11,100 research outputs found
Materials and construction techniques for cryogenic wind tunnel facilities for instruction/research use
The results of the cryogenic wind tunnel program conducted at NASA Langley Research Center are presented to provide a starting point for the design of an instructional/research wind tunnel facility. The advantages of the cryogenic concept are discussed, and operating envelopes for a representative facility are presented to indicate the range and mode of operation. Special attention is given to the design, construction and materials problems peculiar to cryogenic wind tunnels. The control system for operation of a cryogenic tunnel is considered, and a portion of a linearized mathematical model is developed for determining the tunnel dynamic characteristics
Limits of stakeholder participation in sustainable development : "where facts are few, experts are many"
Extract from: The Mediterranean coastal areas from watershed to the sea : interactions and changes / by L.F. Cassar ... [et al.]. Proceedings of the MEDCORE International conference, Florence, 10th-14th November 2005The notion of including stakeholders, those affected (positively or negatively)
by a sustainable development programme in both its design and implementation,
has become a central concern for those implementing such programmes.
Such an approach is often referred to as ‘stakeholder participation’, as ‘participatory
development’ or more simply still as ‘participation’. How best to
achieve this has been the topic of a substantial literature, with a host of different
methodologies presented and promoted. Each has its own advantages
and disadvantages, but there has been surprisingly little discussion in the
sustainable development literature as to the limits and dangers of participation
irrespective of the approach employed to ‘best’ facilitate it. Inter-linked
with the limits of participation is the role of specialists and expert opinion
in sustainable development. This paper discusses the results of participatory
exercises conducted in Gozo (Malta) between 2003 and 2005. On the positive
side, participation yielded many useful and interesting insights and invoked
a sense of ‘involvement’ in sustainable development, but there were
problems and these are discussed in this paper. For example, the outcome of
the exercise crucially depends upon representation, and a simplified vision of
‘community’ often employed in participation to make it practicable can load
the process in favour of certain stakeholder groups at the expense of others.peer-reviewe
The structure of trailing vortices generated by model rotor blades
Hot-wire anemometry to analyze the structure and geometry of rotary wing trailing vortices is studied. Tests cover a range of aspect ratios and blade twist. For all configurations, measured vortex strength correlates well with maximum blade-bound circulation. Measurements of wake geometry are in agreement with classical data for high-aspect ratios. The detailed vortex structure is similar to that found for fixed wings and consists of four well defined regions--a viscous core, a turbulent mixing region, a merging region, and an inviscid outer region. A single set of empirical formulas for the entire set of test data is described
Comparing the performance of stellar variability filters for the detection of planetary transits
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of
Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar
microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical
experiment has been designed to test the performance of our approach in
comparison with other variability filters and fitting techniques for stars of
different magnitudes and planets of different radius and orbital period, as
observed by the space missions CoRoT and Kepler. Here we report on the results
of this experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figures, Transiting Planets Proceeding IAU
Symposium No.253, 200
Anomalous fluctuations of active polar filaments
Using a simple model, we study the fluctuating dynamics of inextensible,
semiflexible polar filaments interacting with active and directed force
generating centres such as molecular motors. Taking into account the fact that
the activity occurs on time-scales comparable to the filament relaxation time,
we obtain some unexpected differences between both the steady-state and
dynamical behaviour of active as compared to passive filaments. For the
statics, the filaments have a {novel} length-scale dependent rigidity.
Dynamically, we find strongly enhanced anomalous diffusion.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Soliton Stability in Systems of Two Real Scalar Fields
In this paper we consider a class of systems of two coupled real scalar
fields in bidimensional spacetime, with the main motivation of studying
classical or linear stability of soliton solutions. Firstly, we present the
class of systems and comment on the topological profile of soliton solutions
one can find from the first-order equations that solve the equations of motion.
After doing that, we follow the standard approach to classical stability to
introduce the main steps one needs to obtain the spectra of Schr\"odinger
operators that appear in this class of systems. We consider a specific system,
from which we illustrate the general calculations and present some analytical
results. We also consider another system, more general, and we present another
investigation, that introduces new results and offers a comparison with the
former investigations.Comment: 16 pages, Revtex, 3 f igure
Hall of Mirrors Scattering from an Impurity in a Quantum Wire
This paper develops a scattering theory to examine how point impurities
affect transport through quantum wires. While some of our new results apply
specifically to hard-walled wires, others--for example, an effective optical
theorem for two-dimensional waveguides--are more general. We apply the method
of images to the hard-walled guide, explicitly showing how scattering from an
impurity affects the wire's conductance. We express the effective cross section
of a confined scatterer entirely in terms of the empty waveguide's Green's
function, suggesting a way in which to use semiclassical methods to understand
transport properties of smooth wires. In addition to predicting some new
phenomena, our approach provides a simple physical picture for previously
observed effects such as conductance dips and confinement-induced resonances.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review B.
Minor additions to text, added reference
Polynomial Solutions of Shcrodinger Equation with the Generalized Woods Saxon Potential
The bound state energy eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenfunctions of
the generalized Woods Saxon potential are obtained in terms of the Jacobi
polynomials. Nikiforov Uvarov method is used in the calculations. It is shown
that the results are in a good agreement with the ones obtained before.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physical Review
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