AVIATR - Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance A Titan Airplane Mission Concept

We describe a mission concept for a stand-alone Titan airplane mission: Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance (AVIATR). With independent delivery and direct-to-Earth communications, AVIATR could contribute to Titan science either alone or as part of a sustained Titan Exploration Program. As a focused mission, AVIATR as we have envisioned it would concentrate on the science that an airplane can do best: exploration of Titan's global diversity. We focus on surface geology/hydrology and lower-atmospheric structure and dynamics. With a carefully chosen set of seven instruments-2 near-IR cameras, 1 near-IR spectrometer, a RADAR altimeter, an atmospheric structure suite, a haze sensor, and a raindrop detector-AVIATR could accomplish a significant subset of the scientific objectives of the aerial element of flagship studies. The AVIATR spacecraft stack is composed of a Space Vehicle (SV) for cruise, an Entry Vehicle (EV) for entry and descent, and the Air Vehicle (AV) to fly in Titan's atmosphere. Using an Earth-Jupiter gravity assist trajectory delivers the spacecraft to Titan in 7.5 years, after which the AVIATR AV would operate for a 1-Earth-year nominal mission. We propose a novel 'gravity battery' climb-then-glide strategy to store energy for optimal use during telecommunications sessions. We would optimize our science by using the flexibility of the airplane platform, generating context data and stereo pairs by flying and banking the AV instead of using gimbaled cameras. AVIATR would climb up to 14 km altitude and descend down to 3.5 km altitude once per Earth day, allowing for repeated atmospheric structure and wind measurements all over the globe. An initial Team-X run at JPL priced the AVIATR mission at FY10 $715M based on the rules stipulated in the recent Discovery announcement of opportunity. Hence we find that a standalone Titan airplane mission can achieve important science building on Cassini's discoveries and can likely do so within a New Frontiers budget

Latest results from the European Mars simulation wind tunnel facility

The Mars Simulation wind tunnel at Aarhus University is a unique ESA and EU supported simulation facility designed for studies of the Martian environment. Specifically it is capable of recreating the key physical parameters such as temperature, pressure (composition), wind flow and importantly the suspension of dust particulates. This facility is available to the scientific community for collaborative research. Preliminary results from the first year of facility operations will be presented

Sublimation-driven formation of recent mass flows on Mars: experimental tests in low-pressure environments

International audienceMartian gullies are kilometre-scale landforms consisting of an alcove, channel and depositional fan. They are among the youngest landforms that may have formed by liquid water and are active today. Understanding their formation is thus critical for resolving Mars’ most recent climatic history and potential to sustain life. Gullies on Mars have been hypothesized to have formed by either the action of liquid water and brines or the action of sublimating carbon-dioxide (CO2) ice. They strongly resemble terrestrial systems formed by aqueous debris flows, having similar sedimentology, morphology, and morphometry. Yet, new deposits have formed within multiple gullies across Mars over the past decade, and we cannot reconcile these flows with the low availability of atmospheric water and the triple point of water under present martian conditions. These flows do, however, occur in winter when temperatures are below the CO2 condensation point, and CO2-ice has been observed in many gullies during time of activity. But can CO2 sublimation support and fluidize mass flow on Mars and form deposits similar to terrestrial debris flows? Here, I present novel experiments where we operate small-scale mass-flow flumes inside Mars chambers at Aarhus University (Denmark) and the Open University (UK). In these chambers Martian atmospheric conditions can be simulated, which is crucial for fluidization of mass flows since volume expansion, and therefore gas flow rate, by CO2-ice sublimation is much larger under the low atmospheric pressure of Mars (8 mbar) than under the atmospheric pressure of Earth (1000 mbar). These experiments reveal that CO2 sublimation under martian atmospheric conditions can fluidize mass flows by generating elevated pore pressures reducing intergranular friction, resulting in lobate deposits with levees, as observed in martian gullies. These findings show that CO2-sublimation processes can explain our observations in active Martian gully systems today, which has far-reaching implications for the search for potential liquid water on Mars as well as the interpretation of planetary landforms on other planetary bodies. In particular, they show that on planetary bodies unlike Earth, landforms may be created that look similar to those found on Earth but are actually produced by disparate and so-far unknown processes

AVIATR—Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance

International audienc

25th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS-2016

Table of contents A1 Functional advantages of cell-type heterogeneity in neural circuits Tatyana O. Sharpee A2 Mesoscopic modeling of propagating waves in visual cortex Alain Destexhe A3 Dynamics and biomarkers of mental disorders Mitsuo Kawato F1 Precise recruitment of spiking output at theta frequencies requires dendritic h-channels in multi-compartment models of oriens-lacunosum/moleculare hippocampal interneurons Vladislav Sekulić, Frances K. Skinner F2 Kernel methods in reconstruction of current sources from extracellular potentials for single cells and the whole brains Daniel K. Wójcik, Chaitanya Chintaluri, Dorottya Cserpán, Zoltán Somogyvári F3 The synchronized periods depend on intracellular transcriptional repression mechanisms in circadian clocks. Jae Kyoung Kim, Zachary P. Kilpatrick, Matthew R. Bennett, Kresimir Josić O1 Assessing irregularity and coordination of spiking-bursting rhythms in central pattern generators Irene Elices, David Arroyo, Rafael Levi, Francisco B. Rodriguez, Pablo Varona O2 Regulation of top-down processing by cortically-projecting parvalbumin positive neurons in basal forebrain Eunjin Hwang, Bowon Kim, Hio-Been Han, Tae Kim, James T. McKenna, Ritchie E. Brown, Robert W. McCarley, Jee Hyun Choi O3 Modeling auditory stream segregation, build-up and bistability James Rankin, Pamela Osborn Popp, John Rinzel O4 Strong competition between tonotopic neural ensembles explains pitch-related dynamics of auditory cortex evoked fields Alejandro Tabas, André Rupp, Emili Balaguer-Ballester O5 A simple model of retinal response to multi-electrode stimulation Matias I. Maturana, David B. Grayden, Shaun L. Cloherty, Tatiana Kameneva, Michael R. Ibbotson, Hamish Meffin O6 Noise correlations in V4 area correlate with behavioral performance in visual discrimination task Veronika Koren, Timm Lochmann, Valentin Dragoi, Klaus Obermayer O7 Input-location dependent gain modulation in cerebellar nucleus neurons Maria Psarrou, Maria Schilstra, Neil Davey, Benjamin Torben-Nielsen, Volker Steuber O8 Analytic solution of cable energy function for cortical axons and dendrites Huiwen Ju, Jiao Yu, Michael L. Hines, Liang Chen, Yuguo Yu O9 C. elegans interactome: interactive visualization of Caenorhabditis elegans worm neuronal network Jimin Kim, Will Leahy, Eli Shlizerman O10 Is the model any good? Objective criteria for computational neuroscience model selection Justas Birgiolas, Richard C. Gerkin, Sharon M. Crook O11 Cooperation and competition of gamma oscillation mechanisms Atthaphon Viriyopase, Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer, Stan Gielen O12 A discrete structure of the brain waves Yuri Dabaghian, Justin DeVito, Luca Perotti O13 Direction-specific silencing of the Drosophila gaze stabilization system Anmo J. Kim, Lisa M. Fenk, Cheng Lyu, Gaby Maimon O14 What does the fruit fly think about values? A model of olfactory associative learning Chang Zhao, Yves Widmer, Simon Sprecher,Walter Senn O15 Effects of ionic diffusion on power spectra of local field potentials (LFP) Geir Halnes, Tuomo Mäki-Marttunen, Daniel Keller, Klas H. Pettersen,Ole A. Andreassen, Gaute T. Einevoll O16 Large-scale cortical models towards understanding relationship between brain structure abnormalities and cognitive deficits Yasunori Yamada O17 Spatial coarse-graining the brain: origin of minicolumns Moira L. Steyn-Ross, D. Alistair Steyn-Ross O18 Modeling large-scale cortical networks with laminar structure Jorge F. Mejias, John D. Murray, Henry Kennedy, Xiao-Jing Wang O19 Information filtering by partial synchronous spikes in a neural population Alexandra Kruscha, Jan Grewe, Jan Benda, Benjamin Lindner O20 Decoding context-dependent olfactory valence in Drosophila Laurent Badel, Kazumi Ohta, Yoshiko Tsuchimoto, Hokto Kazama P1 Neural network as a scale-free network: the role of a hub B. Kahng P2 Hemodynamic responses to emotions and decisions using near-infrared spectroscopy optical imaging Nicoladie D. Tam P3 Phase space analysis of hemodynamic responses to intentional movement directions using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) optical imaging technique Nicoladie D.Tam, Luca Pollonini, George Zouridakis P4 Modeling jamming avoidance of weakly electric fish Jaehyun Soh, DaeEun Kim P5 Synergy and redundancy of retinal ganglion cells in prediction Minsu Yoo, S. E. Palmer P6 A neural field model with a third dimension representing cortical depth Viviana Culmone, Ingo Bojak P7 Network analysis of a probabilistic connectivity model of the Xenopus tadpole spinal cord Andrea Ferrario, Robert Merrison-Hort, Roman Borisyuk P8 The recognition dynamics in the brain Chang Sub Kim P9 Multivariate spike train analysis using a positive definite kernel Taro Tezuka P10 Synchronization of burst periods may govern slow brain dynamics during general anesthesia Pangyu Joo P11 The ionic basis of heterogeneity affects stochastic synchrony Young-Ah Rho, Shawn D. Burton, G. Bard Ermentrout, Jaeseung Jeong, Nathaniel N. Urban P12 Circular statistics of noise in spike trains with a periodic component Petr Marsalek P14 Representations of directions in EEG-BCI using Gaussian readouts Hoon-Hee Kim, Seok-hyun Moon, Do-won Lee, Sung-beom Lee, Ji-yong Lee, Jaeseung Jeong P15 Action selection and reinforcement learning in basal ganglia during reaching movements Yaroslav I. Molkov, Khaldoun Hamade, Wondimu Teka, William H. Barnett, Taegyo Kim, Sergey Markin, Ilya A. Rybak P17 Axon guidance: modeling axonal growth in T-Junction assay Csaba Forro, Harald Dermutz, László Demkó, János Vörös P19 Transient cell assembly networks encode persistent spatial memories Yuri Dabaghian, Andrey Babichev P20 Theory of population coupling and applications to describe high order correlations in large populations of interacting neurons Haiping Huang P21 Design of biologically-realistic simulations for motor control Sergio Verduzco-Flores P22 Towards understanding the functional impact of the behavioural variability of neurons Filipa Dos Santos, Peter Andras P23 Different oscillatory dynamics underlying gamma entrainment deficits in schizophrenia Christoph Metzner, Achim Schweikard, Bartosz Zurowski P24 Memory recall and spike frequency adaptation James P. Roach, Leonard M. Sander, Michal R. Zochowski P25 Stability of neural networks and memory consolidation preferentially occur near criticality Quinton M. Skilling, Nicolette Ognjanovski, Sara J. Aton, Michal Zochowski P26 Stochastic Oscillation in Self-Organized Critical States of Small Systems: Sensitive Resting State in Neural Systems Sheng-Jun Wang, Guang Ouyang, Jing Guang, Mingsha Zhang, K. Y. Michael Wong, Changsong Zhou P27 Neurofield: a C++ library for fast simulation of 2D neural field models Peter A. Robinson, Paula Sanz-Leon, Peter M. Drysdale, Felix Fung, Romesh G. Abeysuriya, Chris J. Rennie, Xuelong Zhao P28 Action-based grounding: Beyond encoding/decoding in neural code Yoonsuck Choe, Huei-Fang Yang P29 Neural computation in a dynamical system with multiple time scales Yuanyuan Mi, Xiaohan Lin, Si Wu P30 Maximum entropy models for 3D layouts of orientation selectivity Joscha Liedtke, Manuel Schottdorf, Fred Wolf P31 A behavioral assay for probing computations underlying curiosity in rodents Yoriko Yamamura, Jeffery R. Wickens P32 Using statistical sampling to balance error function contributions to optimization of conductance-based models Timothy Rumbell, Julia Ramsey, Amy Reyes, Danel Draguljić, Patrick R. Hof, Jennifer Luebke, Christina M. Weaver P33 Exploration and implementation of a self-growing and self-organizing neuron network building algorithm Hu He, Xu Yang, Hailin Ma, Zhiheng Xu, Yuzhe Wang P34 Disrupted resting state brain network in obese subjects: a data-driven graph theory analysis Kwangyeol Baek, Laurel S. Morris, Prantik Kundu, Valerie Voon P35 Dynamics of cooperative excitatory and inhibitory plasticity Everton J. Agnes, Tim P. Vogels P36 Frequency-dependent oscillatory signal gating in feed-forward networks of integrate-and-fire neurons William F. Podlaski, Tim P. Vogels P37 Phenomenological neural model for adaptation of neurons in area IT Martin Giese, Pradeep Kuravi, Rufin Vogels P38 ICGenealogy: towards a common topology of neuronal ion channel function and genealogy in model and experiment Alexander Seeholzer, William Podlaski, Rajnish Ranjan, Tim Vogels P39 Temporal input discrimination from the interaction between dynamic synapses and neural subthreshold oscillations Joaquin J. Torres, Fabiano Baroni, Roberto Latorre, Pablo Varona P40 Different roles for transient and sustained activity during active visual processing Bart Gips, Eric Lowet, Mark J. Roberts, Peter de Weerd, Ole Jensen, Jan van der Eerden P41 Scale-free functional networks of 2D Ising model are highly robust against structural defects: neuroscience implications Abdorreza Goodarzinick, Mohammad D. Niry, Alireza Valizadeh P42 High frequency neuron can facilitate propagation of signal in neural networks Aref Pariz, Shervin S. Parsi, Alireza Valizadeh P43 Investigating the effect of Alzheimer’s disease related amyloidopathy on gamma oscillations in the CA1 region of the hippocampus Julia M. Warburton, Lucia Marucci, Francesco Tamagnini, Jon Brown, Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova P44 Long-tailed distributions of inhibitory and excitatory weights in a balanced network with eSTDP and iSTDP Florence I. Kleberg, Jochen Triesch P45 Simulation of EMG recording from hand muscle due to TMS of motor cortex Bahar Moezzi, Nicolangelo Iannella, Natalie Schaworonkow, Lukas Plogmacher, Mitchell R. Goldsworthy, Brenton Hordacre, Mark D. McDonnell, Michael C. Ridding, Jochen Triesch P46 Structure and dynamics of axon network formed in primary cell culture Martin Zapotocky, Daniel Smit, Coralie Fouquet, Alain Trembleau P47 Efficient signal processing and sampling in random networks that generate variability Sakyasingha Dasgupta, Isao Nishikawa, Kazuyuki Aihara, Taro Toyoizumi P48 Modeling the effect of riluzole on bursting in respiratory neural networks Daniel T. Robb, Nick Mellen, Natalia Toporikova P49 Mapping relaxation training using effective connectivity analysis Rongxiang Tang, Yi-Yuan Tang P50 Modeling neuron oscillation of implicit sequence learning Guangsheng Liang, Seth A. Kiser, James H. Howard, Jr., Yi-Yuan Tang P51 The role of cerebellar short-term synaptic plasticity in the pathology and medication of downbeat nystagmus Julia Goncharenko, Neil Davey, Maria Schilstra, Volker Steuber P52 Nonlinear response of noisy neurons Sergej O. Voronenko, Benjamin Lindner P53 Behavioral embedding suggests multiple chaotic dimensions underlie C. elegans locomotion Tosif Ahamed, Greg Stephens P54 Fast and scalable spike sorting for large and dense multi-electrodes recordings Pierre Yger, Baptiste Lefebvre, Giulia Lia Beatrice Spampinato, Elric Esposito, Marcel Stimberg et Olivier Marre P55 Sufficient sampling rates for fast hand motion tracking Hansol Choi, Min-Ho Song P56 Linear readout of object manifolds SueYeon Chung, Dan D. Lee, Haim Sompolinsky P57 Differentiating models of intrinsic bursting and rhythm generation of the respiratory pre-Bötzinger complex using phase response curves Ryan S. Phillips, Jeffrey Smith P58 The effect of inhibitory cell network interactions during theta rhythms on extracellular field potentials in CA1 hippocampus Alexandra Pierri Chatzikalymniou, Katie Ferguson, Frances K. Skinner P59 Expansion recoding through sparse sampling in the cerebellar input layer speeds learning N. Alex Cayco Gajic, Claudia Clopath, R. Angus Silver P60 A set of curated cortical models at multiple scales on Open Source Brain Padraig Gleeson, Boris Marin, Sadra Sadeh, Adrian Quintana, Matteo Cantarelli, Salvador Dura-Bernal, William W. Lytton, Andrew Davison, R. Angus Silver P61 A synaptic story of dynamical information encoding in neural adaptation Luozheng Li, Wenhao Zhang, Yuanyuan Mi, Dahui Wang, Si Wu P62 Physical modeling of rule-observant rodent behavior Youngjo Song, Sol Park, Ilhwan Choi, Jaeseung Jeong, Hee-sup Shin P64 Predictive coding in area V4 and prefrontal cortex explains dynamic discrimination of partially occluded shapes Hannah Choi, Anitha Pasupathy, Eric Shea-Brown P65 Stability of FORCE learning on spiking and rate-based networks Dongsung Huh, Terrence J. Sejnowski P66 Stabilising STDP in striatal neurons for reliable fast state recognition in noisy environments Simon M. Vogt, Arvind Kumar, Robert Schmidt P67 Electrodiffusion in one- and two-compartment neuron models for characterizing cellular effects of electrical stimulation Stephen Van Wert, Steven J. Schiff P68 STDP improves speech recognition capabilities in spiking recurrent circuits parameterized via differential evolution Markov Chain Monte Carlo Richard Veale, Matthias Scheutz P69 Bidirectional transformation between dominant cortical neural activities and phase difference distributions Sang Wan Lee P70 Maturation of sensory networks through homeostatic structural plasticity Júlia Gallinaro, Stefan Rotter P71 Corticothalamic dynamics: structure, number of solutions and stability of steady-state solutions in the space of synaptic couplings Paula Sanz-Leon, Peter A. Robinson P72 Optogenetic versus electrical stimulation of the parkinsonian basal ganglia. Computational study Leonid L. Rubchinsky, Chung Ching Cheung, Shivakeshavan Ratnadurai-Giridharan P73 Exact spike-timing distribution reveals higher-order interactions of neurons Safura Rashid Shomali, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, Hideaki Shimazaki, S. Nader Rasuli P74 Neural mechanism of visual perceptual learning using a multi-layered neural network Xiaochen Zhao, Malte J. Rasch P75 Inferring collective spiking dynamics from mostly unobserved systems Jens Wilting, Viola Priesemann P76 How to infer distributions in the brain from subsampled observations Anna Levina, Viola Priesemann P77 Influences of embedding and estimation strategies on the inferred memory of single spiking neurons Lucas Rudelt, Joseph T. Lizier, Viola Priesemann P78 A nearest-neighbours based estimator for transfer entropy between spike trains Joseph T. Lizier, Richard E. Spinney, Mikail Rubinov, Michael Wibral, Viola Priesemann P79 Active learning of psychometric functions with multinomial logistic models Ji Hyun Bak, Jonathan Pillow P81 Inferring low-dimensional network dynamics with variational latent Gaussian process Yuan Zaho, Il Memming Park P82 Computational investigation of energy landscapes in the resting state subcortical brain network Jiyoung Kang, Hae-Jeong Park P83 Local repulsive interaction between retinal ganglion cells can generate a consistent spatial periodicity of orientation map Jaeson Jang, Se-Bum Paik P84 Phase duration of bistable perception reveals intrinsic time scale of perceptual decision under noisy condition Woochul Choi, Se-Bum Paik P85 Feedforward convergence between retina and primary visual cortex can determine the structure of orientation map Changju Lee, Jaeson Jang, Se-Bum Paik P86 Computational method classifying neural network activity patterns for imaging data Min Song, Hyeonsu Lee, Se-Bum Paik P87 Symmetry of spike-timing-dependent-plasticity kernels regulates volatility of memory Youngjin Park, Woochul Choi, Se-Bum Paik P88 Effects of time-periodic coupling strength on the first-spike latency dynamics of a scale-free network of stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley neurons Ergin Yilmaz, Veli Baysal, Mahmut Ozer P89 Spectral properties of spiking responses in V1 and V4 change within the trial and are highly relevant for behavioral performance Veronika Koren, Klaus Obermayer P90 Methods for building accurate models of individual neurons Daniel Saska, Thomas Nowotny P91 A full size mathematical model of the early olfactory system of honeybees Ho Ka Chan, Alan Diamond, Thomas Nowotny P92 Stimulation-induced tuning of ongoing oscillations in spiking neural networks Christoph S. Herrmann, Micah M. Murray, Silvio Ionta, Axel Hutt, Jérémie Lefebvre P93 Decision-specific sequences of neural activity in balanced random networks driven by structured sensory input Philipp Weidel, Renato Duarte, Abigail Morrison P94 Modulation of tuning induced by abrupt reduction of SST cell activity Jung H. Lee, Ramakrishnan Iyer, Stefan Mihalas P95 The functional role of VIP cell activation during locomotion Jung H. Lee, Ramakrishnan Iyer, Christof Koch, Stefan Mihalas P96 Stochastic inference with spiking neural networks Mihai A. Petrovici, Luziwei Leng, Oliver Breitwieser, David Stöckel, Ilja Bytschok, Roman Martel, Johannes Bill, Johannes Schemmel, Karlheinz Meier P97 Modeling orientation-selective electrical stimulation with retinal prostheses Timothy B. Esler, Anthony N. Burkitt, David B. Grayden, Robert R. Kerr, Bahman Tahayori, Hamish Meffin P98 Ion channel noise can explain firing correlation in auditory nerves Bahar Moezzi, Nicolangelo Iannella, Mark D. McDonnell P99 Limits of temporal encoding of thalamocortical inputs in a neocortical microcircuit Max Nolte, Michael W. Reimann, Eilif Muller, Henry Markram P100 On the representation of arm reaching movements: a computational model Antonio Parziale, Rosa Senatore, Angelo Marcelli P101 A computational model for investigating the role of cerebellum in acquisition and retention of motor behavior Rosa Senatore, Antonio Parziale, Angelo Marcelli P102 The emergence of semantic categories from a large-scale brain network of semantic knowledge K. Skiker, M. Maouene P103 Multiscale modeling of M1 multitarget pharmacotherapy for dystonia Samuel A. Neymotin, Salvador Dura-Bernal, Alexandra Seidenstein, Peter Lakatos, Terence D. Sanger, William W. Lytton P104 Effect of network size on computational capacity Salvador Dura-Bernal, Rosemary J. Menzies, Campbell McLauchlan, Sacha J. van Albada, David J. Kedziora, Samuel Neymotin, William W. Lytton, Cliff C. Kerr P105 NetPyNE: a Python package for NEURON to facilitate development and parallel simulation of biological neuronal networks Salvador Dura-Bernal, Benjamin A. Suter, Samuel A. Neymotin, Cliff C. Kerr, Adrian Quintana, Padra