Report of the first Nimbus-7 SMMR Experiment Team Workshop

Preliminary results of sea ice and techniques for calculating sea ice concentration and multiyear fraction from the microwave radiances obtained from the Nimbus-7 SMMR were presented. From these results, it is evident that these groups used different and independent approaches in deriving sea ice emissivities and algorithms. This precluded precise comparisons of their results. A common set of sea ice emissivities were defined for all groups to use for subsequent more careful comparison of the results from the various sea ice parameter algorithms. To this end, three different geographical areas in two different time intervals were defined as typifying SMMR beam-filling conditions for first year sea ice, multiyear sea ice, and open water and to be used for determining the required microwave emissivities

Bethe ansatz solution of an integrable, non-Abelian anyon chain with D(D_3) symmetry

The exact solution for the energy spectrum of a one-dimensional Hamiltonian with local two-site interactions and periodic boundary conditions is determined. The two-site Hamiltonians commute with the symmetry algebra given by the Drinfeld double D(D_3) of the dihedral group D_3. As such the model describes local interactions between non-Abelian anyons, with fusion rules given by the tensor product decompositions of the irreducible representations of D(D_3). The Bethe ansatz equations which characterise the exact solution are found through the use of functional relations satisfied by a set of mutually commuting transfer matrices.Comment: 19 page

Full-scale testing of an Ogee tip rotor

Full scale tests were utilized to investigate the effect of the ogee tip on helicopter rotor acoustics, performance, and loads. Two facilities were used: the Langley whirl tower and a UH-1H helicopter. The text matrix for hover on the whirl tower involved thrust values from 0 to 44 480 N (10,000 lb) at several tip Mach numbers for both standard and Ogee rotors. The full scale testing on the UH-1H encompassed the major portion of the flight envelope for that aircraft. Both near field acoustic measurements and far field flyover data were obtained for both the ogee and standard rotors. Data analysis of the whirl tower test shows that the ogee tip does significantly diffuse the tip vortex while providing some improvement in hover performance at low and moderate thrust coefficients. Flight testing of both rotors indicates that the strong impulsive noise signature of the standard rotor can be reduced with the ogee rotor. Analysis of the spectra indicates a reduction in energy in the 250 Hz and 1000 Hz range for the ogee rotor. Forward flight performance was significantly improved with the ogee configuration for a large number of flight conditions. Further, rotor control loads were reduced through use of this advanced tip rotor

Streaming, Distributed Variational Inference for Bayesian Nonparametrics

This paper presents a methodology for creating streaming, distributed inference algorithms for Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) models. In the proposed framework, processing nodes receive a sequence of data minibatches, compute a variational posterior for each, and make asynchronous streaming updates to a central model. In contrast to previous algorithms, the proposed framework is truly streaming, distributed, asynchronous, learning-rate-free, and truncation-free. The key challenge in developing the framework, arising from the fact that BNP models do not impose an inherent ordering on their components, is finding the correspondence between minibatch and central BNP posterior components before performing each update. To address this, the paper develops a combinatorial optimization problem over component correspondences, and provides an efficient solution technique. The paper concludes with an application of the methodology to the DP mixture model, with experimental results demonstrating its practical scalability and performance.Comment: This paper was presented at NIPS 2015. Please use the following BibTeX citation: @inproceedings{Campbell15_NIPS, Author = {Trevor Campbell and Julian Straub and John W. {Fisher III} and Jonathan P. How}, Title = {Streaming, Distributed Variational Inference for Bayesian Nonparametrics}, Booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS)}, Year = {2015}

Computer and photogrammetric general land use study of central north Alabama

The object of this report is to acquaint potential users with two computer programs, developed at NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center. They were used in producing a land use survey and maps of central north Alabama from Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) digital data. The report describes in detail the thought processes and analysis procedures used from the initiation of the land use study to its completion, as well as a photogrammetric study that was used in conjunction with the computer analysis to produce similar land use maps. The results of the land use demonstration indicate that, with respect to computer time and cost, such a study may be economically and realistically feasible on a statewide basis

Induced encystment improves resistance to preservation and storage of Acanthamoeba castellanii

Several conditions that allow the preservation, storage and rapid, efficient recovery of viable Acanthamoeba castellanii organisms were investigated. The viability of trophozoites (as determined by time to confluence) significantly declined over a period of 12 months when stored at −70°C using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO; 5 or 10%) as cryopreservant. As A. castellanii are naturally capable of encystment, studies were undertaken to determine whether induced encystment might improve the viability of organisms under a number of storage conditions. A. castellanii cysts stored in the presence of Mg2+ at 4°C remained viable over the study period, although time to confluence was increased from approximately 8 days to approximately 24 days over the 12-month period. Storage of cysts at −70°C with DMSO (5 or 10%) or 40% glycerol, but not 80% glycerol as cryopreservants increased their viability over the 12-month study period compared with those stored at room temperature. Continued presence of Mg2+ in medium during storage had no adverse effects and generally improved recovery of viable organisms. The present study demonstrates that A. castellanii can be stored as a non-multiplicative form inexpensively, without a need for cryopreservation, for at least 12 months, but viability is increased by storage at −70°C

Effects of P-wave Annihilation on the Angular Power Spectrum of Extragalactic Gamma-rays from Dark Matter Annihilation

We present a formalism for estimating the angular power spectrum of extragalactic gamma-rays produced by dark matter annihilating with any general velocity-dependent cross section. The relevant density and velocity distribution of dark matter is modeled as an ensemble of smooth, universal, rigid, disjoint, spherical halos with distribution and universal properties constrained by simulation data. We apply this formalism to theories of dark matter with p-wave annihilation, for which the relative-velocity-weighted annihilation cross section is \sigma v=a+bv^2. We determine that this significantly increases the gamma-ray power if b/a >> 10^6. The effect of p-wave annihilation on the angular power spectrum is very similar for the sample of particle physics models we explored, suggesting that the important effect for a given b/a is largely determined by the cosmic dark matter distribution. If the dark matter relic from strong p-wave theories is thermally produced, the intensities of annihilation gamma-rays are strongly p-wave suppressed, making them difficult to observe. If an angular power spectrum consistent with a strong p-wave were to be observed, it would likely indicate non-thermal production of dark matter in the early Universe.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure