A domain-specific design architecture for composite material design and aircraft part redesign

Advanced composites have been targeted as a 'leapfrog' technology that would provide a unique global competitive position for U.S. industry. Composites are unique in the requirements for an integrated approach to designing, manufacturing, and marketing of products developed utilizing the new materials of construction. Numerous studies extending across the entire economic spectrum of the United States from aerospace to military to durable goods have identified composites as a 'key' technology. In general there have been two approaches to composite construction: build models of a given composite materials, then determine characteristics of the material via numerical simulation and empirical testing; and experience-directed construction of fabrication plans for building composites with given properties. The first route sets a goal to capture basic understanding of a device (the composite) by use of a rigorous mathematical model; the second attempts to capture the expertise about the process of fabricating a composite (to date) at a surface level typically expressed in a rule based system. From an AI perspective, these two research lines are attacking distinctly different problems, and both tracks have current limitations. The mathematical modeling approach has yielded a wealth of data but a large number of simplifying assumptions are needed to make numerical simulation tractable. Likewise, although surface level expertise about how to build a particular composite may yield important results, recent trends in the KBS area are towards augmenting surface level problem solving with deeper level knowledge. Many of the relative advantages of composites, e.g., the strength:weight ratio, is most prominent when the entire component is designed as a unitary piece. The bottleneck in undertaking such unitary design lies in the difficulty of the re-design task. Designing the fabrication protocols for a complex-shaped, thick section composite are currently very difficult. It is in fact this difficulty that our research will address

Accidental Drownings are Predictable and Preventable

Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury-related death in the world for all age groups, with one third of fatal and nonfatal drownings occurring with the hours of 4pm and 8pm. This data slice gives helpful advice on how to stay safe while cooling off

Neutrinos from photo-hadronic interactions in Pks2155-304

The high-peaked BL Lac object Pks2155-304 shows high variability at multiwavelengths, i.e. from optical up to TeV energies. A giant flare of around 1 hour at X-ray and TeV energies was observed in 2006. In this context, it is essential to understand the physical processes in terms of the primary spectrum and the radiation emitted, since high-energy emission can arise in both leptonic and hadronic processes. In this contribution, we investigate the possibility of neutrino production in photo-hadronic interactions. In particular, we predict a direct correlation between optical and TeV energies at sufficiently high optical radiation fields. We show that in the blazar Pks2155-304, the optical emission in the low-state is sufficient to lead to photo-hadronic interactions and therefore to the production of high-energy photons.Comment: contribution to RICAP 2009 and ICRC 2009 - both papers are combined in one draft. 11 pages, 3 figure

Reanalysis of Data Taken by the CANGAROO 3.8 Meter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope: PSR B1706-44, SN 1006, and Vela

We have reanalyzed data from observations of PSR B1706-44, SN 1006, and the Vela pulsar region made with the CANGAROO 3.8 m imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope between 1993 and 1998 in response to the results reported for these sources by the H.E.S.S. collaboration. In our reanalysis, in which gamma-ray selection criteria have been determined exclusively using gamma-ray simulations and OFF-source data as background samples, no significant TeV gamma-ray signals have been detected from compact regions around PSR B1706-44 or within the northeast rim of SN 1006. We discuss reasons why the original analyses gave the source detections. The reanalysis did result in a TeV gamma-ray signal from the Vela pulsar region at the 4.5 sigma level using 1993, 1994, and 1995 data. The excess was located at the same position, 0.13 deg. to the southeast of the Vela pulsar, as that reported in the original analysis. We have investigated the effect of the acceptance distribution in the field of view of the 3.8 m telescope, which rapidly decreases toward the edge of the field of the camera, on the detected gamma-ray morphology. The expected excess distribution for the 3.8 m telescope has been obtained by reweighting the distribution of HESS J0835-455 measured by H.E.S.S. with the acceptance of the 3.8 m telescope. The result is morphologically comparable to the CANGAROO excess distribution, although the profile of the acceptance-reweighted H.E.S.S. distribution is more diffuse than that of CANGAROO. The integral gamma-ray flux from HESS J0835-455 has been estimated for the same region as defined by H.E.S.S. from the 1993-1995 data of CANGAROO to be F(> 4.0 +/- 1.6 TeV) = (3.28 +/- 0.92) x 10^{-12} photons cm^{-2} s^{-1}, which is statistically consistent with the integral flux obtained by H.E.S.S.Comment: Published in ApJ, minor improvement

Beings in their own right? Exploring Children and young people's sibling and twin relationships in the Minority World

This paper examines the contributions that the sociological study of sibship and twinship in the Minority World can make to childhood studies. It argues that, in providing one forum within which to explore children and young people's social relationships, we can add to our understanding of children and young people's interdependence and develop a more nuanced understanding of agency. As emergent subjects, children, young people and adults are in a process of ‘becoming’. However, this does not mean that they can ‘become’ anything they choose to. The notion of negotiated interdependence (Punch 2002) is useful in helping us to grasp the contingent nature of children and young people's agency

Between overt and covert research: concealment and disclosure in an ethnographic study of commercial hospitality

This article examines the ways in which problems of concealment emerged in an ethnographic study of a suburban bar and considers how disclosure of the research aims, the recruitment of informants, and elicitation of information was negotiated throughout the fieldwork. The case study demonstrates how the social context and the relationships with specific informants determined overtness or covertness in the research. It is argued that the existing literature on covert research and covert methods provides an inappropriate frame of reference with which to understand concealment in fieldwork. The article illustrates why concealment is sometimes necessary, and often unavoidable, and concludes that the criticisms leveled against covert methods should not stop the fieldworker from engaging in research that involves covertness

HESS-II reconstruction strategy and performance in the low-energy (20-150 GeV) domain

International audienceIn mid-2009 a notable upgrade of the H.E.S.S. telescope system will take place: a new telescope with a 600 m2 mirror area and very-high-resolution camera (0.07°) will be positioned at the centre of the present configuration, with the aim of lowering the threshold and enhance its sensitivity in the 100 GeV to several TeV energy range. HESS-II will permit the investigation of the lower energy gamma-ray spectra in various cosmic accelerators, giving information on the origin of the gamma-rays observed, and will detect AGNs with a redshift greater than 0.2 (being less affected by absorption by Extragalactic Background Light-EBL-in this energy range) and will search for new classes of very high energy gamma-ray emitters (pulsars, microquasars, GRB, and dark matter candidates)

Association of Center Volume with Outcome After Liver and Kidney Transplantation

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73934/1/j.1600-6143.2004.00462.x.pd