Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS): An investigator's guide to TIMS data

The Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS) is a NASA aircraft scanner providing six channel spectral capability in the thermal infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Operating in the atmospheric window region (8 to 12 micrometers) with a channel sensitivity of approximately 0.1 C, TIMS may be used whenever an accurate measure of the Earth's surface is needed. A description of this scanner is provided as well as a discussion of data acquisition and reduction

Numerical investigation of high-pressure combustion in rocket engines using Flamelet/Progress-variable models

The present paper deals with the numerical study of high pressure LOx/H2 or LOx/hydrocarbon combustion for propulsion systems. The present research effort is driven by the continued interest in achieving low cost, reliable access to space and more recently, by the renewed interest in hypersonic transportation systems capable of reducing time-to-destination. Moreover, combustion at high pressure has been assumed as a key issue to achieve better propulsive performance and lower environmental impact, as long as the replacement of hydrogen with a hydrocarbon, to reduce the costs related to ground operations and increase flexibility. The current work provides a model for the numerical simulation of high- pressure turbulent combustion employing detailed chemistry description, embedded in a RANS equations solver with a Low Reynolds number k-omega turbulence model. The model used to study such a combustion phenomenon is an extension of the standard flamelet-progress-variable (FPV) turbulent combustion model combined with a Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equation Solver (RANS). In the FPV model, all of the thermo-chemical quantities are evaluated by evolving the mixture fraction Z and a progress variable C. When using a turbulence model in conjunction with FPV model, a probability density function (PDF) is required to evaluate statistical averages of chemical quantities. The choice of such PDF must be a compromise between computational costs and accuracy level. State- of-the-art FPV models are built presuming the functional shape of the joint PDF of Z and C in order to evaluate Favre-averages of thermodynamic quantities. The model here proposed evaluates the most probable joint distribution of Z and C without any assumption on their behavior.Comment: presented at AIAA Scitech 201

Doubly connected minimal surfaces and extremal harmonic mappings

The concept of a conformal deformation has two natural extensions: quasiconformal and harmonic mappings. Both classes do not preserve the conformal type of the domain, however they cannot change it in an arbitrary way. Doubly connected domains are where one first observes nontrivial conformal invariants. Herbert Groetzsch and Johannes C. C. Nitsche addressed this issue for quasiconformal and harmonic mappings, respectively. Combining these concepts we obtain sharp estimates for quasiconformal harmonic mappings between doubly connected domains. We then apply our results to the Cauchy problem for minimal surfaces, also known as the Bjorling problem. Specifically, we obtain a sharp estimate of the modulus of a doubly connected minimal surface that evolves from its inner boundary with a given initial slope.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figures. Minor edits, references adde

The impact of electronic records on patient safety : a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Our aim was to explore NHS staff perceptions and experiences of the impact on patient safety of introducing a maternity system. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 members of NHS staff who represented a variety of staff groups (doctors, midwives, health care assistants), staff grades (consultant and midwife grades) and wards within a maternity unit. Participants represented a single maternity unit at a NHS teaching hospital in the North of England. Interviews were conducted during the first 12 months of the system being implemented and were analysed thematically. RESULTS: Participants perceived there to be an elevated risk to patient safety during the system's implementation. The perceived risks were attributed to a range of social and technical factors. For example, poor system design and human error which resulted in an increased potential for missing information and inputting error. CONCLUSIONS: The first 12 months of introducing the maternity system was perceived to and in some cases had already caused actual risk to patient safety. Trusts throughout the NHS are facing increasing pressure to become paperless and should be aware of the potential adverse impacts on patient safety that can occur when introducing electronic systems. Given the potential for increased risk identified, recommendations for further research and for NHS trusts introducing electronic systems are proposed

'What is this corpus about?': Using topic modelling to explore a specialised corpus

This paper introduces topic modelling, a machine learning technique that automatically identifies 'topics' in a given corpus. The paper illustrates its use in the exploration of a corpus of academic English. It first offers the intuitive explanation of the underlying mechanism of topic modelling and describes the procedure for building a model, including the decisions involved in the model-building process. The paper then explores the model. A topic in topic models is characterised by a set of co-occurring words, and we will demonstrate that such topics bring us rich insights into the nature of a corpus. As exemplary tasks, this paper identifies the prominent topics in different parts of papers, investigates the chronological change of a journal, and reveals different types of papers in the journal. The paper further compares topic modelling to two more traditional techniques in corpus linguistics, semantic annotation and keywords analysis, and highlights the strengths of topic modelling.We believe that topic modelling is particularly useful in the initial exploration of a corpus

Parabolic stable surfaces with constant mean curvature

We prove that if u is a bounded smooth function in the kernel of a nonnegative Schrodinger operator $-L=-(\Delta +q)$ on a parabolic Riemannian manifold M, then u is either identically zero or it has no zeros on M, and the linear space of such functions is 1-dimensional. We obtain consequences for orientable, complete stable surfaces with constant mean curvature $H\in\mathbb{R}$ in homogeneous spaces $\mathbb{E}(\kappa,\tau)$ with four dimensional isometry group. For instance, if M is an orientable, parabolic, complete immersed surface with constant mean curvature H in $\mathbb{H}^2\times\mathbb{R}$, then $|H|\leq 1/2$ and if equality holds, then M is either an entire graph or a vertical horocylinder.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. Minor changes have been incorporated (exchange finite capacity by parabolicity, and simplify the proof of Theorem 1)

Radio Astronomy

Contains research objectives, summary of research and reports on eleven research projects.National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NGL 22-009-016)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-14854)Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-13056)Sloan Fund for Basic Research (M. I. T. Grant 312

Brief Announcement: The Temporal Firefighter Problem

The Firefighter problem asks how many vertices can be saved from a fire spreading over the vertices of a graph. At timestep 0 a vertex begins burning, then on each subsequent timestep a non-burning vertex is chosen to be defended, and the fire then spreads to all undefended vertices that it neighbours. The problem is NP-Complete on arbitrary graphs, however existing work has found several graph classes for which there are polynomial time solutions. We introduce Temporal Firefighter, an extension of Firefighter to temporal graphs. We show that Temporal Firefighter is also NP-Complete, and remains so on all but one of the underlying classes of graphs on which Firefighter is known to have a polynomial-time solution. This motivates us to explore restrictions on the temporal structure of the graph, and we find that Temporal Firefighter is fixed parameter tractable with respect to the temporal graph parameter vertex-interval-membership-width

BRCA2 polymorphic stop codon K3326X and the risk of breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers

Background: The K3326X variant in BRCA2 (BRCA2*c.9976A>T; p.Lys3326*; rs11571833) has been found to be associated with small increased risks of breast cancer. However, it is not clear to what extent linkage disequilibrium with fully pathogenic mutations might account for this association. There is scant information about the effect of K3326X in other hormone-related cancers. Methods: Using weighted logistic regression, we analyzed data from the large iCOGS study including 76 637 cancer case patients and 83 796 control patients to estimate odds ratios (ORw) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for K3326X variant carriers in relation to breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer risks, with weights defined as probability of not having a pathogenic BRCA2 variant. Using Cox proportional hazards modeling, we also examined the associations of K3326X with breast and ovarian cancer risks among 7183 BRCA1 variant carriers. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: The K3326X variant was associated with breast (ORw = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.17 to 1.40, P = 5.9x10- 6) and invasive ovarian cancer (ORw = 1.26, 95% CI = 1.10 to 1.43, P = 3.8x10-3). These associations were stronger for serous ovarian cancer and for estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer (ORw = 1.46, 95% CI = 1.2 to 1.70, P = 3.4x10-5 and ORw = 1.50, 95% CI = 1.28 to 1.76, P = 4.1x10-5, respectively). For BRCA1 mutation carriers, there was a statistically significant inverse association of the K3326X variant with risk of ovarian cancer (HR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.22 to 0.84, P = .013) but no association with breast cancer. No association with prostate cancer was observed. Conclusions: Our study provides evidence that the K3326X variant is associated with risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers independent of other pathogenic variants in BRCA2. Further studies are needed to determine the biological mechanism of action responsible for these associations