Art/Sci Nexus, 9 Evenings Revisited

Following the exhibition of Hybrid Bodies at KKW in 2016 Andrew Carnie and I were invited back to act as mentors to a group of young artists and scientists from all over Europe undertaking a week long workshop designed to lead to new art/science collaborations. We were also invited to present the Hybrid Bodies project at a one day public event preceding the workshop

Fission fragment assisted reactor concept for space propulsion: Foil reactor

The concept is to fabricate a reactor using thin films or foils of uranium, uranium oxide and then to coat them on substrates. These coatings would be made so thin as to allow the escaping fission fragments to directly heat a hydrogen propellant. The idea was studied of direct gas heating and direct gas pumping in a nuclear pumped laser program. Fission fragments were used to pump lasers. In this concept two substrates are placed opposite each other. The internal faces are coated with thin foil of uranium oxide. A few of the advantages of this technology are listed. In general, however, it is felt that if one look at all solid core nuclear thermal rockets or nuclear thermal propulsion methods, one is going to find that they all pretty much look the same. It is felt that this reactor has higher potential reliability. It has low structural operating temperatures, very short burn times, with graceful failure modes, and it has reduced potential for energetic accidents. Going to a design like this would take the NTP community part way to some of the very advanced engine designs, such as the gas core reactor, but with reduced risk because of the much lower temperatures

Aircraft energy efficiency laminar flow control glove flight conceptual design study

A laminar flow control glove applied to the wing of a short to medium range jet transport with aft mounted engines was designed. A slotted aluminum glove concept and a woven stainless steel mesh porous glove concept suction surfaces were studied. The laminar flow control glove and a dummy glove with a modified supercritical airfoil, ducting, modified wing leading and trailing edges, modified flaps, and an LFC trim tab were applied to the wing after slot spacing suction parameters, and compression power were determined. The results show that a laminar flow control glove can be applied to the wing of a jet transport with an appropriate suction system installed

A geometric interpretation of the permutation pp-value and its application in eQTL studies

Permutation $p$-values have been widely used to assess the significance of linkage or association in genetic studies. However, the application in large-scale studies is hindered by a heavy computational burden. We propose a geometric interpretation of permutation $p$-values, and based on this geometric interpretation, we develop an efficient permutation $p$-value estimation method in the context of regression with binary predictors. An application to a study of gene expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) shows that our method provides reliable estimates of permutation $p$-values while requiring less than 5% of the computational time compared with direct permutations. In fact, our method takes a constant time to estimate permutation $p$-values, no matter how small the $p$-value. Our method enables a study of the relationship between nominal $p$-values and permutation $p$-values in a wide range, and provides a geometric perspective on the effective number of independent tests.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS298 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

COMMENTARY Enhancing consumer empowerment

Purpose of this paper: Much of the literature on consumer empowerment focuses on consumers’ efforts to regain control of their consumption processes from suppliers. Our purpose is to argue that many suppliers achieve success by trying hard to empower consumers. The mechanism by which this takes place consists of researching and providing what consumers want. Consumers feel empowered when they are able to enjoy the consumption process. This is of particular note in shopping, which is not simply obtaining products but also experience and enjoyment. Design/methodology/approach: Research is examined into the links between firms’ efforts to understand what consumers want, atmospheric stimuli, emotions and buying behaviour. Findings: We find that successful firms’ try hard to understand what consumers want and to improve consumer satisfaction and empowerment by providing pleasant marketing environments and apt, relevant information. Research limitations/implications: The approach is based on prior literature. We examine marketing to consumers in company locations, e.g. stores, malls, restaurants and banks to examine specific evidence of the effects of atmospheric stimuli such as aroma, music and video screen media. Practical implications: We contend that firms can and do become successful in a competitive arena by providing pleasant environments and information that people want. What is original/value of paper?: We show how consumer empowerment is an important concept. This paper contributes since there is a dearth of writings specifically about consumer empowerment in the marketing literature. Far from the popular view of consumers being manipulated by firms, successful firms try hard to and succeed in empowering consumers in their marketing activities

Multitransient electromagnetic demonstration survey in France

We describe the acquisition, processing, and inversion of a multitransient electromagnetic (MTEM) single-line survey, conducted in December 2004 over an underground gas storage reservoir in southwestern France. The objective was to find a resistor corresponding to known gas about 500m below the survey line. In data acquisition, we deployed a 100-m inline bipole current source and twenty 100-m inline potential receivers in various configurations along the 5-km survey line; we measured the input current step and received voltages simultaneously. Then we deconvolved the received voltages for the measured input current to determine the earth impulse responses. We show how both amplitude and traveltime information contained in the recovered earth impulse responses reveal the lateral location and approximate depth of the resistive reservoir. Integrating the impulse responses yields step responses, from which the asymptotic DC values were estimated and used in rapid 2D dipole-dipole DC resistivity inversion to find the top of the reservoir. A series of collated 1D full-waveform inversions performed on individual common midpoint gathers of the step responses position the top and bottom of a resistor corresponding to known gas in the reservoir and also obtain the transverse resistance. The results imply that the MTEM method can be used as a tool for hydrocarbon exploration and production

A Framework for Robust Assimilation of Potentially Malign Third-Party Data, and its Statistical Meaning

This paper presents a model-based method for fusing data from multiple sensors with a hypothesis-test-based component for rejecting potentially faulty or otherwise malign data. Our framework is based on an extension of the classic particle filter algorithm for real-time state estimation of uncertain systems with nonlinear dynamics with partial and noisy observations. This extension, based on classical statistical theories, utilizes statistical tests against the system's observation model. We discuss the application of the two major statistical testing frameworks, Fisherian significance testing and Neyman-Pearsonian hypothesis testing, to the Monte Carlo and sensor fusion settings. The Monte Carlo Neyman-Pearson test we develop is useful when one has a reliable model of faulty data, while the Fisher one is applicable when one may not have a model of faults, which may occur when dealing with third-party data, like GNSS data of transportation system users. These statistical tests can be combined with a particle filter to obtain a Monte Carlo state estimation scheme that is robust to faulty or outlier data. We present a synthetic freeway traffic state estimation problem where the filters are able to reject simulated faulty GNSS measurements. The fault-model-free Fisher filter, while underperforming the Neyman-Pearson one when the latter has an accurate fault model, outperforms it when the assumed fault model is incorrect.Comment: IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine, special issue on GNSS-based positionin