Rendezvous radar for the orbital maneuvering vehicle

The Rendezvous Radar Set (RRS) was designed at Motorola's Strategic Electronics Division in Chandler, Arizona, to be a key subsystem aboard NASA's Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (OMV). The unmanned OMV, which was under development at TRW's Federal Systems Division in Redondo Beach, California, was designed to supplement the Shuttle's satellite delivery, retrieval, and maneuvering activities. The RRS was to be used to locate and then provide the OMV with vectoring information to the target satellite (or Shuttle or Space Station) to aid the OMV in making a minimum fuel consumption approach and rendezvous. The OMV development program was halted by NASA in 1990 just as parts were being ordered for the RRS engineering model. The paper presented describes the RRS design and then discusses new technologies, either under development or planned for development at Motorola, that can be applied to radar or alternative sensor solutions for the Automated Rendezvous and Capture problem

Understanding the learner: Effective course design in the changing higher education space

Due to the ‘Bradley’ review of Higher Education in 2008, there has been a shift in demographics of students entering universities in Australia (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008). Moreover, the uncertainty around university funding has created additional challenges for many universities. However, as Jobs once stated “innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat” (2011), and emerging from this space arose an opportunity at Murdoch University to create OnTrack Sprint, which specifically aimed to capture school-leavers aspiring to university but achieving an ATAR just below the cut-off for direct entrance (i.e. between 60 - 69.95). This four-week intensive program was offered for the first time pre-semester one, 2015. Of those who started the course, 92% were retained and 96% of retained students progressed to enrolling in an undergraduate course at Murdoch University. The effectiveness of this enabling program stemmed from a curriculum that was informed by the learning needs (Kift, 2009) of this targeted demographic. This paper dances with the idea that a successful student-teacher relationship is reliant on ‘knowing’ your learner (Hattie, 2009) and refers to the program OnTrack Sprint to demonstrate how an effective transition pedagogy that is cognisant of the learner can be intentionally constructed and delivered to effectively engage and transition enabling students

Electrophoretic Pattern of Human Hairbulb Tyrosinase

A small gel electrophoretic system has been developed for the study of tryosinase from human hairbulb melanocytes. Enzyme is released from the hairbulb with Triton X-100. Electrophoresis is run in 60mm microcapillary pipettes with an internal diameter of 1.5mm. With this technique, tyrosinase from normally pigmented brown, black, blond, and red hairbulbs gives a single band when the gel is stained with L-dopa for enzyme activity. Tryosinase from tryosinase-positive oculocutaneous albino and Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome hairbulbs gives a single L-dopa band. Neuraminidase pretreatment of the tyrosinase from normal and albino hairbulbs changes the migration of the tyrosinase band to a less anodal position. Trypsin pretreatment has no effect. We conclude that human hairbulb tyrosinase is a glycoprotein and that tyrosinase-positive albino tyrosinase has no major electrophoretic difference from normal enzyme

An Interview with Eileen A. Olds

It\u27s your job to speak up. And then it\u27s also your job if you see things that don\u27t... feel right, to address them in some way. -- Judge Eileen Olds ------------------------------------ Sharp, quick-witted, and carrying a solemn charm, Judge Olds shares a strong personal narrative portraying her life as one in which she incessantly pursues justice. Her interview begins with stories of a strong sense of right and wrong in her early years. She goes on to share her rather traumatic experience of being isolated by fellow classmates during law school. Nonetheless, she and her fellow African American students (there were only four in her class) supported one another, even advocating for increased diversity among students and faculty at the law school. As the interview progresses, Judge Olds describes her highly successful career. She touches on rejoining the law school community after many years feeling unable to return. Judge Olds describes her “Tell it to the Judge” program, about how judges are trained, what they can do to be better. She discusses advice for her younger self, and for the law school now. She finishes the interview on a hopeful note, describing the law school today as a much better institution in terms of diversity and priorities.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/oralhist_all/1005/thumbnail.jp

Impact hazard protection efficiency by a small kinetic impactor

In this paper the ability of a small kinetic impactor spacecraft to mitigate an Earth-threatening asteroid is assessed by means of a novel measure of efficiency. This measure estimates the probability of a space system to deflect a single randomly-generated Earth-impacting object to a safe distance from the Earth. This represents a measure of efficiency that is not biased by the orbital parameters of a test-case object. A vast number of virtual Earth-impacting scenarios are investigated by homogenously distributing in orbital space a grid of 17,518 Earth impacting trajectories. The relative frequency of each trajectory is estimated by means Opik’s theory and Bottke’s near Earth objects model. A design of the entire mitigation mission is performed and the largest deflected asteroid computed for each impacting trajectory. The minimum detectable asteroid can also be estimated by an asteroid survey model. The results show that current technology would likely suffice against discovered airburst and local damage threats, whereas larger space systems would be necessary to reliably tackle impact hazard from larger threats. For example, it is shown that only 1,000 kg kinetic impactor would suffice to mitigate the impact threat of 27.1% of objects posing similar threat than that posed by Apophis

Cold Regime Interannual Variability of Primary and Secondary Producer Community Composition in the Southeastern Bering Sea

Variability of hydrographic conditions and primary and secondary productivity between cold and warm climatic regimes in the Bering Sea has been the subject of much study in recent years, while interannual variability within a single regime and across multiple trophic levels has been less well-documented. Measurements from an instrumented mooring on the southeastern shelf of the Bering Sea were analyzed for the spring-to-summer transitions within the cold regime years of 2009–2012 to investigate the interannual variability of hydrographic conditions, primary producer biomass, and acoustically-derived secondary producer and consumer abundance and community structure. Hydrographic conditions in 2012 were significantly different than in 2009, 2010, and 2011, driven largely by increased ice extent and thickness, later ice retreat, and earlier stratification of the water column. Primary producer biomass was more tightly coupled to hydrographic conditions in 2012 than in 2009 or 2011, and shallow and mid-column phytoplankton blooms tended to occur independent of one another. There was a high degree of variability in the relationships between different classes of secondary producers and hydrographic conditions, evidence of significant intra-consumer interactions, and trade-offs between different consumer size classes in each year. Phytoplankton blooms stimulated different populations of secondary producers in each year, and summer consumer populations appeared to determine dominant populations in the subsequent spring. Overall, primary producers and secondary producers were more tightly coupled to each other and to hydrographic conditions in the coldest year compared to the warmer years. The highly variable nature of the interactions between the atmospherically-driven hydrographic environment, primary and secondary producers, and within food webs underscores the need to revisit how climatic regimes within the Bering Sea are defined and predicted to function given changing climate scenarios

The Structure and Sensitivity of the Eye of Different Life History Stages of the Ontogenetic Migrator Gnathophausia ingens

The structure and ultrastructure of the photoreceptors of several life history stages of the ontogenetically migrating lophogastrid crustacean Gnathophausia ingens were examined. The younger instars of this species live in a much brighter light field than the older instars, and this difference is reflected in differences in their visual systems. The shallowest free living individuals (instars 3 and 4) possess a superposition eye with almost no clear zone, which minimizes the light shared between ommatidia and reduces the sensitivity of the eye. A progression to superposition optics with a large clear zone, usually associated with night-active or deep-living species, occurs as the animals move deeper in the water column. Regional differences within the eye are also evident, with a largely nonexistent clear zone in the dorsal region and a large clear zone in the ventral region in the eyes of instar 5 animals, the first instar to move to deeper depths. The deepest living instars (10–12) possess superposition optics with a large clear zone throughout the eye, and are significantly more sensitive to light than the younger, shallower instars