Cost and schedule management on the quiet short-haul research aircraft project

The Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA) Project, one of the largest aeronautical programs undertaken by NASA to date, achieved a significant cost underrun. This is attributed to numerous factors, not the least of which were the contractual arrangement and the system of cost and schedule management employed by the contractor. This paper summarizes that system and the methods used for cost/performance measurement by the contractor and by the NASA project management. Recommendations are made for the use of some of these concepts in particular for future programs of a similar nature

Systematic review of antimicrobial drug prescribing in hospitals.

Prudent antibiotic prescribing to hospital inpatients has the potential to reduce the incidences of antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infection. We reviewed the literature from January 1980 to November 2003 to identify rigorous evaluations of interventions to improve hospital antibiotic prescribing. We identified 66 studies with interpretable data of which 16 reported 20 microbiological outcomes: Gram negative resistant bacteria (GNRB), 10 studies; Clostridium difficile associated diarrhoea (CDAD), 5 studies; vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE), 3 studies and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), 2 studies. Four studies provide good evidence that the intervention changed microbial outcomes with low risk of alternative explanations, eight studies provide less convincing evidence and four studies were negative. The strongest and most consistent evidence was for CDAD but we were able to analyse only the immediate impact of interventions because of nonstandardised durations of follow up. The ability to compare results of studies could be substantially improved by standardising methodology and reporting

The mean magnetic field of the sun: Observations at Stanford

A solar telescope was built at Stanford University to study the organization and evolution of large-scale solar magnetic fields and velocities. The observations are made using a Babcock-type magnetograph which is connected to a 22.9 m vertical Littrow spectrograph. Sun-as-a-star integrated light measurements of the mean solar magnetic field were made daily since May 1975. The typical mean field magnitude is about 0.15 gauss with typical measurement error less than 0.05 gauss. The mean field polarity pattern is essentially identical to the interplanetary magnetic field sector structure (seen near the earth with a 4 day lag). The differences in the observed structures can be understood in terms of a warped current sheet model

Independent trapping and manipulation of microparticles using dexterous acoustic tweezers

An electronically controlled acoustic tweezer was used to demonstrate two acoustic manipulation phenomena: superposition of Bessel functions to allow independent manipulation of multiple particles and the use of higher-order Bessel functions to trap particles in larger regions than is possible with first-order traps. The acoustic tweezers consist of a circular 64-element ultrasonic array operating at 2.35MHz which generates ultrasonic pressure fields in a millimeter-scale fluid-filled chamber. The manipulation capabilities were demonstrated experimentally with 45 and 90-lm-diameter polystyrene spheres. These capabilities bring the dexterity of acoustic tweezers substantially closer to that of optical tweezers

Study of the relationship between solar activity and terrestrial weather

Evidence for some connection between weather and solar related phenomena is presented. Historical data of world wide temperature variations with relationship to change in solar luminosity are examined. Several test methods for estimating the statistical significance of such phenomena are discussed in detail

Moving system with speeded-up evolution

In the classical (non-quantum) relativity theory the course of the moving clock is dilated as compared to the course of the clock at rest (the Einstein dilation). Any unstable system may be regarded as a clock. The time evolution (e.g., the decay) of a uniformly moving physical system is considered using the relativistic quantum theory. The example of a moving system is given whose evolution turns out to be speeded-up instead of being dilated. A discussion of this paradoxical result is presented.Comment: 10 pages, LaTe

Gluelump Spectrum in the Bag Model

We explore the ordering of the lowest levels in a simple bag model of the ``gluelump'' of Michael and also discuss, again within the context of the bag model, the related problem of hybrid potentials in the limit of very small spacing between quark and anti-quark sources.Comment: 10 page

Passive noise control strategies for jets exhausting over flat surfaces : an LES study

Unconventional aircraft propulsion configurations have to be considered in the future to address environmental issues, including air traffic noise that is know to affect communities surrounding airports. One approach involves rectangular jets in the vicinity of flat surfaces that are parallel to the jet axis in an attempt to shield the noise, but previous experimental work indicated that there is an increase in the noise generated by these configurations, mainly associated with the effect that the plate trailing edge exerts on the flow. In this work, we use large eddy simulations to investigate the potential of wall deformations at the plate trailing edge to reduce jet noise. We consider a high aspect ratio rectangular nozzle exhausting a jet over a flat surface in different configurations, and estimate the farfield noise using the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkins acoustic analogy. Because of the high aspect ratio of the rectangular nozzle, we approximate the jet as being two-dimensional, and use periodic boundary conditions in the spanwise direction. For the configurations that we considered here, the trailing edge deformations did not seem to affect the noise significantly; an overall sound pressure level in the order of 1-2 dB was observed for some selected cases