The energy efficient engine project

The Energy Efficient Engine Project is directed at providing, by 1984, the advanced technologies which could be used for a generation of fuel conservative turbofan engines. The project is conducted through contracts with the General Electric Company and Pratt and Whitney Aircraft. The scope of the entire project and the current status of these efforts are summarized. A description of the preliminary designs of the fully developed engines is included and the potential benefits of these advanced engines, as well as highlights of some of the component technology efforts conducted to date, are discussed

Fluctuations and the QCD phase diagram

In this contribution the role of quantum fluctuations for the QCD phase diagram is discussed. This concerns in particular the importance of the matter back-reaction to the gluonic sector. The impact of these fluctuations on the location of the confinement/deconfinement and the chiral transition lines as well as their interrelation are investigated. Consequences of our findings for the size of a possible quarkyonic phase and location of a critical endpoint in the phase diagram are drawn.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physics of Atomic Nucle

Exceptional Points in a Microwave Billiard with Time-Reversal Invariance Violation

We report on the experimental study of an exceptional point (EP) in a dissipative microwave billiard with induced time-reversal invariance (T) violation. The associated two-state Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian and non-symmetric. It is determined experimentally on a narrow grid in a parameter plane around the EP. At the EP the size of T violation is given by the relative phase of the eigenvector components. The eigenvectors are adiabatically transported around the EP, whereupon they gather geometric phases and in addition geometric amplitudes different from unity

COBE Observations of the Microwave Counterparts of Gamma Ray Bursts

We have used the data from the COBE satellite to search for delayed microwave emission (31 - 90 GHz) from Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). The large $7^\circ$ beam of COBE is well matched to the large positional uncertainties in the GRB locations, although it also means that fluxes from (point source) GRB objects will be diluted. In view of this we are doing a statistical search of the GRBs which occurred during the currently released COBE DMR data (years 1990 and 1991), which overlap $\sim 200$ GRBs recorded by GRO. Here we concentrate on just the top 10 GRBs (in peak counts/second). We obtain the limits on the emission by comparing the COBE fluxes before and after the GRB at the GRB location. Since it is thought that the microwave emission should lag the GRB event, we have searched the GRB position for emission in the few months following the GRB occurrence.Comment: 5 pages, LaTE

Fundamental results from microgravity cell experiments with possible commericial applications

Some of the major milestones are presented for studies in cell biology that were conducted by the Soviet Union and the United States in the upper layers of the atmosphere and in outer space for more than thirty-five years. The goals have changed as new knowledge is acquired and the priorities for the use of microgravity have shifted toward basic research and commercial applications. Certain details concerning the impact of microgravity on cell systems is presented. However, it needs to be emphasized that in planning and conducting microgravity experiments, there are some important prerequisites not normally taken into account. Apart from the required background knowledge of previous microgravity and ground-based experiments, the investigator should have the understanding of the hardware as a physical unit, the complete knowledge of its operation, the range of its capabilities and the anticipation of problems that may occur. Moreover, if the production of commercial products in space is to be manifested, data obtained from previous microgravity experiments must be used to optimize the design of flight hardware

Near-infrared studies of the 2010 outburst of the recurrent nova U Scorpii

We present near-infrared (near-IR) observations of the 2010 outburst of U Sco. JHK photometry is presented on 10 consecutive days starting from 0.59 d after outburst. Such photometry can gainfully be integrated into a larger data base of other multiwavelength data which aim to comprehensively study the evolution of U Sco. Early near-IR spectra, starting from 0.56 d after outburst, are presented and their general characteristics discussed. Early in the eruption, we see very broad wings in several spectral lines, with tails extending up to ∼10 000 km s−1 along the line of sight; it is unexpected to have a nova with ejection velocities equal to those usually thought to be exclusive to supernovae. From recombination analysis, we estimate an upper limit of [inline image] for the ejected mass

Utilising semantic technologies for intelligent indexing and retrieval of digital images

The proliferation of digital media has led to a huge interest in classifying and indexing media objects for generic search and usage. In particular, we are witnessing colossal growth in digital image repositories that are difficult to navigate using free-text search mechanisms, which often return inaccurate matches as they in principle rely on statistical analysis of query keyword recurrence in the image annotation or surrounding text. In this paper we present a semantically-enabled image annotation and retrieval engine that is designed to satisfy the requirements of the commercial image collections market in terms of both accuracy and efficiency of the retrieval process. Our search engine relies on methodically structured ontologies for image annotation, thus allowing for more intelligent reasoning about the image content and subsequently obtaining a more accurate set of results and a richer set of alternatives matchmaking the original query. We also show how our well-analysed and designed domain ontology contributes to the implicit expansion of user queries as well as the exploitation of lexical databases for explicit semantic-based query expansion

Dynamical Masses of Low Mass Stars in the Taurus and Ophiuchus Star Forming Regions

We report new dynamical masses for 5 pre-main sequence (PMS) stars in the L1495 region of the Taurus star-forming region (SFR) and 6 in the L1688 region of the Ophiuchus SFR. Since these regions have VLBA parallaxes these are absolute measurements of the stars' masses and are independent of their effective temperatures and luminosities. Seven of the stars have masses $<0.6$ solar masses, thus providing data in a mass range with little data, and of these, 6 are measured to precision $< 5 \%$. We find 8 stars with masses in the range 0.09 to 1.1 solar mass that agree well with the current generation of PMS evolutionary models. The ages of the stars we measured in the Taurus SFR are in the range 1-3 MY, and $<1$ MY for those in L1688. We also measured the dynamical masses of 14 stars in the ALMA archival data for Akeson~\&~Jensen's Cycle 0 project on binaries in the Taurus SFR. We find that the masses of 7 of the targets are so large that they cannot be reconciled with reported values of their luminosity and effective temperature. We suggest that these targets are themselves binaries or triples.Comment: 20 page