An investigation of reports of Controlled Flight Toward Terrain (CFTT)

Some 258 reports from more than 23,000 documents in the files of the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) were found to be to the hazard of flight into terrain with no prior awareness by the crew of impending disaster. Examination of the reports indicate that human error was a casual factor in 64% of the incidents in which some threat of terrain conflict was experienced. Approximately two-thirds of the human errors were attributed to controllers, the most common discrepancy being a radar vector below the Minimum Vector Altitude (MVA). Errors by pilots were of a much diverse nature and include a few instances of gross deviations from their assigned altitudes. The ground proximity warning system and the minimum safe altitude warning equipment were the initial recovery factor in some 18 serious incidents and were apparently the sole warning in six reported instances which otherwise would most probably have ended in disaster

Extreme Quantum Advantage for Rare-Event Sampling

We introduce a quantum algorithm for efficient biased sampling of the rare events generated by classical memoryful stochastic processes. We show that this quantum algorithm gives an extreme advantage over known classical biased sampling algorithms in terms of the memory resources required. The quantum memory advantage ranges from polynomial to exponential and when sampling the rare equilibrium configurations of spin systems the quantum advantage diverges.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures; http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/eqafbs.ht

Optimizing Quantum Models of Classical Channels: The reverse Holevo problem

Given a classical channel---a stochastic map from inputs to outputs---the input can often be transformed to an intermediate variable that is informationally smaller than the input. The new channel accurately simulates the original but at a smaller transmission rate. Here, we examine this procedure when the intermediate variable is a quantum state. We determine when and how well quantum simulations of classical channels may improve upon the minimal rates of classical simulation. This inverts Holevo's original question of quantifying the capacity of quantum channels with classical resources. We also show that this problem is equivalent to another, involving the local generation of a distribution from common entanglement.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures; http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/qfact.htm; substantially updated from v

A procedure for assessing aircraft turbulence- penetration performance

Subsonic transport aircraft performance assessment during atmospheric turbulenc

Thermal, Radiation and Impact Protective Shields (TRIPS) for Robotic and Human Space Exploration Missions

New concepts for protective shields for NASA s Crew Exploration Vehicles (CEVs) and planetary probes offer improved mission safety and affordability. Hazards include radiation from cosmic rays and solar particle events, hypervelocity impacts from orbital debris/ micrometeorites, and the extreme heating environment experienced during entry into planetary atmospheres. The traditional approach for the design of protection systems for these hazards has been to create single-function shields, i.e. ablative and blanket-based heat shields for thermal protection systems (TPS), polymer or other low-molecular-weight materials for radiation shields, and multilayer, Whipple-type shields for protection from hypervelocity impacts. This paper introduces an approach for the development of a single, multifunctional protective shield, employing nanotechnology- based materials, to serve simultaneously as a TPS, an impact shield and as the first line of defense against radiation. The approach is first to choose low molecular weight ablative TPS materials, (existing and planned for development) and add functionalized carbon nanotubes. Together they provide both thermal and radiation (TR) shielding. Next, impact protection (IP) is furnished through a tough skin, consisting of hard, ceramic outer layers (to fracture the impactor) and sublayers of tough, nanostructured fabrics to contain the debris cloud from the impactor before it can penetrate the spacecraft s interior

Discovery of the Interstellar Chiral Molecule Propylene Oxide (CH3_3CHCH2_2O)

Life on Earth relies on chiral molecules, that is, species not superimposable on their mirror images. This manifests itself in the selection of a single molecular handedness, or homochirality, across the biosphere. We present the astronomical detection of a chiral molecule, propylene oxide (CH$_3$CHCH$_2$O), in absorption toward the Galactic Center. Propylene oxide is detected in the gas phase in a cold, extended molecular shell around the embedded, massive protostellar clusters in the Sagittarius B2 star-forming region. This material is representative of the earliest stage of solar system evolution in which a chiral molecule has been found

Cell proliferation and differentiation kinetics during spermatogenesis in Hydra carnea

Spermatogenesis inHydra carnea was investigated. The cell proliferation and differentiation kinetics of intermediates in the spermatogenesis pathway were determined, using quantitative determinations of cell abundance, pulse and continuous labelling with3H-thymidine and nuclear DNA measurements. Testes develop in the ectoderm of male hydra as a result of interstitial cell proliferation. Gonial stem cells and proliferating spermatogonia have cell cycles of 28 h and 22 h, respectively. Stem cells undergo four, five or six cell divisions prior to meiosis which includes a premeiotic S+G2 phase of 20 h followed by a long meiotic prophase (22 h). Spermatid differentiation requires 12–29 h. When they first appear, testes contain only proliferating spermatogonia; meiotic and postmeiotic cells appear after 2 and 3 days, respectively and release of mature sperm begins after 4 days. Mature testes produce about 27,000 sperm per day over a period of 4–6 days: about 220 gonial stem cells per testis are required to support this level of sperm differentiation. Further results indicate that somatic (e.g. nematocyte) differentiation does not occur in testes although it continues normally in ectodermal tissue outside testes. Our results support the hypothesis that spermatogenesis is controlled locally in regions of the ectoderm where testes develop

Coupled Oscillators with Chemotaxis

A simple coupled oscillator system with chemotaxis is introduced to study morphogenesis of cellular slime molds. The model successfuly explains the migration of pseudoplasmodium which has been experimentally predicted to be lead by cells with higher intrinsic frequencies. Results obtained predict that its velocity attains its maximum value in the interface region between total locking and partial locking and also suggest possible roles played by partial synchrony during multicellular development.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, latex using jpsj.sty and epsf.sty, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 67 (1998