Digital computer control of a 30-cm mercury ion thruster

The major objective was to define the exact role of an onboard spacecraft computer in the control of ion thrusters. An initial computer control system with accurate high speed capability was designed, programmed, and tested with the computer as the sole control element for an operating ion thruster. The command functions and a code format for a spacecraft digital control system were established. A second computer control system was constructed to operate with these functions and format. A throttle program sequence was established and tested. A two thruster array was tested with these computer control systems and the results reported

Electrostatic propulsion system with a direct nuclear electrogenerator Patent

Nuclear electric generator for accelerating charged propellant particles in electrostatic propulsion syste

Temperature Fluctuations driven by Magnetorotational Instability in Protoplanetary Disks

The magnetorotational instability (MRI) drives magnetized turbulence in sufficiently ionized regions of protoplanetary disks, leading to mass accretion. The dissipation of the potential energy associated with this accretion determines the thermal structure of accreting regions. Until recently, the heating from the turbulence has only been treated in an azimuthally averaged sense, neglecting local fluctuations. However, magnetized turbulence dissipates its energy intermittently in current sheet structures. We study this intermittent energy dissipation using high resolution numerical models including a treatment of radiative thermal diffusion in an optically thick regime. Our models predict that these turbulent current sheets drive order unity temperature variations even where the MRI is damped strongly by Ohmic resistivity. This implies that the current sheet structures where energy dissipation occurs must be well resolved to correctly capture the flow structure in numerical models. Higher resolutions are required to resolve energy dissipation than to resolve the magnetic field strength or accretion stresses. The temperature variations are large enough to have major consequences for mineral formation in disks, including melting chondrules, remelting calcium-aluminum rich inclusions, and annealing silicates; and may drive hysteresis: current sheets in MRI active regions could be significantly more conductive than the remainder of the disk.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, ApJ In Press, updated to match proof

Aspects of nature in early Irish religion: an essay in the phenomenology of religion

Research into a wide range of early Irish literature has yielded a large number of texts in which nature and the Sacred are clearly linked in some way. By comparing and contrasting these various nature texts with each other and with attitudes to nature in the Bible and elsewhere, it is possible to arrive at a basic understanding of the religious significance of nature in early Irish Christianity and, to some extent, in pre-christian Irish religion.The primal religions of Ireland and early Israel had many features in common. Both saw the land, water, trees, sun, fire and other aspects of nature as potentially revealing the presence and activity of the Divine. The term 'sacramental universe' is appropriate to both, and neither distinguished sharply between the spiritual and the physical. How did they come by this integrated world-view? There are of course theories of symbolism and sacramentology which one might p call upon in an attempt to explain the experience but such abstract conceptions belong to a different time and place. To say that they used their primal imagination is also to import ideas from another world, but at least they are ideas which have been formed in dialogue with surviving primal religions. Exactly what primal imagination is (as distinct from what it believes) and how it operates is another matter.It is none the less an important question. Did the people who approached the Divine in and through nature, address an external reality, or a projection, or a delusion or what? We asked similar questions in relation to the girls #10 claimed to have seen the fairywoman on Knockainy, but the answers are far from clear. What is clear however, is that in Ireland as in Israel, the life-giving energy of nature was seen as having a supernatural source or sources, upon which human beings were ultimately dependent. This was a cause of wonder and also of fear. Both cultures sometimes expressed a deep ambivalence towards the Divine.Yahweh and the deities of pre-christian Ireland represent very different conceptions of God and the cosmos. However, the primal imagination which we have seen at work in parts of the Hebrew Bible, together with the wealth of nature imagery found throughout the Bible as a whole, may have helped the early Irish Christians to retain some of their own traditional attitudes towards nature, as they made the transition from a primal to a more universal faith

Corrections to deuterium hyperfine structure due to deuteron excitations

We consider the corrections to deuterium hyperfine structure originating from the two-photon exchange between electron and deuteron, with the deuteron excitations in the intermediate states. In particular, the motion of the two intermediate nucleons as a whole is taken into account. The problem is solved in the zero-range approximation. The result is in good agreement with the experimental value of the deuterium hyperfine splitting.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe

The Influence of Metallicity on Star Formation in Protogalaxies

In cold dark matter cosmological models, the first stars to form are believed to do so within small protogalaxies. We wish to understand how the evolution of these early protogalaxies changes once the gas forming them has been enriched with small quantities of heavy elements, which are produced and dispersed into the intergalactic medium by the first supernovae. Our initial conditions represent protogalaxies forming within a fossil H II region, a previously ionized region that has not yet had time to cool and recombine. We study the influence of low levels of metal enrichment on the cooling and collapse of ionized gas in small protogalactic halos using three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations that incorporate the effects of the appropriate chemical and thermal processes. Our previous simulations demonstrated that for metallicities Z < 0.001 Z_sun, metal line cooling alters the density and temperature evolution of the gas by less than 1% compared to the metal-free case at densities below 1 cm-3) and temperatures above 2000 K. Here, we present the results of high-resolution simulations using particle splitting to improve resolution in regions of interest. These simulations allow us to address the question of whether there is a critical metallicity above which fine structure cooling from metals allows efficient fragmentation to occur, producing an initial mass function (IMF) resembling the local Salpeter IMF, rather than only high-mass stars.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, First Stars III conference proceeding

Presymmetry beyond the Standard Model

We go beyond the Standard Model guided by presymmetry, the discrete electroweak quark-lepton symmetry hidden by topological effects which explain quark fractional charges as in condense matter physics. Partners of the particles of the Standard Model and the discrete symmetry associated with this partnership appear as manifestations of a residual presymmetry and its extension from matter to forces. This duplication of the spectrum of the Standard Model keeps spin and comes nondegenerated about the TeV scale.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures. To be published in the proceedings of DPF-2009, Detroit, MI, July 2009, eConf C09072

Hydrogen bonding in substituted nitroanilines : isolated nets in 1,3-diamino-4-nitrobenzene and continuously interwoven nets in 3,5-dinitroaniline

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Multiple steady-states in the terrestrial atmosphere-biosphere system: a result of a discrete vegetation classification?

International audienceMultiple steady states in the atmosphere-biosphere system can arise as a consequence of interactions and positive feedbacks. While atmospheric conditions affect vegetation productivity in terms of available light, water, and heat, different levels of vegetation productivity can result in differing energy- and water partitioning at the land surface, thereby leading to different atmospheric conditions. Here we investigate the emergence of multiple steady states in the terrestrial atmosphere-biosphere system and focus on the role of how vegetation is represented in the model: (i) in terms of a few, discrete vegetation classes, or (ii) a continuous representation. We then conduct sensitivity simulations with respect to initial conditions and to the number of discrete vegetation classes in order to investigate the emergence of multiple steady states. We find that multiple steady states occur in our model only if vegetation is represented by a few vegetation classes. With an increased number of classes, the difference between the number of multiple steady states diminishes, and disappears completely in our model when vegetation is represented by 8 classes or more. Despite the convergence of the multiple steady states into a single one, the resulting climate-vegetation state is nevertheless less productive when compared to the emerging state associated with the continuous vegetation parameterization. We conclude from these results that the representation of vegetation in terms of a few, discrete vegetation classes can result (a) in an artificial emergence of multiple steady states and (b) in a underestimation of vegetation productivity. Both of these aspects are important limitations to be considered when global vegetation-atmosphere models are to be applied to topics of global change

Thermoregulation of the \u3ci\u3epap\u3c/i\u3e Operon: Evidence for the Involvement of RimJ, the N-terminal Acetylase of Ribosomal Protein S5

Our previous work showed that pap pilin gene transcription is subject to a thermoregulatory control mechanism under which pap pilin is not transcribed at a low temperature (23°C) (L. B. Blyn, B. A. Braaten, C. A. White-Ziegler, D. H. Rolfson, and D. A. Low, EMBO J. 8:613-620, 1989). In order to isolate genes involved in this temperature regulation of gene expression, chromosomal mini-TnlO (mTnlO) mutations that allowed transcription of the pap pilin gene at 23°C were identified, and the locus was designated tcp, for thermoregulatory control of pap (C. A. White-Ziegler, L. B. Blyn, B. A. Braaten, and D. A. Low, J. Bacteriol. 172:1775-1782, 1990). In the present study, quantitative analysis showed that the tcp mutations restore pap pilin transcription at 23°C to levels similar to those measured at 37°C. By in vivo recombination, the tcp mutations were mapped to phage E4H1OS of the Kohara library of the Escherichia coli chromosome (Y. Kohara, K. Akiyama, and K. Isono, Cell 50:495-508, 1987). The tcp locus was cloned by complementation, in which a 1.3-kb DNA fragment, derived from the Kohara phage, was shown to restore thermoregulation to the mTnlO mutants. DNA sequencing revealed two open reading frames (ORFs) encoding proteins with calculated molecular masses of 22.7 and 20.3 kDa. The sequence of the 22.7-kDa ORF was identical to that of rimJ, the N-terminal acetylase of the ribosomal protein S5. The gene encoding the 20.3-kDa ORF, designated g20.3 here, did not display significant homology to any known. DNA or protein sequence. On the basis of Northern (RNA) blot data, rimj and g20.3 are located within the same operon. Two of the mTnlO transposons in the thermoregulatory mutants were inserted within the coding region of rimi, indicating that the RimJ protein plays an important role in the temperature regulation ofpap pilin gene transcription. However, rimj itself is not thermoregulated, since rim. transcripts were detected at both 23 and 37°C. Disruption of the g20.3 gene by insertion and deletion mutagenesis did not affect thermoregulation of the pap operon, suggesting that, although g20.3 lies within the same operon as rimj, it does not play a role in thermoregulation