Development of a figure-of-merit for space missions

The concept of a quantitative figure-of-merit (FOM) to evaluate different and competing options for space missions is further developed. Over six hundred individual factors are considered. These range from mission orbital mechanics to in-situ resource utilization (ISRU/ISMU) plants. The program utilizes a commercial software package for synthesis and visual display; the details are completely developed in-house. Historical FOM's are derived for successful space missions such as the Surveyor, Voyager, Apollo, etc. A cost FOM is also mentioned. The bulk of this work is devoted to one specific example of Mars Sample Return (MSR). The program is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of evolving technologies. Initial results show that the FOM for sample return is a function of the mass returned to LEO, and that missions utilizing ISRU/ISMU are far more cost effective than those that rely on all earth-transported resources

A comprehensive study of sparse codes on abnormality detection

Sparse representation has been applied successfully in abnormal event detection, in which the baseline is to learn a dictionary accompanied by sparse codes. While much emphasis is put on discriminative dictionary construction, there are no comparative studies of sparse codes regarding abnormality detection. We comprehensively study two types of sparse codes solutions - greedy algorithms and convex L1-norm solutions - and their impact on abnormality detection performance. We also propose our framework of combining sparse codes with different detection methods. Our comparative experiments are carried out from various angles to better understand the applicability of sparse codes, including computation time, reconstruction error, sparsity, detection accuracy, and their performance combining various detection methods. Experiments show that combining OMP codes with maximum coordinate detection could achieve state-of-the-art performance on the UCSD dataset [14].Comment: 7 page

Experimental nonlinear sign shift for linear optics quantum computation

We have realized the nonlinear sign shift (NS) operation for photonic qubits.This operation shifts the phase of two photons reflected by a beam splitter using an extra single photon and measurement. We show that the conditional phase shift is $(1.05\pm 0.06) \pi$ in clear agreement with theory. Our results show that by using an ancilla photon and conditional detection, nonlinear optical effects can be implemented using only linear optical elements. This experiment represents an essential step for linear optical implementations of scalable quantum computation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Comments on the 'China model'

This paper reviews the articles by Pan and by Zhu on the China Model. The review of Pan is critical, that of Zhu sympathetic. Pan is criticised for taking an unquestioning attitude towards state supporting ideologies and failing to adequately account for the effects of changes in family structure and class structure in China over the past 50 years. The reviewer broadly agrees with Zhu's comments about a future steady state economy. The article provides statistical data from the recent economic and demographic histories of China and Japan to back up the general conclusions drawn by Zhu

Defects of new-build dwellings constructed to building regulations and to ‘The Code for Sustainable Homes’

Fulltext in: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar2013-1015-1025_Pan_Thomas.pdfDefect is an important aspect to address for enhancing quality of homes. However, there is little research into defects of new-build homes in the UK constructed to the 'Code for Sustainable Homes' which has been introduced to the UK building industry since 2007 as an environmental assessment tool. The aim of this paper is to contribute to knowledge of the defect profile of new homes regarding the defect number, type, location, severity and responsible trades. The research was carried out through analysing defect records for 327 homes in the UK constructed to the Code in comparison with to Building Regulations. In total 3209 defects were identified, with the mean average of 9.8 defects per home. Despite some extreme cases 91.4% of the dwellings studied were reported of 20 or less defects each. It is concluded that the defect profile of UK new-build homes since 2007 has improved in number, diversity and severity of defects. Nevertheless, kitchens and bathrooms remained as two most defective areas, with plumbers and painters/decorators being most often tasked for rectifications. With the evidence presented no clear relationship was observed between the defect profile of the homes and their performance standards or build methods adopted

Feed-Forward Propagation of Temporal and Rate Information between Cortical Populations during Coherent Activation in Engineered In Vitro Networks.

Transient propagation of information across neuronal assembles is thought to underlie many cognitive processes. However, the nature of the neural code that is embedded within these transmissions remains uncertain. Much of our understanding of how information is transmitted among these assemblies has been derived from computational models. While these models have been instrumental in understanding these processes they often make simplifying assumptions about the biophysical properties of neurons that may influence the nature and properties expressed. To address this issue we created an in vitro analog of a feed-forward network composed of two small populations (also referred to as assemblies or layers) of living dissociated rat cortical neurons. The populations were separated by, and communicated through, a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device containing a strip of microscale tunnels. Delayed culturing of one population in the first layer followed by the second a few days later induced the unidirectional growth of axons through the microtunnels resulting in a primarily feed-forward communication between these two small neural populations. In this study we systematically manipulated the number of tunnels that connected each layer and hence, the number of axons providing communication between those populations. We then assess the effect of reducing the number of tunnels has upon the properties of between-layer communication capacity and fidelity of neural transmission among spike trains transmitted across and within layers. We show evidence based on Victor-Purpura's and van Rossum's spike train similarity metrics supporting the presence of both rate and temporal information embedded within these transmissions whose fidelity increased during communication both between and within layers when the number of tunnels are increased. We also provide evidence reinforcing the role of synchronized activity upon transmission fidelity during the spontaneous synchronized network burst events that propagated between layers and highlight the potential applications of these MEMs devices as a tool for further investigation of structure and functional dynamics among neural populations

Aberdeen University Ontology Reuse Stack

Postprin

Screening Procedures to Identify Robust Product or Process Designs Using Fractional Factorial Experiments

In many quality improvement experiments, there are one or more ``control'' factors that can be modified to determine a final product design or manufacturing process, and one or more ``environmental'' (or `` noise'') factors that vary under field or manufacturing conditions. In many applications, the product design or process design is considered seriously flawed if its performance is poor for any level of the environmental factor. For example, if a particular prosthetic heart valve design has poor fluid flow characteristics for certain flow rates, then a manufacturer will not want to put this design into production. Thus this paper considers cases when it is appropriate to measure a product's quality to be its {\em worst} performance over the levels of the environmental factor. We consider the frequently occurring case of combined-array experiments and extend the subset selection methodology of Gupta (1956, 1965) to provide statistical screening procedures to identify product designs that maximize the worst case performance of the design over the environmental conditions for such experiments. A case study is provided to illustrate the proposed procedures