Nuclear and ionic charge distribution experiment on ISEE-1 and ISEE-3

The experimental work carried out under this contract is a continuation of that originally performed under Contracts NAS5-20062 and NAS5-26739. The data analyzed are from the Max-Planck Institut/Univ. of Maryland experiment on ISEE-1 and ISEE-3. Each spacecraft experiment consists of a nearly identical set of three sensors (designated the ULECA, ULEWAT, and ULEZEQ sensors) designed to measure the energy spectra and composition of suprathermal and energetic ions over a broad energy range (less than 3 keV/e to more than 20 MeV/nucleon). Since the launch of ISEE's 2 and 3, the MPI/Univ. of Maryland experiments have generally performed as expected except for a partial failure of the ULEWAT sensor on ISEE-1 in August 1978. A number of scientific studies have either been completed, initiated or are at various stages of completion. A brief summary of Primary Results is given, followed by a more detailed summary of the major accomplishments at the Univ. of Maryland

Deprivation as an outcome determinant in emergency medical admissions

Background: Deprivation in the general population predicts mortality. We have investigated its relevance to an acute medical admission, using a database of all emergency admissions to St James’ Hospital, Dublin, over a ten year period (2002-2011). <p/>Methods: All emergency admissions, based on geocoding of residence, were allocated to a Small Area Health Research Unit (SAHRU) division, with a corresponding deprivation index. We then examined this index as a univariate (unadjusted) and independent (adjusted) predictor of 30-day in-hospital mortality. <p/>Results: The 30-day in-hospital mortality, over the 10 year period was higher, for those in the upper half of the deprivation distribution (9.6% vs 8.6%: p = 0.002). Indeed, there was a stepwise increase in 30-day mortality over the quintiles of deprivation from 7.3% (Quintile 1) to 8.8%, 10.0%, 10.0% and 9.3% respectively. Univariate logistic regression of the deprivation indices (quintiles) against outcome showed an increased risk (p = 0.002) of a 30-day death with OR’s respectively (compared with lowest deprivation quintile) of 1.23 (95% CI 1.07, 1.40), 1.41 (95% CI 1.24, 1.60), 1.41 (95% CI 1.24, 1.61) and 1.30 (95% CI 1.14, 1.48). The deprivation index was an independent predictor of outcome in a model when adjusted for illness severity and co-morbidity. The fully adjusted OR for a 30-day death was increased by 31% (p=0.001) for patients in the upper half of the deprivation index distribution (OR 1.31: 95% CI 1.20, 1.44). <p/>Conclusion: Deprivation independently of co-morbidity or acute illness severity is a powerful outcome predictor in acute medical admissions

Iron charge states observed in the solar wind

Solar wind measurements from the ULECA sensor of the Max-Planck-Institut/University of Maryland experiment on ISEE-3 are reported. The low energy section of approx the ULECA sensor selects particles by their energy per charge (over the range 3.6 keV/Q to 30 keV/Q) and simultaneously measures their total energy with two low-noise solid state detectors. Solar wind Fe charge state measurements from three time periods of high speed solar wind occurring during a post-shock flow and a coronal hole-associated high speed stream are presented. Analysis of the post-shock flow solar wind indicates the charge state distributions for Fe were peaked at approx +16, indicative of an unusually high coronal temperature (3,000,000 K). In contrast, the Fe charge state distribution observed in a coronal hole-associated high speed stream peaks at approx -9, indicating a much lower coronal temperature (1,400,000 K). This constitutes the first reported measurements of iron charge states in a coronal hole-associated high speed stream

A Design Process Framework to Deal with Non-functional Requirements in Conceptual System Designs

To simultaneously satisfy the user needs and project-specific technical requirements, it is imperative that complex engineering systems are designed using contemporary, systematic approaches. This study presents a framework that combines Axiomatic Design and Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process to ensure that designers can concurrently satisfy the functional and non-functional requirements along with the design constraints of conceptual system designs. A conceptual design case of an autonomous battery charging system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is presented as an illustrative case study. The results showed that the approach can aid decision-making processes by systematic evaluation and comparison of conceptual designs such that the selected solutions satisfy user needs whilst also realising both functional and non-functional requirements of the system

Temporal variations of the anomalous oxygen component, 1977 - 1984

A survey is of the long term temporal variations of 6.6 to 12 MeV/nucleon anomalous oxygen at 1 AU covering the period 1977 to 1984. This time interval included the recent solar maximum, with the recovery at neutron monitor energies beginning in 1982. During this time interval, 6.6 to 12 MeV/nucleon 0 fluxes decreased by at least a factor of 50, and indeed remained below the instrumental detection threshold after 1979. By late 1984, neutron monitors had recovered to roughly 1979 levels from the 1982 solar maximum, and anomalous O still remained below the detection threshold

Factors Related to Marketing Successes for Fibre Producers in Middle Asia

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the economic well-being of livestock producers of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan declined dramatically (see Kerven 2003; Kerven et al., 2003). Like the economies in general, the livestock economies are slowly recovering and restructuring. Livestock producers have been encouraged by international market prices to raise sheep, goats, camels, and animals producing specialty fibre. Fine-fibre sheep and goats remain in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but marketing of fibres from the region is not ideal. As examples, sheep pelts are not sorted and graded, which is expected by international buyers, and cashmere is shorn and sold in bulk. Lastly, marketing opportunities are limited, technology, transportation infrastructure, and market information is lacking, and the bargaining power of individual fibre producers is weak. Under support from the U.S. AID Global Livestock-Collaborative Research Support Program (GL-CRSP) project, Developing institutions and capacity for sheep and fibre marketing in Central Asia, we seek to understand the spatial relationships that can help determine success in fibre marketing

A Conscience Sensitive Approach To Ethics and Teaching Caring Attitudes

An I.U. Conscience Project and HELP Collaboration. The article describes models for teaching ethics and caring attitudes to undergraduate medical students in both formal and informal medical education curriculum. Competency based curriculum is discussed

Phase coexistence and torpid mixing in the 3-coloring model on Z^d

We show that for all sufficiently large d, the uniform proper 3-coloring model (in physics called the 3-state antiferromagnetic Potts model at zero temperature) on Z^d admits multiple maximal-entropy Gibbs measures. This is a consequence of the following combinatorial result: if a proper 3-coloring is chosen uniformly from a box in Z^d, conditioned on color 0 being given to all the vertices on the boundary of the box which are at an odd distance from a fixed vertex v in the box, then the probability that v gets color 0 is exponentially small in d. The proof proceeds through an analysis of a certain type of cutset separating v from the boundary of the box, and builds on techniques developed by Galvin and Kahn in their proof of phase transition in the hard-core model on Z^d. Building further on these techniques, we study local Markov chains for sampling proper 3-colorings of the discrete torus Z^d_n. We show that there is a constant \rho \approx 0.22 such that for all even n \geq 4 and d sufficiently large, if M is a Markov chain on the set of proper 3-colorings of Z^d_n that updates the color of at most \rho n^d vertices at each step and whose stationary distribution is uniform, then the mixing time of M (the time taken for M to reach a distribution that is close to uniform, starting from an arbitrary coloring) is essentially exponential in n^{d-1}