938 research outputs found
Repair of major system elements on Skylab
In-flight maintenance, as conceived and preplanned for the Skylab mission was limited to simple scheduled and unscheduled replacement tasks and minor contingency repairs. Tools and spares were provided accordingly. However, failures during the mission dictated complicated and sophisticated repairs to major systems so that the mission could continue. These repairs included the release of a large structure that failed to deploy, the assembly and deployment of large mechanical devices, the installation and checkout of precision electronic equipment, troubleshooting and repair of precision electromechanical equipment, and tapping into and recharging a cooling system. The repairs were conducted both inside the spacecraft and during extravehicular activities. Some of the repair tasks required team effort on the part of the crewmen including close procedural coordination between internal and extravehicular crewmen. The Skylab experience indicates that crewmen can, with adequate training, make major system repairs in space using standard or special tools. Design of future spacecraft systems should acknowledge this capability and provide for more extensive in-flight repair and maintenance
Advanced power sources for space missions
Approaches to satisfying the power requirements of space-based Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) missions are studied. The power requirements for non-SDI military space missions and for civil space missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are also considered. The more demanding SDI power requirements appear to encompass many, if not all, of the power requirements for those missions. Study results indicate that practical fulfillment of SDI requirements will necessitate substantial advances in the state of the art of power technology. SDI goals include the capability to operate space-based beam weapons, sometimes referred to as directed-energy weapons. Such weapons pose unprecedented power requirements, both during preparation for battle and during battle conditions. The power regimes for these two sets of applications are referred to as alert mode and burst mode, respectively. Alert-mode power requirements are presently stated to range from about 100 kW to a few megawatts for cumulative durations of about a year or more. Burst-mode power requirements are roughly estimated to range from tens to hundreds of megawatts for durations of a few hundred to a few thousand seconds. There are two likely energy sources, chemical and nuclear, for powering SDI directed-energy weapons during the alert and burst modes. The choice between chemical and nuclear space power systems depends in large part on the total duration during which power must be provided. Complete study findings, conclusions, and eight recommendations are reported
Relativistic Structure of the Deuteron: 1.Electro-disintegration and y-scaling
Realistic solutions of the spinor-spinor Bethe-Salpeter equation for the
deuteron with realistic interaction kernel including the exchange of pi, sigma,
omega, rho, eta and delta mesons, are used to systematically investigate
relativistic effects in inclusive quasi-elastic electron-deuteron scattering
within the relativistic impulse approximation. Relativistic y-scaling is
considered by generalising the non relativistic scaling function to the
relativistic case, and it is shown that y-scaling does occur in the usual
relativistic scaling variable resulting from the energy conservation in the
instant form of dynamics. The present approach of y-scaling is fully covariant,
with the deuteron being described by eight components, viz. the 3S_1^{++},
3S_1^{--}, 3D_1^{++}, 3D_1^{--}, 3P_1^{+-}, 3P_1^{-+}, 1P_1^{+-}, 1P_1^{-+}
waves. It is demonstrated that if the negative relative energy states 1P_1,
3P_1 are disregarded, the concept of covariant momentum distributions N(p_0,p),
with p_0=M_D/2-\sqrt{p^2+m^2}, can be introduced, and that calculations of
lectro-disintegration cross section in terms of these distributions agree
within few percents with the exact calculations which include the 1P_1, 3P_1
states, provided the nucleon three momentum |p|\<= 1 GeV/c; in this momentum
range, the asymptotic relativistic scaling function is shown to coincide with
the longitudinal covariant momentum distribution.Comment: 32 LaTeX pages, 18 eps-figures. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Microscopic calculations of medium effects for 200-MeV (p,p') reactions
We examine the quality of a G-matrix calculation of the effective
nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction for the prediction of the cross section and
analyzing power for 200-MeV (p,p') reactions that populate natural parity
states in O, Si, and Ca. This calculation is based on a
one-boson-exchange model of the free NN force that reproduces NN observables
well. The G-matrix includes the effects of Pauli blocking, nuclear binding, and
strong relativistic mean-field potentials. The implications of adjustments to
the effective mass ansatz to improve the quality of the approximation at
momenta above the Fermi level will be discussed, along with the general quality
of agreement to a variety of (p,p') transitions.Comment: 36 pages, TeX, 18 figure
Some Like It Fat: Comparative Ultrastructure of the Embryo in Two Demosponges of the Genus Mycale (Order Poecilosclerida) from Antarctica and the Caribbean
0000-0002-7993-1523© 2015 Riesgo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License [4.0], which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article
SDSS-IV MaNGA: A serendipitous observation of a potential gas accretion event
The nature of warm, ionized gas outside of galaxies may illuminate several key galaxy evolutionary processes. A serendipitous observation by the MaNGA survey has revealed a large, asymmetric H complex with no optical counterpart that extends ≈8″ (≈6.3 kpc) beyond the effective radius of a dusty, starbursting galaxy. This H extension is approximately three times the effective radius of the host galaxy and displays a tail-like morphology. We analyze its gas-phase metallicities, gaseous kinematics, and emission-line ratios and discuss whether this H extension could be diffuse ionized gas, a gas accretion event, or something else. We find that this warm, ionized gas structure is most consistent with gas accretion through recycled wind material, which could be an important process that regulates the low-mass end of the galaxy stellar mass function.Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS-IV acknowledges support and resources from the Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah. SDSS-IV is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS Collaboration. D.B. is supported by grant RSCF-14-22-00041. A.W. acknowledges support from a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. J.H.K. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant number AYA2013-41243-P and thanks the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool John Moores University for their hospitality, and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports for financial support of his visit there, through grant number PR2015-00512
Phase I trial of intravesical Suramin in recurrent superficial transitional cell bladder carcinoma
Suramin is an antitrypanosomal agent with antineoplastic activity, but with serious systemic side effects. We administered Suramin intravesically to determine a concentration with low toxicity but with evidence of a pharmacodynamic effect, to recommend a dose level for phase II trials. This was an open-labelled, nonrandomised dose-escalation phase I study. In all, 12 patients with a history of recurrent superficial bladder cancer were grouped into four dose levels (10–150 mg ml−1 in 60 ml saline). Six catheter instillations at weekly intervals were used. Cystoscopy and biopsy were performed before and 3 months after the start of treatment. Suramin was assayed using high-performance liquid chromatography, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) using ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and urinary protein profile using surface-enhanced laser desorption ionisation mass spectroscopy (SELDI). Minimal systemic absorption of Suramin was found at the highest dose of 150 mg ml−1. Urinary VEGF was affected by Suramin at doses above 50 mg ml−1, corresponding to the estimated threshold of saturation of Suramin binding to urine albumin. SELDI showed a specific disappearance of urinary protein peaks during treatment. Intravesical Suramin shows lack of toxicity and low systemic absorption. The results of this phase I trial support expanded clinical trials of efficacy at a dose of 100 mg ml−1 intravesically
Critical Early Roles for col27a1a and col27a1b in Zebrafish Notochord Morphogenesis, Vertebral Mineralization and Post-embryonic Axial Growth
Fibrillar collagens are well known for their links to human diseases, with which all have been associated except for the two most recently identified fibrillar collagens, type XXIV collagen and type XXVII collagen. To assess functions and potential disease phenotypes of type XXVII collagen, we examined its roles in zebrafish embryonic and post-embryonic development.We identified two type XXVII collagen genes in zebrafish, col27a1a and col27a1b. Both col27a1a and col27a1b were expressed in notochord and cartilage in the embryo and early larva. To determine sites of type XXVII collagen function, col27a1a and col27a1b were knocked down using morpholino antisense oligonucleotides. Knockdown of col27a1a singly or in conjunction with col27a1b resulted in curvature of the notochord at early stages and formation of scoliotic curves as well as dysmorphic vertebrae at later stages. These defects were accompanied by abnormal distributions of cells and protein localization in the notochord, as visualized by transmission electron microscopy, as well as delayed vertebral mineralization as detected histologically.Together, our findings indicate a key role for type XXVII collagen in notochord morphogenesis and axial skeletogenesis and suggest a possible human disease phenotype
Using the RDP Classifier to Predict Taxonomic Novelty and Reduce the Search Space for Finding Novel Organisms
BACKGROUND: Currently, the naïve Bayesian classifier provided by the Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) is one of the most widely used tools to classify 16S rRNA sequences, mainly collected from environmental samples. We show that RDP has 97+% assignment accuracy and is fast for 250 bp and longer reads when the read originates from a taxon known to the database. Because most environmental samples will contain organisms from taxa whose 16S rRNA genes have not been previously sequenced, we aim to benchmark how well the RDP classifier and other competing methods can discriminate these novel taxa from known taxa. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Because each fragment is assigned a score (containing likelihood or confidence information such as the boostrap score in the RDP classifier), we "train" a threshold to discriminate between novel and known organisms and observe its performance on a test set. The threshold that we determine tends to be conservative (low sensitivity but high specificity) for naïve Bayesian methods. Nonetheless, our method performs better with the RDP classifier than the other methods tested, measured by the f-measure and the area-under-the-curve on the receiver operating characteristic of the test set. By constraining the database to well-represented genera, sensitivity improves 3-15%. Finally, we show that the detector is a good predictor to determine novel abundant taxa (especially for finer levels of taxonomy where novelty is more likely to be present). CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that selecting a read-length appropriate RDP bootstrap score can significantly reduce the search space for identifying novel genera and higher levels in taxonomy. In addition, having a well-represented database significantly improves performance while having genera that are "highly" similar does not make a significant improvement. On a real dataset from an Amazon Terra Preta soil sample, we show that the detector can predict (or correlates to) whether novel sequences will be assigned to new taxa when the RDP database "doubles" in the future
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