197 research outputs found
Beyond Severe Disabilities: A Functional Bibliography
This bibliography is divided into five broad categories to help users obtain information about specific areas. But, it is not an inclusive listing of the literature available
Determination of mean camber surfaces for wings having uniform chordwise loading and arbitrary spanwise loading in subsonic flow
The field of a uniformly loaded wing in subsonic flow is discussed in terms of the acceleration potential. It is shown that, for the design of such wings, the slope of the mean camber surface at any point can be determined by a line integration around the wing boundary. By an additional line integration around the wing boundary, this method is extended to include the case where the local section lift coefficient varies with spanwise location (the chordwise loading at every section still remaining uniform). For the uniformly loaded wing of polygonal plan form, the integrations necessary to determine the local slope of the surface and the further integration of the slopes to determine the ordinate can be done analytically. An outline of these integrations and the resulting formulas are included. Calculated results are given for a sweptback wing with uniform chordwise loading and a highly tapered spanwise loading, a uniformly loaded delta wing, a uniformly loaded sweptback wing, and the same sweptback wing with uniform chordwise loading but elliptical span load distribution
Platelets in the Newborn
Platelets were first described in the mid-nineteenth century. Since then, their roles were identified in hemostasis and thrombosis, inflammation, leukocyte interactions, angiogenesis, and cancer growth. But there is little information about such platelet functions in the newborn. Several studies highlighted some platelet differences between newborns and adults. Yet, in spite of these differences, healthy newborns appear to be adequately protected. A number of factors, however, were reported to negatively affect neonatal platelets. These include maternal hypertensive disorders or infections, neonatal asphyxia or respiratory distress, therapies such as ampicillin or indomethacin, and treatment modalities such as ventilators, nitric oxide, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Their effects on newborn platelets are usually transitory, lasting from several hours to a few days or weeks. If these effects are well characterized, they could serve as reporters for diagnosis and monitoring during therapy. Careful studies of neonatal platelets are needed to improve the understanding of basic physiology and pathophysiology in this cohort and to identify possible targets for intervention and therapy
Programming Robots With Events
International audienceWe introduce how to use event-based style to program robots through the INI programming language. INI features both built-in and user-defined events, a mechanism to handle various kinds of changes happening in the environment. Event handlers run in parallel either synchronously or asynchronously, and events can be reconfigured at runtime to modify their behavior when needed. We apply INI to the humanoid robot called Nao, for which we develop an object tracking program
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NEW METHOD FOR DETERMINATION OF ACTINIDES AND STRONTIUM IN ANIMAL TISSUE
The analysis of actinides in animal tissue samples is very important for environmental monitoring. There is a need to measure actinide isotopes with very low detection limits in animal tissue samples, including fish, deer, hogs, beef and shellfish. A new, rapid actinide separation method has been developed and implemented that allows the measurement of plutonium, neptunium, uranium, americium, curium and strontium isotopes in large animal tissue samples (100-200 g) with high chemical recoveries and effective removal of matrix interferences. This method uses stacked TEVA Resin{reg_sign}, TRU Resin{reg_sign} and DGA-Resin{reg_sign} cartridges from Eichrom Technologies (Darien, IL, USA) that allows the rapid separation of plutonium (Pu), neptunium (Np), uranium (U), americium (Am), and curium (Cm) using a single multi-stage column combined with alpha spectrometry. Sr-90 is collected on Sr Resin{reg_sign} from Eichrom Technologies (Darien, IL, USA). After acid digestion and furnace heating of the animal tissue samples, the actinides and Sr-89/90 are separated using column extraction chromatography. This method has been shown to be effective over a wide range of animal tissue matrices. By using vacuum box cartridge technology with rapid flow rates, sample preparation time is minimized
Galactic HI on the 50-AU scale in the direction of three extra-galactic sources observed with MERLIN
We present MERLIN observations of Galactic 21-cm HI absorption at an angular
resolution of c. 0.1-0.2 arcsec and a velocity resolution of 0.5 km/s, in the
direction of three moderately low latitude (-8< b <-12 deg) extragalactic radio
sources, 3C111, 3C123 and 3C161, all of which are heavily reddened. HI
absorption is observed against resolved background emission sources up to c. 2
arcsec in extent and we distinguish details of the opacity distribution within
1-1.5 arcsec regions towards 3C~123 and 3C~161. This study is the second MERLIN
investigation of small scale structure in interstellar HI (earlier work probed
Galactic HI in the directions of the compact sources 3C138 and 3C147). The
0.1-arcsec scale is intermediate between HI absorption studies made with other
fixed element interferometers with resolution of 1 to 10 arcsec and VLBI
studies with resolutions of 10-20 milli-arcsec. At a scale of 1 arcsec (about
500 AU), prominent changes in Galactic HI opacity in excess of 1-1.5 are
determined in the direction of 3C161 with a signal-to-noise ratio of at least
10 sigma. Possible fluctuations in the HI opacity at the level of about 1 are
detected at the 2.5-3 sigma level in the direction of 3C123.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures Accepted by MNRAS 2008 April
Investigation of flat spectrum radio sources by the interplanetary scintillation method at 111 MHz
Interplanetary scintillation observations of 48 of the 55 Augusto et al.
(1998) flat spectrum radio sources were carried out at 111 MHz using the
interplanetary scintillation method on the Large Phased Array (LPA) in Russia.
Due to the large size of the LPA beam (1\degr \times 0.5\degr) a careful
inspection of all possible confusion sources was made using extant large radio
surveys: 37 of the 48 sources are not confused. We were able to estimate the
scintillating flux densities of 13 sources, getting upper limits for the
remaining 35. Gathering more or improving extant VLBI data on these sources
might significantly improve our results. This proof-of-concept project tells us
that compact () flat spectrum radio sources show strong enough
scintillations at 111 MHz to establish/constrain their spectra (low-frequency
end).Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Far and mid infrared observations of two ultracompact H II regions and one compact CO clump
Two ultracompact H II regions (IRAS 19181+1349 and 20178+4046) and one
compact molecular clump (20286+4105) have been observed at far infrared
wavelengths using the TIFR 1 m balloon-borne telescope and at mid infrared
wavelengths using ISO. Far infrared observations have been made simultaneously
in two bands with effective wavelengths of ~ 150 and ~ 210 micron, using liquid
3He cooled bolometer arrays. ISO observations have been made in seven spectral
bands using the ISOCAM instrument; four of these bands cover the emission from
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules. In addition, IRAS survey data
for these sources in the four IRAS bands have been processed using the HIRES
routine. In the high resolution mid infrared maps as well as far infrared maps
multiple embedded energy sources have been resolved. There are structural
similarities between the images in the mid infrared and the large scale maps in
the far infrared bands, despite very different angular resolutions of the two.
Dust temperature and optical depth (tau_150 um) maps have also been generated
using the data from balloon-borne observations. Spectral energy distributions
(SEDs) for these sources have been constructed by combining the data from all
these observations. Radiation transfer calculations have been made to
understand these SEDs. Parameters for the dust envelopes in these sources have
been derived by fitting the observed SEDs. In particular, it has been found
that radial density distribution for three sources is diffrent. Whereas in the
case of IRAS 20178+4046, a steep distribution of the form r^-2 is favoured, for
IRAS 20286+4105 it is r^-1 and for IRAS 19181+1349 it the uniform distribution
(r^0). Line ratios for PAH bands have generally been found to be similar to
those for other compact H II regions but different from general H II regions.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics; (19 pages including 14 Figures
and 6 Tables
Interstellar absorptions towards the LMC: Small-scale density variations in Milky Way disc gas
Observations show that the ISM contains sub-structure on scales less than 1
pc, detected in the form of spatial and temporal variations in column densities
or optical depth. Despite the number of detections, the nature and ubiquity of
the small-scale structure in the ISM is not yet fully understood. We use UV
absorption data mainly from FUSE and partly from STIS of six LMC stars
(Sk-67{\deg}111, LH54-425, Sk-67{\deg}107, Sk-67{\deg}106, Sk-67{\deg}104, and
Sk-67{\deg}101), all located within 5 arcmin of each other, and analyse the
physical properties of the Galactic disc gas in front of the LMC on sub-pc
scales. We analyse absorption lines of a number of ions within the UV spectral
range. Most importantly, interstellar molecular hydrogen, neutral oxygen, and
fine-structure levels of neutral carbon have been used in order to study
changes in the density and the physical properties of the Galactic disc gas
over small angular scales. While most species do not show any significant
variation in their column densities, we find an enhancement of almost 2 dex for
H_2 from Sk-67{\deg}111 to Sk-67{\deg}101, accompanied by only a small
variation in the OI column density. Based on the formation-dissociation
equilibrium, we trace these variations to the actual density variations in the
molecular gas. On the smallest spatial scale of < 0.08 pc, between
Sk-67{\deg}107 and LH54-425, we find a gas density variation of a factor of
1.8. The line of sight towards LH54-425 does not follow the relatively smooth
change seen from Sk-67{\deg}101 to Sk-67{\deg}111, suggesting that
sub-structure might exist on a smaller spatial scale than the linear extent of
our sight-lines. Our observations suggest that the detected H_2 in these six
lines of sight is not necessarily physically connected, but that we are
sampling molecular cloudlets with pathlengths < 0.1-1.8 pc and possibly
different densities.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
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