Spacecraft high-voltage power supply construction

The design techniques, circuit components, fabrication techniques, and past experience used in successful high-voltage power supplies for spacecraft flight systems are described. A discussion of the basic physics of electrical discharges in gases is included and a design rationale for the prevention of electrical discharges is provided. Also included are typical examples of proven spacecraft high-voltage power supplies with typical specifications for design, fabrication, and testing

Phosphonium chloride for thermal storage

Development of systems for storage of thermal energy is discussed. Application of phosphonium chloride for heat storage through reversible dissociation is described. Chemical, physical, and thermodynamic properties of phosphonium chloride are analyzed and dangers in using phosphonium chloride are explained

Solid amine compounds as sorbents for carbon dioxide: A concept

Solid amine compounds were examined as possible absorbents for removal of carbon dioxide in life support systems of type which may be employed in high altitude aircraft, spacecraft, or submarines. Many solid amine compounds release absorbed carbon dioxide when heated in vacuum, therefore, when properly packaged spent amine compounds can be readily regenerated and put back into service

Plans for the LIGO–TAMA joint search for gravitational wave bursts

We describe the plans for a joint search for unmodelled gravitational wave bursts being carried out by the LIGO and TAMA Collaborations using data collected during February–April 2003. We take a conservative approach to detection, requiring candidate gravitational wave bursts to be seen in coincidence by all four interferometers. We focus on some of the complications of performing this coincidence analysis, in particular the effects of the different alignments and noise spectra of the interferometers

Children's opinions on effective strategies to cope with bullying: the importance of bullying role and perspective

In order to find out what children would suggest as useful interventions to stop bullying, we designed a questionnaire administered to 311 children (155 boys and 156 girls; mean age = 11 years). Thirty-six items were employed to ask children how effective, in their opinion, retaliation, nonchalance and assertiveness could be in stopping bullying. Items were presented to children from three different perspectives (imagine you are the victim, the bully or a witness). We used peer reports to assess children's role in bullying. Children were grouped into bullies, followers of the bully, defenders of the victims, outsiders, victims and those not involved. The strategy most frequently chosen by all children was to cope with bullying through assertiveness. Bullies considered retaliation effective more often than their classmates, especially when they adopted the perspective of the victim or witness. Bullies did not consider assertive strategies as efficient in stopping the bully. Defenders, outsiders, victims and children not involved, on the other hand, were very much in favour of strategies aimed at solving the conflict through nonchalance or assertiveness, especially when they imagined being the bully. Girls chose assertive strategies more often than boys and younger children preferred nonchalance more often than older children, who tended to choose retaliation more often. Suggestions for intervention are made. © 2005 NFER

Large-Scale Image Processing with the ROTSE Pipeline for Follow-Up of Gravitational Wave Events

Electromagnetic (EM) observations of gravitational-wave (GW) sources would bring unique insights into a source which are not available from either channel alone. However EM follow-up of GW events presents new challenges. GW events will have large sky error regions, on the order of 10-100 square degrees, which can be made up of many disjoint patches. When searching such large areas there is potential contamination by EM transients unrelated to the GW event. Furthermore, the characteristics of possible EM counterparts to GW events are also uncertain. It is therefore desirable to be able to assess the statistical significance of a candidate EM counterpart, which can only be done by performing background studies of large data sets. Current image processing pipelines such as that used by ROTSE are not usually optimised for large-scale processing. We have automated the ROTSE image analysis, and supplemented it with a post-processing unit for candidate validation and classification. We also propose a simple ad hoc statistic for ranking candidates as more likely to be associated with the GW trigger. We demonstrate the performance of the automated pipeline and ranking statistic using archival ROTSE data. EM candidates from a randomly selected set of images are compared to a background estimated from the analysis of 102 additional sets of archival images. The pipeline's detection efficiency is computed empirically by re-analysis of the images after adding simulated optical transients that follow typical light curves for gamma-ray burst afterglows and kilonovae. We show that the automated pipeline rejects most background events and is sensitive to simulated transients to limiting magnitudes consistent with the limiting magnitude of the images

Synthesizing Program Input Grammars

We present an algorithm for synthesizing a context-free grammar encoding the language of valid program inputs from a set of input examples and blackbox access to the program. Our algorithm addresses shortcomings of existing grammar inference algorithms, which both severely overgeneralize and are prohibitively slow. Our implementation, GLADE, leverages the grammar synthesized by our algorithm to fuzz test programs with structured inputs. We show that GLADE substantially increases the incremental coverage on valid inputs compared to two baseline fuzzers