Proposal for a low cost close air support aircraft for the year 2000: The Raptor

The Raptor is a proposed low cost Close Air Support (CAS) aircraft for the U.S. Military. The Raptor incorporates a 'cranked arrow' wing planform, and uses canards instead of a traditional horizontal tail. The Raptor is designed to be capable of responsive delivery of effective ordnance in close proximity to friendly ground forces during the day, night, and 'under the weather' conditions. Details are presented of the Raptor's mission, configuration, performance, stability and control, ground support, manufacturing, and overall cost to permit engineering evaluation of the proposed design. A description of the design process and analysis methods used is also provided

Operational Concepts for a Generic Space Exploration Communication Network Architecture

This document is one of three. It describes the Operational Concept (OpsCon) for a generic space exploration communication architecture. The purpose of this particular document is to identify communication flows and data types. Two other documents accompany this document, a security policy profile and a communication architecture document. The operational concepts should be read first followed by the security policy profile and then the architecture document. The overall goal is to design a generic space exploration communication network architecture that is affordable, deployable, maintainable, securable, evolvable, reliable, and adaptable. The architecture should also require limited reconfiguration throughout system development and deployment. System deployment includes: subsystem development in a factory setting, system integration in a laboratory setting, launch preparation, launch, and deployment and operation in space

Solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for bound states of scalar theories in Minkowski space

We apply the perturbation theory integral representation (PTIR) to solve for the bound state Bethe-Salpeter (BS) vertex for an arbitrary scattering kernel, without the need for any Wick rotation. The results derived are applicable to any scalar field theory (without derivative coupling). It is shown that solving directly for the BS vertex, rather than the BS amplitude, has several major advantages, notably its relative simplicity and superior numerical accuracy. In order to illustrate the generality of the approach we obtain numerical solutions using this formalism for a number of scattering kernels, including cases where the Wick rotation is not possible.Comment: 28 pages of LaTeX, uses psfig.sty with 5 figures. Also available via WWW at http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/theory/papers/ADP-97-10.T248-abs.html or via anonymous ftp at ftp://bragg.physics.adelaide.edu.au/pub/theory/ADP-97-10.T248.ps A number of (crucial) typographical errors in Appendix C corrected. To be published in Phys. Rev. D, October 199

Limpet II: A Modular, Untethered Soft Robot

The ability to navigate complex unstructured environments and carry out inspection tasks requires robots to be capable of climbing inclined surfaces and to be equipped with a sensor payload. These features are desirable for robots that are used to inspect and monitor offshore energy platforms. Existing climbing robots mostly use rigid actuators, and robots that use soft actuators are not fully untethered yet. Another major problem with current climbing robots is that they are not built in a modular fashion, which makes it harder to adapt the system to new tasks, to repair the system, and to replace and reconfigure modules. This work presents a 450 g and a 250 × 250 × 140 mm modular, untethered hybrid hard/soft robot—Limpet II. The Limpet II uses a hybrid electromagnetic module as its core module to allow adhesion and locomotion capabilities. The adhesion capability is based on negative pressure adhesion utilizing suction cups. The locomotion capability is based on slip-stick locomotion. The Limpet II also has a sensor payload with nine different sensing modalities, which can be used to inspect and monitor offshore structures and the conditions surrounding them. Since the Limpet II is designed as a modular system, the modules can be reconfigured to achieve multiple tasks. To demonstrate its potential for inspection of offshore platforms, we show that the Limpet II is capable of responding to different sensory inputs, repositioning itself within its environment, adhering to structures made of different materials, and climbing inclined surfaces

Divergent Goals and Commitments in Global Malaria Intervention

Anthony Kiszewski discusses the implications of a new study that finds that global malaria funding remains inadequate

Virtuality in human supervisory control: Assessing the effects of psychological and social remoteness

Virtuality would seem to offer certain advantages for human supervisory control. First, it could provide a physical analogue of the 'real world' environment. Second, it does not require control room engineers to be in the same place as each other. In order to investigate these issues, a low-fidelity simulation of an energy distribution network was developed. The main aims of the research were to assess some of the psychological concerns associated with virtual environments. First, it may result in the social isolation of the people, and it may have dramatic effects upon the nature of the work. Second, a direct physical correspondence with the 'real world' may not best support human supervisory control activities. Experimental teams were asked to control an energy distribution network. Measures of team performance, group identity and core job characteristics were taken. In general terms, the results showed that teams working in the same location performed better than team who were remote from one another

The Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer (AMPR) - Initial Results from the Integrated Precipitation Hydrology Experiment (IPHEx)

No abstract availabl

Healthy living and cancer: evidence from UK Biobank.

CONTEXT: UK Biobank is a prospective study of half a million subjects, almost all aged 40-69 years, identified in 22 centres across the UK during 2006-2010. OBJECTIVE: A healthy lifestyle has been described as 'better than any pill, and no side effects [5]. We therefore examined the relationships between healthy behaviours: low alcohol intake, non-smoking, healthy BMI, physical activity and a healthy diet, and the risk of all cancers, colon, breast and prostate cancers in a large dataset. METHOD: Data on lifestyle behaviours were provided by 343,150 subjects, and height and weight were measured at recruitment. 14,285 subjects were diagnosed with cancer during a median of 5.1 years of follow-up. RESULTS: Compared with subjects who followed none or a single healthy behaviour, a healthy lifestyle based on all five behaviours was associated with a reduction of about one-third in incident cancer (hazard ratio [HR] 0.68; 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.63-0.74). Colorectal cancer was reduced in subjects following the five behaviours by about one-quarter (HR 0.75; 95% CI 0.58-0.97), and breast cancer by about one-third (HR 0.65; 95% CI 0.52-0.83). The association between a healthy lifestyle and prostate cancer suggested a significant increase in risk, but this can be attributed to bias consequent on inequalities in the uptake of the prostate specific antigen screening test. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together with reported reductions in diabetes, vascular disease and dementia, it is clearly important that every effort is taken to promote healthy lifestyles throughout the population, and it is pointed out that cancer and other screening clinics afford 'teachable moments' for the promotion of a healthy lifestyle

Gluon Propagator in the Infrared Region

The gluon propagator is calculated in quenched QCD for two different lattice sizes (16^3x48 and 32^3x64) at beta=6.0. The volume dependence of the propagator in Landau gauge is studied. The smaller lattice is instrumental in revealing finite volume and anisotropic lattice artefacts. Methods for minimising these artefacts are developed and applied to the larger lattice data. New structure seen in the infrared region survives these conservative cuts to the lattice data. This structure serves to rule out a number of models that have appeared in the literature. A fit to a simple analytical form capturing the momentum dependence of the nonperturbative gluon propagator is also reported.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, using RevTeX. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. This and related papers can also be obtained from http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~jskuller/papers