Perdeuterated cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals for infrared applications

Perdeuterated 4'-pentyl-4-cyanobiphenyl (D5CB) was synthesized and its physical properties evaluated and compared to those of 5CB. D5CB retains physical properties similar to those of 5CB, such as phase transition temperatures, dielectric constants, and refractive indices. An outstanding feature of D5CB is that it exhibits a much cleaner and reduced infrared absorption. Perdeuteration, therefore, extends the usable range of liquid crystals to the mid infrared by significantly reducing the absorption in the near infrared, which is essential for telecom applications

The Practice of Immigration Health in Complex Emergency Situations - A Case Study of Kosovo from March to July 1999

The need to rapidly transport refugees, displaced as a result of evolving complex humanitarian emergencies creates challenges for those refugee-receiving nations that require formaI immigration medical screening of these populations. Balancing the need to expediently resettle the refugees with these legislative and regulatory medical requirements can be logistically and operationally difficult. During the 1999 Kosovo crisis, the Humanitarian Evacuation Programme from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia rapidly moved large numbers of Kosovar Albanian refugees to nations with existing formal immigration medical screening requirements. This paper describes the successful management and delivery of immigration health services during this complicated international event.La nécessité de transporter rapidement les réfugiés déplacés à cause d'urgences humanitaires complexes à évolution rapide représenteun défi pour les nations receveuses de réfugiés requérant un tamisage médical routinier de sa population immigrante. Des points de vue logistique et opérationnel, il peut s'avérer fort difficile pour ces états de concilier la nécessité de relocaliser rapidement les réfugiés avec les exigences de leurs lois et règlements en matière médicale et sanitaire. Lors de la crise du Kosovo de 1999, le Programme d'Évacuation Humanitaire de l'ancienne république yougoslave de Macédoine déplaça rapidement un grand nombre de réfugiés albanais kosovars vers des nations requérant formellement un tamisage médical de sa population immigrante. Cet article décrit la gestion et la distribution réussies de services de santé à l'immigration au cours de cet événement international complexe

Evolution of central pattern generators for the control of a five-link bipedal walking mechanism

Central pattern generators (CPGs), with a basis is neurophysiological studies, are a type of neural network for the generation of rhythmic motion. While CPGs are being increasingly used in robot control, most applications are hand-tuned for a specific task and it is acknowledged in the field that generic methods and design principles for creating individual networks for a given task are lacking. This study presents an approach where the connectivity and oscillatory parameters of a CPG network are determined by an evolutionary algorithm with fitness evaluations in a realistic simulation with accurate physics. We apply this technique to a five-link planar walking mechanism to demonstrate its feasibility and performance. In addition, to see whether results from simulation can be acceptably transferred to real robot hardware, the best evolved CPG network is also tested on a real mechanism. Our results also confirm that the biologically inspired CPG model is well suited for legged locomotion, since a diverse manifestation of networks have been observed to succeed in fitness simulations during evolution.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures; substantial revision of content, organization, and quantitative result

Detection of Voigt Spectral Line Profiles of Hydrogen Radio Recombination Lines toward Sagittarius B2(N)

We report the detection of Voigt spectral line profiles of radio recombination lines (RRLs) toward Sagittarius B2(N) with the 100-m Green Bank Telescope (GBT). At radio wavelengths, astronomical spectra are highly populated with RRLs, which serve as ideal probes of the physical conditions in molecular cloud complexes. An analysis of the Hn(alpha) lines presented herein shows that RRLs of higher principal quantum number (n>90) are generally divergent from their expected Gaussian profiles and, moreover, are well described by their respective Voigt profiles. This is in agreement with the theory that spectral lines experience pressure broadening as a result of electron collisions at lower radio frequencies. Given the inherent technical difficulties regarding the detection and profiling of true RRL wing spans and shapes, it is crucial that the observing instrumentation produce flat baselines as well as high sensitivity, high resolution data. The GBT has demonstrated its capabilities regarding all of these aspects, and we believe that future observations of RRL emission via the GBT will be crucial towards advancing our knowledge of the larger-scale extended structures of ionized gas in the interstellar medium (ISM)

Forward Physics at the LHC (Elba 2010)

The papers review the main theoretical and experimental aspects of the Forward Physics at the Large Hadron Collider

Persistence Through Collaboration at Sea for Off-Shore and Coastal Operations

Collaboration (Bruzzone et al. 2013a, b, c, d, e, f) is often mentioned as an opportunity to develop new capabilities for autonomous systems; indeed this paper proposes a practical application where use this approach to enhance the autonomy of the systems during operations in coastal areas or around offshore platforms. The proposed case deals with developing a collaborative approach (Bruzzone et al. 2013a, b, c, d, e, f) among an USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle) with several AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) to guarantee persistent surveillance over a marine area (Shkurti et al. 2012). Obviously, the proposed solution could be adopted also for defense and homeland security (Bruzzone et al. 2011a, b, 2010) as well as for archeological site protection in consistence with related cost analysis. The authors propose a technological solution as well as a simulation framework to validate and demonstrate the capabilities of this new approach as well as to quantify expected improvements