A Search for Early Optical Emission at Gamma-Ray Burst Locations by the Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI)

The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) views nearly every point on the sky once every 102 minutes and can detect point sources as faint as R~10th magnitude. Therefore, SMEI can detect or provide upper limits for the optical afterglow from gamma-ray bursts in the tens of minutes after the burst when different shocked regions may emit optically. Here we provide upper limits for 58 bursts between 2003 February and 2005 April.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ, 17 pages, 8 figure

The effect of time constraint on anticipation, decision making, and option generation in complex and dynamic environments

Researchers interested in performance in complex and dynamic situations have focused on how individuals predict their opponent(s) potential courses of action (i.e., during assessment) and generate potential options about how to respond (i.e., during intervention). When generating predictive options, previous research supports the use of cognitive mechanisms that are consistent with long-term working memory (LTWM) theory (Ericsson and Kintsch in Phychol Rev 102(2):211–245, 1995; Ward et al. in J Cogn Eng Decis Mak 7:231–254, 2013). However, when generating options about how to respond, the extant research supports the use of the take-the-first (TTF) heuristic (Johnson and Raab in Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 91:215–229, 2003). While these models provide possible explanations about how options are generated in situ, often under time pressure, few researchers have tested the claims of these models experimentally by explicitly manipulating time pressure. The current research investigates the effect of time constraint on option-generation behavior during the assessment and intervention phases of decision making by employing a modified version of an established option-generation task in soccer. The results provide additional support for the use of LTWM mechanisms during assessment across both time conditions. During the intervention phase, option-generation behavior appeared consistent with TTF, but only in the non-time-constrained condition. Counter to our expectations, the implementation of time constraint resulted in a shift toward the use of LTWM-type mechanisms during the intervention phase. Modifications to the cognitive-process level descriptions of decision making during intervention are proposed, and implications for training during both phases of decision making are discussed

Removal of oyster pathogens from seawater

International audienc

Visualization of Remotely-Sensed Heliospheric Plasmas for Space Weather Applications

We demonstrate a software application designed for the display and interactive manipulation of 3D heliospheric volume data, such as solar wind density, velocity and magnetic field. The Volume Explorer software exploits the capabilities of the Volume Pro 1000 (from TeraRecon, Inc.), a low-cost 64-bit PCI board capable of rendering a 512-cubed array of volume data in real time at up to 30 frames per second on a standard PC. The application allows stereo and perspective views, and animations of time-sequences. We show examples of three-dimensional heliospheric volume data derived from tomographic reconstructions based on heliospheric remote sensing observations of the heliospheric density and velocity structure. Currently these reconstructions are based on archival IPS and Thomson scattering data. In the near future we expect to add reconstructions based on the all-sky observations from the recently launched Solar Mass Ejection Imager