270 research outputs found
A Service Life Analysis of Coast Guard C-130 Aircraft
The U. S. Coast Guard, much like the rest of the Armed Services, is facing a dramatic transformation of its forces to meet current and future service requirements. The Coast Guard has responded to this transformation by initiating the Deepwater System, a complete review of the offshore mission requirements and the modernization of its infrastructure. In particular, Deepwater will review and modernize the Coast Guard\u27s aviation assets, improving aircraft systems, airborne sensors, and communications and information management systems. However, these capability advancements will take time and money to implement, and will require careful management of the current resources to ensure a smooth transition. One of the oldest and most versatile Coast Guard aircraft is the C-130, which the Coast Guard uses for Long Range Surveillance missions (LRS), as well as for logistics transport. Service life decisions regarding the C-130 are complicated by aging aircraft issues, and the forced introduction of a new generation C-130. It will be difficult for Coast Guard decision makers to select how program funding should be executed within the C-130 fleet. This study examines how long the current airframes can safely remain in service, how much the remaining service life will cost, and what level of availability can be realized for the rest of the service life. Once these questions can be reasonably answered, it will then be possible to perform an insightful and justifiable analysis of alternatives for modernizing, sustaining, and if necessary retiring the C-130s.46 Leaders at the United States Coast Guard\u27s Aircraft Repair and Service Center (ARSC) in Elizabeth City, North Carolina recently formalized their planning and analysis functions by adding a dedicated branch to their command structure. The Planning and Analysis Branch intends to apply computer modeling and simulation to study the impact of process changes to the various Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) lines. This research considers the applicability of this type of modeling and simulation, using ARENA to study the current HH-6OJ PDM process. The contribution of this research is a methodology specific to ARSC needs, an analysis of methodology based on a discrete event simulation model of PDM lines, and a specific case study demonstrating the methodologies. The response variable of interest is average PDM process time as a function of either in-sourcing or out-sourcing labor for a major process step. The research includes development and evaluation of a macro-level process model using ARENA 5.0
Victims and the sentencing process: developing participatory rights?
Recent years have seen a number of developments pertaining to the notion that victims should be afforded a ‘voice’ in the criminal justice system. The theoretical and structural parameters of the adversarial system are not, however, conducive to exercising such a role. For many, conferring procedural rights on victims jeopardises the due process rights of the accused, as well as the public nature of the criminal justice system. In light of the recent decision to roll out the ‘Victims' Focus Scheme’ across England and Wales, this paper explores a number of issues of principle that arise – not least the deeper policy implications of an apparent re-alignment of the normative parameters of the criminal justice system to incorporate the private interests of third parties
Autonomous control of underground mining vehicles using reactive navigation
Describes how many of the navigation techniques developed by the robotics research community over the last decade may be applied to a class of underground mining vehicles (LHDs and haul trucks). We review the current state-of-the-art in this area and conclude that there are essentially two basic methods of navigation applicable. We describe an implementation of a reactive navigation system on a 30 tonne LHD which has achieved full-speed operation at a production mine
A survey of American neurologists about brain death: understanding the conceptual basis and diagnostic tests for brain death
Tracking the quark-gluon plasma
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 171).by Michael I. Duff.M.Eng
Trifocal Relative Pose from Lines at Points and its Efficient Solution
We present a new minimal problem for relative pose estimation mixing point
features with lines incident at points observed in three views and its
efficient homotopy continuation solver. We demonstrate the generality of the
approach by analyzing and solving an additional problem with mixed point and
line correspondences in three views. The minimal problems include
correspondences of (i) three points and one line and (ii) three points and two
lines through two of the points which is reported and analyzed here for the
first time. These are difficult to solve, as they have 216 and - as shown here
- 312 solutions, but cover important practical situations when line and point
features appear together, e.g., in urban scenes or when observing curves. We
demonstrate that even such difficult problems can be solved robustly using a
suitable homotopy continuation technique and we provide an implementation
optimized for minimal problems that can be integrated into engineering
applications. Our simulated and real experiments demonstrate our solvers in the
camera geometry computation task in structure from motion. We show that new
solvers allow for reconstructing challenging scenes where the standard two-view
initialization of structure from motion fails.Comment: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. DMS-1439786 while most authors were in residence
at Brown University's Institute for Computational and Experimental Research
in Mathematics -- ICERM, in Providence, R
Amplifier-free slab-coupled optical waveguide optoelectronic oscillator systems.
We demonstrate a free-running 3-GHz slab-coupled optical waveguide (SCOW) optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with low phase-noise (-120 dBc/Hz at 1-kHz offset) and ultra-low sidemode spurs. These sidemodes are indistinguishable from noise on a spectrum analyzer measurement (88 dB down from carrier). The SCOW-OEO uses high-power low-noise SCOW components in a single-loop cavity employing 1.5-km delay. The noise properties of our SCOW external-cavity laser (SCOWECL) and SCOW photodiode (SCOWPD) are characterized and shown to be suitable for generation of high spectral purity microwave tones. Through comparisons made with SCOW-OEO topologies employing amplification, we observe the sidemode levels to be degraded by any amplifiers (optical or RF) introduced within the OEO cavity
The Effect of Race and Gender on Attributions of Stalking
© 2020 by the Southwestern Social Science Association Objective: This study is concerned with examining the impact of the extralegal factors of race and gender in attributions of stalking and motivation in examples of heterosexual, low-level stalking behavior. Methods: A 4 (race pairing of protagonist and target) × 2 (gender pairing of protagonist and target) between- participants design, using a vignette incorporating faces of the protagonist and target, asked participants to identify the extent to which they considered the behavior stalking, the motivation for that behavior, and provide responses to measures of racism and sexism. Results: The results identify that intraracial behavior is considered more like stalking than interracial behavior, that female-to-male behavior is considered more like stalking than male-to-female, and that gender and race do not impact on the attributed motivations for the behavior. Both racism and sexism do contribute to attributions of stalking. Conclusion: The influence of race on attributions of stalking mirrors that of findings in other areas of crime and is important in understanding decision making
Low-noise RF-amplifier-free slab-coupled optical waveguide coupled optoelectronic oscillators: physics and operation
We demonstrate a 10-GHz RF-amplifier-free slab-coupled optical waveguide coupled optoelectronic oscillator (SCOW-COEO) system operating with low phase-noise (-115 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz offset) and large sidemode suppression (70 dB measurement-limited). The optical pulses generated by the SCOW-COEO exhibit 26.8-ps pulse width (post compression) with a corresponding spectral bandwidth of 0.25 nm (1.8X transform-limited). We also investigate the mechanisms that limit the performance of the COEO. Our measurements indicate that degradation in the quality factor (Q) of the optical cavity significantly impacts COEO phase-noise through increases in the optical amplifier relative intensity noise (RIN)
Dimensions and Global Twist of Single-Layer DNA Origami Measured by Small-Angle X-ray Scattering
The
rational design of complementary DNA sequences can be used
to create nanostructures that self-assemble with nanometer precision.
DNA nanostructures have been imaged by atomic force microscopy and
electron microscopy. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) provides
complementary structural information on the ensemble-averaged state
of DNA nanostructures in solution. Here we demonstrate that SAXS can
distinguish between different single-layer DNA origami tiles that
look identical when immobilized on a mica surface and imaged with
atomic force microscopy. We use SAXS to quantify the magnitude of
global twist of DNA origami tiles with different crossover periodicities:
these measurements highlight the extreme structural sensitivity of
single-layer origami to the location of strand crossovers. We also
use SAXS to quantify the distance between pairs of gold nanoparticles
tethered to specific locations on a DNA origami tile and use this
method to measure the overall dimensions and geometry of the DNA nanostructure
in solution. Finally, we use indirect Fourier methods, which have
long been used for the interpretation of SAXS data from biomolecules,
to measure the distance between DNA helix pairs in a DNA origami nanotube.
Together, these results provide important methodological advances
in the use of SAXS to analyze DNA nanostructures in solution and insights
into the structures of single-layer DNA origami
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