MISAT: Designing a Series of Powerful Small Satellites Based upon Micro Systems Technology

MISAT is a research and development cluster which will create a small satellite platform based on Micro Systems Technology (MST) aiming at innovative space as well as terrestrial applications. MISAT is part of the Dutch MicroNed program which has established a microsystems infrastructure to fully exploit the MST knowledge chain involving public and industrial partners alike. The cluster covers MST-related developments for the spacecraft bus and payload, as well as the satellite architecture. Particular emphasis is given to distributed systems in space to fully exploit the potential of miniaturization for future mission concepts. Examples of current developments are wireless sensor and actuator networks with plug and play characteristics, autonomous digital Sun sensors, re-configurable radio front ends with minimum power consumption, or micro-machined electrostatic accelerometer and gradiometer system for scientific research in fundamental physics as well as geophysics. As a result of MISAT, a first nano-satellite will be launched in 2007 to demonstrate the next generation of Sun sensors, power subsystems and satellite architecture technology. Rapid access to in-orbit technology demonstration and verification will be provided by a series of small satellites. This will include a formation flying mission, which will increasingly rely on MISAT technology to improve functionality and reduce size, mass and power for advanced technology demonstration and novel scientific applications.

Person prominence and relation prominence : on the typology of syntactic relations with particular reference to Yucatec Maya

PM3969, ISO 639-3 : -, Maya language--Syntax1. Introduction 2. Theoretical background 2.1. The cognitive structure of a situation 2.1.1. Situation, situation core, and participants 2.1.2. Participant features 2.1.3. Participant roles 2.2. Syntactic functions 2.3. Correlation between syntactic functions and participant roles 3. Prominence in typology 3.1. Subject prominence vs. topic prominence 3.2. Reference domination vs. role domination 3.3. Person prominence vs. relation prominence 4. Languages investigated 4.1. Yucatec Maya 4.2. Samoan 4.3. Maori 4.4. Tamil 4.5. Lezgian 4.6. Korean 5. Prominence in syntactic constructions 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Higher predicates 5.2.1. Modal predicates 5.2.2. Phase predicates 5.2.3. Tense, aspect, and aktionsart auxiliaries 5.3. Possessive constructions 5.3.1. Part-whole relations 5.3.2. Ascription of possession 5.3.3. Predication of belonging 5.3.4. Ascription of property to body part 5.3.5. Affection of possessor 5.4. Mental, sensual, and emotional states and processes 5.4.1. Preliminaries 5.4.2. Sensual states and processes 5.4.3. Emotional states and processes 5.4.4. Mental states and processes 5.4.5. Conclusion 5.5. Benefactive 6. Relation prominence in YM: a historical-comparative perspective 6.1. Colonial Yucatec Maya 6.1.1. Preliminaries 6.1.2. Modal predicates 6.1.3. Phase predicates 6.1.4. Aspect auxiliaries 6.1.5. Conclusion 6.2. Cognate languages 6.2.1. Preliminaries 6.2.2. Higher predicates 6.2.3. Possessive constructions 6.2.4. Mental, sensual and emotional states and processes 6.2.5. Benefactive 6.2.6. Conclusion 7. Typology 7.1. Empirical generalizations 7.1.1. The domain of possession 136 7.1.2. Higher predicates 7.1.3. Participant roles 7.2. Grammatical correlations 7.3. Conclusion Indices Abbreviations Morpheme glosses & syntactic categories Languages Sources of data Bibliographical references LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLE

Loss mechanisms of surface plasmon polaritons on gold probed by cathodoluminescence imaging spectroscopy

We use cathodoluminescence imaging spectroscopy to excite surface plasmon polaritons and measure their decay length on single crystal and polycrystalline gold surfaces. The surface plasmon polaritons are excited on the gold surface by a nanoscale focused electron beam and are coupled into free space radiation by gratings fabricated into the surface. By scanning the electron beam on a line perpendicular to the gratings, the propagation length is determined. Data for single-crystal gold are in agreement with calculations based on dielectric constants. For polycrystalline films, grain boundary scattering is identified as additional loss mechanism, with a scattering coefficient SG=0.2%

Lexical specificity training effects in second language learners

Children who start formal education in a second language may experience slower vocabulary growth in that language and subsequently experience disadvantages in literacy acquisition. The current study asked whether lexical specificity training can stimulate bilingual children's phonological awareness, which is considered to be a precursor to literacy. Therefore, Dutch monolingual and Turkish-Dutch bilingual children were taught new Dutch words with only minimal acoustic-phonetic differences. As a result of this training, the monolingual and the bilingual children improved on phoneme blending, which can be seen as an early aspect of phonological awareness. During training, the bilingual children caught up with the monolingual children on words with phonological overlap between their first language Turkish and their second language Dutch. It is concluded that learning minimal pair words fosters phoneme awareness, in both first and second language preliterate children, and that for second language learners phonological overlap between the two languages positively affects training outcomes, likely due to linguistic transfe