Donor Advisors and Philanthropic Strategy

Based on a literature review and interviews, explores how donor advisors shape the philanthropic strategies of the wealthy. Looks at the key activities and elements of effective advising, the need for training, and the potential for collaboration

A unified approach to suboptimum control

Suboptimal control based on linear changes in vicinity of optimum trajector

Design of a three-axis attitude control system for a spacecraft acted upon by random perturbations Final report

Three axis attitude control system for spacecraft under random perturbation

Stability of attitude control systems acted upon by random perturbations

Mathematical models on stability of attitude control systems acted upon by random perturbation processe

Additional studies of quasi-optimum feedback control techniques

Quasi-optimal control technique for space vehicle attitude, bounded acceleration rendezvous in free space, and aircraft landing proble

Extra dimensions, orthopositronium decay, and stellar cooling

In a class of extra dimensional models with a warped metric and a single brane the photon can be localized on the brane by gravity only. An intriguing feature of these models is the possibility of the photon escaping into the extra dimensions. The search for this effect has motivated the present round of precision orthopositronium decay experiments. We point out that in this framework a photon in plasma should be metastable. We consider the astrophysical consequences of this observation, in particular, what it implies for the plasmon decay rate in globular cluster stars and for the core-collapse supernova cooling rate. The resulting bounds on the model parameter exceed the possible reach of orthopositronium experiments by many orders of magnitude.Comment: 13 pages, no figure

Robust autoresonant excitation in the plasma beat-wave accelerator: a theoretical study

A modified version of the Plasma Beat-Wave Accelerator scheme is introduced and analyzed, which is based on autoresonant phase-locking of the nonlinear Langmuir wave to the slowly chirped beat frequency of the driving lasers via adiabatic passage through resonance. This new scheme is designed to overcome some of the well-known limitations of previous approaches, namely relativistic detuning and nonlinear modulation or other non-uniformity or non-stationarity in the driven Langmuir wave amplitude, and sensitivity to frequency mismatch due to measurement uncertainties and density fluctuations and inhomogeneities

Approximating the monomer-dimer constants through matrix permanent

The monomer-dimer model is fundamental in statistical mechanics. However, it is #P-complete in computation, even for two dimensional problems. A formulation in matrix permanent for the partition function of the monomer-dimer model is proposed in this paper, by transforming the number of all matchings of a bipartite graph into the number of perfect matchings of an extended bipartite graph, which can be given by a matrix permanent. Sequential importance sampling algorithm is applied to compute the permanents. For two-dimensional lattice with periodic condition, we obtain $0.6627\pm0.0002$, where the exact value is $h_2=0.662798972834$. For three-dimensional lattice with periodic condition, our numerical result is $0.7847\pm0.0014$, {which agrees with the best known bound $0.7653 \leq h_3 \leq 0.7862$.}Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure