22,117 research outputs found
Skylab SO71/SO72 circadian periodicity experiment
The circadian rhythm hardware activities from 1965 through 1973 are considered. A brief history of the programs leading to the development of the combined Skylab SO71/SO72 Circadian Periodicity Experiment (CPE) is given. SO71 is the Skylab experiment number designating the pocket mouse circadian experiment, and SO72 designates the vinegar gnat circadian experiment. Final design modifications and checkout of the CPE, integration testing with the Apollo service module CSM 117 and the launch preparation and support tasks at Kennedy Space Center are reported
Planetary astronomy program
Observations and analyses of asteroids, Trojans and cometary nuclei are presented. Spectrophotometry was used to observe the cometary nuclei. The spectra are plotted as a function of semimajor axis and eccentricity. Trojans and other asteroids at great solar distances show a variety of spectra, many of them quite red despite the low measured albedoes for many of these asteroids. The asteroid spectra are grouped according to diameter and taxonomic class
Quantum annealing with Jarzynski equality
We show a practical application of the Jarzynski equality in quantum
computation. Its implementation may open a way to solve combinatorial
optimization problems, minimization of a real single-valued function, cost
function, with many arguments. We consider to incorpolate the Jarzynski
equality into quantum annealing, which is one of the generic algorithms to
solve the combinatorial optimization problem. The ordinary quantum annealing
suffers from non-adiabatic transitions whose rate is characterized by the
minimum energy gap of the quantum system under
consideration. The quantum sweep speed is therefore restricted to be extremely
slow for the achievement to obtain a solution without relevant errors. However,
in our strategy shown in the present study, we find that such a difficulty
would not matter.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Analysis of the loop length distribution for the negative weight percolation problem in dimensions d=2 through 6
We consider the negative weight percolation (NWP) problem on hypercubic
lattice graphs with fully periodic boundary conditions in all relevant
dimensions from d=2 to the upper critical dimension d=6. The problem exhibits
edge weights drawn from disorder distributions that allow for weights of either
sign. We are interested in in the full ensemble of loops with negative weight,
i.e. non-trivial (system spanning) loops as well as topologically trivial
("small") loops. The NWP phenomenon refers to the disorder driven proliferation
of system spanning loops of total negative weight. While previous studies where
focused on the latter loops, we here put under scrutiny the ensemble of small
loops. Our aim is to characterize -using this extensive and exhaustive
numerical study- the loop length distribution of the small loops right at and
below the critical point of the hypercubic setups by means of two independent
critical exponents. These can further be related to the results of previous
finite-size scaling analyses carried out for the system spanning loops. For the
numerical simulations we employed a mapping of the NWP model to a combinatorial
optimization problem that can be solved exactly by using sophisticated matching
algorithms. This allowed us to study here numerically exact very large systems
with high statistics.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, paper summary available at
http://www.papercore.org/Kajantie2000. arXiv admin note: substantial text
overlap with arXiv:1003.1591, arXiv:1005.5637, arXiv:1107.174
Optimal Vertex Cover for the Small-World Hanoi Networks
The vertex-cover problem on the Hanoi networks HN3 and HN5 is analyzed with
an exact renormalization group and parallel-tempering Monte Carlo simulations.
The grand canonical partition function of the equivalent hard-core repulsive
lattice-gas problem is recast first as an Ising-like canonical partition
function, which allows for a closed set of renormalization group equations. The
flow of these equations is analyzed for the limit of infinite chemical
potential, at which the vertex-cover problem is attained. The relevant fixed
point and its neighborhood are analyzed, and non-trivial results are obtained
both, for the coverage as well as for the ground state entropy density, which
indicates the complex structure of the solution space. Using special
hierarchy-dependent operators in the renormalization group and Monte-Carlo
simulations, structural details of optimal configurations are revealed. These
studies indicate that the optimal coverages (or packings) are not related by a
simple symmetry. Using a clustering analysis of the solutions obtained in the
Monte Carlo simulations, a complex solution space structure is revealed for
each system size. Nevertheless, in the thermodynamic limit, the solution
landscape is dominated by one huge set of very similar solutions.Comment: RevTex, 24 pages; many corrections in text and figures; final
version; for related information, see
http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/boettcher
Early focus development effort, ultrasonic inspection of fixed housing metal-to-adhesive bondline
An ultrasonic technique was developed for the fixed housing metal-to-adhesive bondline that will support the Flight 15 time frame and subsequent motors. The technique has the capability to detect a 1.0 inch diameter unbond with a 90 percent probability of detection (POD) at a 95 percent confidence level. The technique and support equipment will perform within the working envelope dictated by a stacked motor configuration
RNA secondary structure design
We consider the inverse-folding problem for RNA secondary structures: for a
given (pseudo-knot-free) secondary structure find a sequence that has that
structure as its ground state. If such a sequence exists, the structure is
called designable. We implemented a branch-and-bound algorithm that is able to
do an exhaustive search within the sequence space, i.e., gives an exact answer
whether such a sequence exists. The bound required by the branch-and-bound
algorithm are calculated by a dynamic programming algorithm. We consider
different alphabet sizes and an ensemble of random structures, which we want to
design. We find that for two letters almost none of these structures are
designable. The designability improves for the three-letter case, but still a
significant fraction of structures is undesignable. This changes when we look
at the natural four-letter case with two pairs of complementary bases:
undesignable structures are the exception, although they still exist. Finally,
we also study the relation between designability and the algorithmic complexity
of the branch-and-bound algorithm. Within the ensemble of structures, a high
average degree of undesignability is correlated to a long time to prove that a
given structure is (un-)designable. In the four-letter case, where the
designability is high everywhere, the algorithmic complexity is highest in the
region of naturally occurring RNA.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
Negative-weight percolation
We describe a percolation problem on lattices (graphs, networks), with edge
weights drawn from disorder distributions that allow for weights (or distances)
of either sign, i.e. including negative weights. We are interested whether
there are spanning paths or loops of total negative weight. This kind of
percolation problem is fundamentally different from conventional percolation
problems, e.g. it does not exhibit transitivity, hence no simple definition of
clusters, and several spanning paths/loops might coexist in the percolation
regime at the same time. Furthermore, to study this percolation problem
numerically, one has to perform a non-trivial transformation of the original
graph and apply sophisticated matching algorithms.
Using this approach, we study the corresponding percolation transitions on
large square, hexagonal and cubic lattices for two types of disorder
distributions and determine the critical exponents. The results show that
negative-weight percolation is in a different universality class compared to
conventional bond/site percolation. On the other hand, negative-weight
percolation seems to be related to the ferromagnet/spin-glass transition of
random-bond Ising systems, at least in two dimensions.Comment: v1: 4 pages, 4 figures; v2: 10 pages, 7 figures, added results, text
and reference
Accelerated Sampling of Boltzmann distributions
The sampling of Boltzmann distributions by stochastic Markov processes, can
be strongly limited by the crossing time of high (free) energy barriers. As a
result, the system may stay trapped in metastable states, and the relaxation
time to the equilibrium Boltzmann distribution may be very large compared to
the available computational time. In this paper, we show how, by a simple
modification of the Hamiltonian, one can dramatically decrease the relaxation
time of the system, while retaining the same equilibrium distribution. The
method is illustrated on the case of the one-dimensional double-well potential
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