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Multimedia broadcast and internet satellite system design and user trial results
The EU funded project, System for Advanced Multimedia Broadcast
and IT Services (SAMBITS), has created an enhanced and synchronised,
multimedia terminal for merging satellite broadcast and internet
telecommunication services in a way that efficiently combines the large
bandwidth of the broadcast channel and the interactivity of the internet.
This paper proposes a novel broadcast and internet service concept, illustrates
this concept with two service scenarios and develops a system architecture to
demonstrate the range of key benefits provided by these new technologies.
It then describes the interactive multimedia terminal that was used for
consuming this new service concept. Finally, the results of the user trials on the
terminal are presented and discussed
Use of cohesive elements in fatigue analysis
Cohesive laws describe the resistance to incipient separation
of material surfaces. A cohesive finite element
is formulated on the basis of a particular cohesive
law. Cohesive elements are placed at the boundary
between adjacent standard volume finite elements
to model fatigue damage that leads to fracture at the
separation of the element boundaries per the cohesive
law. In this work, a cohesive model for fatigue
crack initiation is taken to be the irreversible loadingunloading
hysteresis that represents fatigue damage
occuring due to cyclic loads leading to the initiation of
small cracks. Various cohesive laws are reviewed and
one is selected that incorporates a hysteretic cyclic
loading that accounts for energetic dissipative mechanisms.
A mathematical representation is developed
based on an exponential effective load-separation cohesive
relationship. A three-dimensional cohesive element
is defined using this compliance relationship integrated
at four points on the mid-surface of the area
element. Implementation into finite element software
is discussed and particular attention is applied to numerical
convergence issues as the inflection point between
loading and 'unloading in the cohesive law is
encountered. A simple example of a displacementcontrolled
fatigue test is presented in a finite element
simulation. Comments are made on applications of
the method to prediction of fatigue life for engineering
structures such as pressure vessels and piping
Solar radiation force modeling for TDRS orbit determination
The relative orbit determination accuracies resulting from several TDRS models are evaluated. These models include spherical, single-plate, and restricted two-plate models. The plate models can be adjusted in both area and reflectivity through differential correction. The restricted two-plate model has an Earth-pointing plate and a solar plate; the orientation of the solar plate is restricted to rotation about an axis perpendicular to the satellite's orbital plane
Consistent Gravitationally-Coupled Spin-2 Field Theory
Inspired by the translational gauge structure of teleparallel gravity, the
theory for a fundamental massless spin-2 field is constructed. Accordingly,
instead of being represented by a symmetric second-rank tensor, the fundamental
spin-2 field is assumed to be represented by a spacetime (world) vector field
assuming values in the Lie algebra of the translation group. The flat-space
theory naturally emerges in the Fierz formalism and is found to be equivalent
to the usual metric-based theory. However, the gravitationally coupled theory,
with gravitation itself described by teleparallel gravity, is shown not to
present the consistency problems of the spin-2 theory constructed on the basis
of general relativity.Comment: 16 pages, no figures. V2: Presentation changes, including addition of
a new sub-section, aiming at clarifying the text; version accepted for
publication in Class. Quantum Grav
High-fidelity trapped-ion quantum logic using near-field microwaves
We demonstrate a two-qubit logic gate driven by near-field microwaves in a
room-temperature microfabricated ion trap. We measure a gate fidelity of
99.7(1)\%, which is above the minimum threshold required for fault-tolerant
quantum computing. The gate is applied directly to Ca "atomic clock"
qubits (coherence time ) using the microwave
magnetic field gradient produced by a trap electrode. We introduce a
dynamically-decoupled gate method, which stabilizes the qubits against
fluctuating a.c.\ Zeeman shifts and avoids the need to null the microwave
field
From real materials to model Hamiltonians with density matrix downfolding
Due to advances in computer hardware and new algorithms, it is now possible
to perform highly accurate many-body simulations of realistic materials with
all their intrinsic complications. The success of these simulations leaves us
with a conundrum: how do we extract useful physical models and insight from
these simulations? In this article, we present a formal theory of
downfolding--extracting an effective Hamiltonian from first-principles
calculations. The theory maps the downfolding problem into fitting information
derived from wave functions sampled from a low-energy subspace of the full
Hilbert space. Since this fitting process most commonly uses reduced density
matrices, we term it density matrix downfolding (DMD).Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures; Huihuo Zheng and Hitesh J. Changlani
contributed equally to this wor
Revisiting the effect of external fields in Axelrod's model of social dynamics
The study of the effects of spatially uniform fields on the steady-state
properties of Axelrod's model has yielded plenty of controversial results. Here
we re-examine the impact of this type of field for a selection of parameters
such that the field-free steady state of the model is heterogeneous or
multicultural. Analyses of both one and two-dimensional versions of Axelrod's
model indicate that, contrary to previous claims in the literature, the steady
state remains heterogeneous regardless of the value of the field strength.
Turning on the field leads to a discontinuous decrease on the number of
cultural domains, which we argue is due to the instability of zero-field
heterogeneous absorbing configurations. We find, however, that spatially
nonuniform fields that implement a consensus rule among the neighborhood of the
agents enforces homogenization. Although the overall effects of the fields are
essentially the same irrespective of the dimensionality of the model, we argue
that the dimensionality has a significant impact on the stability of the
field-free homogeneous steady state
Earth-like sand fluxes on Mars
Strong and sustained winds on Mars have been considered rare, on the basis of surface meteorology measurements and global circulation models, raising the question of whether the abundant dunes and evidence for wind erosion seen on the planet are a current process. Recent studies showed sand activity, but could not determine whether entire dunes were moving—implying large sand fluxes—or whether more localized and surficial changes had occurred. Here we present measurements of the migration rate of sand ripples and dune lee fronts at the Nili Patera dune field. We show that the dunes are near steady state, with their entire volumes composed of mobile sand. The dunes have unexpectedly high sand fluxes, similar, for example, to those in Victoria Valley, Antarctica, implying that rates of landscape modification on Mars and Earth are similar
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