33,552 research outputs found
SSME Long-life Bearings
Hybrid hydrostatic/ball bearings for LH2 and LO2 service in turbopumps were studied as a means of improving speed and life capabilities. Four hybrid bearing configurations were designed with emphasis on achieving maximum stiffness and damping. Parallel load bearings were tested at steady-state and transient conditions with LH2 (externally fed) and LN2 (internally fed). The hydrostatic elements were tested with Freon 113 for empirical determination of dynamic characteristics. Tests using an eccentric journal for loading showed the externally and internally fed hydrostatic bearings to have significant separated coefficients of direct stiffness and damping. For the internally fed bearing, the strongly speed-dependent cross-coupling stiffness arising from fluid swirl, along with significant cross-coupling damping, resulted in low net effective stiffness and damping. The test method used can produce separated coefficients with a sufficiently elliptic journal orbit; otherwise, only net effective coefficients combining direct and cross-coupling terms can be determined. Testing with nonsynchronous excitation is recommended to avoid this restriction. Investigation of hard materials, including ceramics, is recommended as a means of eliminating the need for the rolling bearing for startup and shutdown support. The testing was performed in 1984 (LH2), 1985 (LN2) and 1985-86 (Freon)
The Impact of Late-Career Health and Employment Shocks on Social Security and Other Wealth
About one-quarter of workers age 51 to 55 in 1992 developed health-related work limitations and about one-fifth were laid off from their jobs before age 62. Although late-career health and employment shocks often derail retirement savings plans, Social Security's disability insurance, spouse and survivor benefits, and progressive benefit formula provide important protections. In fact, health shocks increase Social Security's lifetime value, primarily because the system's disability insurance allows some disabled workers to collect benefits before age 62. However, if the system's disability insurance program did not exist, the onset of health-related work limitations would substantially reduce Social Security wealth
A constraint on a varying proton--electron mass ratio 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang
A molecular hydrogen absorber at a lookback time of 12.4 billion years,
corresponding to 10 of the age of the universe today, is analyzed to put a
constraint on a varying proton--electron mass ratio, . A high resolution
spectrum of the J14432724 quasar, which was observed with the Very Large
Telescope, is used to create an accurate model of 89 Lyman and Werner band
transitions whose relative frequencies are sensitive to , yielding a limit
on the relative deviation from the current laboratory value of
.Comment: Accepted for publication in PRL. Includes supplemental materia
Hydrocarbons in the banana leaf, Musa sapientum
Mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, and thin layer and gas chromatography studies of hydrocarbons in banana leave
Improvements in Cd stable isotope analysis achieved through use of liquid–liquid extraction to remove organic residues from Cd separates obtained by extraction chromatography
Organic compounds released from resins that are commonly employed for trace element separations are known to have a detrimental impact on the quality of isotopic analyses by MC-ICP-MS. A recent study highlighted that such effects can be particularly problematic for Cd stable isotope measurements (M. Gault-Ringold and C. H. Stirling, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2012, 27, 449–459). In this case, the final stage of sample purification commonly applies extraction chromatography with Eichrom TRU resin, which employs particles coated with octylphenyl-N,N-di-isobutyl carbamoylphosphine oxide (CMPO) dissolved in tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP). During chromatography, it appears that some of these compounds are eluted alongside Cd and cannot be removed by evaporation due to their high boiling points. When aliquots of the zero-ε reference material were processed through the purification procedure, refluxed in concentrated HNO(3) and analyzed at minimum dilution (in 1 ml 0.1 M HNO(3)), they yielded Cd isotopic compositions (ε(114/110)Cd = 4.6 ± 3.4, 2SD, n = 4) that differed significantly from the expected value, despite the use of a double spike technique to correct for instrumental mass fractionation. This result was accompanied by a 35% reduction in instrumental sensitivity for Cd. With increasing dilution of the organic resin residue, both of these effects are reduced and they are insignificant when the eluted Cd is dissolved in ≥3 ml 0.1 M HNO(3). Our results, furthermore, indicate that the isotopic artefacts are most likely related to anomalous mass bias behavior. Previous studies have shown that perchloric acid can be effective at avoiding such effects (Gault-Ringold and Stirling, 2012; K. C. Crocket, M. Lambelet, T. van de Flierdt, M. Rehkämper and L. F. Robinson, Chem. Geol., 2014, 374–375, 128–140), presumably by oxidizing the resin-derived organics, but there are numerous disadvantages to its use. Here we show that liquid–liquid extraction with n-heptane removes the organic compounds, dramatically improving quality of the Cd isotope data for samples that are analyzed at or close to minimum dilution factors. This technique is quick, simple and may be of use prior to analysis of other isotope systems where similar resins are employed
The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2): Compact Source Catalogue
We present the first data release from the second epoch Molonglo Galactic
Plane Survey (MGPS-2). MGPS-2 was carried out with the Molonglo Observatory
Synthesis Telescope at a frequency of 843 MHz and with a restoring beam of 45
arcsec x 45 arcsec cosec(dec), making it the highest resolution large scale
radio survey of the southern Galactic plane. It covers the range |b| < 10 deg
and 245 deg < l < 365 deg and is the Galactic counterpart to the Sydney
University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS) which covers the whole southern sky with
dec 10 deg).
In this paper we present the MGPS-2 compact source catalogue. The catalogue
has 48,850 sources above a limiting peak brightness of 10 mJy/beam. Positions
in the catalogue are accurate to 1 arcsec - 2 arcsec. A full catalogue
including extended sources is in preparation. We have carried out an analysis
of the compact source density across the Galactic plane and find that the
source density is not statistically higher than the density expected from the
extragalactic source density alone.
We also present version 2.0 of the SUMSS image data and catalogue which are
now available online. The data consists of 629 4.3 deg x 4.3 deg mosaic images
covering the 8100 deg^2 of sky with dec 10 deg. The
catalogue contains 210,412 radio sources to a limiting peak brightness of 6
mJy/beam at dec -50 deg. We describe the
updates and improvements made to the SUMSS cataloguing process.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, to be published in MNRAS Note that Figures 8 and
9 are much lower resolution than in the published versio
The Nature of the Compact/Symmetric Near-IR Continuum Source in 4C 40.36
Using NICMOS on HST, we have imaged the emission-line nebulae and the
line-free continuum in 4C 40.36, a ultra-steep spectrum FR II radio galaxy at
z=2.269. The line-free continuum was found to be extremely compact and
symmetric while the emission-line nebulae seen in H-alpha+[N II] show very
clumpy structures spreading almost linearly over 16 kpc. However, this linear
structure is clearly misaligned from the radio axis. The SED of the line-free
continuum is very flat, suggesting that if the continuum emission is produced
by a single source, it is likely to be a young bursting stellar population or
scattered AGN light. However, because of the lack of a line-free optical image
with a comparable spatial resolution, we cannot exclude the possibility that
the observed SED is a composite of a young blue population and an old red
population.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; to appear in the proceedings of "The Hy-Redshift
Universe: Galaxy Formation and Evolution at High Redshift", eds. A.J.Bunker
and W. J. M. van Breuge
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