Low-thrust chemical rocket engine study

Parametric data and preliminary designs on liquid rocket engines for low thrust cargo orbit-transfer-vehicles are described and those items where technology is required to enhance the designs are identified. The results of film cooling studies to establish the upper chamber pressure limit are given. The study showed that regen cooling with RP-1 was not feasible over the entire thrust and chamber pressure ranges. The thermal data showed that the RP-1 bulk temperature exceeded the study coking temperature limit of 1010 R. Based upon the results presented, O2/H2 and O2/CH4 regen engine systems and O2/H2 film cooled engines were selected for further study in the system analysis. Six engine design concepts are examined

Adapting Progress Feedback and Emotional Support to Learner Personality

Peer reviewedPostprin

Production of Referring Expressions for an Unknown Audience : a Computational Model of Communal Common Ground

The research reported in this article is based on the Ph.D. project of Dr. RK, which was funded by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA). KvD acknowledges support from the EPSRC under the RefNet grant (EP/J019615/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A study of a trusting partnership between government and industry

This paper is about reform to rural and regional bus services. The Stage 1 and 2 reforms were not done in true partnership with Industry and those experiences were published for T10. The Stage 3, Rural and Regional Reforms, were much closer to achieving trusting partnerships. The Stage 3 reforms also provide important examples and experiences in the way social exclusion can be addressed and how different funding options can be applied. The Government’s School Student Travel Scheme (SSTS) is the framework for services in rural and regional areas. This paper covers all of the conference themes and contrasts the different approaches in Stage 3 to the earlier stages. The political environment has been changing in the NSW jurisdiction and this has had a big impact on the reform and partnership debate. Competition in rural and regional areas presents a different challenge than in urban areas and value for money and service planning have different dynamics. In most rural and regional areas cost recovery is very low and service design has been based on population rather than travel demand. The Rural and Regional Reforms allowed Government to ensure greater community consultation in the planning of bus services and included performance reporting, which was previously lacking as a mechanism to determine renewal. The rollout of new contracts with accompanying explanatory notes was the work of a joint BusNSW/Government Taskforce and are key features of the Stage 3 reforms

Backstepping Control Design for the Coordinated Motion of Vehicles in a Flowfield

Motion coordination of autonomous vehicles has applications from target surveillance to climate monitoring. Previous research has yielded stabilizing formation control laws for a self-propelled vehicle model with first-order rotational dynamics; however this model does not adequately describe the rotational and translational dynamics of vehicles in the atmosphere or ocean. This thesis describes the design of decentralized algorithms to control self-propelled vehicles with second-order rotational and translational dynamics. Backstepping controls for parallel and circular formations are designed in the absence of a flowfield and in a steady, uniform flowfield. Backstepping and proportional-integral controllers are then used to stabilize yaw in a rigid-body model. Feedback linearization is used to attain the desired forward speed. These formation control laws extend prior results to a more realistic vehicle model. Aside from the addition of new sensing and communication requirements, the second-order control laws are demonstrated to have comparable performance to the first-order controllers. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations

Václav Havel: Absurd Tragedian. A study into the influence of tragedy and absurdism on Václav Havel’s plays from 1963-1989

This dissertation is a study of modern classical reception which explores the ways in which playwright and politician Václav Havel has interpreted and reinterpreted classical tragedy. I examine the way in which a relatively modern playwright applies classical ideas of tragedy to their work, whilst also using this knowledge to reinterpret classical tragedy for a modern world and audience. I address the gaps in Czech classical reception studies by Being the first classical reception dissertation to focus entirely on Václav Havel. Furthermore, I illustrate how the Theatre of the Absurd can be seen as the modern theatre genre most similar to classical tragedy, in terms of its approach and ideas. For each individual play of Havel’s, I have identified a particular theme present as either, or both, tragic and Absurd drama and then demonstrated how Havel uses them. This helps to recognise, on a base level, the similarities and differences between both genres of theatre, and identifies Havel as an “absurd tragedian”