Nacelle design

The external cowlings of engine nacelles on large turbofan powered aircraft are good candidates for application of natural laminar flow. These nacelles usually have shorter characteristic lengths than other candidate surfaces such as wings and fuselages and therefore have lower characteristic Reynolds numbers. A conceptive figure of the natural flow nacelle (NLF) is shown. On the typical nacelle the flow accelerates to a curvature induced velocity peak near the lip and then decelerates over the remainder of the nacelle length. Transition occurs near the start of the deceleration, so turbulent flow with high friction coefficient exists over most of the nacelle length. On the other hand, the NLF nacelle is contoured to have an accelerating flow over most of its length, so transition is delayed, and a relatively lower friction drag exists over most of the nacelle. The motivation for development of the LFN is a potential 40 to 50 percent reduction in nacelle friction drag

Experimental Studies of the NaCs 53Π0 and a3Σ+ States

We report high resolution measurements of 372 NaCs 53Π0(v, J) ro-vibrational level energies in the range 0 ≤ v ≤ 22. The data have been used to construct NaCs 53Π0 potential energy curves using the Rydberg–Klein-Rees and inverted perturbation approximation methods. Bound-free 53Π0(v, J) → 1(a)3Σ+ emission has also been measured, and is used to determine the repulsive wall of the 1(a)3Σ+ state and the 53Π0 → 1(a)3Σ+ relative transition dipole moment function. Hyperfine structure in the 53Π0 state has not been observed in this experiment. This null result is explained using a simple vector coupling model

Thoracic Injury Effects Of Linear And Angular Karate Impacts

Skilled karate practitioners are reputed to be able to completely disable an opponent with one blow -- when necessary. Immediate questions arise as to whether karate participants: (a) can, in fact, deliver disabling injurious blows to the thorax, (b) can have a greater ability to damage the body with some technique types over others, and (c) can wear readily available safety equipment to temper blows to below the level of medically severe injury. The viscous response criteria (VCmax), based on chest compression and compression velocity, has been devised to estimate level of injury to the thorax or chest. Accordingly, a VCmax =1.0 m/s is the level for a 25% probability of severe injury, such as liver or lung laceration. Twelve international class karate competitors of 3rd, 4th, and 5th degree or higher (master class) black belt ranks, were evaluated impacting the thorax of an instrumented anthropometric test dummy (ATD) to determine the probable injury effects of linear (thrusting) and angular (striking or snapping) types of karate blows, with and without a chest protector. Techniques evaluated were the roundhouse kick, backfist strike, side-thrust kick, and the reverse punch. Data were analyzed using a 2*3*4 ANOVA design with Tukey's Studentized Range follow-up tests to discriminate within condition differences. The adjusted viscous response (VCmax) was the variable used for evaluation. Of the three skill classes evaluated, 3rd (M =1.2096, SD =.5309) and 4th (M =1.1127, SD =.4304) degree ranks generated statistically higher VCmax levels than master class competitors (M =.8036, SD =.2797) across all conaitions, F (2, 60) =7.57, F = .0012. The chest protector was found to be effective, F 0,60) =4.28, F =.0430, in attenuating the impact effects below the serious injury level (M =1.1382, SD = .4423 and M =.9535, SD = .4575, without and with the chest protector, respectively). The roundhouse kick (M =1.3778, SD =.4674) generated higher .VCmax than all other techniques, F (3, 60) =7.17, F = .0003,: the reverse punch (M =1.0122, SD =.3923); the side-thrust kick (M =.9538, SD =.4976); or the backfist strike (M =.8189, SD =.2986). No statistical difference was detected among the technique conditions. It was concluded that the highly skilled karate competitor could deliver severe or greater levels of damage to the thorax with karate techniques, especially the roundhouse kick. The level of damage to the thorax can be reduced below the "serious" level with the use of a chest protector

Daily Stress Recognition from Mobile Phone Data, Weather Conditions and Individual Traits

Research has proven that stress reduces quality of life and causes many diseases. For this reason, several researchers devised stress detection systems based on physiological parameters. However, these systems require that obtrusive sensors are continuously carried by the user. In our paper, we propose an alternative approach providing evidence that daily stress can be reliably recognized based on behavioral metrics, derived from the user's mobile phone activity and from additional indicators, such as the weather conditions (data pertaining to transitory properties of the environment) and the personality traits (data concerning permanent dispositions of individuals). Our multifactorial statistical model, which is person-independent, obtains the accuracy score of 72.28% for a 2-class daily stress recognition problem. The model is efficient to implement for most of multimedia applications due to highly reduced low-dimensional feature space (32d). Moreover, we identify and discuss the indicators which have strong predictive power.Comment: ACM Multimedia 2014, November 3-7, 2014, Orlando, Florida, US

Simulating Auxiliary Inputs, Revisited

For any pair $(X,Z)$ of correlated random variables we can think of $Z$ as a randomized function of $X$. Provided that $Z$ is short, one can make this function computationally efficient by allowing it to be only approximately correct. In folklore this problem is known as \emph{simulating auxiliary inputs}. This idea of simulating auxiliary information turns out to be a powerful tool in computer science, finding applications in complexity theory, cryptography, pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge. In this paper we revisit this problem, achieving the following results: \begin{enumerate}[(a)] We discuss and compare efficiency of known results, finding the flaw in the best known bound claimed in the TCC'14 paper "How to Fake Auxiliary Inputs". We present a novel boosting algorithm for constructing the simulator. Our technique essentially fixes the flaw. This boosting proof is of independent interest, as it shows how to handle "negative mass" issues when constructing probability measures in descent algorithms. Our bounds are much better than bounds known so far. To make the simulator $(s,\epsilon)$-indistinguishable we need the complexity $O\left(s\cdot 2^{5\ell}\epsilon^{-2}\right)$ in time/circuit size, which is better by a factor $\epsilon^{-2}$ compared to previous bounds. In particular, with our technique we (finally) get meaningful provable security for the EUROCRYPT'09 leakage-resilient stream cipher instantiated with a standard 256-bit block cipher, like $\mathsf{AES256}$.Comment: Some typos present in the previous version have been correcte

The chaining lemma and its application

We present a new information-theoretic result which we call the Chaining Lemma. It considers a so-called “chain” of random variables, defined by a source distribution X(0)with high min-entropy and a number (say, t in total) of arbitrary functions (T1,…, Tt) which are applied in succession to that source to generate the chain (Formula presented). Intuitively, the Chaining Lemma guarantees that, if the chain is not too long, then either (i) the entire chain is “highly random”, in that every variable has high min-entropy; or (ii) it is possible to find a point j (1 ≤ j ≤ t) in the chain such that, conditioned on the end of the chain i.e. (Formula presented), the preceding part (Formula presented) remains highly random. We think this is an interesting information-theoretic result which is intuitive but nevertheless requires rigorous case-analysis to prove. We believe that the above lemma will find applications in cryptography. We give an example of this, namely we show an application of the lemma to protect essentially any cryptographic scheme against memory tampering attacks. We allow several tampering requests, the tampering functions can be arbitrary, however, they must be chosen from a bounded size set of functions that is fixed a prior

Proton affinities of candidates for positively charged ambient ions in boreal forests

The optimized structures and proton affinities of a total of 81 nitrogen-containing bases, chosen based on field measurements of ambient positive ions, were studied using the CBS-QB3 quantum chemical method. The results were compared to values given in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Chemistry WebBook in cases where a value was listed. The computed values show good agreement with the values listed in NIST. Grouping the molecules based on their molecular formula, the largest calculated proton affinities for each group were also compared with experimentally observed ambient cation concentrations in a boreal forest. This comparison allows us to draw qualitative conclusions about the relative ambient concentrations of different nitrogen-containing organic base molecules

Turbofan mixed flow exhaust system

An improved exhaust system including a lobed mixer and an improved exhaust centerbody is provided. The improved exhaust centerbody includes means for cooperating with the lobed mixer to increase mixing effectiveness of the exhaust system without substantially increasing pressure losses attributable thereto. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the cooperating means include a plurality of circumferentially spaced elongated deformations, such as grooves and ridges, which deformations extend radially with respect to a reference surface of the exhaust centerbody and which deformations are aligned in an axial direction substantially parallel to a longitudinal axis of the centerbody