Step Integration to Taurus First Flight Payload Launch Processing

The first flight of the Orbital Sciences Corp. (OSC) TAURUS launch vehicle is with a space vehicle developed by TRW and DSI under the Air Force Space Test Experiment Program (STEP) that contains several scientific experiments. The experiments have a demanding cleanliness requirement; the satellite requires status monitoring and battery maintenance during launch operations. OSC developed the TAURUS launch vehicle in response to the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) Standard Small Launch Vehicle (SSLV) program. The Taurus system is composed of a flight vehicle and ground support equipment designed for easy transportability and rapid setup and launch on an unimproved concrete pad. TRW provides system engineering on the STEP program, and DSI designed and built the STEP spacecraft. The spacecraft is an evolutionary design based on previous DSI satellite designs. A TRW propulsion system provides orbital adjustment capability. The space vehicle is approximately 36 in diameter, 72 high and weighs almost 1100 pounds when in flight configuration. The challenge was to maintain the requirements in a low cost environment with minimal support from an established infrastructure. This was achieved by the process of encapsulating the satellite in the fairing in a clean room before transport and mate to the launch vehicle. Rehearsals were held at the OSC facility in Arizona in November 1992 and February 1993, and at Vandenberg AFB, CA in June 1993 to develop the procedures necessary for mission success. The TAURUS initial launch capability is planned for November 1993

The Classification of Movement in Infants for the Autonomous Monitoring of Neurological Development

Neurodevelopmental delay following extremely preterm birth or birth asphyxia is common but diagnosis is often delayed as early milder signs are not recognised by parents or clinicians. Early interventions have been shown to improve outcomes. Automation of diagnosis and monitoring of neurological disorders using non-invasive, cost effective methods within a patient’s home could improve accessibility to testing. Furthermore, said testing could be conducted over a longer period, enabling greater confidence in diagnoses, due to increased data availability. This work proposes a new method to assess the movements in children. Twelve parent and infant participants were recruited (children aged between 3 and 12 months). Approximately 25 min 2D video recordings of the infants organically playing with toys were captured. A combination of deep learning and 2D pose estimation algorithms were used to classify the movements in relation to the children’s dexterity and position when interacting with a toy. The results demonstrate the possibility of capturing and classifying children’s complexity of movements when interacting with toys as well as their posture. Such classifications and the movement features could assist practitioners to accurately diagnose impaired or delayed movement development in a timely fashion as well as facilitating treatment monitoring

Status and size of Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta populations in East Africa, with a first coastal breeding record

Several populations of Pied Avocet are understood to overlap in East Africa, yet the specific movements and size of each of them remains largely unclear. A review of current literature, combined with waterbird counts and recent citizen science data, suggests that potentially three populations occur in the region (Palaearctic, southern origin, and resident), and that the resident population is substantially smaller than previous estimates suggested. A new breeding record at the Kenyan coast, which only constitutes the fourth confirmed breeding location of Pied Avocet in Kenya and the first for the East African coast, demonstrates a potential overlap of Palaearctic migrants and East African residents, which may breed opportunistically along the coast. More resources are needed to carry out standardized and regular national monitoring counts in order to further elucidate the origin, movement, and numbers of Pied Avocets in East Africa

Non-linear Pattern Matching with Backtracking for Non-free Data Types

Non-free data types are data types whose data have no canonical forms. For example, multisets are non-free data types because the multiset $\{a,b,b\}$ has two other equivalent but literally different forms $\{b,a,b\}$ and $\{b,b,a\}$. Pattern matching is known to provide a handy tool set to treat such data types. Although many studies on pattern matching and implementations for practical programming languages have been proposed so far, we observe that none of these studies satisfy all the criteria of practical pattern matching, which are as follows: i) efficiency of the backtracking algorithm for non-linear patterns, ii) extensibility of matching process, and iii) polymorphism in patterns. This paper aims to design a new pattern-matching-oriented programming language that satisfies all the above three criteria. The proposed language features clean Scheme-like syntax and efficient and extensible pattern matching semantics. This programming language is especially useful for the processing of complex non-free data types that not only include multisets and sets but also graphs and symbolic mathematical expressions. We discuss the importance of our criteria of practical pattern matching and how our language design naturally arises from the criteria. The proposed language has been already implemented and open-sourced as the Egison programming language

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition combustion and fuel composition

Homogeneous charge compression ignition, HCCI, combustion has potentials to deliver high efficiency and negligible cycle-to-cycle variations, while keeps NOx and particulate emissions at very low levels in comparison with conventional SI and CI combustion concepts. Since HCCI combustion is an auto ignited combustion, fuel structure has direct impact on its auto-ignition performance. In this research, by mixing iso-octane and n-heptane, the auto-ignition nature of fuels with different research octane number, RON, were simulated and analysed using a single-zone engine combustion model with detailed chemical kinetics and convective heat transfer loss. The effects of internally recirculated engine exhaust gas, IEGR, as a potential control strategy was also calculated