2,092 research outputs found
SPS program review transportation perspective
The delivery of cargo and space workers to the SPS construction site requires the development of two different systems, one to handle large cargo deliveries and a smaller system to accommodate crew. The overall scenario of the transportation system is shown. Eight major elements comprise the transportation system: personnel launch vehicle (PLV) or shuttle; personnel orbital transfer vehicle (POTV); the heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV); the electric orbital transfer vehicle (EOTV); intra orbit transfer vehicle (IOTV); LEO support facility; GEO support facility and a shuttle derived HLLV (SDHLLV) for supporting the early SPS Demonstration Program. The HLLV and EOTV represent the cargo carriers while the PLV and POTV represent the people carriers. The IOTV is utilized to ferry people and cargo modules over short distances in the vicinity of its station
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Home accidents amongst elderly people: A locality study in Scotland
Aim
The aim of this locality study was to collect information on reported and unreported accidents amongst elderly people living in one locality in Scotland.
Method
Postal Survey- A postal questionnaire was sent to 3,757 men and women aged 65+ years living in one locality. The questionnaire asked respondents to indicate how many accidents they had experienced in the past twelve months, plus to indicate type and location. Information was gathered on living arrangements, ethnicity, gender, age and deprivation. Respondents were asked if they would be willing to take part in an interview study.
Interview Study - One hundred elders who had had at least one accident in the previous twelve months were interviewed.
Results
Postal Survey - Over a third of the respondents in the postal survey reported having had an accident in the previous twelve months. Bumps and drops and falls were the most common type of accident. Most accidents happened in the kitchen. Women reported more falls than men and those living alone reported more accidents than those living with others. Age was associated with the prevalence of accidents, but the association was somewhat curvilinear, with accidents decreasing with age and then increasing again.
Interview Study – Interviewees found it hard to differentiate one accident from another. Considerable reluctance to visit the GP after an accident was noted, with many not attending even for serious accidents. Almost forty percent were ‘very’ distressed after their accident, and a quarter reported a loss of confidence. However, most did not worry about accidents. Few thought that their age, health or medications were a cause of their accidents
Assessing the efficiency of first-principles basin-hopping sampling
We present a systematic performance analysis of first-principles
basin-hopping (BH) runs, with the target to identify all low-energy isomers of
small Si and Cu clusters described within density-functional theory. As
representative and widely employed move classes we focus on single-particle and
collective moves, in which one or all atoms in the cluster at once are
displaced in a random direction by some prescribed move distance, respectively.
The analysis provides detailed insights into the bottlenecks and governing
factors for the sampling efficiency, as well as simple rules-of-thumb for
near-optimum move settings, that are intriguingly independent of the distinctly
different chemistry of Si and Cu. At corresponding settings, the observed
performance of the BH algorithm employing two simple, general-purpose move
classes is already very good, and for the small systems studied essentially
limited by frequent revisits to a few dominant isomers.Comment: 11 pages including 8 figures; related publications can be found at
http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.htm
Potential Energy Landscape of the Apparent First-Order Phase Transition between Low-Density and High-Density Amorphous Ice
The potential energy landscape (PEL) formalism is a valuable approach within
statistical mechanics for describing supercooled liquids and glasses. Here we
use the PEL formalism and computer simulations to study the pressure-induced
transformations between low-density amorphous ice (LDA) and high-density
amorphous ice (HDA) at different temperatures. We employ the ST2 water model
for which the LDA-HDA transformations are remarkably sharp, similar to what is
observed in experiments, and reminiscent of a first-order phase transition. Our
results are consistent with the view that LDA and HDA configurations are
associated with two distinct regions (megabasins) of the PEL that are separated
by a potential energy barrier. At higher temperature, we find that low-density
liquid (LDL) configurations are located in the same megabasin as LDA, and that
high-density liquid (HDL) configurations are located in the same megabasin as
HDA. We show that the pressure-induced LDL-HDL and LDA-HDA transformations
occur along paths that interconnect these two megabasins, but that the path
followed by the liquid is different than the path followed by the amorphous
solid. At higher pressure, we also study the liquid-to-ice-VII first-order
phase transition, and find that the behavior of the PEL properties across this
transition are qualitatively similar to the changes found during the LDA-HDA
transformation. This similarity supports the interpretation that the LDA-HDA
transformation is a first-order-like phase transition between
out-of-equilibrium states.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure
Nature of Ar bonding to small Co_n^+ clusters and its effect on the structure determination by far-infrared absorption spectroscopy
Far-infrared vibrational spectroscopy by multiple photon dissociation has
proven to be a very useful technique for the structural fingerprinting of small
metal clusters. Contrary to previous studies on cationic V, Nb and Ta clusters,
measured vibrational spectra of small cationic cobalt clusters show a strong
dependence on the number of adsorbed Ar probe atoms, which increases with
decreasing cluster size. Focusing on the series Co_4^+ to Co_8^+ we therefore
use density-functional theory to analyze the nature of the Ar-Co_n^+ bond and
its role for the vibrational spectra. In a first step, energetically low-lying
isomer structures are identified through first-principles basin-hopping
sampling runs and their vibrational spectra computed for a varying number of
adsorbed Ar atoms. A comparison of these fingerprints with the experimental
data enables in some cases a unique assignment of the cluster structure.
Independent of the specific low-lying isomer, we obtain a pronounced increase
of the Ar binding energy for the smallest cluster sizes, which correlates
nicely with the observed increased influence of the Ar probe atoms on the IR
spectra. Further analysis of the electronic structure motivates a simple
electrostatic picture that not only explains this binding energy trend, but
also why the influence of the rare-gas atom is much stronger than in the
previously studied systems.Comment: 12 pages including 10 figures; related publications can be found at
http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.htm
Characterization of the Dynamics of Glass-forming Liquids from the Properties of the Potential Energy Landscape
We develop a framework for understanding the difference between strong and
fragile behavior in the dynamics of glass-forming liquids from the properties
of the potential energy landscape. Our approach is based on a master equation
description of the activated jump dynamics among the local minima of the
potential energy (the so-called inherent structures) that characterize the
potential energy landscape of the system. We study the dynamics of a small
atomic cluster using this description as well as molecular dynamics simulations
and demonstrate the usefulness of our approach for this system. Many of the
remarkable features of the complex dynamics of glassy systems emerge from the
activated dynamics in the potential energy landscape of the atomic cluster. The
dynamics of the system exhibits typical characteristics of a strong supercooled
liquid when the system is allowed to explore the full configuration space. This
behavior arises because the dynamics is dominated by a few lowest-lying minima
of the potential energy and the potential energy barriers between these minima.
When the system is constrained to explore only a limited region of the
potential energy landscape that excludes the basins of attraction of a few
lowest-lying minima, the dynamics is found to exhibit the characteristics of a
fragile liquid.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Flexible Functional Forms and Global Curvature Conditions
Empirically estimated flexible functional forms frequently fail to satisfy the appropriate theoretical curvature conditions. Lau and Gallant and Golub have worked out methods for imposing the appropriate curvature conditions locally, but those local techniques frequently fail to yield satisfactory results. We develop two methods for imposing curvature conditions globally in the context of cost function estimation. The first method adopts Lau's technique to a generalization of a functional form first proposed by McFadden. Using this Generalized McFadden functional form, it turns out that imposing the appropriate curvature conditions at one data point imposes the conditions globally. The second method adopts a technique used by McFadden and Barnett, which is based on the fact that a non-negative sum of concave functions will be concave. Our various suggested techniques are illustrated using the U.S. Manufacturing data utilized by Berndt and Khaled
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