Panspermia, Past and Present: Astrophysical and Biophysical Conditions for the Dissemination of Life in Space

Astronomically, there are viable mechanisms for distributing organic material throughout the Milky Way. Biologically, the destructive effects of ultraviolet light and cosmic rays means that the majority of organisms arrive broken and dead on a new world. The likelihood of conventional forms of panspermia must therefore be considered low. However, the information content of dam-aged biological molecules might serve to seed new life (necropanspermia).Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Review

The thermal alteration by pyrolysis of the organic component of small projectiles of mudrock during capture at hypervelocity

In a series of experiments the pyrolytic effects of the heating induced during the hypervelocity impact (HVI) of small projectiles of high TOC mudrock were observed. Impacts at these high speeds (km s−1) release sufficient energy to vaporise metal projectiles, and the temperatures created greatly exceed the pyrolysis temperatures typically employed during laboratory studies of the thermal alteration of sedimentary organic matter. Despite this the organic geochemical analyses of projectiles of Orcadian Laminite impacted into targets of sand and water at hypervelocities provides evidence that the structural backbone of biomarkers has remained intact and that only a comparatively low degree of thermal alteration (pre-oil window) has occurred. While further studies are necessary, it appears that the organic component of a projectile captured at hypervelocity will be a slightly thermally altered sample of its precursor

Planning drinking water for airplanes

The management of the Dutch national airline company KLM intends to bring a sufficient amount of water on board of all flights to fulfill customer’s demand. On the other hand, the surplus of water after a flight should be kept to a minimum to reduce fuel costs. The service to passengers is measured with a service level. The objective of this research is to develop models, which can be used tominimize the amount of water on board of flights such that a predefined service level is met. The difficulty that has to be overcome is the fact that most of the available data of water consumption on flights are rounded off to the nearest eighth of the water tank. For wide-body aircrafts this rounding may correspond to about two hundred litres of water. Part of the problem was also to define a good service level. The use of a service level as a model parameter would give KLM a better control of the water surplus. The available data have been analyzed to examine which aspects we had to take into consideration. Next, a general framework has been developed in which the service level has been defined as a Quality of Service for each flight: The probability that a sufficient amount of water is available on a given flight leg. Three approaches will be proposed to find a probability distribution function for the total water consumption on a flight. The first approach tries to fit a distribution for the water consumption based on the available data, without any assumptions on the underlying shape of the distribution. The second approach assumes normality for the total water consumption on a flight and the third approach uses a binomial distribution. All methods are validated and numerically illustrated. We recommend KLM to use the second approach, where the first approach can be used to determine an upper bound on the water level

Urban Influence on Costs of Production in the Corn Belt

This article determines the relative technical efficiency of rural- and urban-influenced crop/livestock enterprises in the Corn Belt. Farmers in urban-influenced locations are less technically efficient than farmers in rural locations. During 1998–2000, stochastic production frontier procedures indicate that a 10% increase in urban influence leads to a close to 4% decrease in technical efficiency. The most successful urban-influenced farms have controlled costs as effectively as rural farms. They have tended to de-emphasize that nondairy livestock activities—particularly beef and hogs—do not rely extensively on off-farm income, and have relatively large, less residential/lifestyle operations compared to less successful urban-influenced farmers. However, our statistical analysis clearly bears out the refrain in popular literature that urban proximity raises the cost for, and decreases the viability of, traditional farms. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Planning drinking water for airplanes

The management of the Dutch national airline company KLM intends to bring a sufficient amount of water on board of all flights to fulfill customer’s demand. On the other hand, the surplus of water after a flight should be kept to a minimum to reduce fuel costs. The service to passengers is measured with a service level. The objective of this research is to develop models, which can be used tominimize the amount of water on board of flights such that a predefined service level is met. The difficulty that has to be overcome is the fact that most of the available data of water consumption on flights are rounded off to the nearest eighth of the water tank. For wide-body aircrafts this rounding may correspond to about two hundred litres of water. Part of the problem was also to define a good service level. The use of a service level as a model parameter would give KLM a better control of the water surplus. The available data have been analyzed to examine which aspects we had to take into consideration. Next, a general framework has been developed in which the service level has been defined as a Quality of Service for each flight: The probability that a sufficient amount of water is available on a given flight leg. Three approaches will be proposed to find a probability distribution function for the total water consumption on a flight. The first approach tries to fit a distribution for the water consumption based on the available data, without any assumptions on the underlying shape of the distribution. The second approach assumes normality for the total water consumption on a flight and the third approach uses a binomial distribution. All methods are validated and numerically illustrated. We recommend KLM to use the second approach, where the first approach can be used to determine an upper bound on the water level