A design procedure and handling quality criteria for lateral directional flight control systems

A practical design procedure for aircraft augmentation systems is described based on quadratic optimal control technology and handling-quality-oriented cost functionals. The procedure is applied to the design of a lateral-directional control system for the F4C aircraft. The design criteria, design procedure, and final control system are validated with a program of formal pilot evaluation experiments

X-ray tracing using Geant4

We describe an extension to the Geant4 software package that allows it to be used as a general purpose X-ray tracing package. We demonstrate its use by building a model of the X-ray optics of the XMM-Newton, calculating its effective area, and comparing the results with the published calibration curves.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication by NIMA, DOI know

The impact of the reform of the milk quota regime on the Italian dairy sector

This paper analyses the impact of the milk quota regime reform, actually under discussion, on the European countries with a detailed focus on the Italian milk and dairy sector. The dismantling of the milk quota regime is already on the EU agenda, but how and when to do it is still matter of debate. A possibility is to enlarge gradually the size of the national quotas, up to the full dismantling in 2015 (“soft landing”). Meanwhile, the discussion on Health Check of the CAP is under way. In this work we analyse the possible impacts of the reform of the milk quota regime on the basis of a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach, using two models in sequence: the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model is used to evaluate the impacts of different scenarios of milk quota reform on the EU market and to compute the price changes outside Italy; these, in turn, are used as inputs for the MEG-D model, that focuses on the Italian milk and dairy market. The two models were run together with two specific objectives: the first was to avoid, in evaluating the impacts of reform of the milk sector regime in Italy, running the model with rough price estimates taken for secondary sources; the second, to have more specific results on the outcome at the national level. Particularly, the model takes in account the particular relevance of quality products (GDO) in Italian diary sector. In order to evaluate the impact of the “soft landing” reform scenario, we run a “comparison” scenario where the milk quotas are fully abolished in the 2009.Milk and dairy sector, Quota production, EU Agri-Food Market, PAC, Agricultural and Food Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Using a Full Spectral Raytracer for Calculating Light Microclimate in Functional-Structural Plant Modelling

Raytracers that allow the spatially explicit calculation of the fate of light beams in a 3D scene allow the consideration of shading, reected and transmitted light in functional-structural plant models (FSPM). However, the spectrum of visible light also has an e ect on cellular and growth processes. This recently created the interest to extend this modelling paradigm allowing the representation of detailed spectra instead of monochromatic or white light and to extend existing FSPM platforms accordingly. In this study a raytracer is presented which supports the full spectrum of light and which can be used to compute spectra from arbitrary light sources and their transformation at the organ level by absorption,reection and transmission in a virtual canopy. The raytracer was implemented as an extension of the FSPM platform GroIMP

FSPM-P: towards a general functional-structural plant model for robust and comprehensive model development

In the last decade, functional-structural plant modelling (FSPM) has become a more widely accepted paradigm in crop and tree production, as 3D models for the most important crops have been proposed. Given the wider portfolio of available models, it is now appropriate to enter the next level in FSPM development, by introducing more efficient methods for model development. This includes the consideration of model reuse (by modularisation), combination and comparison, and the enhancement of existing models. To facilitate this process, standards for design and communication need to be defined and established. We present a first step towards an efficient and general, i.e., not speciesspecific FSPM, presently restricted to annual or bi-annual plants, but with the potential for extension and further generalization. Model structure is hierarchical and object-oriented, with plant organs being the base-level objects and plant individual and canopy the higher-level objects. Modules for the majority of physiological processes are incorporated, more than in other platforms that have a similar aim (e.g., photosynthesis, organ formation and growth). Simulation runs with several general parameter sets adopted from the literature show that the present prototypewas able to reproduce a plausible output range for different crops (rapeseed, barley, etc.) in terms of both the dynamics and final values (at harvest time) of model state variables such as assimilate production, organ biomass, leaf area and architecture

Impedance of a Rectangular Beam Tube with Small Corrugations

We consider the impedance of a structure with rectangular, periodic corrugations on two opposing sides of a rectangular beam tube. Using the method of field matching, we find the modes in such a structure. We then limit ourselves to the the case of small corrugations, but where the depth of corrugation is not small compared to the period. For such a structure we generate analytical approximate solutions for the wave number $k$, group velocity $v_g$, and loss factor $\kappa$ for the lowest (the dominant) mode which, when compared with the results of the complete numerical solution, agreed well. We find: if $w\sim a$, where $w$ is the beam pipe width and $a$ is the beam pipe half-height, then one mode dominates the impedance, with $k\sim1/\sqrt{w\delta}$ ($\delta$ is the depth of corrugation), $(1-v_g/c)\sim\delta$, and $\kappa\sim1/(aw)$, which (when replacing $w$ by $a$) is the same scaling as was found for small corrugations in a {\it round} beam pipe. Our results disagree in an important way with a recent paper of Mostacci {\it et al.} [A. Mostacci {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. ST-AB, {\bf 5}, 044401 (2002)], where, for the rectangular structure, the authors obtained a synchronous mode with the same frequency $k$, but with $\kappa\sim\delta$. Finally, we find that if $w$ is large compared to $a$ then many nearby modes contribute to the impedance, resulting in a wakefield that Landau damps.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 1 bibliography fil

Simulating CCDs for the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer

We have implemented a Monte Carlo algorithm to model and predict the response of various kinds of CCDs to X-ray photons and minimally-ionizing particles and have applied this model to the CCDs in the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer. This algorithm draws on empirical results and predicts the response of all basic types of X-ray CCD devices. It relies on new solutions of the diffusion equation, including recombination, to predict the radial charge cloud distribution in field-free regions of CCDs. By adjusting the size of the charge clouds, we can reproduce the event grade distribution seen in calibration data. Using a model of the channel stops developed here and an insightful treatment of the insulating layer under the gate structure developed at MIT, we are able to reproduce all notable features in ACIS calibration spectra. The simulator is used to reproduce ground and flight calibration data from ACIS, thus confirming its fidelity. It can then be used for a variety of calibration tasks, such as generating spectral response matrices for spectral fitting of astrophysical sources, quantum efficiency estimation, and modeling of photon pile-up.Comment: 42 pages, 22 figures; accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A; paper with high-quality figures can be found at ftp://ftp.astro.psu.edu/pub/townsley/simulator.p

Corporal diagnostic work and diagnostic spaces: Clinicians' use of space and bodies during diagnosis

© 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.An emerging body of literature in sociology has demonstrated that diagnosis is a useful focal point for understanding the social dimensions of health and illness. This article contributes to this work by drawing attention to the relationship between diagnostic spaces and the way in which clinicians use their own bodies during the diagnostic process. As a case study, we draw upon fieldwork conducted with a multidisciplinary clinical team providing deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat children with a movement disorder called dystonia. Interviews were conducted with team members and diagnostic examinations were observed. We illustrate that clinicians use communicative body work and verbal communication to transform a material terrain into diagnostic space, and we illustrate how this diagnostic space configures forms of embodied 'sensing-and-acting' within. We argue that a 'diagnosis' can be conceptualised as emerging from an interaction in which space, the clinician-body, and the patient-body (or body-part) mutually configure one another. By conceptualising diagnosis in this way, this article draws attention to the corporal bases of diagnostic power and counters Cartesian-like accounts of clinical work in which the patient-body is objectified by a disembodied medical discourse.The Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Trust Biomedical Strategic Award 086034

Ultrafast Spectroscopy of [Mn(CO)3] Complexes: Tuning the Kinetics of Light-Driven CO Release and Solvent Binding

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Inorganic Chemistry, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b02758.Manganese tricarbonyl complexes are promising catalysts for CO2 reduction, but complexes in this family are often photo-sensitive and decompose rapidly upon exposure to visible light. In this report, synthetic and photochemical studies probe the initial steps of light-driven speciation for Mn(CO)3(Rbpy)Br complexes bearing a range of 4,4′-disubstituted-2,2′-bipyridyl ligands (Rbpy, R = tBu, H, CF3, NO2). Transient absorption spectroscopy measurements for the Mn(CO)3(Rbpy)Br coordination compounds with R = tBu, H, and CF3 in acetonitrile reveal ultrafast loss of a CO ligand on the femtosecond timescale, followed by solvent coordination on the picosecond timescale. The Mn(CO)3(NO2bpy)Br complex is unique among the four compounds in having a longer-lived excited state that does not undergo CO release or the subsequent solvent coordination. The kinetics of photolysis and solvent coordination for the light-sensitive complexes depend on the electronic properties of the di-substituted bipyridyl ligand. The results implicate roles for both metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) and dissociative ligand field (dd) excited states in the ultrafast photochemistry. Taken together, the findings suggest that more robust catalysts could be prepared with appropriately designed complexes that avoid crossing between the excited states that drive photochemical CO loss.Hall Chemical Research Fund at the University of KansasU.S. National Science Foundation (CHE-1151555)NIH T32 GM008545-2