Sky’s No Limit: Space-Based Solar Power, The Next Major Step in The Indo-US Strategic Partnership

IDSA Occassional Paper No. 9 2010 This paper provides a policymaker\u27s overview of a highly scalable, revolutionary, renewable energy technology, Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP), and evaluates it utility within the context of the Indo-US strategic partnership. After providing an overview of the concept and its significance to the compelling problems of sustainable growth, economic development, energy security and climate change, it evaluates the utility of the concept in the context of respective Indian and US political context and energy-climate trajectories. The paper concludes that a bilateral initiative to develop Space-Based Solar Power is highly consistent with the objectives of the Indo-US strategic partnership, and ultimately recommends an actionable tree-tiered programme to realize its potential

How Jupiter's Unusual Magnetospheric Topology Structures Its Aurora

Jupiter's bright persistent polar aurora and Earth's dark polar region indicate that the planets' magnetospheric topologies are very different. High-resolution global simulations show that the reconnection rate at the interface between the interplanetary and jovian magnetic fields is too slow to generate a magnetically open, Earth-like polar cap on the timescale of planetary rotation, resulting in only a small crescent-shaped region of magnetic flux interconnected with the interplanetary magnetic field. Most of the jovian polar cap is threaded by helical magnetic flux that closes within the planetary interior, extends into the outer magnetosphere and piles-up near its dawnside flank where fast differential plasma rotation pulls the field lines sunward. This unusual magnetic topology provides new insights into Jupiter's distinctive auroral morphology

Primordial magnetic fields from superconducting cosmic strings.

This paper explores the possibility of generation of a primordial magnetic field by a network of charged-current carrying cosmic strings. The field is created by vorticity, generated in the primordial plasma due to the strings’ motion and gravitational pull. In the case of superconducting strings formed at the breaking of grand unification, it is found that strong magnetic fields of high coherence can be generated in that way. Such fields could account for the observed galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields since they suffice to seed magnetic dynamos on galactic scales

Social Attention, Joint Attention and Sustained Attention in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Williams Syndrome: Convergences and Divergences

There is limited knowledge on shared and syndrome-specific attentional profiles in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Williams syndrome (WS). Using eye-tracking, we examined attentional profiles of 35 preschoolers with ASD, 22 preschoolers with WS and 20 typically developing children across social and non-social dimensions of attention. Children with ASD and those with WS presented with overlapping deficits in spontaneous visual engagement with the target of others’ attention and in sustained attention. Children with ASD showed syndrome-specific abnormalities in monitoring and following a person’s referential gaze, as well as a lack of preferential attention to social stimuli. Children with ASD and WS present with shared as well as syndrome-specific abnormalities across social and non-social dimensions of attention.No Full Tex