Eighth year projects and activities of the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Laboratory (ERSAL)

Projects completed for the NASA Office of University Affairs include the application of remote sensing data in support of rehabilitation of wild fire damaged areas and the use of LANDSAT 3 return beam vidicon in forestry mapping applications. Continuing projects for that office include monitoring western Oregon timber clearcut; detecting and monitoring wheat disease; land use monitoring for tax assessment in Umatilla, Lake, and Morrow Counties; and the use of Oregon Air National Guard thermal infrared scanning data. Projects funded through other agencies include the remote sensing inventory of elk in the Blue Mountains; the estimation of burned agricultural acreage in the Willamette Valley; a resource inventory of Deschutes County; and hosting a LANDSAT digital workshop

Gauge Invariant Effective Stress-Energy Tensors for Gravitational Waves

It is shown that if a generalized definition of gauge invariance is used, gauge invariant effective stress-energy tensors for gravitational waves and other gravitational perturbations can be defined in a much larger variety of circumstances than has previously been possible. In particular it is no longer necessary to average the stress-energy tensor over a region of spacetime which is larger in scale than the wavelengths of the waves and it is no longer necessary to restrict attention to high frequency gravitational waves.Comment: 11 pages, RevTe

Optimal Routing and Control of Multiple Agents Moving in a Transportation Network and Subject to an Arrival Schedule and Separation Constraints

We address the problem of navigating a set of moving agents, e.g. automated guided vehicles, through a transportation network so as to bring each agent to its destination at a specified time. Each pair of agents is required to be separated by a minimal distance, generally agent-dependent, at all times. The speed range, initial position, required destination, and required time of arrival at destination for each agent are assumed provided. The movement of each agent is governed by a controlled differential equation (state equation). The problem consists in choosing for each agent a path and a control strategy so as to meet the constraints and reach the destination at the required time. This problem arises in various fields of transportation, including Air Traffic Management and train coordination, and in robotics. The main contribution of the paper is a model that allows to recast this problem as a decoupled collection of problems in classical optimal control and is easily generalized to the case when inertia cannot be neglected. Some qualitative insight into solution behavior is obtained using the Pontryagin Maximum Principle. Sample numerical solutions are computed using a numerical optimal control solver

Information-disturbance tradeoff in estimating a maximally entangled state

We derive the amount of information retrieved by a quantum measurement in estimating an unknown maximally entangled state, along with the pertaining disturbance on the state itself. The optimal tradeoff between information and disturbance is obtained, and a corresponding optimal measurement is provided.Comment: 4 pages. Accepted for publication on Physical Review Letter

A Transiting Jupiter Analog

Decadal-long radial velocity surveys have recently started to discover analogs to the most influential planet of our solar system, Jupiter. Detecting and characterizing these worlds is expected to shape our understanding of our uniqueness in the cosmos. Despite the great successes of recent transit surveys, Jupiter analogs represent a terra incognita, owing to the strong intrinsic bias of this method against long orbital periods. We here report on the first validated transiting Jupiter analog, Kepler-167e (KOI-490.02), discovered using Kepler archival photometry orbiting the K4-dwarf KIC-3239945. With a radius of $(0.91\pm0.02)$ $R_{\mathrm{Jup}}$, a low orbital eccentricity ($0.06_{-0.04}^{+0.10}$) and an equilibrium temperature of $(131\pm3)$ K, Kepler-167e bears many of the basic hallmarks of Jupiter. Kepler-167e is accompanied by three Super-Earths on compact orbits, which we also validate, leaving a large cavity of transiting worlds around the habitable-zone. With two transits and continuous photometric coverage, we are able to uniquely and precisely measure the orbital period of this post snow-line planet ($1071.2323\pm0.0006$ d), paving the way for follow-up of this $K=11.8$ mag target.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to ApJ. Posteriors available at https://github.com/CoolWorlds/Kepler-167-Posterior

The Isaacson expansion in quantum cosmology

This paper is an application of the ideas of the Born-Oppenheimer (or slow/fast) approximation in molecular physics and of the Isaacson (or short-wave) approximation in classical gravity to the canonical quantization of a perturbed minisuperspace model of the kind examined by Halliwell and Hawking. Its aim is the clarification of the role of the semiclassical approximation and the backreaction in such a model. Approximate solutions of the quantum model are constructed which are not semiclassical, and semiclassical solutions in which the quantum perturbations are highly excited.Comment: Revtex, 11 journal or 24 preprint pages. REPLACEMENT: A comment on previous work by Dowker and Laflamme is corrected. Utah preprint UU-REL-93/3/1

Levodopa/carbidopa/entacapone 200/50/200 mg (Stalevo® 200) in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease: a case series

Levodopa continues to be the most efficacious and widely used treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Levodopa dosing is understood to be critical for the optimal control of symptoms, and increasing the levodopa dose is a common method to treat advancing disease. Escalating levodopa dosages coupled with disease progression is associated with increasing likelihood of developing levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Moreover, frequent and complicated dosing schemes, combined with limited dose availability, leads to increasing pill burden and its associated impairment of patient adherence issues. Levodopa/carbidopa/entacapone has been shown to improve the pharmacokinetic profile of levodopa and provide superior symptomatic control compared with conventional levodopa/dopa decarboxylase inhibitor therapy. We report four case histories describing clinical experience of using levodopa/carbidopa/entacapone 200/50/200 mg, one of the latest doses of this formulation, in a range of patients with Parkinson’s disease. These cases illustrate that levodopa/carbidopa/entacapone 200/50/200 mg provides improvements in symptomatic control and convenience, and that switching to this dose was not associated with safety concerns

Electron-Energy-Loss Study of Stage-1 Potassium-Intercalated Graphite

Electron-energy-loss spectra of stage-1 K-intercalated graphite single crystals were obtained with a scanning transmission electron microscope. The complex dielectric function with electric polarization perpendicular to the c axis was derived by Kramers-Kronig analysis. The energy-loss peak at 2.5 eV is consistent with previous optical measurements, while the splitting of the one at 27 eV can be interpreted by folding the Brillouin zone of pristine graphite. Splittings and shifts of the interband transitions were observed and compared with calculations