21,663 research outputs found
Requirements for Provenance on the Web
From where did this tweet originate? Was this quote from the New York Times modified? Daily, we rely on data from the Web but often it is difficult or impossible to determine where it came from or how it was produced. This lack of provenance is particularly evident when people and systems deal with Web information or with any environment where information comes from sources of varying quality. Provenance is not captured pervasively in information systems. There are major technical, social, and economic impediments that stand in the way of using provenance effectively. This paper synthesizes requirements for provenance on the Web for a number of dimensions focusing on three key aspects of provenance: the content of provenance, the management of provenance records, and the uses of provenance information. To illustrate these requirements, we use three synthesized scenarios that encompass provenance problems faced by Web users toda
Comparison of Four Space Propulsion Methods for Reducing Transfer Times of Manned Mars Mission
We assess the possibility of reducing the travel time of a manned mission to
Mars by examining four different propulsion methods, and keeping the mass at
departure under 2,500 tonnes, for a fixed architecture. We evaluated
representative systems of three different state of the art technologies
(chemical, nuclear thermal, and electric), and one advance technology, the
"Pure Electro-Magnetic Thrust" (PEMT) concept (proposed by Rubbia). A mission
architecture mostly based on the Design Reference Architecture 5.0 is assumed
in order to estimate the mass budget, that influences the performance of the
propulsion system. Pareto curves of the duration of the mission and time of
flight versus mass of mission are drawn. We conclude that the ion engine
technology, combined with the classical chemical engine, yields the shortest
mission times for this architecture with the lowest mass, and that chemical
propulsion alone is the best to minimise travel time. The results obtained
using the PEMT suggest that it could be a more suitable solution for farther
destinations than Mars.Comment: Change in title, abstract and presentation so to clarify the main
results. 14 pages, 7 figures and 2 table
Polarized radio emission from the magnetar XTE J1810-197
We have used the Parkes radio telescope to study the polarized emission from
the anomalous X-ray pulsar XTE J1810-197 at frequencies of 1.4, 3.2, and 8.4
GHz. We find that the pulsed emission is nearly 100% linearly polarized. The
position angle of linear polarization varies gently across the observed pulse
profiles, varying little with observing frequency or time, even as the pulse
profiles have changed dramatically over a period of 7 months. In the context of
the standard pulsar "rotating vector model," there are two possible
interpretations of the observed position angle swing coupled with the wide
profile. In the first, the magnetic and rotation axes are substantially
misaligned and the emission originates high in the magnetosphere, as seen for
other young radio pulsars, and the beaming fraction is large. In the second
interpretation, the magnetic and rotation axes are nearly aligned and the line
of sight remains in the emission zone over almost the entire pulse phase. We
deprecate this possibility because of the observed large modulation of thermal
X-ray flux. We have also measured the Faraday rotation caused by the Galactic
magnetic field, RM = +77 rad/m^2, implying an average magnetic field component
along the line of sight of 0.5 microG.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. Six pages with 4 figure
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