4,982 research outputs found
The Pythagorean Won-Loss Formula and Hockey: A Statistical Justification for Using the Classic Baseball Formula as an Evaluative Tool in Hockey
Originally devised for baseball, the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula estimates
the percentage of games a team should have won at a particular point in a
season. For decades, this formula had no mathematical justification. In 2006,
Steven Miller provided a statistical derivation by making some heuristic
assumptions about the distributions of runs scored and allowed by baseball
teams. We make a similar set of assumptions about hockey teams and show that
the formula is just as applicable to hockey as it is to baseball. We hope that
this work spurs research in the use of the Pythagorean Won-Loss formula as an
evaluative tool for sports outside baseball.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures; Forthcoming in The Hockey Research Journal: A
Publication of the Society for International Hockey Research, 2012/1
Land of the Rising Moon: The VIIRS Day/Night Band as a Path to Nocturnal Enlightenment (INVITED)
Investigation of a Novel Compact Vibration Isolation System for Space Applications
A novel compact vibration isolation system was designed, built, and tested for the Space Chromotomography Experiment (CTEx) being built by Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) researchers. CTEx is a multifunctional experimental imaging chromotomographic spectrometer designed for flight on the International Space Station (ISS) and is sensitive to jitter caused by vibrations both through the support structure as well as those produced on the optical platform by rotating optical components. CTEx demands a compact and lightweight means of vibration isolation and suppression from the ISS structure. Vibration tests conducted on an initial isolator design resulted in changes in the chosen spring and damping material properties but confirmed finite element (FE) model results and showed that the spring geometry meets preliminary design goals. The FE model served as a key tool in evaluating material and spring designs and development of the final drawing sets for fabrication. Research efforts led to a final design which was tested in the final flight configuration. This final configuration proved the potential for a compact means of vibration isolation for space applications
A Turbulent Fluid Mechanics via Nonlinear Mixing of Smooth Flows with Bargmann-Fock Random Fields: Stochastically Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations and Velocity Correlations
Let , with , contain a fluid of viscosity and velocity
with , satisfying the Navier-Stokes
equations with some boundary conditions on and evolving
from initial Cauchy data. Now let be a Gaussian random field
defined for all with expectation
, and a Bargmann-Fock binary
correlation with
. Define a volume-averaged Reynolds number
.
The critical Reynolds number is so that
turbulence evolves within for such that
. Let
be an
arbitrary monotone-increasing functional. The turbulent flow evolving within
is described by the random field via a
'mixing' ansatz
where is a constant and
an indicator
function. The flow grows increasingly random if
increases with so that this is a 'control parameter'. The turbulent flow
is a solution of stochastically averaged N-S equations.
Reynolds-type velocity correlations are estimated.Comment: 64 pages, 5 figure
Second And Third-Order Structure Functions Of An 'Engineered' Random Field And Emergence Of The Kolmogorov 4/5 And 2/3-Scaling Laws Of Turbulence
The 4/5 and 2/3 laws of turbulence can emerge from a theory of 'engineered'
random vector fields existing within
. Here, is a smooth deterministic
vector field obeying a nonlinear PDE for all
, and is a small parameter.
The field is a regulated and differentiable Gaussian random field
with expectation , but having an antisymmetric
covariance kernel
with
and with a standard
stationary symmetric kernel. For with
and then for , the third-order
structure function is \begin{align}
S_{3}[\ell]=\mathbb{E}\left[|\mathcal{X}_{i}(x+\ell,t)-\mathcal{X}(x,t)|^{3}\right]=-\frac{4}{5}\|X_{i}\|^{3}=-\frac{4}{5}X^{3}\nonumber
\end{align} and . The classical 4/5 and 2/3-scaling laws
then emerge if one identifies the random field with a
turbulent fluid flow or velocity, with mean flow
being a trivial solution of
Burger's equation. Assuming constant dissipation rate , small
constant viscosity , corresponding to high Reynolds number, and the
standard energy balance law, then for a range
\begin{align}
S_{3}[\ell]=\mathbb{E}\left[|\mathcal{U}_{i}(x+\ell,t)-\mathcal{U}(x,t)|^{3}\right]=-\frac{4}{5}\epsilon\ell\nonumber
\end{align} where . For the second-order
structure function, the 2/3-law emerges as
The effectiveness of thin films in lieu of hyperbolic metamaterials in the near field
We show that the near-field functionality of hyperbolic metamaterials (HMM),
typically proposed for increasing the photonic local density of states (LDOS),
can be achieved with thin metal films. Although HMMs have an infinite density
of internally-propagating plane-wave states, the external coupling to nearby
emitters is severely restricted. We show analytically that properly designed
thin films, of thicknesses comparable to the metal size of a hyperbolic
metamaterial, yield a LDOS as high as (if not higher than) that of HMMs. We
illustrate these ideas by performing exact numerical computations of the LDOS
of multilayer HMMs, along with their application to the problem of maximizing
near-field heat transfer, to show that thin films are suitable replacements in
both cases.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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