A high resolution spectroscopic study of the oxygen molecule

A high resolution spectrometer which incorporates a narrow line width tunable dye laser was used to make absorption profiles of 57 spectral lines in the Oxygen A-Band at pressures up to one atmosphere in pure O2. The observed line profiles are compared to the Voigt, and a collisionally narrowed, profile using a least squares fitting procedure. The collisionally narrowed profile compares more favorable to the observed profiles. Values of the line strengths and self broadening coeffiencients, determined from the least square fitting process, are presented in tabular form. It is found that the experssion by Watson are in closest agreement with the experimentally determined strengths. The self broadening coefficients are compared with the measurements of several other investigators

Illumination in binaries

We give a simple, but accurate method that can be used to account for illumination in compact binary systems which have a low-mass companion, even if spherically symmetric illumination of the secondary star (not necessarily on the main sequence) is not assumed. This is done by introducing a multiplicative factor Phi in the Stefan-Boltzmann surface boundary condition, which accounts for the blocking of the intrinsic secondary flux by X-ray heating of the photospheric layers. Numerical fits and tables for Phi are given for unperturbed effective temperatures in the range 2500 - 5600 K and log g in the range 1.0 - 5.0Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Serie

Free-Knot Spline Approximation of Stochastic Processes

We study optimal approximation of stochastic processes by polynomial splines with free knots. The number of free knots is either a priori fixed or may depend on the particular trajectory. For the $s$-fold integrated Wiener process as well as for scalar diffusion processes we determine the asymptotic behavior of the average $L_p$-distance to the splines spaces, as the (expected) number $k$ of free knots tends to infinity.Comment: 23 page

Weight estimation techniques for composite airplanes in general aviation industry

Currently available weight estimation methods for general aviation airplanes were investigated. New equations with explicit material properties were developed for the weight estimation of aircraft components such as wing, fuselage and empennage. Regression analysis was applied to the basic equations for a data base of twelve airplanes to determine the coefficients. The resulting equations can be used to predict the component weights of either metallic or composite airplanes

Low-powered incentives

We study low-powered incentives in a model that captures important features of workplaces in which incentive-pay approaches are minimally relevant. Our motivation is that incentive pay, while not rare, is clearly far less common than are agency problems: many firms with agency problems nonetheless pay fixed compensation and offer continued employment to all but those workers judged "unsatisfactory" according to largely subjective criteria. We find that low-powered incentives can achieve efficient outcomes in simple workplaces and function surprisingly well even when the environment is characterized by unobservable performance heterogeneity and a high degree of complementarity among workers.Wages

Valuable jobs and uncertainty

Little attention has been given to the link between variation in a firm's circumstances and the resolution of agency problems that pervade the relationship between a firm and its employees. We construct stochastic versions of standard efficiency-wage and performance-bonding models and find that this connection has important and apparently inescapable consequences. Compensation levels depend on characteristics of the firm. The possibility of the firm's exit drive an important counterfactual prediction in both classes of model: compensation rises in dying firms. This result illustrates the need for careful attention to the circumstances under which valuable jobs are liquidated.Job analysis ; Employment (Economic theory) ; Labor turnover

Does Size Matter? School Consolidation Policy Issues in Arkansas

Providing a reasonable education for all students in Arkansas is a legal responsibility explicitly mandated by the state’s constitution. Consistent with the long-standing American tradition of “grassroots” control of education, public schools in all states are funded and managed first and foremost at the local level. The federal government can and does enact legislation with which schools must conform. Directly or indirectly, federal mandates provide significant amounts of monies to support particular types of school services and programming. But ultimate responsibility for financing and operating schools devolves on state government. In Arkansas, it has been held, the state must provide “a general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schools” (Lakeview v. Huckabee, 2001)

Towards More Data-Aware Application Integration (extended version)

Although most business application data is stored in relational databases, programming languages and wire formats in integration middleware systems are not table-centric. Due to costly format conversions, data-shipments and faster computation, the trend is to "push-down" the integration operations closer to the storage representation. We address the alternative case of defining declarative, table-centric integration semantics within standard integration systems. For that, we replace the current operator implementations for the well-known Enterprise Integration Patterns by equivalent "in-memory" table processing, and show a practical realization in a conventional integration system for a non-reliable, "data-intensive" messaging example. The results of the runtime analysis show that table-centric processing is promising already in standard, "single-record" message routing and transformations, and can potentially excel the message throughput for "multi-record" table messages.Comment: 18 Pages, extended version of the contribution to British International Conference on Databases (BICOD), 2015, Edinburgh, Scotlan

STS-40 orbital acceleration research experiment flight results during a typical sleep period

The Orbital Acceleration Research Experiment (OARE), an electrostatic accelerometer package with complete on-orbit calibration capabilities, was flown for the first time aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-40. This is also the first time an accelerometer package with nano-g sensitivity and a calibration facility has flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The instrument is designed to measure and record the Space Shuttle aerodynamic acceleration environment from the free molecule flow regime through the rarified flow transition into the hypersonic continuum regime. Because of its sensitivity, the OARE instrument defects aerodynamic behavior of the Space Shuttle while in low-earth orbit. A 2-hour orbital time period on day seven of the mission, when the crew was asleep and other spacecraft activities were at a minimum, was examined. During the flight, a 'trimmed-mean' filter was used to produce high quality, low frequency data which was successfully stored aboard the Space Shuttle in the OARE data storage system. Initial review of the data indicated that, although the expected precision was achieved, some equipment problems occurred resulting in uncertain accuracy. An acceleration model which includes aerodynamic, gravity-gradient, and rotational effects was constructed and compared with flight data. Examination of the model with the flight data shows the instrument to be sensitive to all major expected low frequency acceleration phenomena; however, some erratic instrument bias behavior persists in two axes. In these axes, the OARE data can be made to match a comprehensive atmospheric-aerodynamic model by making bias adjustments and slight linear corrections for drift. The other axis does not exhibit these difficulties and gives good agreement with the acceleration model