Preliminary assessment of power-generating tethers in space and of propulsion for their orbit maintenance

The concept of generating power in space by means of a conducting tether deployed from a spacecraft was studied. Using hydrogen and oxygen as the rocket propellant to overcome the drag of such a power-generating tether would yield more benefit than if used in a fuel cell. The mass consumption would be 25 percent less than the reactant consumption of fuel cells. Residual hydrogen and oxygen in the external tank and in the orbiter could be used very effectively for this purpose. Many other materials (such as waste from life support) could be used as the propellant. Electrical propulsion using tether generated power can compensate for the drag of a power-generating tether, half the power going to the useful load and the rest for electric propulsion. In addition, the spacecraft's orbital energy is a large energy reservoir that permits load leveling and a ratio of peak to average power equal to 2. Critical technologies to be explored before a power-generating tether can be used in space are delineated

A Mid-Infrared Galaxy Atlas (MIGA)

A mid-infrared atlas of part of the Galactic plane ($75^\circ < l < 148^\circ, b = \pm6^\circ$) has been constructed using HIRES processed infrared data to provide a mid-infrared data set for the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS). The addition of this data set to the CGPS will enable the study of the emission from the smallest components of interstellar dust at an angular resolution comparable to that of the radio, millimetre, and far-infrared data in the CGPS. The Mid-Infrared Galaxy Atlas (MIGA) is a mid-infrared (12 $\mu$m and 25 $\mu$m) counterpart to the far-infrared IRAS Galaxy Atlas (IGA), and consists of resolution enhanced ($\sim 0.5'$ resolution) HIRES images along with ancillary maps. This paper describes the processing and characteristics of the atlas, the cross-beam simulation technique used to obtain high-resolution ratio maps, and future plans to extend both the IGA and MIGA.Comment: 38 pages (including 15 tables), 13 figures (8 dithered GIF and 5 EPS). Submitted to Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. A preprint with higher resolution figures is available at http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~kerton/publications.htm

Driven Intrinsic Localized Modes in a Coupled Pendulum Array

Intrinsic localized modes (ILMs), also called discrete breathers, are directly generated via modulational instability in an array of coupled pendulums. These ILMs can be stabilized over a range of driver frequencies and amplitudes. They are characterized by a pi-phase difference between their center and wings. At higher driver frequencies, these ILMs are observed to disintegrate via a pulsating instability, and the mechanism of this breather instability is investigated.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Nonlinear localized modes in two-dimensional electrical lattices

We report the observation of spontaneous localization of energy in two spatial dimensions in the context of nonlinear electrical lattices. Both stationary and traveling self-localized modes were generated experimentally and theoretically in a family of two-dimensional square, as well as hon- eycomb lattices composed of 6x6 elements. Specifically, we find regions in driver voltage and frequency where stationary discrete breathers, also known as intrinsic localized modes (ILM), exist and are stable due to the interplay of damping and spatially homogeneous driving. By introduc- ing additional capacitors into the unit cell, these lattices can controllably induce traveling discrete breathers. When more than one such ILMs are experimentally generated in the lattice, the interplay of nonlinearity, discreteness and wave interactions generate a complex dynamics wherein the ILMs attempt to maintain a minimum distance between one another. Numerical simulations show good agreement with experimental results, and confirm that these phenomena qualitatively carry over to larger lattice sizes.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Discrete breathers in a nonlinear electric line: Modeling, Computation and Experiment

We study experimentally and numerically the existence and stability properties of discrete breathers in a periodic nonlinear electric line. The electric line is composed of single cell nodes, containing a varactor diode and an inductor, coupled together in a periodic ring configuration through inductors and driven uniformly by a harmonic external voltage source. A simple model for each cell is proposed by using a nonlinear form for the varactor characteristics through the current and capacitance dependence on the voltage. For an electrical line composed of 32 elements, we find the regions, in driver voltage and frequency, where $n$-peaked breather solutions exist and characterize their stability. The results are compared to experimental measurements with good quantitative agreement. We also examine the spontaneous formation of $n$-peaked breathers through modulational instability of the homogeneous steady state. The competition between different discrete breathers seeded by the modulational instability eventually leads to stationary $n$-peaked solutions whose precise locations is seen to sensitively depend on the initial conditions

Fundamental investigation of losses of skeletal mineral in young adult human males and collaterally in young adult male pigtail monkeys /macacus nemestrima/ through immobilization for varying periods of time, coupled with a study of methods of preven

Skeletal mineral losses in young adult humans and monkeys resulting from immobilizatio

Polarization dependent photoionization cross-sections and radiative lifetimes of atomic states in Ba

The photoionization cross-sections of two even-parity excited states, $5d6d ^3D_1$ and $6s7d ^3D_{2}$, of atomic Ba at the ionization-laser wavelength of 556.6 nm were measured. We found that the total cross-section depends on the relative polarization of the atoms and the ionization-laser light. With density-matrix algebra, we show that, in general, there are at most three parameters in the photoionization cross-section. Some of these parameters are determined in this work. We also present the measurement of the radiative lifetime of five even-parity excited states of barium.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Multibreather and vortex breather stability in Klein--Gordon lattices: Equivalence between two different approaches

In this work, we revisit the question of stability of multibreather configurations, i.e., discrete breathers with multiple excited sites at the anti-continuum limit of uncoupled oscillators. We present two methods that yield quantitative predictions about the Floquet multipliers of the linear stability analysis around such exponentially localized in space, time-periodic orbits, based on the Aubry band method and the MacKay effective Hamiltonian method and prove that their conclusions are equivalent. Subsequently, we showcase the usefulness of the methods by a series of case examples including one-dimensional multi-breathers, and two-dimensional vortex breathers in the case of a lattice of linearly coupled oscillators with the Morse potential and in that of the discrete $\phi^4$ model