384 research outputs found
Using graphics and expert system technologies to support satellite monitoring at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, fault-isolation expert systems have been developed to support data monitoring and fault detection tasks in satellite control centers. Based on the lessons learned during these efforts in expert system automation, a new domain-specific expert system development tool named the Generic Spacecraft Analysts Assistant (GenSAA), was developed to facilitate the rapid development and reuse of real-time expert systems to serve as fault-isolation assistants for spacecraft analysts. This paper describes GenSAA's capabilities and how it is supporting monitoring functions of current and future NASA missions for a variety of satellite monitoring applications ranging from subsystem health and safety to spacecraft attitude. Finally, this paper addresses efforts to generalize GenSAA's data interface for more widespread usage throughout the space and commercial industry
Cache as ca$h can
In this contribution several caching strategies for the World Wide Weba re studied. Special attention is paid to the so-called proxy placement, i.e. placing of caches on carefully selected nodes in the network near to the end users
Rigidity percolation in a field
Rigidity Percolation with g degrees of freedom per site is analyzed on
randomly diluted Erdos-Renyi graphs with average connectivity gamma, in the
presence of a field h. In the (gamma,h) plane, the rigid and flexible phases
are separated by a line of first-order transitions whose location is determined
exactly. This line ends at a critical point with classical critical exponents.
Analytic expressions are given for the densities n_f of uncanceled degrees of
freedom and gamma_r of redundant bonds. Upon crossing the coexistence line, n_f
and gamma_r are continuous, although their first derivatives are discontinuous.
We extend, for the case of nonzero field, a recently proposed hypothesis,
namely that the density of uncanceled degrees of freedom is a ``free energy''
for Rigidity Percolation. Analytic expressions are obtained for the energy,
entropy, and specific heat. Some analogies with a liquid-vapor transition are
discussed. Particularizing to zero field, we find that the existence of a
(g+1)-core is a necessary condition for rigidity percolation with g degrees of
freedom. At the transition point gamma_c, Maxwell counting of degrees of
freedom is exact on the rigid cluster and on the (g+1)-rigid-core, i.e. the
average coordination of these subgraphs is exactly 2g, although gamma_r, the
average coordination of the whole system, is smaller than 2g. gamma_c is found
to converge to 2g for large g, i.e. in this limit Maxwell counting is exact
globally as well. This paper is dedicated to Dietrich Stauffer, on the occasion
of his 60th birthday.Comment: RevTeX4, psfig, 16 pages. Equation numbering corrected. Minor typos
correcte
Energy Spectra of Elemental Groups of Cosmic Rays: Update on the KASCADE Unfolding Analysis
The KASCADE experiment measures extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays
in the energy range around the so-called knee. The data of KASCADE have been
used in a composition analysis showing the knee at 3-5 PeV to be caused by a
steepening in the light-element spectra. Since the applied unfolding analysis
depends crucially on simulations of air showers, different high energy hadronic
interaction models (QGSJet and SIBYLL) were used. The results have shown a
strong dependence of the relative abundance of the individual mass groups on
the underlying model. In this update of the analysis we apply the unfolding
method with a different low energy interaction model (FLUKA instead of GHEISHA)
in the simulations. While the resulting individual mass group spectra do not
change significantly, the overall description of the measured data improves by
using the FLUKA model. In addition data in a larger range of zenith angle are
analysed. The new results are completely consistent, i.e. there is no hint to
any severe problem in applying the unfolding analysis method to KASCADE data.Comment: accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic
Extinction times in the subcritical stochastic SIS logistic epidemic
Many real epidemics of an infectious disease are not straightforwardly super-
or sub-critical, and the understanding of epidemic models that exhibit such
complexity has been identified as a priority for theoretical work. We provide
insights into the near-critical regime by considering the stochastic SIS
logistic epidemic, a well-known birth-and-death chain used to model the spread
of an epidemic within a population of a given size . We study the behaviour
of the process as the population size tends to infinity. Our results cover
the entire subcritical regime, including the "barely subcritical" regime, where
the recovery rate exceeds the infection rate by an amount that tends to 0 as but more slowly than . We derive precise asymptotics for
the distribution of the extinction time and the total number of cases
throughout the subcritical regime, give a detailed description of the course of
the epidemic, and compare to numerical results for a range of parameter values.
We hypothesise that features of the course of the epidemic will be seen in a
wide class of other epidemic models, and we use real data to provide some
tentative and preliminary support for this theory.Comment: Revised; 34 pages; 6 figure
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