Nuclear electric propulsion development and qualification facilities

This paper summarizes the findings of a Tri-Agency panel consisting of members from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) that were charged with reviewing the status and availability of facilities to test components and subsystems for megawatt-class nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) systems. The facilities required to support development of NEP are available in NASA centers, DOE laboratories, and industry. However, several key facilities require significant and near-term modification in order to perform the testing required to meet a 2014 launch date. For the higher powered Mars cargo and piloted missions, the priority established for facility preparation is: (1) a thruster developmental testing facility, (2) a thruster lifetime testing facility, (3) a dynamic energy conversion development and demonstration facility, and (4) an advanced reactor testing facility (if required to demonstrate an advanced multiwatt power system). Facilities to support development of the power conditioning and heat rejection subsystems are available in industry, federal laboratories, and universities. In addition to the development facilities, a new preflight qualifications and acceptance testing facility will be required to support the deployment of NEP systems for precursor, cargo, or piloted Mars missions. Because the deployment strategy for NEP involves early demonstration missions, the demonstration of the SP-100 power system is needed by the early 2000's

Hamiltonicity of 3-arc graphs

An arc of a graph is an oriented edge and a 3-arc is a 4-tuple $(v,u,x,y)$ of vertices such that both $(v,u,x)$ and $(u,x,y)$ are paths of length two. The 3-arc graph of a graph $G$ is defined to have vertices the arcs of $G$ such that two arcs $uv, xy$ are adjacent if and only if $(v,u,x,y)$ is a 3-arc of $G$. In this paper we prove that any connected 3-arc graph is Hamiltonian, and all iterative 3-arc graphs of any connected graph of minimum degree at least three are Hamiltonian. As a consequence we obtain that if a vertex-transitive graph is isomorphic to the 3-arc graph of a connected arc-transitive graph of degree at least three, then it is Hamiltonian. This confirms the well known conjecture, that all vertex-transitive graphs with finitely many exceptions are Hamiltonian, for a large family of vertex-transitive graphs. We also prove that if a graph with at least four vertices is Hamilton-connected, then so are its iterative 3-arc graphs.Comment: in press Graphs and Combinatorics, 201

The Complexity of Separating Points in the Plane

We study the following separation problem: given n connected curves and two points s and t in the plane, compute the minimum number of curves one needs to retain so that any path connecting s to t intersects some of the retained curves. We give the first polynomial (O(n3)) time algorithm for the problem, assuming that the curves have reasonable computational properties. The algorithm is based on considering the intersection graph of the curves, defining an appropriate family of closed walks in the intersection graph that satisfies the 3-path-condition, and arguing that a shortest cycle in the family gives an optimal solution. The 3-path-condition has been used mainly in topological graph theory, and thus its use here makes the connection to topology clear. We also show that the generalized version, where several input points are to be separated, is NP-hard for natural families of curves, like segments in two directions or unit circles

Plasmas and Controlled Nuclear Fusion

Contains reports on two research projects.U. S. Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(11-1)-3070

Contact Representations of Graphs in 3D

We study contact representations of graphs in which vertices are represented by axis-aligned polyhedra in 3D and edges are realized by non-zero area common boundaries between corresponding polyhedra. We show that for every 3-connected planar graph, there exists a simultaneous representation of the graph and its dual with 3D boxes. We give a linear-time algorithm for constructing such a representation. This result extends the existing primal-dual contact representations of planar graphs in 2D using circles and triangles. While contact graphs in 2D directly correspond to planar graphs, we next study representations of non-planar graphs in 3D. In particular we consider representations of optimal 1-planar graphs. A graph is 1-planar if there exists a drawing in the plane where each edge is crossed at most once, and an optimal n-vertex 1-planar graph has the maximum (4n - 8) number of edges. We describe a linear-time algorithm for representing optimal 1-planar graphs without separating 4-cycles with 3D boxes. However, not every optimal 1-planar graph admits a representation with boxes. Hence, we consider contact representations with the next simplest axis-aligned 3D object, L-shaped polyhedra. We provide a quadratic-time algorithm for representing optimal 1-planar graph with L-shaped polyhedra

Custom Design and Analysis of High-Density Oligonucleotide Bacterial Tiling Microarrays

Not until recently have custom made high-density oligonucleotide microarrays been available at an affordable price. The aim of this thesis was to design microarrays and analysis algorithms for DNA repair and DNA damage detection, and to apply the methods in real experiments. Thomassen et al. have used their custom designed whole genome-tiling microarrays for detection of transcriptional changes in Escherichia coli after exposure to DNA damageing reagents. The transcriptional changes in E. coli treated with UV light or the methylating reagent MNNG were shown to be larger and to include far more genes than previously reported. To optimize the data analysis for the custom made arrays, Thomassen and coworkers designed their own normalization and analysis algorithms, and showed these more suitable than established methods that are currently applied on custom tiling arrays. Among other findings several novel stress-induced transcripts were detected, of which one is predicted to be a UV-induced short transmembrane protein. Additionally, no upregulation of the previously described UV-inducible aidB is shown. In the MNNG study several genes are shown as downregulated in response to DNA damage although having upstream regulatory sequences similar to the established LexA box A and B. This indicates that the LexA regulon also might control gene repression and that the box A and B sequence can not alone answer for the LexA controlled gene regulation. Thomassen et al. have also custom designed a microarray for oncogenic fusion gene detection. Cancer specific fusion genes are often used to subgroup cancers and to define the optimal treatment, but currently the laboratory detection procedure is both laborious and tedious. In a blinded study on six cancer cell lines proof of principle was shown by detection of six out of six positive controls. The design and analysis methods for this microarray are now being refined to make a diagnostic fusion gene detection tool

Police legitimacy among immigrants in Europe: institutional frames and group position

Research on the antecedents of police legitimacy has begun to stress the relevance of a wide range of factors – beyond performance – in shaping public judgements of police (e.g. Jackson et al 2012; Antrobus et al 2015; Mehozay and Factor 2016; Weitzer and Tuch 2006). The ways in which people experience not just policing and but also their wider social, cultural and economic environment – and the location of both police and policed within structures of power, authority and affect – have important effects on lay judgements of police which, in turn, constitute the empirical legitimacy of this foundational state institution

Spheromak path to fusion

The spheromak attributes� - internally generated toroidal magnetic field without linked coils, dynamo-driven plasma current resulting from helicity injection, and compactness - lead to attractive reactor options ranging from �conventional� steady-state designs, to high beta pulsed configurations, and to-the core of a Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) device. The resolution of the physics issues associated with these attributes, discussed in later sections, will determine the size and viability of the reactors. Preliminary designs, however, have been made and illustrate the opportunities

Zero-free regions for multivariate Tutte polynomials (alias Potts-model partition functions) of graphs and matroids

The chromatic polynomial P_G(q) of a loopless graph G is known to be nonzero (with explicitly known sign) on the intervals (-\infty,0), (0,1) and (1,32/27]. Analogous theorems hold for the flow polynomial of bridgeless graphs and for the characteristic polynomial of loopless matroids. Here we exhibit all these results as special cases of more general theorems on real zero-free regions of the multivariate Tutte polynomial Z_G(q,v). The proofs are quite simple, and employ deletion-contraction together with parallel and series reduction. In particular, they shed light on the origin of the curious number 32/27.Comment: LaTeX2e, 49 pages, includes 5 Postscript figure