Demographic and psychological variables affecting test subject evaluations of ride quality

Ride-quality experiments similar in objectives, design, and procedure were conducted, one using the U.S. Air Force Total In-Flight Simulator and the other using the Langley Passenger Ride Quality Apparatus to provide the motion environments. Large samples (80 or more per experiment) of test subjects were recruited from the Tidewater Virginia area and asked to rate the comfort (on a 7-point scale) of random aircraft motion typical of that encountered during STOL flights. Test subject characteristics of age, sex, and previous flying history (number of previous airplane flights) were studied in a two by three by three factorial design. Correlations were computed between one dependent measure, the subject's mean comfort rating, and various demographic characteristics, attitudinal variables, and the scores on Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. An effect of sex was found in one of the studies. Males made higher (more uncomfortable) ratings of the ride than females. Age and number of previous flights were not significantly related to comfort ratings. No significant interactions between the variables of age, sex, or previous number of flights were observed

The random case of Conley's theorem

The well-known Conley's theorem states that the complement of chain recurrent set equals the union of all connecting orbits of the flow $\phi$ on the compact metric space $X$, i.e. $X-\mathcal{CR}(\phi)=\bigcup [B(A)-A]$, where $\mathcal{CR}(\phi)$ denotes the chain recurrent set of $\phi$, $A$ stands for an attractor and $B(A)$ is the basin determined by $A$. In this paper we show that by appropriately selecting the definition of random attractor, in fact we define a random local attractor to be the $\omega$-limit set of some random pre-attractor surrounding it, and by considering appropriate measurability, in fact we also consider the universal $\sigma$-algebra $\mathcal F^u$-measurability besides $\mathcal F$-measurability, we are able to obtain the random case of Conley's theorem.Comment: 15 page

Measuring a Light Neutralino Mass at the ILC: Testing the MSSM Neutralino Cold Dark Matter Model

The LEP experiments give a lower bound on the neutralino mass of about 46 GeV which, however, relies on a supersymmetric grand unification relation. Dropping this assumption, the experimental lower bound on the neutralino mass vanishes completely. Recent analyses suggest, however, that in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM), a light neutralino dark matter candidate has a lower bound on its mass of about 7 GeV. In light of this, we investigate the mass sensitivity at the ILC for very light neutralinos. We study slepton pair production, followed by the decay of the sleptons to a lepton and the lightest neutralino. We find that the mass measurement accuracy for a few-GeV neutralino is around 2 GeV, or even less if the relevant slepton is sufficiently light. We thus conclude that the ILC can help verify or falsify the MSSM neutralino cold dark matter model even for very light neutralinos.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure; references adde

Differential operators on supercircle: conformally equivariant quantization and symbol calculus

We consider the supercircle $S^{1|1}$ equipped with the standard contact structure. The conformal Lie superalgebra K(1) acts on $S^{1|1}$ as the Lie superalgebra of contact vector fields; it contains the M\"obius superalgebra $osp(1|2)$. We study the space of linear differential operators on weighted densities as a module over $osp(1|2)$. We introduce the canonical isomorphism between this space and the corresponding space of symbols and find interesting resonant cases where such an isomorphism does not exist

Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences in the Nineteenth Century

Angelo Scarlato’s extraordinary and vast collection of art and artifacts related to the Civil War, and specifically to the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Colored Troops, slavery and the African American struggle for emancipation, citizenship and freedom has proved to be an extraordinary resource for Gettysburg College students. The 2012-14 exhibition in Musselman Library’s Special Collections, curated by Lauren Roedner ’13, entitled Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era and its corresponding catalogue provided a powerful and comprehensive historical narrative of the period. This fall, students in my course at Gettysburg College “Art and Public Policy”—Diane Brennan, Maura Conley, Abigail Conner, Nicole Conte, Victoria Perez-Zetune, Savannah Rose, Kaylyn Sawyer, Caroline Wood and Zoe Yeoh—selected additional objects of material and print culture from Angelo’s private collection and drew from Lauren’s expertise for the exhibition Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences in the Nineteenth Century to investigate public representations of a newly freed population as well as their more personal perspectives. [excerpt]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1015/thumbnail.jp

Existence and stability of viscoelastic shock profiles

We investigate existence and stability of viscoelastic shock profiles for a class of planar models including the incompressible shear case studied by Antman and Malek-Madani. We establish that the resulting equations fall into the class of symmetrizable hyperbolic--parabolic systems, hence spectral stability implies linearized and nonlinear stability with sharp rates of decay. The new contributions are treatment of the compressible case, formulation of a rigorous nonlinear stability theory, including verification of stability of small-amplitude Lax shocks, and the systematic incorporation in our investigations of numerical Evans function computations determining stability of large-amplitude and or nonclassical type shock profiles.Comment: 43 pages, 12 figure

Discovery of a Multiply Lensed Submillimeter Galaxy in Early HerMES Herschel/SPIRE Data

We report the discovery of a bright (f(250 μm)>400 mJy), multiply lensed submillimeter galaxy HERMES J105751.1+573027 in Herschel/SPIRE Science Demonstration Phase data from the HerMES project. Interferometric 880 μm Submillimeter Array observations resolve at least four images with a large separation of ~9". A high-resolution adaptive optics K_p image with Keck/NIRC2 clearly shows strong lensing arcs. Follow-up spectroscopy gives a redshift of z = 2.9575, and the lensing model gives a total magnification of μ ~ 11 ± 1. The large image separation allows us to study the multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) of the lensed source unobscured by the central lensing mass. The far-IR/millimeter-wave SED is well described by a modified blackbody fit with an unusually warm dust temperature, 88 ± 3 K. We derive a lensing-corrected total IR luminosity of (1.43 ± 0.09) × 10^(13) L_☉, implying a star formation rate of ~2500 M_☉ yr^(–1). However, models primarily developed from brighter galaxies selected at longer wavelengths are a poor fit to the full optical-to-millimeter SED. A number of other strongly lensed systems have already been discovered in early Herschel data, and many more are expected as additional data are collected

Probing the time dependence of dark energy

A new method to investigate a possible time-dependence of the dark energy equation of state $w$ is proposed. We apply this methodology to two of the most recent data sets of type Ia supernova (Union2 and SDSS) and the baryon acoustic oscillation peak at $z = 0.35$. For some combinations of these data, we show that there is a clear departure from the standard $\Lambda$CDM model at intermediary redshifts, although a non-evolving dark energy component ($dw/dz = 0$) cannot be ruled out by these data. The approach developed here may be useful to probe a possible evolving dark energy component when applied to upcoming observational data.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, LaTe

Supernova Shock Breakout from a Red Supergiant

Massive stars undergo a violent death when the supply of nuclear fuel in their cores is exhausted, resulting in a catastrophic "core-collapse" supernova. Such events are usually only detected at least a few days after the star has exploded. Observations of the supernova SNLS-04D2dc with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope reveal a radiative precursor from the supernova shock before the shock reached the surface of the star and show the initial expansion of the star at the beginning of the explosion. Theoretical models of the ultraviolet light curve confirm that the progenitor was a red supergiant, as expected for this type of supernova. These observations provide a way to probe the physics of core-collapse supernovae and the internal structures of their progenitor starsComment: Science, in press. 32 pages, 7 figure