9,736 research outputs found
Thermal conductivity and dielectric constant of silicate materials
Report on the thermal conductivity and dielectric constant of nonmetallic materials evaluates the mechanisms of heat transfer in evacuated silicate powders and establishes the complex dielectric constant of these materials. Experimental measurements and results are related to postulated lunar surface materials
Thermal conductivity and dielectric constant of silicate materials, 1 April 1965 - 31 August 1966
Heat transfer, and dielectric constants measurements in evacuated silicate powder
Abnormal negative feedback processing in first episode schizophrenia: evidence from an oculomotor rule switching task
Background. Previous studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired on executive tasks,
where positive and negative feedbacks are used to update task rules or switch attention. However, research to date
using saccadic tasks has not revealed clear deficits in task switching in these patients. The present study used an
oculomotor ā rule switching ā task to investigate the use of negative feedback when switching between task rules in
people with schizophrenia.
Method. A total of 50 patients with first episode schizophrenia and 25 healthy controls performed a task in which the association between a centrally presented visual cue and the direction of a saccade could change from trial to trial. Rule changes were heralded by an unexpected negative feedback, indicating that the cue-response mapping
had reversed.
Results. Schizophrenia patients were found to make increased errors following a rule switch, but these were almost entirely the result of executing saccades away from the location at which the negative feedback had been presented on the preceding trial. This impairment in negative feedback processing was independent of IQ.
Conclusions. The results not only confirm the existence of a basic deficit in stimulusāresponse rule switching in
schizophrenia, but also suggest that this arises from aberrant processing of response outcomes, resulting in a failure to appropriately update rules. The findings are discussed in the context of neurological and pharmacological
abnormalities in the conditions that may disrupt prediction error signalling in schizophrenia
Research study on materials processing in space Skylab experiment M553 - sphere forming
A research program was conducted to study the solidification of metals in the form of small spheres both in the one gravity environment of the earth laboratory and the low gravity environment of KC-135 trajectory flights and the Skylab 1/2 mission. The program had three phases. The details of the results of this program are contained in interim reports prepared at the conclusion of each of the three phases. This final report is intended to summarize the efforts and results described in detail in each of these interim reports, with particular emphasis on the differences observed between the ground-based and Skylab flight specimens
Optical Cluster-Finding with An Adaptive Matched-Filter Technique: Algorithm and Comparison with Simulations
We present a modified adaptive matched filter algorithm designed to identify
clusters of galaxies in wide-field imaging surveys such as the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey. The cluster-finding technique is fully adaptive to imaging surveys
with spectroscopic coverage, multicolor photometric redshifts, no redshift
information at all, and any combination of these within one survey. It works
with high efficiency in multi-band imaging surveys where photometric redshifts
can be estimated with well-understood error distributions. Tests of the
algorithm on realistic mock SDSS catalogs suggest that the detected sample is
~85% complete and over 90% pure for clusters with masses above 1.0*10^{14}
h^{-1} M_solar and redshifts up to z=0.45. The errors of estimated cluster
redshifts from maximum likelihood method are shown to be small (typically less
that 0.01) over the whole redshift range with photometric redshift errors
typical of those found in the Sloan survey. Inside the spherical radius
corresponding to a galaxy overdensity of Delta=200, we find the derived cluster
richness Lambda_{200} a roughly linear indicator of its virial mass M_{200},
which well recovers the relation between total luminosity and cluster mass of
the input simulation.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. 13 pages, 9 figure
Experiments to investigate particulate materials in reduced gravity fields
Study investigates agglomeration and macroscopic behavior in reduced gravity fields of particles of known properties by measuring and correlating thermal and acoustical properties of particulate materials. Experiment evaluations provide a basis for a particle behavior theory and measure bulk properties of particulate materials in reduced gravity
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