An Assessment of Potential Detectors to Monitor the Man-made Orbital Debris Environment

Observations using NORAD radar showed that man made debris exceeds the natural environment for large objects. For short times (a few days to a few weeks) after solid rocket motor (SRM) firings in LEO, man made debris in the microparticle size range also appears to exceed the meteoroid environment. The properties of the debris population between these size regimes is currently unknown as there has been no detector system able to perform the required observations. The alternatives for obtaining data on this currently unobserved segment of the population are assessed

International Aid to HRH development in Ethiopia: Assessment of Irish Aid investment in the development of human resources for health in Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR)

Background: Human resources for health (HRH) are considered the linchpin in health development but, until recently, donors were reluctant to support HRH development considered as higher education and not a priority for support. There have been changes in this attitude in the last few years. The evolution in Ethiopia is explored using the experience of Irish Aid (IA) as a case study.Methods: The evolution of HRH in SNNP is explored through study of IA and Regional documents and interviews of key informants, focus group discussions and field visits in the region.Results: Major national initiatives with short and long term impact on HRH are briefly documented including the ‘flooding strategy’, the Accelerated Health Officers Training and the rapid deployment of health extension workers (HEW). Major constraints/uncertainties in improved IA support are noted including absence of specific HRH policy and an outdated health policy; delays in the development of an HRH strategy; impacts of over-drawn BPR process… IA impacts on HRH in the region, including middle level HRH training; training of HEW, in-service training in general…, are commendable. The assessment also documents current weaknesses/gaps in IA support including lack of training needs assessment, weak supportive supervision, lack/delay in upgrading training - for HEW in particular, lag in training to clear the backlog of junior categories and inadequate increase of HRH for Emergency Obstetric Care. Adequate measures have not been taken to improve quality of pre-service training; improve motivation, efficiency and retention of the health workforce (HWF) and strengthen HRH management.Conclusions and Recommendations: Overall, IA had discernable impact on HRH development in the region. Areas for future policy level dialogue and improved impact are recommended

Applications of a High-Altitude Powered Platform (HAPP)

A list of potential uses for the (HAPP) and conceptual system designs for a small subset of the most promising applications were investigated. The method was to postulate a scenario for each application specifying a user, a set of system requirements and the most likely competitor among conventional aircraft and satellite systems. As part of the study of remote sensing applications, a parametric cost comparison was done between aircraft and HAPPS. For most remote sensing applications, aircraft can supply the same data as HAPPs at substantially lower cost. The critical parameters in determining the relative costs of the two systems are the sensor field of view and the required frequency of the observations being made. The HAPP is only competitive with an airplane when sensors having a very wide field of view are appropriate and when the phenomenon being observed must be viewed at least once per day. This eliminates the majority of remote sensing applications from any further consideration

Drag reduction of cylinders by partial porous coating

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.The paper summarizes experimental investigations concerning drag reduction of circular cylinders by porous coating. In order to quantify the effect, wind tunnel experiments with a force balance and flow field analyses have been carried out. In a first experiment, the cylinders were coated completely with a thin porous layer. The results show that the boundary layer over the porous surface is turbulent right from the beginning and thickens faster because of the enhanced vertical momentum exchange when compared to a smooth cylinder surface. The region of flow detachment is widened resulting in a broader area with almost vanishing low flow velocities. All in all, the measurements show that a full porous coating of the cylinders increase the flow resistance. In a second experiment, the cylinders were coated only on the leeward side, which resulted in a reduction of the body's flow resistance. This effect seems due to the fact that the recirculating velocity and the underpressure in the wake is reduced significantly through a leeward porous coating. Thus, combining a smooth non-permeable windward side with a porously coated leeward side can lead to a drag reduction of the body. These findings can be applied advantageously in many technical areas, such as energy saving of moving bodies (cars/trains/planes) or in reducing fluid loads on submersed bodies.dc201

Winter storm risk of residential structures ? model development and application to the German state of Baden-Württemberg

International audienceThe derivation of probabilities of high wind speeds and the establishment of risk curves for storm damage is of prime importance in natural hazard risk analysis. Risk curves allow the assessment of damage being exceeded at a given level of probability. In this paper, a method for the assessment of winter storm damage risk is described in detail and applied to the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Based on meteorological observations of the years 1971?2000 and on damage information of 4 severe storm events, storm hazard and damage risk of residential buildings is calculated on the level of communities. For this purpose, highly resolved simulations of storm wind fields with the Karlsruher Atmospheric Mesoscale Model (KAMM) are performed and a storm damage model is developed. Risk curves including the quantification of the uncertainties are calculated for every community. Local differences of hazard and risk are presented in state-wide maps. An average annual winter storm damage to residential buildings of minimum 15 million Euro (reference year 2000) for Baden-Württemberg is expected

Surface electrical stimulation for facial paralysis is not harmful

Introduction: Does electrical stimulation (ES) of denervated muscles delay or prevent reinnervation, or increase synkinesis? This retrospective study evaluated the outcome with and without ES of patients with acutely denervated facial muscles. Methods: The effect of ES was analyzed in two experiments: In 39 patients (6 with home-based ES, median 17.5 months) undergoing facial nerve reconstruction surgery (FNRS). Time to recovery of volitional movements was analyzed. The second experiment involved 13 patients (7 with ES, median 19 months) during spontaneous reinnervation. Sunnybrook and eFACE scoring provided functional outcome measures. Results: No difference in time of reinnervation after FNRS was found between the patients with and without ES (median (IQR) 4.5(3.0, 5.25) vs. 5.7(3.5, 9.5) months; p=0.2). After spontaneous reinnervation less synkinesis was noted (Sunnybrook synkinesis: 3.0(2.0, 3.0) vs. 5.5(4.75, 7.0); p=0.02) with ES. Discussion: We find no evidence that ES prevents or delays reinnervation or increases synkinesis in facial paralysis

A Coupled Equations Model for Epitaxial Growth on Textured Surfaces

We have developed a continuum model that explains the complex surface shapes observed in epitaxial regrowth on micron scale gratings. This model describes the dependence of the surface morphology on film thickness and growth temperature in terms of a few simple atomic scale processes including adatom diffusion, step-edge attachment and detachment, and a net downhill migration of surface adatoms. The continuum model reduces to the linear part of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with a flux dependent smoothing coefficient in the long wavelength limit.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to the Journal of Crystal Growt

An examination of the effects of self-regulatory focus on the perception of the media richness: the case of email

Communication is a key element in organizations’ business success. The media richness theory and the channel expansion theory are two of the most influential theories regarding the selection and use of communication media in organizations; however, literature has focused little on the effects of self-regulation by managers and employees in these theories. To analyze these topics, this study develops an empirical investigation by gathering data from 600 managers and employees using a questionnaire. The results suggest that the perception of media richness is positively affected when the individual shows a promotion focus or strategy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Segmenting Motion Capture Data Using a Qualitative Analysis

Many interactive 3D games utilize motion capture for both character animation and user input. These applications require short, meaningful sequences of data. Manually producing these segments of motion capture data is a laborious, time-consuming process that is impractical for real-time applications. We present a method to automatically produce semantic segmentations of general motion capture data by examining the qualitative properties that are intrinsic to all motions, using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). LMA provides a good compromise between high-level semantic features, which are difficult to extract for general motions, and lowlevel kinematic features, which often yield unsophisticated segmentations. Our method finds motion sequences which exhibit high output similarity from a collection of neural networks trained with temporal variance. We show that segmentations produced using LMA features are more similar to manual segmentations, both at the frame and the segment level, than several other automatic segmentation methods

Cu-O network-dependent core-hole screening in low-dimensional cuprate systems: a high-resolution X-ray photoemission study

We present an experimental study of the dynamics of holes in the valence bands of zero-, one-, and two-dimensional undoped model cuprates, as expressed via the screening of a Cu 2p core hole. The response depends strongly upon the dimensionality and the details of the Cu-O-Cu network geometry and clearly goes beyond the present theoretical state-of-the-art description within the three-band d-p model