2,622 research outputs found
Coronagraphic Observations of Lunar Sodium
This grant supported an investigation of lunar sodium by our coronagraph and spectrograph on nearby Mount Lemmon. We report successful operation and data analysis during International Lunar Atmosphere Week, September 15 - 22, 1995, and submittal of a paper to Icarus. The core of the proposed work was to observe the lunar sodium atmosphere with our classical Lyot coronagraph and specially-built grating spectrograph on Mount Lemmon, a 9400-foot peak about an hour's drive from Tucson. It is optimized for low scattered light and for observing from the Moon's limb to an altitude of approx.1 lunar radius. The grating has 600 lines/mm and a blaze angle of 49 deg., and is used with a somewhat wide slit at a resolving power of about 5000. It is called DARRK for the initials of the people who designed it. The rejection of stray light from the Moon's disk is spectacularly good: when the sky is clear this light is absent right up to a few arcsec from the limb. We use an excellent 1024 by 1024 pixel CCD camera, operated at -100 C; the exposures are 10 to 30 min. Data reduction is done with IRAF running on a Sun Sparcstation
Coronagraphic Observations of Lunar Sodium
The core of the proposed work was to observe the lunar sodium atmosphere with our classical Lyot coronagraph and specially-built grating spectrograph on Mount Lemmon, a 9400-foot peak about an hour's drive from Tucson. It is optimized for low scattered light and for observing from the Moon's limb to an altitude of approx. 1 lunar radius. The grating has 600 lines/mm and a blaze angle of 49 deg, and is used with a somewhat wide slit at a resolving power of about 5000. It is called DARRK for the initials of the people who designed it. The rejection of stray light from the Moon's disk is spectacularly good: when the sky is clear this light is absent right up to a few arcsec from the limb. We use an excellent 1024 by 1024 pixel CCD camera, operated at -100 C; the exposures are 10 to 30 min. Data reduction is done with ERAF running on a Sun Sparcstation
Antecedent flow conditions and nitrate concentrations in the Mississippi River basin
The relationship between antecedent flow conditions and nitrate
concentrations was explored at eight sites in the 2.9 million square kilometers
(km<sup>2</sup>) Mississippi River basin, USA. Antecedent flow conditions were
quantified as the ratio between the mean daily flow of the previous year and
the mean daily flow from the period of record (Qratio), and the Qratio was
statistically related to nitrate anomalies (the unexplained variability in
nitrate concentration after filtering out season, long-term trend, and
contemporaneous flow effects) at each site. Nitrate anomaly and Qratio were
negatively related at three of the four major tributary sites and upstream
in the Mississippi River, indicating that when mean daily streamflow during
the previous year was lower than average, nitrate concentrations were higher
than expected. The strength of these relationships increased when data were
subdivided by contemporaneous flow conditions. Five of the eight sites had
significant negative relationships (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.05) at high or moderately
high contemporaneous flows, suggesting nitrate that accumulates in these
basins during a drought is flushed during subsequent high flows. At half of
the sites, when mean daily flow during the previous year was 50 percent
lower than average, nitrate concentration can be from 9 to 27 percent
higher than nitrate concentrations that follow a year with average mean
daily flow. Conversely, nitrate concentration can be from 8 to 21 percent
lower than expected when flow during the previous year was 50 percent higher
than average. Previously documented for small, relatively homogenous basins,
our results suggest that relationships between antecedent flows and nitrate
concentrations are also observable at a regional scale. Relationships were
not observed (using all contemporaneous flow data together) for basins
larger than 1 million km<sup>2</sup>, suggesting that above this limit the overall
size and diversity within these basins may necessitate the use of more
complicated statistical approaches or that there may be no discernible
basin-wide relationship with antecedent flow. The relationships between
nitrate concentration and Qratio identified in this study serve as the basis
for future studies that can better define specific hydrologic processes
occurring during and after a drought (or high flow period) which influence
nitrate concentration, such as the duration or magnitude of low flows, and
the timing of low and high flows
Mars Telescopic Observations Workshop II
Mars Telescopic Observations Workshop E convened in Tucson, Arizona, in October 1997 by popular demand slightly over two years following the first successful Mars Telescopic Observations Workshop, held in Ithaca, New York, in August 1995. Experts on Mars from the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and the United States were present. Twenty-eight oral presentations were made and generous time allotted for useful discussions among participants. The goals of the workshop were to (1) summarize active groundbased observing programs and evaluate them in the context of current and future space missions to Mars, (2) discuss new technologies and instrumentation in the context of changing emphasis of observations and theory useful for groundbased observing, and (3) more fully understand capabilities of current and planned Mars missions to better judge which groundbased observations are and will continue to be of importance to our overall Mars program. In addition, the exciting new discoveries presented from the Pathfinder experiments and the progress report from the Mars Global Surveyor infused the participants with satisfaction for the successes achieved in the early stages of these missions. Just as exciting was the enthusiasm for new groundbased programs designed to address new challenges resulting from mission science results. We would like to thank the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as Dr. David Black, director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and the staff of the Institute's Publications and Program Services Department for providing logistical, administrative, and publication support services for this workshop
Planetary Aeronomy and Related Studies
Mercury atmosphere - Sprague and Hunten, in collaboration with Katharina Lodders of Washington University, proposed, mainly on cosmochemical grounds, that S atoms are an important constituent of the atmosphere (30 times more abundant than sodium). This paper has appeared in Icarus. We also suggest that condensed sulfur is an excellent candidate for the radar-bright polar caps, more plausible than water ice because the latter is only barely stable even in permanently-shadowed craters. The best prospect for detection of the vapor is through its resonance lines, a triplet near 1814 A. Mercury is too close to the Sun to be observed by any existing space telescope, but there is some prospect that the search could be made from a Shuttle-based spectrograph such as Lyle Broadfoot's USTAR. Sprague and Hunten have completed an elaborate data analysis of over 100 measurements of the Na D lines, obtained with the 61-inch telescope and our echelle spectrograph. Full account has been taken of the radiative-transfer problem that arises because the Na atmosphere is not optically thin. The output of this code is used in another program that makes an elaborate inverse interpolation in two angles and optical depth and computes the effect of the seeing (always bad for Mercury). The seeing is determined by fitting cuts across a computed image to part of the spectrum adjacent to the sodium lines, and typically ranges from slightly less than 4 arcsec to worse than 6 (diameter at l/e of a Gaussian). The final result is a list of Na abundances, with some information on spatial distribution. One particularly interesting result of further analysis is a strong abundance maximum in the morning relative to the afternoon, confirming an earlier result for potassium, based on much fewer measurements. The analysis are completed during the extension of the present grant. This work depends heavily on the Hapke parameters used to estimate the reflectance of Mercury's surface. The paper by Domingue et al. examines the credibility of the available parameters, which are derived from disk-unresolved photometry, and concludes that errors in the derived Na abundances could be as great as 30%
Kinetics of n-Butoxy and 2-Pentoxy Isomerization and Detection of Primary Products by Infrared Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy
The primary products of n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy isomerization in the presence and absence of O_2 have been detected using pulsed laser photolysis-cavity ringdown spectroscopy (PLP-CRDS). Alkoxy radicals n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy were generated by photolysis of alkyl nitrite precursors (n-butyl nitrite or 2-pentyl nitrite, respectively), and the isomerization products with and without O_2 were detected by infrared cavity ringdown spectroscopy 20 μs after the photolysis. We report the mid-IR OH stretch (ν_1) absorption spectra for δ-HO-1-C_4H_8•, δ-HO-1-C_4H_8OO•, δ-HO-1-C_5H_(10)•, and δ-HO-1-C_5H_(10)OO•. The observed ν_1 bands are similar in position and shape to the related alcohols (n-butanol and 2-pentanol), although the HOROO• absorption is slightly stronger than the HOR• absorption. We determined the rate of isomerization relative to reaction with O_2 for the n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy radicals by measuring the relative ν_1 absorbance of HOROO• as a function of [O_2]. At 295 K and 670 Torr of N_2 or N_2/O_2, we found rate constant ratios of k_(isom)/k_(O2) = 1.7 (±0.1) × 10^(19) cm^(–3) for n-butoxy and k_(isom)/k_(O2) = 3.4(±0.4) × 10^(19) cm^(–3) for 2-pentoxy (2σ uncertainty). Using currently known rate constants k_(O2), we estimate isomerization rates of k_(isom) = 2.4 (±1.2) × 10^5 s^(–1) and k_(isom) ≈ 3 × 10^5 s^(–1) for n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy radicals, respectively, where the uncertainties are primarily due to uncertainties in k_(O2). Because isomerization is predicted to be in the high pressure limit at 670 Torr, these relative rates are expected to be the same at atmospheric pressure. Our results include corrections for prompt isomerization of hot nascent alkoxy radicals as well as reaction with background NO and unimolecular alkoxy decomposition. We estimate prompt isomerization yields under our conditions of 4 ± 2% and 5 ± 2% for n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy formed from photolysis of the alkyl nitrites at 351 nm. Our measured relative rate values are in good agreement with and more precise than previous end-product analysis studies conducted on the n-butoxy and 2-pentoxy systems. We show that reactions typically neglected in the analysis of alkoxy relative kinetics (decomposition, recombination with NO, and prompt isomerization) may need to be included to obtain accurate values of k_(isom)/k_(O2)
Spin susceptibility of the superfluid He-B in aerogel
The temperature dependence of paramagnetic susceptibility of the superfluid
^{3}He-B in aerogel is found. Calculations have been performed for an arbitrary
phase shift of s-wave scattering in the framework of BCS weak coupling theory
and the simplest model of aerogel as an aggregate of homogeneously distributed
ordinary impurities. Both limiting cases of the Born and unitary scattering can
be easily obtained from the general result. The existence of gapless
superfluidity starting at the critical impurity concentration depending on the
value of the scattering phase has been demonstrated. While larger than in the
bulk liquid the calculated susceptibility of the B-phase in aerogel proves to
be conspicuously smaller than that determined experimentally in the high
pressure region.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, REVTe
Engaging Healthcare Users through Gamification in Knowledge Sharing of Continuous Improvement in Healthcare
Knowledge management systems are key for capturing, retaining, and communicating results from projects and presenting information to staff. The purpose of a knowledge management system is to tap into the vast wisdom from projects and experts across an organization. This research focuses on the knowledge management system within the Veterans Health Administration that was developed as a repository of information on continuous improvement tools such as flowcharts, value stream mapping, 5S, and the application of these in healthcare projects. The use of social network analysis and gamification improves website organization, user participation, and dissemination of shared knowledge related to continuous improvement of operations. The purpose of gamification is to engage, teach, entertain, measure, and improve the ease of use of information systems. The goal of this research is to utilize gamification theory within the knowledge management system to drive behaviors in a targeted audience and engage users in aspects such as writing, contributing, getting the feedback, which will create a more robust, cohesive system. A thorough review of the current knowledge management system was conducted, and a gap analysis was performed comparing the goals and objectives for the system to the current results. Next, gamification techniques with the potential to improve performance were identified and strategies to implement these were developed
Model of Inhomogeneous Impurity Distribution in Fermi Superfluids
The standard treatment of impurities in metals assumes a homogeneous
distribution of impurities. In this paper we study distributions that are
inhomogeneous. We discuss in detail the "isotropic inhomogeneous scattering
model" which takes into account the spatially varying scattering on the scale
of the superfluid coherence length. On a large scale the model reduces to a
homogeneous medium with renormalized parameter values. We apply the model to
superfluid 3He, where porous aerogel acts as the impurity. We calculate the
transition temperature Tc, the order parameter, and the superfluid density.
Both A- and B-like phases are considered. Two different types of behavior are
identified for the temperature dependence of the order parameter. We compare
the calculations with experiments on 3He in aerogel. We find that most of the
differences between experiments and the homogeneous theory can be explained by
the inhomogeneous model. All our calculations are based on the quasiclassical
theory of Fermi liquids. The parameters of this theory for superfluid 3He in
aerogel are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, minor change
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