Installing fiber insulation

A method for installing fragile, high temperature insulation batting in an elongated cavity or in a resilient wire sleeve to form a resilient seal. The batting is preformed to rough dimensions and wrapped in a plastic film, the film being of a material which is fugitive at a high temperature. The film is heat sealed and trimmed to form a snugly fit skin which overlaps at least at one end to permit attachment of a pull cord. The film absorbs the tensile force of pulling the film enclosed batting through the cavity or wire mesh sleeve and is subsequently driven off by high temperature baking, leaving only the insulation in the cavity or wire mesh sleeve

The cognitive organization of music knowledge: a clinical analysis

Despite much recent interest in the clinical neuroscience of music processing, the cognitive organization of music as a domain of non-verbal knowledge has been little studied. Here we addressed this issue systematically in two expert musicians with clinical diagnoses of semantic dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, in comparison with a control group of healthy expert musicians. In a series of neuropsychological experiments, we investigated associative knowledge of musical compositions (musical objects), musical emotions, musical instruments (musical sources) and music notation (musical symbols). These aspects of music knowledge were assessed in relation to musical perceptual abilities and extra-musical neuropsychological functions. The patient with semantic dementia showed relatively preserved recognition of musical compositions and musical symbols despite severely impaired recognition of musical emotions and musical instruments from sound. In contrast, the patient with Alzheimer’s disease showed impaired recognition of compositions, with somewhat better recognition of composer and musical era, and impaired comprehension of musical symbols, but normal recognition of musical emotions and musical instruments from sound. The findings suggest that music knowledge is fractionated, and superordinate musical knowledge is relatively more robust than knowledge of particular music. We propose that music constitutes a distinct domain of non-verbal knowledge but shares certain cognitive organizational features with other brain knowledge systems. Within the domain of music knowledge, dissociable cognitive mechanisms process knowledge derived from physical sources and the knowledge of abstract musical entities

Precision Determination of the Mass Function of Dark Matter Halos

The predicted mass function of dark matter halos is essential in connecting observed galaxy cluster counts and models of galaxy clustering to the properties of the primordial density field. We determine the mass function in the concordance $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, as well as its uncertainty, using sixteen $1024^3$-particle nested-volume dark-matter simulations, spanning a mass range of over five orders of magnitude. Using the nested volumes and single-halo tests, we find and correct for a systematic error in the friends-of-friends halo-finding algorithm. We find a fitting form and full error covariance for the mass function that successfully describes the simulations' mass function and is well-behaved outside the simulations' resolutions. Estimated forecasts of uncertainty in cosmological parameters from future cluster count surveys have negligible contribution from remaining statistical uncertainties in the central cosmology multiplicity function. There exists a potentially non-negligible cosmological dependence (non-universality) of the halo multiplicity function.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ

Synthesis of empty bacterial microcompartments, directed organelle protein incorporation, and evidence of filament-associated organelle movement

Compartmentalization is an important process, since it allows the segregation of metabolic activities and, in the era of synthetic biology, represents an important tool by which defined microenvironments can be created for specific metabolic functions. Indeed, some bacteria make specialized proteinaceous metabolic compartments called bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) or metabolosomes. Here we demonstrate that the shell of the metabolosome (representing an empty BMC) can be produced within E. coil cells by the coordinated expression of genes encoding structural proteins. A plethora of diverse structures can be generated by changing the expression profile of these genes, including the formation of large axial filaments that interfere with septation. Fusing GFP to PduC, PduD, or PduV, none of which are shell proteins, allows regiospecific targeting of the reporter group to the empty BMC. Live cell imaging provides unexpected evidence of filament-associated BMC movement within the cell in the presence of Pdu

Design of a "Digital Atlas Vme Electronics" (DAVE) Module

ATLAS-SCT has developed a new ATLAS trigger card, 'Digital Atlas Vme Electronics' ("DAVE"). The unit is designed to provide a versatile array of interface and logic resources, including a large FPGA. It interfaces to both VME bus and USB hosts. DAVE aims to provide exact ATLAS CTP (ATLAS Central Trigger Processor) functionality, with random trigger, simple and complex deadtime, ECR (Event Counter Reset), BCR (Bunch Counter Reset) etc. being generated to give exactly the same conditions in standalone running as experienced in combined runs. DAVE provides additional hardware and a large amount of free firmware resource to allow users to add or change functionality. The combination of the large number of individually programmable inputs and outputs in various formats, with very large external RAM and other components all connected to the FPGA, also makes DAVE a powerful and versatile FPGA utility cardComment: 8 pages, 4 figures, TWEPP-2011; E-mail: [email protected]

A Simplified Approach to Optimally Controlled Quantum Dynamics

A new formalism for the optimal control of quantum mechanical physical observables is presented. This approach is based on an analogous classical control technique reported previously[J. Botina, H. Rabitz and N. Rahman, J. chem. Phys. Vol. 102, pag. 226 (1995)]. Quantum Lagrange multiplier functions are used to preserve a chosen subset of the observable dynamics of interest. As a result, a corresponding small set of Lagrange multipliers needs to be calculated and they are only a function of time. This is a considerable simplification over traditional quantum optimal control theory[S. shi and H. Rabitz, comp. Phys. Comm. Vol. 63, pag. 71 (1991)]. The success of the new approach is based on taking advantage of the multiplicity of solutions to virtually any problem of quantum control to meet a physical objective. A family of such simplified formulations is introduced and numerically tested. Results are presented for these algorithms and compared with previous reported work on a model problem for selective unimolecular reaction induced by an external optical electric field.Comment: Revtex, 29 pages (incl. figures