dwarf galaxies (UCDs) recently discovered in the center of the Fornax cluster (Drinkwater et al. 2000). 280 unresolved objects in the magnitude space covering UCDs and bright globular clusters (18<V<21 mag) were observed spectroscopically. 54 new Fornax members were discovered, plus five of the seven already known UCDs. Their distribution in radial velocity, colour, magnitude and space was investigated. It is found that bright compact objects (V<20 or M_V<-11.4 mag), including the UCDs, have a higher mean velocity than faint compact objects (V>20 mag) at 96% confidence. The mean velocity of the bright compact objects is consistent with that of the dwarf galaxy population in Fornax, but inconsistent with that of NGC 1399's globular cluster system at 93.5% confidence. The compact objects follow a colour magnitude relation with a slope very similar to that of normal dEs, but shifted about 0.2 mag redwards. The magnitude distribution of compact objects shows a fluent transition between UCDs and GCs with an overpopulation of 8 +/- 4 objects for V<20 mag with respect to the extrapolation of NGC 1399's GC luminosity function. The spatial distribution of bright compact objects is in comparison to the faint ones more extended at 88% confidence. All our findings are consistent with the threshing scenario (Bekki et al. 2003), suggesting that a substantial fraction of compact Fornax members brighter than V~20 mag could be created by threshing dE,Ns. Fainter than V~20 mag, the majority of the objects seem to be genuine GCs. Our results are also consistent with merged stellar super-clusters (Fellhauer & Kroupa 2002) as an alternative explanation for the bright compact objects.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Some Flight Characteristics of a Deflected Slipstream V/STOL Aircraft

The Ryan VZ-3RY V/STOL test vehicle was flight tested over the airspeed range from 80 knots to below 6 knots. The deflected slipstream concept proved to be better suited to STOL than VTOL operation. Adverse ground effects prevented operation close to the ground at speeds less than 20 knots and below approximately 15 feet altitude. Steep glide slopes to landing (up to -16 deg) at approximately 40 knots were achieved, but steep, slow, descending flight did not appear feasible. Full-span leading-edge slats markedly increased the descent capability and reduced the minimum level flight speed

When It’s (Mostly) the Taking Part that Counts: The Post-Application Consequences of Employment Tribunal Claims

This paper uses the 2003 Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications to examine the post-application employment consequences for individuals registering complaints to Employment Tribunals following dismissal or redundancy. In examining this issue, we consider a number of pieces of evidence: (i) the probability of finding another job; (ii) the time taken to get a new job and (iii) the pay/status of the new job. It is found that age plays a significant role in aspects (i) and (iii), whilst those who previously held managerial positions generally took longest to get a new job and found it most difficult to achieve a similar level of pay/status in their current jobs. Long-term health problems/disability is associated with significantly worse outcomes on all three measures. Respondents whose cases were dismissed by the tribunals without hearings fared worst in terms of obtaining a new job and the time it took to do so compared with other outcomes. There were, however, fewer differences by outcome in the relative pay/status of the claimant’s current job.employment tribunals, job separations, job search

Estimating and Measuring Application Latency of Typical Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) - Based Simulation Architecture

One of the challenges in a distributed virtual environment stems from the requirement to simultaneously execute the simulations in realtime to support human interaction, in conjunction with maintaining a consistent view of the shared simulated environment. Maintaining a consistent set of simulation state data in the presence of network latency is difficult if individual data items are updated frequently. The principle application of DIS-based simulation environments has been in the domain of training where a consistent view or its correctness is often judged in subjective terms such as the simulation looking and feeling correct. New application areas for these systems are emerging in the analysis and test domains. For these domains, quantifying shared state consistency in terms of overall distributed application architecture is desirable. This research effort will investigate and validate methods to calculate and measure the latency effects that consider the structure of the applications themselves. Additional latencies introduced due to the software architecture may significantly affect the consistency of the simulation. An improved understanding is beneficial to the Air Force where real-time distributed simulations used for the purpose of analyzing the systems they simulate and the support of live test events

Quasar-galaxy associations

There is controversy about the measurement of statistical associations between bright quasars and faint, presumably foreground galaxies. We look at the distribution of galaxies around an unbiased sample of 63 bright, moderate redshift quasars using a new statistic based on the separation of the quasar and its nearest neighbour galaxy. We find a significant excess of close neighbours at separations less than about 10 arcsec which we attribute to the magnification by gravitational lensing of quasars which would otherwise be too faint to be included in our sample. About one quarter to one third of the quasars are so affected although the allowed error in this fraction is large.Comment: uuencoded Postscript file (including figures and tables), SUSSEX-AST 94/8-

Interactive manipulation of microparticles in an octagonal sonotweezer

An ultrasonic device for micro-patterning and precision manipulation of micrometre-scale particles is demonstrated. The device is formed using eight piezoelectric transducers shaped into an octagonal cavity. By exciting combinations of transducers simultaneously, with a controlled phase delay between them, different acoustic landscapes can be created, patterning micro-particles into lines, squares, and more complex shapes. When operated with all eight transducers the device can, with appropriate phase control, manipulate the two dimensional acoustic pressure gradient; it thus has the ability to position and translate a single tweezing zone to different locations on a surface in a precise and programmable manner

When it's (mostly) the taking part that counts: the post-application consequences of employment tribunal claims

This paper uses the 2003 Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications to examine the post-application employment consequences for individuals registering complaints to Employment Tribunals following dismissal or redundancy. In examining this issue, we consider a number of pieces of evidence: (i) the probability of finding another job; (ii) the time taken to get a new job and (iii) the pay/status of the new job. It is found that age plays a significant role in aspects (i) and (iii), whilst those who previously held managerial positions generally took longest to get a new job and found it most difficult to achieve a similar level of pay/status in their current jobs. Long-term health problems/disability is associated with significantly worse outcomes on all three measures. Respondents whose cases were dismissed by the tribunals without hearings fared worst in terms of obtaining a new job and the time it took to do so compared with other outcomes. There were, however, fewer differences by outcome in the relative pay/status of the claimant's current job

X-ray properties of the Parkes sample of flat-spectrum radio sources: dust in radio-loud quasars?

We investigate the X-ray properties of the Parkes sample of flat-spectrum radio sources using data from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey and archival pointed PSPC observations. In total, 163 of the 323 sources are detected. For the remaining 160 sources 2 sigma upper limits to the X-ray flux are derived. We present power-law photon indices for 115 sources, which were either determined with a hardness ratio technique or from direct fits to pointed PSPC data. For quasars, the soft X-ray photon index is correlated with redshift and with radio spectral index. Webster et al. (1995) discovered many sources with unusually red optical continua among the quasars of this sample and interpreted this result in terms of extinction by dust. Although the X-ray spectra in general do not show excess absorption, we find that low-redshift optically red quasars have significantly lower soft X-ray luminosities on average than objects with blue optical continua. The difference disappears for higher redshifts, as is expected for intrinsic absorption by cold gas associated with the dust. Alternative explanations are briefly discussed. We conclude, however, that dust does play an important role in some of the radio-loud quasars with red optical continua.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, to appear in MNRA