Energy efficient engine: Low-pressure turbine subsonic cascade component development and integration program

A subsonic cascade test program was conducted to provide technical data for optimizing the blade and vane airfoil designs for the Energy Efficient Engine Low-Pressure Turbine component. The program consisted of three parts. The first involved an evaluation of the low-chamber inlet guide vane. The second, was an evaluation of two candidate aerodynamic loading philosophies for the fourth blade root section. The third part consisted of an evaluation of three candidate airfoil geometries for the fourth blade mean section. The performance of each candidate airfoil was evaluated in a linear cascade configuration. The overall results of this study indicate that the aft-loaded airfoil designs resulted in lower losses which substantiated Pratt & Whitney Aircraft's design philosophy for the Energy Efficient Engine low-pressure turbine component

Miniature photonic-crystal hydrophone optimized for ocean acoustics

This work reports on an optical hydrophone that is insensitive to hydrostatic pressure, yet capable of measuring acoustic pressures as low as the background noise in the ocean in a frequency range of 1 Hz to 100 kHz. The miniature hydrophone consists of a Fabry-Perot interferometer made of a photonic-crystal reflector interrogated with a single-mode fiber, and is compatible with existing fiber-optic technologies. Three sensors with different acoustic power ranges placed within a sub-wavelength sized hydrophone head allow a high dynamic range in the excess of 160 dB with a low harmonic distortion of better than -30 dB. A method for suppressing cross coupling between sensors in the same hydrophone head is also proposed. A prototype was fabricated, assembled, and tested. The sensitivity was measured from 100 Hz to 100 kHz, demonstrating a minimum detectable pressure down to 12 {\mu}Pa (1-Hz noise bandwidth), a flatband wider than 10 kHz, and very low distortion

The impact of representative employee participation on work environment quality and business outcomes in the hotel industry

The paper evaluates the impact of representative employee participation on the work environment and business outcomes in the hotel industry in De nmark and New Zealand (NZ). These countries are of similar population and economic structure. Each has legislation for occupational health and safety (OHS) delegates, but in NZ this is quite recent and wider participative practices are not well developed by employer/union agreement as in Denmark with co operation committees. Comparison between the two countries enables testing of the impact of the degree of embeddedness of participative practices

New Natural Injection-Moldable Composite Material from Sunflower Oil Cake

Through a twin-screw extrusion process the native structure of sunflower oil cake was completely transformed (globular protein denaturation/texturization and husk fiber defibration) into a simpler matrix-fiber structure, as could be seen on SEM micrographs. Further chemical reduction of protein disulfide bridges greatly reduced the melt viscosity of the moistened composite that it could be injection-molded. The molded specimens were tested and their tensile and flexural properties and water absorption calculated. Their water resistance appeared to be particularly high, and could be enhanced further after a thermal treatment (N2, 200°C). The proteic matrix seemed to behave like a natural thermoset resin. Sunflower oil cake could be used without any additives to make biodegradable, water resistant and exceptionally cheap material

Billiards in a general domain with random reflections

We study stochastic billiards on general tables: a particle moves according to its constant velocity inside some domain ${\mathcal D} \subset {\mathbb R}^d$ until it hits the boundary and bounces randomly inside according to some reflection law. We assume that the boundary of the domain is locally Lipschitz and almost everywhere continuously differentiable. The angle of the outgoing velocity with the inner normal vector has a specified, absolutely continuous density. We construct the discrete time and the continuous time processes recording the sequence of hitting points on the boundary and the pair location/velocity. We mainly focus on the case of bounded domains. Then, we prove exponential ergodicity of these two Markov processes, we study their invariant distribution and their normal (Gaussian) fluctuations. Of particular interest is the case of the cosine reflection law: the stationary distributions for the two processes are uniform in this case, the discrete time chain is reversible though the continuous time process is quasi-reversible. Also in this case, we give a natural construction of a chord "picked at random" in ${\mathcal D}$, and we study the angle of intersection of the process with a $(d-1)$-dimensional manifold contained in ${\mathcal D}$.Comment: 50 pages, 10 figures; To appear in: Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis; corrected Theorem 2.8 (induced chords in nonconvex subdomains

MESMER: MeerKAT Search for Molecules in the Epoch of Reionization

[Abridged] Observations of molecular gas at all redshifts are critical for measuring the cosmic evolution in molecular gas density and understanding the star-formation history of the Universe. The 12CO molecule (J=1-0 transition = 115.27 GHz) is the best proxy for extragalactic H2, which is the gas reservoir from which star formation occurs, and has been detected out to z~6. Typically, redshifted high-J lines are observed at mm-wavelengths, the most commonly targeted systems exhibiting high SFRs (e.g. submm galaxies), and far-IR-bright QSOs. While the most luminous objects are the most readily observed, detections of more typical galaxies with modest SFRs are essential for completing the picture. ALMA will be revolutionary in terms of increasing the detection rate and pushing the sensitivity limit down to include such galaxies, however the limited FoV when observing at such high frequencies makes it difficult to use ALMA for studies of the large-scale structure traced out by molecular gas in galaxies. This article introduces a strategy for a systematic search for molecular gas during the EoR (z~7 and above), capitalizing on the fact that the J=1-0 transition of 12CO enters the upper bands of cm-wave instruments at high-z. The FoV advantage gained by observing at such frequencies, coupled with modern broadband correlators allows significant cosmological volumes to be probed on reasonable timescales. In this article we present an overview of our future observing programme which has been awarded 6,500 hours as one of the Large Survey Projects for MeerKAT, the forthcoming South African SKA pathfinder instrument. Its large FoV and correlator bandwidth, and high-sensitivity provide unprecedented survey speed for such work. An existing astrophysical simulation is coupled with instrumental considerations to demonstrate the feasibility of such observations and predict detection rates.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "Astronomy with megastructures: Joint science with the E-ELT and SKA", 10-14 May 2010, Crete, Greece (Eds: Isobel Hook, Dimitra Rigopoulou, Steve Rawlings and Aris Karastergiou

A new perspective on the submillimetre galaxy MM 18423+5938 at redshift 3.9296 from radio continuum imaging

The bright submillimetre (sub-mm) galaxy MM 18423+5938 at redshift 3.9296 has been predicted from mid-infrared and millimetre photometry to have an exceptionally large total infrared (IR) luminosity. We present new radio imaging at 1.4 GHz with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope that is used to determine a radio-derived total IR luminosity for MM 18423+5938 via the well established radio-far-infrared correlation. The flux density is found to be S_1.4 GHz = 217 +/- 37 \mu Jy, which corresponds to a rest-frame luminosity density of L_1.4 GHz = 2.32 +/- 0.40 x 10^25 / u W / Hz, where u is the magnification from a probable gravitational lens. The radio-derived total IR luminosity and star-formation rate are L_8-1000 \mu m = 5.6^+4.1_-2.4 x 10^13 / u L_sol and SFR = 9.4^+7.4_-4.9 x 10^3 / u M_sol / yr, respectively, which are ~9 times smaller than those previously reported. These differences are attributed to the IR spectral energy distribution of MM 18423+5938 being poorly constrained by the limited number of reliable photometric data that are currently available, and from a previous misidentification of the object at 70 \mu m. Using the radio derived total IR luminosity as a constraint, the temperature of the cold dust component is found to be T ~ 24^+7_-5 K for a dust emissivity of \beta = 1.5 +/- 0.5. The radio-derived properties of this galaxy are still large given the low excitation temperature implied by the CO emission lines and the temperature of the cold dust. Therefore, we conclude that MM 18423+5938 is probably gravitationally lensed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Biomarkers for exposure to ambient air pollution--comparison of carcinogen-DNA adduct levels with other exposure markers and markers for oxidative stress.

Human exposure to genotoxic compounds present in ambient air has been studied using selected biomarkers in nonsmoking Danish bus drivers and postal workers. A large interindividual variation in biomarker levels was observed. Significantly higher levels of bulky carcinogen-DNA adducts (75.42 adducts/10(8) nucleotides) and of 2-amino-apidic semialdehyde (AAS) in plasma proteins (56.7 pmol/mg protein) were observed in bus drivers working in the central part of Copenhagen, Denmark. In contrast, significantly higher levels of AAS in hemoglobin (55.8 pmol/mg protein), malondialdehyde in plasma (0. 96 nmol/ml plasma), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-albumin adduct (3.38 fmol/ microg albumin) were observed in the suburban group. The biomarker levels in postal workers were similar to the levels in suburban bus drivers. In the combined group of bus drivers and postal workers, negative correlations were observed between bulky carcinogen-DNA adduct and PAH-albumin levels (p = 0.005), and between DNA adduct and [gamma]-glutamyl semialdehyde (GGS) in hemoglobin (p = 0.11). Highly significant correlations were found between PAH-albumin adducts and AAS in plasma (p = 0.001) and GGS in hemoglobin (p = 0.001). Significant correlations were also observed between urinary 8-oxo-7, 8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine and AAS in plasma (p = 0.001) and PAH-albumin adducts (p = 0.002). The influence of the glutatione S-transferase (GST) M1 deletion on the correlation between the biomarkers was studied in the combined group. A significant negative correlation was only observed between bulky carcinogen-DNA adducts and PAH-albumin adducts (p = 0.02) and between DNA adduct and urinary mutagenic activity (p = 0.02) in the GSTM1 null group, but not in the workers who were homozygotes or heterozygotes for GSTM1. Our results indicate that some of the selected biomarkers can be used to distinguish between high and low exposure to environmental genotoxins