Diaphragm spring gives clutch over-center toggle effect

Diaphragm spring clutch mechanism is used in testing the relative merits of eddy-current and hysteresis dampers. The dampers are alternately coupled to a single damping boom shaft. The floating clutch mechanism enables the inoperative damper to remain completely isolated from the damping boom shaft during test of the other damper

Dynamic mechanical analysis and organization/storage of data for polymetric materials

Dynamic mechanical analysis was performed on a variety of temperature resistant polymers and composite resin matrices. Data on glass transition temperatures and degree of cure attained were derived. In addition a laboratory based computer system was installed and data base set up to allow entry of composite data. The laboratory CPU termed TYCHO is based on a DEC PDP 11/44 CPU with a Datatrieve relational data base. The function of TYCHO is integration of chemical laboratory analytical instrumentation and storage of chemical structures for modeling of new polymeric structures and compound

Health Care in Rural Communities: Exploring the Development of Informal and Voluntary Care

Nation-state restructuring has resulted in significant political, economic and social change in rural communities. One manifestation of this transformation has been the changing nature of local governance, characterised by the re-working of central-local relations and public- private responsibilities, such that local informal and voluntary sectors now play an active and direct role in the organisation and delivery of health care services. This paper investigates the relationship between the changing nature of local governance and the provision of health care services, and places it within the context of rural communities and population aging in Canada. In particular, it considers the ascendancy of informal and voluntary sectors with respect to homecare in rural Ontario, and features an analysis of data from the National Population Health Survey and the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, representing user (demand) and provider (supply) perspectives respectively. The results provide a cross-section of informal and voluntary home care in the late 1990s, which indicates that informal and voluntary sectors are major players in the local organisation and delivery of health care services in rural communities. This suggests that the current state of health care provision in rural communities of Ontario is affected very much by the changing nature of local governance associated with restructuring. The 'snap-shot' of health care in rural communities presented in this paper highlights the need to examine further the relationship between governance and health care services at the local level. It also points to the need for more detailed data sets that integrate health, informal and voluntary care data at meaningful geographical and administrative scales to reflect clearly rural communities in Canada.health care; rural communities

Surface magnetic ordering in topological insulators with bulk magnetic dopants

We show that a three dimensional topological insulator doped with magnetic impurities in the bulk can have a regime where the surface is magnetically ordered but the bulk is not. This is in contrast to conventional materials where bulk ordered phases are typically more robust than surface ordered phases. The difference originates from the topologically protected gapless surface states characteristic of topological insulators. We study the problem using a mean field approach in two concrete models that give the same qualitative result, with some interesting differences. Our findings could help explain recent experimental results showing the emergence of a spectral gap in the surface state of Bi2Se3 doped with Mn or Fe atoms, but with no measurable bulk magnetism.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

A comparative assessment of solar thermal electric power plants in the 1-10 MWe range

The candidate power system technologies were ranked in terms of the cost of electric energy each system produces. In all cases, it was assumed that development programs would result in mature power plant systems that could be commercially manufactured. The results of the study, a brief description of the systems examined, and the methodologies used are presented

Identification and evaluation of linear damping models in beam vibrations

Sensitive method, identifying effective damping mechanisms, involves comparing experimentally determined ratio of first to second mode magnification factors related to common point on beam. Cluster size has little effect on frequencies of elements, magnification factor decreases with cluster size, and viscous and stress damping are dominant damping mechanisms

Generic Black-Box End-to-End Attack Against State of the Art API Call Based Malware Classifiers

In this paper, we present a black-box attack against API call based machine learning malware classifiers, focusing on generating adversarial sequences combining API calls and static features (e.g., printable strings) that will be misclassified by the classifier without affecting the malware functionality. We show that this attack is effective against many classifiers due to the transferability principle between RNN variants, feed forward DNNs, and traditional machine learning classifiers such as SVM. We also implement GADGET, a software framework to convert any malware binary to a binary undetected by malware classifiers, using the proposed attack, without access to the malware source code.Comment: Accepted as a conference paper at RAID 201

Evaluation of the HARDMAN comparability methodology for manpower, personnel and training

The methodology evaluation and recommendation are part of an effort to improve Hardware versus Manpower (HARDMAN) methodology for projecting manpower, personnel, and training (MPT) to support new acquisition. Several different validity tests are employed to evaluate the methodology. The methodology conforms fairly well with both the MPT user needs and other accepted manpower modeling techniques. Audits of three completed HARDMAN applications reveal only a small number of potential problem areas compared to the total number of issues investigated. The reliability study results conform well with the problem areas uncovered through the audits. The results of the accuracy studies suggest that the manpower life-cycle cost component is only marginally sensitive to changes in other related cost variables. Even with some minor problems, the methodology seem sound and has good near term utility to the Army. Recommendations are provided to firm up the problem areas revealed through the evaluation