7,221 research outputs found
Fast aquatic escape with a jet thruster
The ability to collect water samples rapidly with aerialâaquatic robots would increase the safety and efficiency of water health monitoring and allow water sample collection from dangerous or inaccessible areas. An aquatic micro air vehicle (AquaMAV) able to dive into the water offers a low cost and robust means of collecting samples. However, small-scale flying vehicles generally do not have sufficient power for transition to flight from water. In this paper, we present a novel jet propelled AquaMAV able to perform jumpgliding leaps from water and a planar trajectory model that is able to accurately predict aquatic escape trajectories. Using this model, we are able to offer insights into the stability of aquatic takeoff to perturbations from surface waves and demonstrate that an impulsive leap is a robust method of flight transition. The AquaMAV uses a CO 2 powered water jet to escape the water, actuated by a custom shape memory alloy gas release. The 100 g robot leaps from beneath the surface, where it can deploy wings and glide over the water, achieving speeds above 11 m/s
Critical currents in weakly textured MgB2: Nonlinear transport in anisotropic heterogeneous media
A model for highly non-linear transport in heterogeneous media consisting of
anisotropic particles with a preferred orientation is proposed and applied to
the current transport in weakly textured magnesium diboride, MgB2. It
essentially explains why, unlike in conventional superconductors, a significant
macroscopic anisotropy of the critical currents can be induced by the
preparation of MgB2 tapes. The field and angular dependence of the critical
current is calculated for various degrees of texture and compared to
experimental data
Nonparametric Regression, Confidence Regions and Regularization
In this paper we offer a unified approach to the problem of nonparametric
regression on the unit interval. It is based on a universal, honest and
non-asymptotic confidence region which is defined by a set of linear
inequalities involving the values of the functions at the design points.
Interest will typically centre on certain simplest functions in that region
where simplicity can be defined in terms of shape (number of local extremes,
intervals of convexity/concavity) or smoothness (bounds on derivatives) or a
combination of both. Once some form of regularization has been decided upon the
confidence region can be used to provide honest non-asymptotic confidence
bounds which are less informative but conceptually much simpler
Digital Offset Calibration of an OPAMP Towards Improving Static Parameters of 90 nm CMOS DAC
In this paper, an on-chip self-calibrated 8-bit R-2R digital-to-analog converter (DAC) based on digitally compensated input offset of the operational amplifier (OPAMP) is presented. To improve the overall DAC performance, a digital offset cancellation method was used to compensate deviations in the input offset voltage of the OPAMP caused by process variations. The whole DAC as well as offset compensation circuitry were designed in a standard 90 nm CMOS process. The achieved results show that after the self-calibration process, the improvement of 48% in the value of DAC offset error is achieved
Large scale structure in the HI Parkes All-Sky Survey: Filling the Voids with HI galaxies?
We estimate the two-point correlation function in redshift space of the
recently compiled HIPASS neutral hydrogen (HI) sources catalogue, which if
modeled as a power law, , the best-fitting
parameters for the HI selected galaxies are found to be Mpc with . Fixing the slope to its universal
value , we obtain Mpc. Comparing the
measured two point correlation function with the predictions of the concordance
cosmological model, we find that at the present epoch the HI selected galaxies
are anti-biased with respect to the underlying matter fluctuation field with
their bias value being . Furthermore, dividing the HI
galaxies into two richness subsamples we find that the low mass HI galaxies
have a very low present bias factor (), while the high mass
HI galaxies trace the underlying matter distribution as the optical galaxies
(). Using our derived present-day HI galaxy bias we estimate
their redshift space distortion parameter, and correct accordingly the
correlation function for peculiar motions. The resulting real-space correlation
length is Mpc and Mpc for the low and high mass HI galaxies, respectively. The
low-mass HI galaxies appear to have the lowest correlation length among all
extragalactic populations studied to-date. Also, we have correlated the
IRAS-PSCz reconstructed density field, smoothed over scales of 5 Mpc,
with the positions of the HI galaxies, to find that indeed the HI galaxies are
typically found in negative overdensity regions (\delta\rho/\rho_{\rm PSCz}
\mincir 0).Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, MNRAS in pres
The Influence of Task Type on Perceived Fluency
In foreign language teaching it is necessary to employ a variety of tasks with a different degree of narrative structure to influence learnersâ performance in anticipated ways, thus enhancing overall fluency as a significant aspect of successful communication. This study examines how different task types influence the perceived fluency of EFL learners. The obtained results confirm that the perception of speakersâ fluency varied across tasks. The worst perception of fluency was achieved in the task based on the formulation of unrelated utterances, that is, the most unstructured task led to the least fluent performance. A frequent introduction of new topics demands a great amount of attention. Therefore, in foreign language teaching emphasis should be laid on tasks including frequent introductions of new topics, due to the observed decrease in perceived fluency
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