52,543 research outputs found
Effects of leading-edge devices on the low-speed aerodynamic characteristics of a highly-swept arrow-wing
An investigation was conducted in the Texas A&M University 7 by 10 foot Low Speed Wind Tunnel to provide a direct comparison of the effect of several leading edge devices on the aerodynamic performance of a highly swept wing configuration. Analysis of the data indicates that for the configuration with undeflected leading edges, vortex separation first occurs on the outboard wing panel for angles of attack of approximately 2, and wing apex vorticies become apparent for alpha or = 4 deg. However, the occurrence of the leading edge vortex flow may be postponed with leading edge devices. Of the devices considered, the most promising were a simple leading edge deflection of 30 deg and a leading edge slat system. The trailing edge flap effectiveness was found to be essentially the same for the configuration employing either of these more promising leading edge devices. Analysis of the lateral directional data showed that for all of the concepts considered, deflecting leading edge downward in an attempt to postpone leading edge vortex flows, has the favorable effect of reducing the effective dihedral
16S rRNA gene-based profiling of the human infant gut microbiota is strongly influenced by sample processing and PCR primer choice
Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the assistance of Grietje Holtrop (RINH-BioSS) with the statistical analysis of the data and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s 454 pyrosequencing team for generating 16S rRNA gene data. AWW, PS and JP received core funding support from the Wellcome Trust [grant number 098051]. AWW, JCM, HJF and KPS are funded by the Scottish Government (SG-RESAS).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Saffman-Taylor fingers with kinetic undercooling
The mathematical model of a steadily propagating Saffman-Taylor finger in a
Hele-Shaw channel has applications to two-dimensional interacting streamer
discharges which are aligned in a periodic array. In the streamer context, the
relevant regularisation on the interface is not provided by surface tension,
but instead has been postulated to involve a mechanism equivalent to kinetic
undercooling, which acts to penalise high velocities and prevent blow-up of the
unregularised solution. Previous asymptotic results for the Hele-Shaw finger
problem with kinetic undercooling suggest that for a given value of the kinetic
undercooling parameter, there is a discrete set of possible finger shapes, each
analytic at the nose and occupying a different fraction of the channel width.
In the limit in which the kinetic undercooling parameter vanishes, the fraction
for each family approaches 1/2, suggesting that this 'selection' of 1/2 by
kinetic undercooling is qualitatively similar to the well-known analogue with
surface tension. We treat the numerical problem of computing these
Saffman-Taylor fingers with kinetic undercooling, which turns out to be more
subtle than the analogue with surface tension, since kinetic undercooling
permits finger shapes which are corner-free but not analytic. We provide
numerical evidence for the selection mechanism by setting up a problem with
both kinetic undercooling and surface tension, and numerically taking the limit
that the surface tension vanishes.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by Physical Review
Fast algorithm for detecting community structure in networks
It has been found that many networks display community structure -- groups of
vertices within which connections are dense but between which they are sparser
-- and highly sensitive computer algorithms have in recent years been developed
for detecting such structure. These algorithms however are computationally
demanding, which limits their application to small networks. Here we describe a
new algorithm which gives excellent results when tested on both
computer-generated and real-world networks and is much faster, typically
thousands of times faster than previous algorithms. We give several example
applications, including one to a collaboration network of more than 50000
physicists.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
LISA Science Results in the Presence of Data Disturbances
Each spacecraft in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna houses a proof mass
which follows a geodesic through spacetime. Disturbances which change the proof
mass position, momentum, and/or acceleration will appear in the LISA data
stream as additive quadratic functions. These data disturbances inhibit signal
extraction and must be removed. In this paper we discuss the identification and
fitting of monochromatic signals in the data set in the presence of data
disturbances. We also present a preliminary analysis of the extent of science
result limitations with respect to the frequency of data disturbances
Disruption of reflecting Bose-Einstein condensates due to inter-atomic interactions and quantum noise
We perform fully three-dimensional simulations, using the truncated Wigner
method, to investigate the reflection of Bose-Einstein condensates from abrupt
potential barriers. We show that the inter-atomic interactions can disrupt the
internal structure of a cigar-shaped cloud with a high atom density at low
approach velocities, damping the center-of-mass motion and generating vortices.
Furthermore, by incorporating quantum noise we show that scattering halos form
at high approach velocities, causing an associated condensate depletion. We
compare our results to recent experimental observations.Comment: 5 figure
Redshifted 21cm Signatures Around the Highest Redshift Quasars
The Ly-alpha absorption spectrum of the highest redshift quasars indicates
that they are surrounded by giant HII regions, a few Mpc in size. The neutral
gas around these HII regions should emit 21cm radiation in excess of the Cosmic
Microwave Background, and enable future radio telescopes to measure the
transverse extent of these HII regions. At early times, the HII regions expand
with a relativistic speed. Consequently, their measured sizes along the
line-of-sight (via Ly-alpha absorption) and transverse to it (via 21 cm
emission) should have different observed values due to relativistic time-delay.
We show that the combined measurement of these sizes would directly constrain
the neutral fraction of the surrounding intergalactic medium (IGM) as well as
the quasar lifetime. Based on current number counts of luminous quasars at z>6,
an instrument like LOFAR should detect >2 redshifted 21cm shells per field
(with a radius of 11 degrees) around active quasars as bright as those already
discovered by SDSS, and >200 relic shells of inactive quasars per field. We
show that Ly-alpha photons from the quasar are unable to heat the IGM or to
couple the spin and kinetic temperatures of atomic hydrogen beyond the edge of
the HII region. The detection of the IGM in 21cm emission around high redshift
quasars would therefore gauge the presence of a cosmic Ly-alpha background
during the reionization epoch.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Ap
Ground-simulation investigations of VTOL airworthiness criteria for terminal-area operations
Several ground-based simulation experiments undertaken to investigate concerns related to tilt-rotor aircraft airworthiness were conducted. The experiments were conducted on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center's Vertical Motion Simulator, which permits simulation of a wide variety of aircraft with a high degree of fidelity of motion cueing. Variations in conversion/deceleration profile, type of augmentation or automation, level of display assistance, and meteorological conditions were considered in the course of the experiments. Certification pilots from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) participated, in addition to NASA research pilots. The setup of these experiments on the simulator is summarized, and some of the results highlighted
Finding community structure in very large networks
The discovery and analysis of community structure in networks is a topic of
considerable recent interest within the physics community, but most methods
proposed so far are unsuitable for very large networks because of their
computational cost. Here we present a hierarchical agglomeration algorithm for
detecting community structure which is faster than many competing algorithms:
its running time on a network with n vertices and m edges is O(m d log n) where
d is the depth of the dendrogram describing the community structure. Many
real-world networks are sparse and hierarchical, with m ~ n and d ~ log n, in
which case our algorithm runs in essentially linear time, O(n log^2 n). As an
example of the application of this algorithm we use it to analyze a network of
items for sale on the web-site of a large online retailer, items in the network
being linked if they are frequently purchased by the same buyer. The network
has more than 400,000 vertices and 2 million edges. We show that our algorithm
can extract meaningful communities from this network, revealing large-scale
patterns present in the purchasing habits of customers
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