Improved silicon nitride for advanced heat engines

The technology base required to fabricate silicon nitride components with the strength, reliability, and reproducibility necessary for actual heat engine applications is presented. Task 2 was set up to develop test bars with high Weibull slope and greater high temperature strength, and to conduct an initial net shape component fabrication evaluation. Screening experiments were performed in Task 7 on advanced materials and processing for input to Task 2. The technical efforts performed in the second year of a 5-yr program are covered. The first iteration of Task 2 was completed as planned. Two half-replicated, fractional factorial (2 sup 5), statistically designed matrix experiments were conducted. These experiments have identified Denka 9FW Si3N4 as an alternate raw material to GTE SN502 Si3N4 for subsequent process evaluation. A detailed statistical analysis was conducted to correlate processing conditions with as-processed test bar properties. One processing condition produced a material with a 97 ksi average room temperature MOR (100 percent of goal) with 13.2 Weibull slope (83 percent of goal); another condition produced 86 ksi (6 percent over baseline) room temperature strength with a Weibull slope of 20 (125 percent of goal)

Benchmarking a Soil Moisture Data Assimilation System for Agricultural Drought Monitoring

Despite considerable interest in the application of land surface data assimilation systems (LDAS) for agricultural drought applications, relatively little is known about the large-scale performance of such systems and, thus, the optimal methodological approach for implementing them. To address this need, this paper evaluates an LDAS for agricultural drought monitoring by benchmarking individual components of the system (i.e., a satellite soil moisture retrieval algorithm, a soil water balance model and a sequential data assimilation filter) against a series of linear models which perform the same function (i.e., have the same basic inputoutput structure) as the full system component. Benchmarking is based on the calculation of the lagged rank cross-correlation between the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and soil moisture estimates acquired for various components of the system. Lagged soil moistureNDVI correlations obtained using individual LDAS components versus their linear analogs reveal the degree to which non-linearities andor complexities contained within each component actually contribute to the performance of the LDAS system as a whole. Here, a particular system based on surface soil moisture retrievals from the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM), a two-layer Palmer soil water balance model and an Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is benchmarked. Results suggest significant room for improvement in each component of the system

Integration over the quantum diagonal subgroup and associated Fourier-like algebras

By analogy with the classical construction due to Forrest, Samei and Spronk we associate to every compact quantum group $\mathbb{G}$ a completely contractive Banach algebra $A_\Delta(\mathbb{G})$, which can be viewed as a deformed Fourier algebra of $\mathbb{G}$. To motivate the construction we first analyse in detail the quantum version of the integration over the diagonal subgroup, showing that although the quantum diagonal subgroups in fact never exist, as noted earlier by Kasprzak and So{\l}tan, the corresponding integration represented by a certain idempotent state on $C(\mathbb{G})$ makes sense as long as $\mathbb{G}$ is of Kac type. Finally we analyse as an explicit example the algebras $A_\Delta(O_N^+)$, $N\ge 2$, associated to Wang's free orthogonal groups, and show that they are not operator weakly amenable.Comment: Minor updates; Remark 5.7 has been added; 31 page

Amino acid substitutions within the heptad repeat domain 1 of murine coronavirus spike protein restrict viral antigen spread in the central nervous system.

Targeted recombination was carried out to select mouse hepatitis viruses (MHVs) in a defined genetic background, containing an MHV-JHM spike gene encoding either three heptad repeat 1 (HR1) substitutions (Q1067H, Q1094H, and L1114R) or L1114R alone. The recombinant virus, which expresses spike with the three substitutions, was nonfusogenic at neutral pH. Its replication was significantly inhibited by lysosomotropic agents, and it was highly neuroattenuated in vivo. In contrast, the recombinant expressing spike with L1114R alone mediated cell-to-cell fusion at neutral pH and replicated efficiently despite the presence of lysosomotropic agents; however, it still caused only subclinical morbidity and no mortality in animals. Thus, both recombinant viruses were highly attenuated and expressed viral antigen which was restricted to the olfactory bulbs and was markedly absent from other regions of the brains at 5 days postinfection. These data demonstrate that amino acid substitutions, in particular L1114R, within HR1 of the JHM spike reduced the ability of MHV to spread in the central nervous system. Furthermore, the requirements for low pH for fusion and viral entry are not prerequisites for the highly attenuated phenotype

Density functional theory of the phase diagram of maximum density droplets in two-dimensional quantum dots in a magnetic field

We present a density-functional theory (DFT) approach to the study of the phase diagram of the maximum density droplet (MDD) in two-dimensional quantum dots in a magnetic field. Within the lowest Landau level (LLL) approximation, analytical expressions are derived for the values of the parameters $N$ (number of electrons) and $B$ (magnetic field) at which the transition from the MDD to a ``reconstructed'' phase takes place. The results are then compared with those of full Kohn-Sham calculations, giving thus information about both correlation and Landau level mixing effects. Our results are also contrasted with those of Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations, showing that DFT predicts a more compact reconstructed edge, which is closer to the result of exact diagonalizations in the LLL.Comment: ReVTeX 3.