2,609 research outputs found
Metabolic and Subjective Results Review of the Integrated Suit Test Series
Crewmembers will perform a variety of exploration and construction activities on the lunar surface. These activities will be performed while inside an extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit. In most cases, human performance is compromised while inside an EVA suit as compared to a crewmember s unsuited performance baseline. Subjects completed different EVA type tasks, ranging from ambulation to geology and construction activities, in different lunar analog environments including overhead suspension, underwater and 1-g lunar-like terrain, in both suited and unsuited conditions. In the suited condition, the Mark III (MKIII) EVA technology demonstrator suit was used and suit pressure and suit weight were parameters tested. In the unsuited conditions, weight, mass, center of gravity (CG), terrain type and navigation were the parameters. To the extent possible, one parameter was varied while all others were held constant. Tests were not fully crossed, but rather one parameter was varied while all others were left in the most nominal setting. Oxygen consumption (VO2), modified Cooper-Harper (CH) ratings of operator compensation and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were measured for each trial. For each variable, a lower value correlates to more efficient task performance. Due to a low sample size, statistical significance was not attainable. Initial findings indicate that suit weight, CG and the operational environment can have a large impact on human performance during EVA. Systematic, prospective testing series such as those performed to date will enable a better understanding of the crucial interactions of the human and the EVA suit system and their environment. However, work remains to be done to confirm these findings. These data have been collected using only unsuited subjects and one EVA suit prototype that is known to fit poorly on a large demographic of the astronaut population. Key findings need to be retested using an EVA suit prototype better suited to a larger anthropometric portion of the astronaut population, and elements tested only in the unsuited condition need to be evaluated with an EVA suit and appropriate analog environment
Modification of the pattern informatics method for forecasting large earthquake events using complex eigenvectors
Recent studies have shown that real-valued principal component analysis can
be applied to earthquake fault systems for forecasting and prediction. In
addition, theoretical analysis indicates that earthquake stresses may obey a
wave-like equation, having solutions with inverse frequencies for a given fault
similar to those that characterize the time intervals between the largest
events on the fault. It is therefore desirable to apply complex principal
component analysis to develop earthquake forecast algorithms. In this paper we
modify the Pattern Informatics method of earthquake forecasting to take
advantage of the wave-like properties of seismic stresses and utilize the
Hilbert transform to create complex eigenvectors out of measured time series.
We show that Pattern Informatics analyses using complex eigenvectors create
short-term forecast hot-spot maps that differ from hot-spot maps created using
only real-valued data and suggest methods of analyzing the differences and
calculating the information gain.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to Tectonophysics on 30 August 200
Uncertainty in Signals of Large-Scale Climate Variations in Radiosonde and Satellite Upper-Air Temperature Datasets
There is no single reference dataset of long-term global upper-air temperature observations, although several
groups have developed datasets from radiosonde and satellite observations for climate-monitoring purposes. The
existence of multiple data products allows for exploration of the uncertainty in signals of climate variations and
change. This paper examines eight upper-air temperature datasets and quantifies the magnitude and uncertainty
of various climate signals, including stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and tropospheric ENSO
signals, stratospheric warming following three major volcanic eruptions, the abrupt tropospheric warming of
1976–77, and multidecadal temperature trends. Uncertainty estimates are based both on the spread of signal
estimates from the different observational datasets and on the inherent statistical uncertainties of the signal in
any individual dataset.
The large spread among trend estimates suggests that using multiple datasets to characterize large-scale upperair
temperature trends gives a more complete characterization of their uncertainty than reliance on a single
dataset. For other climate signals, there is value in using more than one dataset, because signal strengths vary.
However, the purely statistical uncertainty of the signal in individual datasets is large enough to effectively
encompass the spread among datasets. This result supports the notion of an 11th climate-monitoring principle,
augmenting the 10 principles that have now been generally accepted (although not generally implemented) by
the climate community. This 11th principle calls for monitoring key climate variables with multiple, independent
observing systems for measuring the variable, and multiple, independent groups analyzing the data
GTI-space : the space of generalized topological indices
A new extension of the generalized topological indices (GTI) approach is carried out torepresent 'simple' and 'composite' topological indices (TIs) in an unified way. Thisapproach defines a GTI-space from which both simple and composite TIs represent particular subspaces. Accordingly, simple TIs such as Wiener, Balaban, Zagreb, Harary and Randićconnectivity indices are expressed by means of the same GTI representation introduced for composite TIs such as hyper-Wiener, molecular topological index (MTI), Gutman index andreverse MTI. Using GTI-space approach we easily identify mathematical relations between some composite and simple indices, such as the relationship between hyper-Wiener and Wiener index and the relation between MTI and first Zagreb index. The relation of the GTI space with the sub-structural cluster expansion of property/activity is also analysed and some routes for the applications of this approach to QSPR/QSAR are also given
Counting matrices over finite fields with support on skew Young diagrams and complements of Rothe diagrams
We consider the problem of finding the number of matrices over a finite field
with a certain rank and with support that avoids a subset of the entries. These
matrices are a q-analogue of permutations with restricted positions (i.e., rook
placements). For general sets of entries these numbers of matrices are not
polynomials in q (Stembridge 98); however, when the set of entries is a Young
diagram, the numbers, up to a power of q-1, are polynomials with nonnegative
coefficients (Haglund 98).
In this paper, we give a number of conditions under which these numbers are
polynomials in q, or even polynomials with nonnegative integer coefficients. We
extend Haglund's result to complements of skew Young diagrams, and we apply
this result to the case when the set of entries is the Rothe diagram of a
permutation. In particular, we give a necessary and sufficient condition on the
permutation for its Rothe diagram to be the complement of a skew Young diagram
up to rearrangement of rows and columns. We end by giving conjectures
connecting invertible matrices whose support avoids a Rothe diagram and
Poincar\'e polynomials of the strong Bruhat order.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, 1 tabl
Electrode Polarization Effects in Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy
In the present work, we provide broadband dielectric spectra showing strong
electrode polarization effects for various materials, belonging to very
different material classes. This includes both ionic and electronic conductors
as, e.g., salt solutions, ionic liquids, human blood, and
colossal-dielectric-constant materials. These data are intended to provide a
broad data base enabling a critical test of the validity of phenomenological
and microscopic models for electrode polarization. In the present work, the
results are analyzed using a simple phenomenological equivalent-circuit
description, involving a distributed parallel RC circuit element for the
modeling of the weakly conducting regions close to the electrodes. Excellent
fits of the experimental data are achieved in this way, demonstrating the
universal applicability of this approach. In the investigated ionically
conducting materials, we find the universal appearance of a second dispersion
region due to electrode polarization, which is only revealed if measuring down
to sufficiently low frequencies. This indicates the presence of a second
charge-transport process in ionic conductors with blocking electrodes.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, experimental data are provided in electronic form
(see "Data Conservancy"
Core Structure of Global Vortices in Brane World Models
We study analytically and numerically the core structure of global vortices
forming on topologically deformed brane-worlds with a single toroidally compact
extra dimension. It is shown that for an extra dimension size larger than the
scale of symmetry breaking the magnitude of the complex scalar field at the
vortex center can dynamically remain non-zero. Singlevaluedness and regularity
are not violated. Instead, the winding escapes to the extra dimension at the
vortex center. As the extra dimension size decreases the field magnitude at the
core dynamically decreases also and in the limit of zero extra dimension size
we reobtain the familiar global vortex solution. Extensions to other types of
defects and gauged symmetries are also discussed.Comment: 6 two column pages, 3 figure
Magneto-Transport Properties of Doped RuSrGdCuO
RuSrGdCuO, in which magnetic order and superconductivity coexist
with , is a complex material which poses new and
important questions to our understanding of the interplay between magnetic and
superconducting (SC) order. Resistivity, Hall effect and thermopower
measurements on sintered ceramic RuSrGdCuO are presented, together
with results on a broad range of substituted analogues. The Hall effect and
thermopower both show anomalous decreases below which may be
explained within a simple two-band model by a transition from localized to more
itinerant behavior in the RuO layer at .Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B., correspondence to
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