PAN AIR analysis of the NASA/MCAIR 279-3: An advanced supersonic V/STOL fighter/attack aircraft

PAN AIR is a computer program for predicting subsonic or supersonic linear potential flow about arbitrary configurations. The program was applied to a highly complex single-engine-cruise V/STOL fighter/attack aircraft. Complexities include a close-coupled canard/wing, large inlets, and four exhaust nozzles mounted directly under the wing and against the fuselage. Modeling uncertainties involving canard wake location and flow-through approximation through the inlet and the exhaust nozzles were investigated. The recently added streamline capability of the program was utilized to evaluate visually the predicted flow over the model. PAN AIR results for Mach numbers of 0.6, 0.9, and angles of attack of 0, 5, and 10 deg. were compared with data obtained in the Ames 11- by 11-Foot Transonic Wind tunnel, at a Reynolds number of 3.69 x 10 to the 6th power based on c bar

Are Changing Demographics Fostering a New Role for Farmers?

Skill sets, profitability, management skills, ordered probit, Agribusiness,

“Stepsons and Stepdaughters”: Chosen Communities, Religion, Faith, and LGBT Liberation

This dissertation explores the new roles the LGBT movement took on in place of religious and faith-based communities. The new discourse behind the LGBT rights movement’s recent popularity and credibility in popular culture in the U.S. created a generation of activists who grew up both within and outside of religious communities that affirmed an individual’s sexuality as an important part of their identity rather than a sinful one. While newer generations of both closeted and open LGBT individuals and religiously affiliated men and women grew up knowing about the fight for and against gay marriage, equal rights, and fair and non-discriminatory treatment, the battle for LGBT rights was reduced, through various mediums like the media, the internet, and popular culture, as a battle between religion and the LGBT movement. This dissertation seeks to unravel the stories behind the various struggles each community, both religious and LGBT affiliated, has and is currently undergoing around the issues of equality and the inclusion of LGBT individuals in religious communities and traditions. It does this against the backdrop of the religious and faith-based communities that have traditional excluded LGBT individuals. Through this process of including individuals and communities on both sides of the LGBT issue, new constructive and effective discourses developed to further bridge the divide between religion and sexuality rather than creating a wider gap. As a result, both young and old individuals were forced to deal with the matter both publicly and privately. This exploration is grounded in the analysis of two years of ethnographic study with widely regarded experts and activists in the field LGBT equality, both within and outside of religious and faith-based communities. While the church and the LGBT community played a key role in creating the various narratives that put them at odds with each other, I focus on the experience of interviewees from within three time periods: post-Stonewall Inn Riots of 1969; the rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis at the height of the Religious Right and Moral Majority popularity in the late 1970s through the 1980s; and, lastly, the fight for marriage equality with the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 to the United States Supreme Court Decision Obergefell v. Hodges which made same sex marriage legal nationwide. Beginning in the 1960s, gays and lesbians who left the churches of their youth created intentional communities of care that fulfilled many of the same human needs that their religious communities had while separating themselves from the negative stigmas attached to their sexuality in most traditionalist Christian congregations. Ironically, then, conservative Christian churches thus helped create the modern LGBT movement in America, imbuing it with a sense of not only political but also spiritual purpose

Designing and Testing a Quench Heater for a 16 T CIC Dipole

The purpose of this project is to create and design a quench heater for the 16 T Cable-in-Conduit (CIC) superconducting magnet. This magnet will be used to create stronger and more cost-effective particle accelerators. The quench heater is a device that is designed to protect the magnet from an unexpected quench. In order to achieve this, the quench heater must be able to produce enough heat to heat the superconducting wires in the CIC cable to approximately 9K over the course of 10 ms. To design a quench heater in this way, it is required to find the dimensions needed using simulations. After finding the required dimensions, a Computer Assisted Design (CAD) file was created so the design could be machined to the exact specifications. Then, using liquid helium and one cable, we tested if the heater would properly heat the cable. Thermocouple wires were integrated into the cable to measure the temperature of the wires during the experiment. This physical experiment has not yet been conducted and thus the results are still unknown. It is expected that the quench heater will be able to properly heat the cable over the 10 ms timeframe. If this experiment is successful, this design for a quench heater will be used for the 16 T CIC cable

Chain Gangs: New Aspects of Hyaluronan Metabolism

Hyaluronan is a matrix polymer prominent in tissues undergoing rapid growth, development, and repair, in embryology and during malignant progression. It reaches 107 Daltons in size but also exists in fragmented forms with size-specific actions. It has intracellular forms whose functions are less well known. Hyaluronan occurs in all vertebrate tissues with 50% present in skin. Hyaluronan provides a scaffold on which sulfated proteoglycans and matrix proteins are organized. These supramolecular structures are able to entrap water and ions to provide tissues with hydration and turgor. Hyaluronan is recognized by membrane receptors that trigger intracellular signaling pathways regulating proliferation, migration, and differentiation. Cell responses are often dependent on polymer size. Catabolic turnover occurs by hyaluronidases and by free radicals, though proportions between these have not been determined. New aspects of hyaluronan biology have recently become realized: involvement in autophagy, in the pathology of diabetes., the ability to modulate immune responses through effects on T regulatory cells and, in its fragmented forms, by being able to engage several toll-like receptors. It is also apparent that hyaluronan synthases and hyaluronidases are regulated at many more levels than previously realized, and that the several hyaluronidases have functions in addition to their enzymatic activities

Applying Hierarchical Contextual Parsing with Visual Density and Geometric Features to Typeset Formula Recognition

We demonstrate that recognition of scanned typeset mathematical expression images can be done by extracting maximum spanning trees from line of sight graphs weighted using geometric and visual density features. The approach used is hierarchical contextual parsing (HCP): Hierarchical in terms of starting with connected components and building to the symbol level using visual, spatial, and contextual features of connected components. Once connected components have been segmented into symbols, a new set of spatial, visual, and contextual features are extracted. One set of visual features is used for symbol classification, and another for parsing. The features are used in parsing to assign classifications and confidences to edges in a line of sight symbol graph. Layout trees describe expression structure in terms of spatial relations between symbols, such as horizontal, subscript, and superscript. From the weighted graph Edmonds\u27 algorithm is used to extract a maximum spanning tree. Segmentation and parsing are done without using symbol classification information, and symbol classification is done independently of expression structure recognition. The commonality between the recognition processes is the type of features they use, the visual densities. These visual densities are used for shape, spatial, and contextual information. The contextual information is shown to help in segmentation, parsing, and symbol recognition. The hierarchical contextual parsing has been implemented in the Python and Graph-based Online/Offline Recognizer for Math (Pythagor^m) system and tested on the InftyMCCDB-2 dataset. We created InftyMCCDB-2 from InftyCDB-2 as a open source dataset for scanned typeset math expression recognition. In building InftyMCCDB-2 modified formula structure representations were used to better capture the spatial positioning of symbols in the expression structures. Namely, baseline punctuation and symbol accents were moved out of horizontal baselines as their positions are not horizontally aligned with symbols on a writing line. With the transformed spatial layouts and HCP, 95.97% of expressions were parsed correctly when given symbols and 93.95% correctly parsed when requiring symbol segmentation from connected components. Overall HCP reached 90.83% expression recognition rate from connected components

Off-farm Income and Investments in Farm Assets: A Double Hurdle Approach

The farm household structure is a complex set of inter-relationships between and among a variety of internal and external factors involving consumption, investment, and income-earning activities. In this paper we use ARMS data to explore the contribution of off-farm income to the viability of the farm business. We focus on the link between off-farm income and farm investment and whether off-farm income drives on-farm investment. The results indicate the importance of farm characteristics such as type, size, and location on the probability of investment but lead us to reject the hypothesis that off farm income is driving farm investment. Further research will be needed to further unweave some of the complex relationships involved in the farm household structure. Keywords: Farm investments, off-farm income, double hurdleOff-farm income, farm investment, double hurdle, Agricultural Finance, Financial Economics, D1, J2, Q12,

Clinical investigation of the wearability of the Bausch and Lomb Low Plus Soflens

A clinical study . involving twelve subjects we.s conducted with the Bausch and Lomb Low Plus soflens at Pacific University. proper adaptation and successful fittings were achieved in six of the sμbjects, with the results correlated to lens decentration, inferior corneal flattening, refractive error, and relationship between posterior apical lens radius and central keratometer readings. Advantages and disadvantages of the lens are discussed as well as fitting procedure recommendations