Flexible foam erectable space structures Patent

Self-erectable space structures of flexible foam for application in planetary orbit

Correlation Statistics of Irregular and Spiral Galaxies Mapped in HI

Several measures of galaxy size and mass obtained from the neutral hydrogen mapping of 70 dwarf irregular galaxies presented in Paper I (Hoffman et al. 1996) are compared statistically to those for the set of all available HI-mapped dwarfs and HI-mapped spirals distributed within the same spatial volume to investigate variations in Tully-Fisher relations and in surface densities as functions of galaxy size and luminosity or mass. Some ambiguities due to the ``non-commutativity'' of the correlations among the variables are addressed and linear regressions of logarithms of blue luminosity, HI and optical radii, velocity profile half-width incorporating rotation and random motions, HI mass, and indicative dynamical mass are presented and analyzed. The surface density of HI is almost constant along the sequence of size/mass/luminosity while surface density of blue luminosity increases with galaxy size. For quantities not involving HI we find no evidence for a ``break'' between dwarfs and spirals, but we do find some curvature in velocity vs. radius and in the Tully-Fisher relation. There is an indication for a difference in the correlations involving HI mass or radius between dwarfs alone and spirals alone, in the sense that irregulars have somewhat more HI mass or slightly larger HI radii than spirals at a given blue luminosity, optical radius, or velocity profile width.Comment: AASTeX, to appear in ApJ, 26 pages + 3 tables + 12 figure

Fabrication and evaluation of advanced titanium and composite structural panels

Advanced manufacturing methods for titanium and composite material structures are being developed and evaluated. The focus for the manufacturing effort is the fabrication of full-scale structural panels which replace an existing shear panel on the upper wing surface of the NASA YF-12 aircraft. The program involves design, fabrication, ground testing, and Mach 3 flight service of full-scale structural panels and laboratory testing of representative structural element specimens

A low-loss photonic silica nanofiber for higher-order modes

Optical nanofibers confine light to subwavelength scales, and are of interest for the design, integration, and interconnection of nanophotonic devices. Here we demonstrate high transmission (> 97%) of the first family of excited modes through a 350 nm radius fiber, by appropriate choice of the fiber and precise control of the taper geometry. We can design the nanofibers so that these modes propagate with most of their energy outside the waist region. We also present an optical setup for selectively launching these modes with less than 1% fundamental mode contamination. Our experimental results are in good agreement with simulations of the propagation. Multimode optical nanofibers expand the photonic toolbox, and may aid in the realization of a fully integrated nanoscale device for communication science, laser science or other sensing applications.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, movies available onlin

The compatible conversion system

Compatible conversion system centralizes the solution of general problems arising from the use of direct access mass storage. It also provides a simple stable interface for the conversion of production programs to process on third generation computer system