Closed Brayton Cycle power system with a high temperature pellet bed reactor heat source for NEP applications

Capitalizing on past and future development of high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) technology, a low mass 15 MWe closed gas turbine cycle power system using a pellet bed reactor heating helium working fluid is proposed for Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) applications. Although the design of this directly coupled system architecture, comprising the reactor/power system/space radiator subsystems, is presented in conceptual form, sufficient detail is included to permit an assessment of overall system performance and mass. Furthermore, an attempt is made to show how tailoring of the main subsystem design characteristics can be utilized to achieve synergistic system level advantages that can lead to improved reliability and enhanced system life while reducing the number of parasitic load driven peripheral subsystems

Exploring Diverse Land Ethics

Different cultures do not share the same relationship( s) with the land, the natural environment, and the cosmos. For some cultures in fact these three labels are all synonymous, while for others clear distinctions are understood through their use/invocation. In addition the role or relationship ofhumans with the land, the natural environment, and the cosmos varies among different groups and cultures. These multiple value systems and epistemologies have shaped cultures and impacted the relations between these many groups. Some might argue that these differences, or this diversity is one of the major reasons that different cultures in contact often result in different cultures in conflict. We need to acknowledge and confront multiple value systems and epistemologies related to attitudes to land and environmental ethics and understand them in a more systematic way

Conflict and the Shaping of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)

On September 21, 2004 after more than a decade of planning, preparation and design, marked along the way with a number of very public conflicts, the Smithsonian NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) opened its doors. While the opening was perhaps not as marked by conflict as it might have been - it did generate a certain amount of controversy, some of which is ongoing. The story of the events and process(s) that led to this point an interesting and instructive

Measurement of the hyperfine structure of antihydrogen in a beam

A measurement of the hyperfine structure of antihydrogen promises one of the best tests of CPT symmetry. We describe an experiment planned at the Antiproton Decelerator of CERN to measure this quantity in a beam of slow antihydrogen atoms.Comment: 5th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP2012), Groningen (The Netherlands), June 18 to 22, 201

Tertiary Subsurface Facies, Source Rocks and Hydrocarbon Reservoirs in the SW Part of the Pannonian Basin (Northern Croatia and South-Western Hungary)

The Neogene sedimentary successions of the Drava, Sava and Slavonija–Srijem depressions in the SW part of the Pannonian Basin System are built up of three 2nd order megacycles separated by four major erosional unconformities. The first megacycle contains terrestrial to marine syn-rift and early post-rift sediments of Early to Mid-Miocene age. The second is built up of Late Miocene Lake Pannon deposits, while the third contains those sediments which were deposited in the remnants of Lake Pannon and in the subsequent fluvial systems, in areas of continuous subsidence associated with basin inversion from the Pliocene onwards. Most of the petroleum source rocks and reservoir rocks are of Miocene age and were formed during the first and second depositional megacycle. Conditions for the accumulation and preservation of large quantities of marine and terrigenous organic matter were most favourable during the Badenian, Sarmatian and Early Pannonian, in deep basin settings, partly associated with rifting. The generation of hydrocarbons was promoted by relatively high geothermal gradients during the initial and subsequent thermal subsidence. Various sedimentary environments produced deposits with good reservoir characteristics: e.g. fault-related talus breccia (mainly Lower Miocene), reefs (mainly Badenian), coastal, shallow marine (Karpatian, Badenian) and deltaic (Pannonian–Pontian) sand bodies or turbiditic sand lobes (mainly Pannonian). The hydrocarbon (HC) migration paths were often provided by the major unconformities bounding the three megacycles, as well as by faults, particularly around the basement highs

Testis-Specific Bb8 Is Essential in the Development of Spermatid Mitochondria.

Mitochondria are essential organelles of developing spermatids in Drosophila, which undergo dramatic changes in size and shape after meiotic division, where mitochondria localized in the cytoplasm, migrate near the nucleus, aggregate, fuse and create the Nebenkern. During spermatid elongation the two similar mitochondrial derivatives of the Nebenkern start to elongate parallel to the axoneme. One of the elongated mitochondrial derivatives starts to lose volume and becomes the minor mitochondrial derivative, while the other one accumulates paracrystalline and becomes the major mitochondrial derivative. Proteins and intracellular environment that are responsible for cyst elongation and paracrystalline formation in the major mitochondrial derivative need to be identified. In this work we investigate the function of the testis specific big bubble 8 (bb8) gene during spermatogenesis. We show that a Minos element insertion in bb8 gene, a predicted glutamate dehydrogenase, causes recessive male sterility. We demonstrate bb8 mRNA enrichment in spermatids and the mitochondrial localisation of Bb8 protein during spermatogenesis. We report that megamitochondria develop in the homozygous mutant testes, in elongating spermatids. Ultrastructural analysis of the cross section of elongated spermatids shows enlarged mitochondria and the production of paracrystalline in both major and minor mitochondrial derivatives. Our results suggest that the Bb8 protein and presumably glutamate metabolism has a crucial role in the normal development and establishment of the identity of the mitochondrial derivatives during spermatid elongation

Negoiated Stories in Public Space

Design professionals and environmental social scientists understand the human modified environment as a material production of cultures. As a result, we also support the idea of spaces as communicative. The contextually defined relations between objects, places, and people communicate the values, decisions, and choices made throughout a broadly defined process of placemaking. Places have meanings, they tell stories. Thus narrating is one aspect or part of deCerteau\u27s conception of spatial practices (de Certeau, 1984, xiv). Yet because values differ, the same place may tell different stories to different people

Dust evolution in protoplanetary disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars - The Spitzer view

In this paper we present mid-infrared spectra of a comprehensive set of Herbig Ae/Be stars observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The signal-to-noise ratio of these spectra is very high, ranging between about a hundred and several hundreds. During the analysis of these data we tested the validity of standard protoplanetary dust models and studied grain growth and crystal formation. On the basis of the analyzed spectra, the major constituents of protoplanetary dust around Herbig Ae/Be stars are amorphous silicates with olivine and pyroxene stoichiometry, crystalline forsterite and enstatite and silica. No other solid state features, indicating other abundant dust species, are present in the Spitzer spectra. Deviations of the synthetic spectra from the observations are most likely related to grain shape effects and uncertainties in the iron content of the dust grains. Our analysis revealed that larger grains are more abundant in the disk atmosphere of flatter disks than in that of flared disks, indicating that grain growth and sedimentation decrease the disk flaring. We did not find, however, correlations between the value of crystallinity and any of the investigated system parameters. Our analysis shows that enstatite is more concentrated toward the warm inner disk than forsterite, in contrast to predictions of equilibrium condensation models. None of the three crystal formation mechanisms proposed so far can alone explain all our findings. It is very likely that all three play at least some role in the formation of crystalline silicates.Comment: 56 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Systematic study of the decay rates of antiprotonic helium states

A systematic study of the decay rates of antiprotonic helium (\pbhef and \pbhet) at CERN AD (Antiproton Decelerator) has been made by a laser spectroscopic method. The decay rates of some of its short-lived states, namely those for which the Auger rates $\gamma_{\mathrm{A}}$ are much larger than their radiative decay rates ($\gamma_{\mathrm{rad}} \sim 1$ $\mu$s$^{-1}$), were determined from the time distributions of the antiproton annihilation signals induced by laser beams, and the widths of the atomic resonance lines. The magnitude of the decay rates, especially their relation with the transition multipolarity, is discussed and compared with theoretical calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, and 1 tabl