Shaping contactless forces through anomalous acoustic scattering

Waves impart momentum and exert force on obstacles in their path. The transfer of wave momentum is a fundamental mechanism for contactless manipulation, yet the rules of conventional scattering intrinsically limit the radiation force based on the shape and the size of the manipulated object. Here, we show that this intrinsic limit can be overcome for acoustic waves with subwavelength-structured metasurfaces, where the force becomes controllable by the arrangement of surface features, independent of the object's overall shape and size. Harnessing such anomalous metasurface scattering, we demonstrate complex actuation phenomena: self-guidance, where a metasurface object is autonomously guided by an acoustic wave, and contactless pulling, where a metasurface object is pulled by the wave. Our results show that bringing metasurface physics, and its full arsenal of tools, to the domain of mechanical manipulation opens the door to diverse actuation mechanisms that are beyond the limits of traditional wave-matter interactions

Learning to Create Jazz Melodies Using Deep Belief Nets

We describe an unsupervised learning technique to facilitate automated creation of jazz melodic improvisation over chord sequences. Specifically we demonstrate training an artificial improvisation algorithm based on unsupervised learning using deep belief nets, a form of probabilistic neural network based on restricted Boltzmann machines. We present a musical encoding scheme and specifics of a learning and creational method. Our approach creates novel jazz licks, albeit not yet in real-time. The present work should be regarded as a feasibility study to determine whether such networks could be used at all. We do not claim superiority of this approach for pragmatically creating jazz

Deployable Articulating Array for Nanosatellites

Under Army SBIR funding CTD has developed a deployable, articulating solar array for nanosatellites. The CubeSat Articulating Solar Array (CASA) provides the community with a solar array module compatible with the standardized CubeSat chassis, and compliant with the P-POD launch canister specification. This development included a bolt-on CASA module, which encompassed a launch restraint system, the deployable solar array, the articulating mechanism and associated control electronics. During the recently completed Phase II effort the CASA system was developed to TRL 5. This Phase II development focused on a 50W point design, for a 3U CubeSat. The innovation of the CASA deployable array system is twofold. First, CASA provides a very large, modular (i.e. scalable), solar panel area. This planar array stows within the standard P-POD volume that surrounds the nanosatellite spacecraft. On-orbit the CASA panels deploy into a co-planar operational configuration. Second, CASA utilizes shape-morphing composite slit-tube boom technology. This morphing composite structure serves multiple functions, thus eliminating parasitic mass and complexity of traditional mechanical systems. The boom provides all the necessary deployment actuation energy for the CASA solar array. Once deployed this same boom is the primary solar array structure that locates the array panels well away from the spacecraft (to prevent shading on the panels from the nanosatellite or nanosatellite payloads), and enable active pointing towards the sun. While multi-functionality results in an elegant final solution, the conflicting requirements presented significant design challenges. The proposed paper will describe the development, flight qualification, and near-term applications of the CASA technology, with a heavy focus on testing of the CASA Engineering Development Unit (EDU). The often times conflicting design requirements of CASA’s multi-functional, shape morphing composite array structure will be discussed in detail. In addition, analysis showing the trade studies and design methodology behind CASA’s selection of a single degree of freedom articulation mechanism vs. a two-axis gimbal will be presented

The effect of scale-free topology on the robustness and evolvability of genetic regulatory networks

We investigate how scale-free (SF) and Erdos-Renyi (ER) topologies affect the interplay between evolvability and robustness of model gene regulatory networks with Boolean threshold dynamics. In agreement with Oikonomou and Cluzel (2006) we find that networks with SFin topologies, that is SF topology for incoming nodes and ER topology for outgoing nodes, are significantly more evolvable towards specific oscillatory targets than networks with ER topology for both incoming and outgoing nodes. Similar results are found for networks with SFboth and SFout topologies. The functionality of the SFout topology, which most closely resembles the structure of biological gene networks (Babu et al., 2004), is compared to the ER topology in further detail through an extension to multiple target outputs, with either an oscillatory or a non-oscillatory nature. For multiple oscillatory targets of the same length, the differences between SFout and ER networks are enhanced, but for non-oscillatory targets both types of networks show fairly similar evolvability. We find that SF networks generate oscillations much more easily than ER networks do, and this may explain why SF networks are more evolvable than ER networks are for oscillatory phenotypes. In spite of their greater evolvability, we find that networks with SFout topologies are also more robust to mutations than ER networks. Furthermore, the SFout topologies are more robust to changes in initial conditions (environmental robustness). For both topologies, we find that once a population of networks has reached the target state, further neutral evolution can lead to an increase in both the mutational robustness and the environmental robustness to changes in initial conditions.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figure

Why “intergenerational feminist media studies”?

Feminism and generation are live and ideologically freighted issues that are subject to a substantial amount of media engagement. The figure of the millennial and the baby boomer, for example, regularly circulate in mainstream media, often accompanied by hyperbolic and vitriolic discourses and affects of intergenerational feminist conflict. In addition, theories of feminist generation and waves have been and continue to be extensively critiqued within feminist theory. Given the compelling criticisms directed at these categories, we ask: why bother examining and foregrounding issues of generation, intergeneration, and transgeneration in feminist media studies? Whilst remaining sceptical of linearity and familial metaphors and of repeating reductive, heteronormative, and racist versions of feminist movements, we believe that the concept of generation does have critical purchase for feminist media scholars. Indeed, precisely because of the problematic ways that is it used, and the prevalence of it as a volatile, yet only too palpable, organizing category, generation is both in need of continual critical analysis, and is an important tool to be used—with care and nuance—when examining the multiple routes through which power functions in order to marginalize, reward, and oppress. Exploring both diachronic and synchronic understandings of generation, this article emphasizes the use of conjunctural analysis to excavate the specific historical conditions that impact upon and create generation. This special issue of Feminist Media Studies covers a range of media forms—film, games, digital media, television, print media, as well as practices of media production, intervention, and representation. The articles also explore how figures at particular lifestages—particularly the girl and the aging woman—are constructed relationally, and circulate, within media, with particular attention to sexuality. Throughout the issue there is an emphasis on exploring the ways in which the category of generation is mobilized in order to gloss sexism, racism, ageism, class oppression, and the effects of neoliberalism

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences.

At the 2019 and 2021 International Conference on Environmental Psychology, discussions were held on the future of conferences in light of the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and inequities associated with conference travel. In this manuscript, we provide an early career researcher (ECR) perspective on this discussion. We argue that travel-intensive conference practices damage both the environment and our credibility as a discipline, conflict with the intrinsic values and motivations of our discipline, and are inequitable. As such, they must change. This change can be achieved by moving toward virtual and hybrid conferences, which can reduce researchers' carbon footprints and promote equity, if employed carefully and with informal exchange as a priority. By acting collectively and with the support of institutional change, we can adapt conference travel norms in our field. To investigate whether our arguments correspond to views in the wider community of ECRs within environmental psychology, we conducted a community case study. By leveraging our professional networks and directly contacting researchers in countries underrepresented in those networks, we recruited 117 ECRs in 32 countries for an online survey in February 2022. The surveyed ECRs supported a change in conference travel practices, including flying less, and perceived the number of researchers wanting to reduce their travel emissions to be growing. Thirteen percent of respondents had even considered leaving academia due to travel requirements. Concerning alternative conference formats, a mixed picture emerged. Overall, participants had slightly negative evaluations of virtual conferences, but expected them to improve within the next 5 years. However, ECRs with health issues, facing visa challenges, on low funding, living in remote areas, with caretaking obligations or facing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 expected a switch toward virtual or hybrid conferences to positively affect their groups. Participants were divided about their ability to build professional relationships in virtual settings, but believed that maintaining relationships virtually is possible. We conclude by arguing that the concerns of ECRs in environmental psychology about current and alternative conference practices must be taken seriously. We call on our community to work on collective solutions and less travel-intensive conference designs using participatory methods. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2022 Köhler, Kreil, Wenger, Darmandieu, Graves, Haugestad, Holzen, Keller, Lloyd, Marczak, Međugorac and Rosa.

Impact of Protein Stability, Cellular Localization, and Abundance on Proteomic Detection of Tumor-Derived Proteins in Plasma

Tumor-derived, circulating proteins are potentially useful as biomarkers for detection of cancer, for monitoring of disease progression, regression and recurrence, and for assessment of therapeutic response. Here we interrogated how a protein's stability, cellular localization, and abundance affect its observability in blood by mass-spectrometry-based proteomics techniques. We performed proteomic profiling on tumors and plasma from two different xenograft mouse models. A statistical analysis of this data revealed protein properties indicative of the detection level in plasma. Though 20% of the proteins identified in plasma were tumor-derived, only 5% of the proteins observed in the tumor tissue were found in plasma. Both intracellular and extracellular tumor proteins were observed in plasma; however, after normalizing for tumor abundance, extracellular proteins were seven times more likely to be detected. Although proteins that were more abundant in the tumor were also more likely to be observed in plasma, the relationship was nonlinear: Doubling the spectral count increased detection rate by only 50%. Many secreted proteins, even those with relatively low spectral count, were observed in plasma, but few low abundance intracellular proteins were observed. Proteins predicted to be stable by dipeptide composition were significantly more likely to be identified in plasma than less stable proteins. The number of tryptic peptides in a protein was not significantly related to the chance of a protein being observed in plasma. Quantitative comparison of large versus small tumors revealed that the abundance of proteins in plasma as measured by spectral count was associated with the tumor size, but the relationship was not one-to-one; a 3-fold decrease in tumor size resulted in a 16-fold decrease in protein abundance in plasma. This study provides quantitative support for a tumor-derived marker prioritization strategy that favors secreted and stable proteins over all but the most abundant intracellular proteins

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente