Metering gun for dispensing precisely measured charges of fluid

A cyclically operable fluid dispenser for use in dispensing precisely measured charges of potable water aboard spacecraft is described. The dispenser is characterized by (1) a sealed housing adapted to be held within a crewman's palm and coupled with a pressurized source of potable water; (2) a dispensing jet projected from the housing and configured to be received within a crewman's lips; (3) an expansible measuring chamber for measuring charges of drinking water received from the source; (4) and a dispenser actuator including a lever extended from the housing to be digitated for initiating operational cycles, whereby precisely measured charges of potable water selectively are delivered for drinking purposes in a weightless environment

Equivalent damage: A critical assessment

The overall goal of achieving improved life cycle management of aircraft engine, gas turbine components is a major industry thrust. Low cycle fatigue (LCF) crack initiation prediction, an important element of life cycle management as traditionally applied, may be overly conservative in estimating total cyclic life capability. Consequently, there is increasing pressure to improve predictive methods both for crack initiation and for subsequent crack propagation. The utility of equivalent damage concepts for application to hot section components of aircraft engines was studied. Specifically, the topics examined were mean stress, cumulative damage, and multiaxiality. Other factors inherently linked to this study were the basic formulation of damage parameters at elevated temperatures and the fact that hot section components experience severe temperature fluctuations throughout their service lifetime

Preliminary Abundance Analysis of Galactic Bulge Main Sequence, Subgiant, and Giant Branch Stars Observed During Microlensing with Keck/HIRES

We present an abundance analysis of six main sequence turnoff, subgiant, and giant branch stars toward the Galactic bulge that were observed with Keck/HIRES during microlensing events. This is an early look at the first detailed chemical analysis of main sequence stars in the Galactic bulge. Lensing events allow the effective aperture of Keck to be increased beyond its current dimensions; although, some events still stretched its spectroscopic capabilities. Future large telescopes with high resolution and high throughput spectrometers will allow the study of abundances in distant stellar populations and in less evolved stars with greater ease.Comment: 8 pages including 2 figures. To appear in SPIE proceedings on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation. Uses spie.cl

Development of Uniform CdTe Pixel Detectors Based on Caltech ASIC

We have developed a large CdTe pixel detector with dimensions of 23.7 x 13.0 mm and a pixel size of 448 x 448 um^2. The detector is based on recent technologies of an uniform CdTe single crystal, a two-dimensional ASIC, and stud bump-bonding to connect pixel electrodes on the CdTe surface to the ASIC. Good spectra are obtained from 1051 pixels out of total 1056 pixels. When we operate the detector at -50 C, the energy resolution is 0.67 keV and 0.99 keV at 14 keV and 60 keV, respectively. Week-long stability of the detector is confirmed at operating temperatures of both -50 C and -20 C. The detector also shows high uniformity: the peak positions for all pixels agree to within 0.82%, and the average of the energy resolution is 1.04 keV at a temperature of -50 C. When we normalized the peak area by the total counts detected by each pixel, a variation of 2.1 % is obtained.Comment: 11pages, 17figures, accepted for publication in Proc. SPIE 200

Relativistic stars in differential rotation: bounds on the dragging rate and on the rotational energy

For general relativistic equilibrium stellar models (stationary axisymmetric asymptotically flat and convection-free) with differential rotation, it is shown that for a wide class of rotation laws the distribution of angular velocity of the fluid has a sign, say "positive", and then both the dragging rate and the angular momentum density are positive. In addition, the "mean value" (with respect to an intrinsic density) of the dragging rate is shown to be less than the mean value of the fluid angular velocity (in full general, without having to restrict the rotation law, nor the uniformity in sign of the fluid angular velocity); this inequality yields the positivity and an upper bound of the total rotational energy.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, LaTeX. Submitted to J. Math. Phy

Quasi-circular Orbits for Spinning Binary Black Holes

Using an effective potential method we examine binary black holes where the individual holes carry spin. We trace out sequences of quasi-circular orbits and locate the innermost stable circular orbit as a function of spin. At large separations, the sequences of quasi-circular orbits match well with post-Newtonian expansions, although a clear signature of the simplifying assumption of conformal flatness is seen. The position of the ISCO is found to be strongly dependent on the magnitude of the spin on each black hole. At close separations of the holes, the effective potential method breaks down. In all cases where an ISCO could be determined, we found that an apparent horizon encompassing both holes forms for separations well inside the ISCO. Nevertheless, we argue that the formation of a common horizon is still associated with the breakdown of the effective potential method.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, submitted to PR

Exotic Meson Decay Widths using Lattice QCD

A decay width calculation for a hybrid exotic meson h, with JPC=1-+, is presented for the channel h->pi+a1. This quenched lattice QCD simulation employs Luescher's finite box method. Operators coupling to the h and pi+a1 states are used at various levels of smearing and fuzzing, and at four quark masses. Eigenvalues of the corresponding correlation matrices yield energy spectra that determine scattering phase shifts for a discrete set of relative pi+a1 momenta. Although the phase shift data is sparse, fits to a Breit-Wigner model are attempted, resulting in a decay width of about 60 MeV when averaged over two lattice sizes.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, RevTex4, minor change to Fig.

Directed polymers on a Cayley tree with spatially correlated disorder

In this paper we consider directed walks on a tree with a fixed branching ratio K at a finite temperature T. We consider the case where each site (or link) is assigned a random energy uncorrelated in time, but correlated in the transverse direction i.e. within the shell. In this paper we take the transverse distance to be the hierarchical ultrametric distance, but other possibilities are discussed. We compute the free energy for the case of quenched disorder and show that there is a fundamental difference between the case of short range spatial correlations of the disorder which behaves similarly to the non-correlated case considered previously by Derrida and Spohn and the case of long range correlations which has a totally different overlap distribution which approaches a single delta function about q=1 for large L, where L is the length of the walk. In the latter case the free energy is not extensive in L for the intermediate and also relevant range of L values, although in the true thermodynamic limit extensivity is restored. We identify a crossover temperature which grows with L, and whenever T<T_c(L) the system is always in the low temperature phase. Thus in the case of long-ranged correlation as opposed to the short-ranged case a phase transition is absent.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, standard latex. J. Phys. A, accepted for publicatio