Computer simulation and design of a three degree-of-freedom shoulder module

An in-depth kinematic analysis of a three degree of freedom fully-parallel robotic shoulder module is presented. The major goal of the analysis is to determine appropriate link dimensions which will provide a maximized workspace along with desirable input to output velocity and torque amplification. First order kinematic influence coefficients which describe the output velocity properties in terms of actuator motions provide a means to determine suitable geometric dimensions for the device. Through the use of computer simulation, optimal or near optimal link dimensions based on predetermined design criteria are provided for two different structural designs of the mechanism. The first uses three rotational inputs to control the output motion. The second design involves the use of four inputs, actuating any three inputs for a given position of the output link. Alternative actuator placements are examined to determine the most effective approach to control the output motion

Predators do not spill over from forest fragments to maize fields in a landscape mosaic in central Argentina

South America is undergoing a rapid and large scale conversion of natural habitats to cultivated land. Ecosystem services (ESs) still remain important but their level and sustainability are not known. We quantified predation intensity in an Argentinian agricultural landscape containing remnants of the original chaco serrano forest by using artificial sentinel prey. We sought to identify the main predators, and the effect of landscape configuration and maize phenology on predation pressure by invertebrate and vertebrate predators in this landscape. The most common predators were chewing insects (50.4% predation events), birds (22.7%), and ants (17.5%). Overall predation rates in forest fragments (41.6% d-1) were significantly higher than in the surrounding maize fields (21.5% d-1). Invertebrate predation was higher inside and at the edge of forest fragments than within fields, and did not change with increasing distance from a fragment edge, indicating a lack of spillover from the native habitat remnants to the cultivated matrix at the local scale. Distance from a continuous forest had a positive impact on predation by invertebrates and a negative impact on vertebrate predation.Fil: Ferrante, Marco. Aarhus University. Flakkebjerg Research Centre. Department of Agroecology; DinamarcaFil: González, Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Gabor L., Lovei. Aarhus University. Flakkebjerg Research Centre. Department of Agroecology; Dinamarc

Identifying effect heterogeneity to improve the effiency of job creation schemes in Germany?

Previous empirical studies of job creation schemes in Germany have shown that the average effects for the participating individuals are negative. However, we find that this is not true for all strata of the population. Identifying individual characteristics that are responsible for the effect heterogeneity and using this information for a better allocation of individuals therefore bears some scope for improving programme efficiency. We present several stratification strategies and discuss the occurring effect heterogeneity. Our findings show that job creation schemes do neither harm nor improve the labour market chances for most of the groups. Exceptions are long-term unemployed men in West and long-term unemployed women in East and West Germany who benefit from participation in terms of higher employment rates. JEL: C13 , J68 , H4

Affleck-Dine Sneutrino Inflation

Motivated by the coincidence between the Hubble scale during inflation and the typical see-saw neutrino mass scale, we present a supergravity model where the inflaton is identified with a linear combination of right-handed sneutrino fields. The model accommodates an inflaton potential that is flatter than quadratic chaotic inflation, resulting in a measurable but not yet ruled out tensor-to-scalar ratio. Small CP-violation in the neutrino mass matrix and supersymmetry breaking yield an evolution in the complex plane for the sneutrino fields. This induces a net lepton charge that, via the Affleck-Dine mechanism, can be the origin of the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Considerations on the Role of Fall-Back Discs in the Final Stages of the Common Envelope Binary Interaction

The common envelope interaction is thought to be the gateway to all evolved compact binaries and mergers. Hydrodynamic simulations of the common envelope interaction between giant stars and their companions are restricted to the dynamical, fast, in-spiral phase. They find that the giant envelope is lifted during this phase, but remains mostly bound to the system. At the same time, the orbital separation is greatly reduced, but in most simulations it levels off? at values larger than measured from observations. We conjectured that during the post-in-spiral phase the bound envelope gas will return to the system. Using hydrodynamic simulations, we generate initial conditions for our simulation that result in a fall-back disk with total mass and angular momentum in line with quantities from the simulations of Passy et al. We find that the simulated fall-back event reduces the orbital separation efficiently, but fails to unbind the gas before the separation levels off once again. We also find that more massive fall-back disks reduce the orbital separation more efficiently, but the efficiency of unbinding remains invariably very low. From these results we deduce that unless a further energy source contributes to unbinding the envelope (such as was recently tested by Nandez et al.), all common envelope interactions would result in mergers. On the other hand, additional energy sources are unlikely to help, on their own, to reduce the orbital separation. We conclude by discussing our dynamical fall-back event in the context of a thermally-regulated post-common envelope phase.Comment: 12 pages, 12 pages, Accepted to MNRA

Self-similar solutions to coagulation equations with time-dependent tails: the case of homogeneity smaller than one

We prove the existence of a one-parameter family of self-similar solutions with time-dependent tails for Smoluchowski's coagulation equation, for a class of rate kernels $K(x,y)$ which are homogeneous of degree $\gamma\in(-\infty,1)$ and satisfy $K(x,1)\sim x^{-a}$ as $x\to 0$, for $a=1-\gamma$. In particular, for small values of a parameter $\rho>0$ we establish the existence of a positive self-similar solution with finite mass and asymptotics $A(t)x^{-(2+\rho)}$ as $x\to\infty$, with $A(t)\sim\rho t^\frac{\rho}{1-\gamma}$

Duality invariance in Fayet-Iliopoulos gauged supergravity

We propose a geometric method to study the residual symmetries in $N=2$, $d=4$ $\text{U}(1)$ Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) gauged supergravity. It essentially involves the stabilization of the symplectic vector of gauge couplings (FI parameters) under the action of the U-duality symmetry of the ungauged theory. In particular we are interested in those transformations that act non-trivially on the solutions and produce scalar hair and dyonic black holes from a given seed. We illustrate the procedure for finding this group in general and then show how it works in some specific models. For the prepotential $F=-iX^0X^1$, we use our method to add one more parameter to the rotating Chow-Comp\`ere solution, representing scalar hair.Comment: 31 pages, uses jheppub.sty. Final version to appear on JHE

Simulation of coalescence, break up and mass transfer in bubble columns by using the Conditional Quadrature Method of Moments in OpenFOAM

The evaluation of the mass transfer rates and the fluid-dynamics aspects of bubble columns are strongly affected by the intrinsic poly-dispersity of the gas phase, namely the different dispersed bubbles are usually distributed over a certain range of size and chemical composition values. In our previous work, gas-liquid systems were investigated by coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics with mono-variate population balance models (PBM) solved by using the quadrature method of moments (QMOM). Since mass transfer rates depend not only on bubble size, but also on bubble composition, the problem was subsequently extended to the solution of multi-variate PBM (Buffo et al. 2013). In this work, the conditional quadrature method of moments (CQMOM) is implemented in the open-source code OpenFOAM for describing bubble coalescence, breakage and mass transfer of a realistic partially aerated rectangular bubble column, experimentally investigated by Diaz et al.(2008). Eventually, the obtained results are here compared with the experimental data availabl