myCopter: Enabling Technologies for Personal Aerial Transportation Systems: Project status after 2.5 years

Current means of transportation for daily commuting are reaching their limits during peak travel times, which results in waste of fuel and loss of time and money. A recent study commissioned by the European Union considers a personal aerial transportation system (PATS) as a viable alternative for transportation to and from work. It also acknowledges that developing such a transportation system should not focus on designing a new flying vehicle for personal use, but instead on investigating issues surrounding the implementation of the transportation system itself. This is the aim of European project myCopter: to determine the social and technological aspects needed to set up a transportation system based on personal aerial vehicles (PAVs). The project focuses on three research areas: human-machine interfaces and training, automation technologies, and social acceptance. Our extended abstract for inclusion in the conference proceedings and our presentation will focus on the achievements during the first 2.5 years of the 4-year project. These include the development of an augmented dynamic model of a PAV with excellent handling qualities that are suitable for training purposes. The training requirements for novice pilots are currently under development. Experimental evaluations on haptic guidance and human-in-the-loop control tasks have allowed us to start implementing a haptic Highway-in-the-Sky display to support novice pilots and to investigate metrics for objectively determining workload using psychophysiological measurements. Within the project, developments for automation technologies have focused on vision-based algorithms. We have integrated such algorithms in the control and navigation architecture of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Detecting suitable landing spots from monocular camera images recorded in flight has proven to reliably work off-line, but further work is required to be able to use this approach in real time. Furthermore, we have built multiple low-cost UAVs and equipped them with radar sensors to test collision avoidance strategies in real flight. Such algorithms are currently under development and will take inspiration from crowd simulations. Finally, using technology assessment methodologies, we have assessed potential markets for PAVs and challenges for its integration into the current transportation system. This will lead to structured discussions on expectations and requirements of potential PAV users

Simulation of the hydrogen ground state in Stochastic Electrodynamics

Stochastic electrodynamics is a classical theory which assumes that the physical vacuum consists of classical stochastic fields with average energy $\frac{1}{2}\hbar \omega$ in each mode, i.e., the zero-point Planck spectrum. While this classical theory explains many quantum phenomena related to harmonic oscillator problems, hard results on nonlinear systems are still lacking. In this work the hydrogen ground state is studied by numerically solving the Abraham -- Lorentz equation in the dipole approximation. First the stochastic Gaussian field is represented by a sum over Gaussian frequency components, next the dynamics is solved numerically using OpenCL. The approach improves on work by Cole and Zou 2003 by treating the full $3d$ problem and reaching longer simulation times. The results are compared with a conjecture for the ground state phase space density. Though short time results suggest a trend towards confirmation, in all attempted modelings the atom ionises at longer times.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures. Published version, minor change

Concentration dependence of the transition temperature in metallic spin glasses

The dependence of the transition temperature $T_g$ in terms of the concentration of magnetic impurities $c$ in spin glasses is explained on the basis of a screened RKKY interaction. The two observed power laws, $T_g ~ c$ at low $c$ and $T_g ~ c^{2/3}$ for intermediate $c$, are described in a unified approach.Comment: 4 page

Ehrenfest relations at the glass transition: solution to an old paradox

In order to find out whether there exists a thermodynamic description of the glass phase, the Ehrenfest relations along the glass transition line are reconsidered. It is explained that the one involving the compressibility is always satisfied, and that the one involving the specific heat is principally incorrect. Thermodynamical relations are presented for non-ergodic systems with a one-level tree in phase space. They are derived for a spin glass model, checked for other models, and expected to apply, e.g., to glass forming liquids. The second Ehrenfest relation gets a contribution from the configurational entropy.Comment: 4 pages revtex, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Quantum thermodynamics: thermodynamics at the nanoscale

A short introduction on quantum thermodynamics is given and three new topics are discussed: 1) Maximal work extraction from a finite quantum system. The thermodynamic prediction fails and a new, general result is derived, the ``ergotropy''. 2) In work extraction from two-temperature setups, the presence of correlations can push the effective efficiency beyond the Carnot bound. 3) In the presence of level crossing, non-slow changes may be more optimal than slow ones.Comment: 5 pages. Talk given at Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE2004), Snowbird, by Th.M. Nieuwenhuize

Competition between glassiness and order in a multi-spin glass

A mean-field multi-spin interaction spin glass model is analyzed in the presence of a ferromagnetic coupling. The static and dynamical phase diagrams contain four phases (paramagnet, spin glass, ordinary ferromagnet and glassy ferromagnet) and exhibit reentrant behavior. The glassy ferromagnet phase has anomalous dynamical properties. The results are consistent with a nonequilibrium thermodynamics that has been proposed for glasses.Comment: revised version, 4 pages Revtex, 2 eps-figures. Phys. Rev. E, Rapid Communication, to appea

Thermodynamic picture of the glassy state

A picture for thermodynamics of the glassy state is introduced. It assumes that one extra parameter, the effective temperature, is needed to describe the glassy state. This explains the classical paradoxes concerning the Ehrenfest relations and the Prigogine-Defay ratio. As a second part, the approach connects the response of macroscopic observables to a field change with their temporal fluctuations, and with the fluctuation-dissipation relation, in a generalized non-equilibrium way.Comment: Proceedings of the Conference "Unifying Concepts in Glass Physics", ICTP, Trieste, 15 - 18 September 199

Psychometric evaluation of the Forensic Inpatient Observation Scale (FIOS) in youngsters with a judicial measure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In this article, the psychometric properties of the Forensic Inpatient Observation Scale (FIOS) were examined. This instrument was developed to observe behavioral functioning of forensic psychiatric patients. Up till now, it has only been used among adult forensic psychiatric patients and this is the first study in which the FIOS is used with youngsters.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data were gathered of 133 patients. The FIOS was routinely used to assess the psychiatric condition of youngsters at fixed intervals with a three-month time period between each measurement. Ward staff working in close contact with the patient conducted the assessments. Of these 133 patients, an YSR/ASR questionnaire was available for 96 of them and a TRF for 110 of the 133 patients. For the descriptive, reliability and validity analyses, SPSS version 16.0 was used. Factor analyses were performed by means of Mplus Version 5.2.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A series of confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses revealed a five-factor structure for the FIOS. The five-factor structure consisted of the following scales: self-care, social behavior, oppositional behavior, verbal skills and distress. The insight scale of the original factor structure could not be replicated in the youth sample. Cronbach's alpha's of the five scales ranged from .70 to .85. The self-care, verbal skills and oppositional behavior scales of the FIOS showed no relation with emotional and behavior problems reported by the patients themselves or their teachers. The distress scale of the FIOS did show a relation with the emotional problems reported by patients themselves and the social behavior scale with behavioral problems as reported by teachers.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The internal consistency of the FIOS was sufficient and the factor structure in the present sample of youngsters was in general comparable to the original factor structure in an adult sample. Its value lies in the focus on behavioral functioning of youngsters with judicial measures. What remains to be seen is whether this instrument is sensitive enough to register all aspects of behavioral changes, whether the interrater reliability is sufficient, and whether it has predictive validity to relapse and recidivism.</p

Deviations from the Gaussian distribution of mesoscopic conductance fluctuations

The conductance distribution of metallic mesoscopic systems is considered. The variance of this distribution describes the universal conductance fluctuations, yielding a Gaussian distribution of the conductance. We calculate diagrammatically the third cumulant of this distribution, the leading deviation from the Gaussian. We confirm random matrix theory calculations that the leading contribution in quasi-one dimension vanishes. However, in quasi two dimensions the third cumulant is negative, whereas in three dimensions it is positive.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, with eps figures,to appear in Phys Rev

Completing the Square to Find the Supersymmetric Matter Effective Action Induced by Coupling to Linearized N=1 Supergravity

We consider generic N=1 supersymmetric matter coupled to linearized N=1 supergravity through the multiplet of currents. By completing the square, we find the effective action giving the leading supergravity induced correction to the matter dynamics, expressed explicitly as a quadratic form in the components of the current multiplet. The effective action is supersymmetry invariant through an interplay of the local terms arising from the auxiliary field couplings, and the nonlocal terms arising from graviton and gravitino exchange, neither of which is separately invariant. Having an explicit form for the supergravity induced effective action is a first step in studying whether supergravity corrections can lead to dynamical supersymmetry breaking in supersymmetric matter dynamics. In Appendices we give explicit expressions for the currents, in our notational conventions, in the Wess-Zumino and supersymmetric Yang Mills models.Comment: TEX; to be submitted to Annals of Physic