30,728 research outputs found
Design study of a low cost civil aviation GPS receiver system
A low cost Navstar receiver system for civil aviation applications was defined. User objectives and constraints were established. Alternative navigation processing design trades were evaluated. Receiver hardware was synthesized by comparing technology projections with various candidate system designs. A control display unit design was recommended as the result of field test experience with Phase I GPS sets and a review of special human factors for general aviation users. Areas requiring technology development to ensure a low cost Navstar Set in the 1985 timeframe were identified
Solar Orbiter: Exploring the Sun-heliosphere connection
The heliosphere represents a uniquely accessible domain of space, where
fundamental physical processes common to solar, astrophysical and laboratory
plasmas can be studied under conditions impossible to reproduce on Earth and
unfeasible to observe from astronomical distances. Solar Orbiter, the first
mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme, will address the central
question of heliophysics: How does the Sun create and control the heliosphere?
In this paper, we present the scientific goals of the mission and provide an
overview of the mission implementation.Comment: 52 pages, 21 figures, 125 references; accepted for publication in
Solar Physic
The MMI cash-futures spread on October 19, 1987
Includes bibliographical references (p. 29)
Specialization of the rostral prefrontal cortex for distinct analogy processes
Analogical reasoning is central to learning and abstract thinking. It involves using a more familiar situation (source) to make inferences about a less familiar situation (target). According to the predominant cognitive models, analogical reasoning includes 1) generation of structured mental representations and 2) mapping based on structural similarities between them. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to specify the role of rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in these distinct processes. An experimental paradigm was designed that enabled differentiation between these processes, by temporal separation of the presentation of the source and the target. Within rostral PFC, a lateral subregion was activated by analogy task both during study of the source (before the source could be compared with a target) and when the target appeared. This may suggest that this subregion supports fundamental analogy processes such as generating structured representations of stimuli but is not specific to one particular processing stage. By contrast, a dorsomedial subregion of rostral PFC showed an interaction between task (analogy vs. control) and period (more activated when the target appeared). We propose that this region is involved in comparison or mapping processes. These results add to the growing evidence for functional differentiation between rostral PFC subregions
Non-equilibrium Lorentz gas on a curved space
The periodic Lorentz gas with external field and iso-kinetic thermostat is
equivalent, by conformal transformation, to a billiard with expanding
phase-space and slightly distorted scatterers, for which the trajectories are
straight lines. A further time rescaling allows to keep the speed constant in
that new geometry. In the hyperbolic regime, the stationary state of this
billiard is characterized by a phase-space contraction rate, equal to that of
the iso-kinetic Lorentz gas. In contrast to the iso-kinetic Lorentz gas where
phase-space contraction occurs in the bulk, the phase-space contraction rate
here takes place at the periodic boundaries
Did Neoliberalizing West African Forests Produce a New Niche for Ebola?
A recent study introduced a vaccine that controls Ebola Makona, the Zaire ebolavirus variant that has infected 28,000 people in West Africa. We propose that even such successful advances are insufficient for many emergent diseases. We review work hypothesizing that Makona, phenotypically similar to much smaller outbreaks, emerged out of shifts in land use brought about by neoliberal economics. The epidemiological consequences demand a new science that explicitly addresses the foundational processes underlying multispecies health, including the deep-time histories, cultural infrastructure, and global economic geographies driving disease emergence. The approach, for instance, reverses the standard public health practice of segregating emergency responses and the structural context from which outbreaks originate. In Ebola's case, regional neoliberalism may affix the stochastic "friction" of ecological relationships imposed by the forest across populations, which, when above a threshold, keeps the virus from lining up transmission above replacement. Export-led logging, mining, and intensive agriculture may depress such functional noise, permitting novel spillovers larger forces of infection. Mature outbreaks, meanwhile, can continue to circulate even in the face of efficient vaccines. More research on these integral explanations is required, but the narrow albeit welcome success of the vaccine may be used to limit support of such a program.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe
Predictions of the causal entropic principle for environmental conditions of the universe
The causal entropic principle has been proposed as a superior alternative to
the anthropic principle for understanding the magnitude of the cosmological
constant. In this approach, the probability to create observers is assumed to
be proportional to the entropy production \Delta S in a maximal causally
connected region -- the causal diamond. We improve on the original treatment by
better quantifying the entropy production due to stars, using an analytic model
for the star formation history which accurately accounts for changes in
cosmological parameters. We calculate the dependence of \Delta S on the density
contrast Q=\delta\rho/\rho, and find that our universe is much closer to the
most probable value of Q than in the usual anthropic approach and that
probabilities are relatively weakly dependent on this amplitude. In addition,
we make first estimates of the dependence of \Delta S on the baryon fraction
and overall matter abundance. Finally, we also explore the possibility that
decays of dark matter, suggested by various observed gamma ray excesses, might
produce a comparable amount of entropy to stars.Comment: RevTeX4, 13pp, 10 figures; v2. clarified introduction, added ref
Polyaniline. Preparation of a conducting polymer (IUPAC technical report)
Eight persons from five institutions in different countries carried out polymerizations of aniline following the same preparation protocol. In a "standard" procedure, aniline hydrochloride was oxidized with ammonium peroxydisulfate in aqueous medium at ambient temperature. The yield of polyaniline was higher than 90% in all cases. The electrical conductivity of polyaniline hydrochloride thus prepared was 4.4 1.7 S cm(-1) (average of 59 samples), measured at room temperature. A product with defined electrical properties could be obtained in various laboratories by following the same synthetic procedure. The influence of reduced reaction temperature and increased acidity of the polymerization medium on polyaniline conductivity were also addressed. The conductivity changes occurring during the storage of polyaniline were monitored. The density of polyaniline hydrochloride was 1.329 g cm(-3). The average conductivity of corresponding polyaniline bases was 1.4 x 10(-8) S cm(-1), the density being 1.245 cm(-3). Additional changes in the conductivity take place during storage. Aging is more pronounced in powders than in compressed samples. As far as aging effects are concerned, their assessment is relative. The observed reduction in the conductivity by similar to10% after more than one-year storage is large but, compared with the low conductivity of corresponding polyaniline (PANI) base, such a change is negligible. For most applications, an acceptable level of conductivity may be maintained throughout the expected lifetime
Fractal dimension of transport coefficients in a deterministic dynamical system
In many low-dimensional dynamical systems transport coefficients are very
irregular, perhaps even fractal functions of control parameters. To analyse
this phenomenon we study a dynamical system defined by a piece-wise linear map
and investigate the dependence of transport coefficients on the slope of the
map. We present analytical arguments, supported by numerical calculations,
showing that both the Minkowski-Bouligand and Hausdorff fractal dimension of
the graphs of these functions is 1 with a logarithmic correction, and find that
the exponent controlling this correction is bounded from above by 1 or
2, depending on some detailed properties of the system. Using numerical
techniques we show local self-similarity of the graphs. The local
self-similarity scaling transformations turn out to depend (irregularly) on the
values of the system control parameters.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures; ver.2: 18 pages, 7 figures (added section 5.2,
corrected typos, etc.
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