Analysis and correlation of the test data from an advanced technology rotor system

Comparisons were made of the performance and blade vibratory loads characteristics for an advanced rotor system as predicted by analysis and as measured in a 1/5 scale model wind tunnel test, a full scale model wind tunnel test and flight test. The accuracy with which the various tools available at the various stages in the design/development process (analysis, model test etc.) could predict final characteristics as measured on the aircraft was determined. The accuracy of the analyses in predicting the effects of systematic tip planform variations investigated in the full scale wind tunnel test was evaluated

Perceptual Grouping for Contour Extraction

This paper describes an algorithm that efficiently groups line segments into perceptually salient contours in complex images. A measure of affinity between pairs of lines is used to guide group formation and limit the branching factor of the contour search procedure. The extracted contours are ranked, and presented as a contour hierarchy. Our algorithm is able to extract salient contours in the presence of texture, clutter, and repetitive or ambiguous image structure. We show experimental results on a complex line-set. 1

Signalment risk factors for cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy (Alabama rot) in dogs in the UK

Seasonal outbreaks of cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy (CRGV) have been reported annually in UK dogs since 2012, yet the aetiology of the disease remains unknown. The objectives of this study were to explore whether any breeds had an increased or decreased risk of being diagnosed with CRGV, and to report on age and sex distributions of CRGV cases occurring in the UK. Multivariable logistic regression was used to compare 101 dogs diagnosed with CRGV between November 2012 and May 2017 with a denominator population of 446,453 dogs from the VetCompass database. Two Kennel Club breed groups—hounds (odds ratio (OR) 10.68) and gun dogs (OR 9.69)—had the highest risk of being diagnosed with CRGV compared with terriers, while toy dogs were absent from among CRGV cases. Females were more likely to be diagnosed with CRGV (OR 1.51) as were neutered dogs (OR 3.36). As well as helping veterinarians develop an index of suspicion for the disease, better understanding of the signalment risk factors may assist in the development of causal models for CRGV and help identify the aetiology of the disease

Some steady and oscillating airfoil test results, including the effects of sweep, from the tunnel spanning wing

A large scale tunnel spanning wing was built and tested. The model can be operated as either a swept or unswept wing and can be tested in steady state or oscillated sinusoidally in pitch about its quarter chord. Data is taken at mid-span with an internal 6-component balance and is also obtained from miniature pressure transducers distributed near the center span region. A description is given of the system and a brief discussion of some of the steady and unsteady results obtained to date. These are the steady load behavior to Mach numbers of approximately 1.1 and unsteady loads, including drag, at a reduced frequency of approximately 0.1

Computational Methods in Modeling Fusion Plasmas

Fusion provides an attractive potential alternative to using fossil fuels for energy. Fusion requires vastly less fuel resources than does current non-renewable energy processes (virtually a 100% reduction in the required mass of fuel needed). The fuel sources needed (mainly deuterium and lithium) are also highly abundant on the Earth and fusion generates minimal waste products. One of the biggest obstacles to practical fusion energy is how to contain the reactants long enough for energy output to significantly exceed energy input. The equations governing plasma dynamics and confinement are highly nonlinear and do not admit simple analytic solutions in realistic situations. To obtain predictions of various plasma confinement scenarios, it is often necessary to turn to other means, such as computational modeling, to simulate the relevant plasma dynamics. Evaluating the effectiveness and reliability of the computational methods used for simulation then becomes extremely important, especially when subsequently using your code to predict new physics to the scientific community. In this work, we present an effort to analyze the effectiveness of one of the computational techniques used in the NIMROD code, which code Eric Held (USU) and others in the scientific community have helped to develop. This method involves resolving something called the Grad-Shafranov equation, which governs the potential plasma equilibria that can exist in tokamak plasmas. Here we evaluate the effectiveness of the method and discuss the potential implications resulting from this analysis

Spatiotemporal patterns and agro-ecological risk factors for cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy (Alabama Rot) in dogs in the UK

Seasonal outbreaks of cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy (CRGV) have been reported annually in UK dogs since 2012, yet the aetiology of the disease remains unknown. The objectives of this study were to explore whether any breeds had an increased or decreased risk of being diagnosed with CRGV, and to report on age and sex distributions of CRGV cases occurring in the UK. Multivariable logistic regression was used to compare 101 dogs diagnosed with CRGV between November 2012 and May 2017 with a denominator population of 446,453 dogs from the VetCompass database. Two Kennel Club breed groups—hounds (odds ratio (OR) 10.68) and gun dogs (OR 9.69)—had the highest risk of being diagnosed with CRGV compared with terriers, while toy dogs were absent from among CRGV cases. Females were more likely to be diagnosed with CRGV (OR 1.51) as were neutered dogs (OR 3.36). As well as helping veterinarians develop an index of suspicion for the disease, better understanding of the signalment risk factors may assist in the development of causal models for CRGV and help identify the aetiology of the disease

Renal fibrosis in feline chronic kidney disease: known mediators and mechanisms of injury

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common medical condition of ageing cats. In most cases the underlying aetiology is unknown, but the most frequently reported pathological diagnosis is renal tubulointerstitial fibrosis. Renal fibrosis, characterised by extensive accumulation of extra-cellular matrix within the interstitium, is thought to be the final common pathway for all kidney diseases and is the pathological lesion best correlated with function in both humans and cats. As a convergent pathway, renal fibrosis provides an ideal target for the treatment of CKD and knowledge of the underlying fibrotic process is essential for the future development of novel therapies. There are many mediators and mechanisms of renal fibrosis reported in the literature, of which only a few have been investigated in the cat. This article reviews the process of renal fibrosis and discusses the most commonly cited mediators and mechanisms of progressive renal injury, with particular focus on the potential significance to feline CKD

Efficient and Accurate Optimal Transport with Mirror Descent and Conjugate Gradients

We design a novel algorithm for optimal transport by drawing from the entropic optimal transport, mirror descent and conjugate gradients literatures. Our scalable and GPU parallelizable algorithm is able to compute the Wasserstein distance with extreme precision, reaching relative error rates of $10^{-8}$ without numerical stability issues. Empirically, the algorithm converges to high precision solutions more quickly in terms of wall-clock time than a variety of algorithms including log-domain stabilized Sinkhorn's Algorithm. We provide careful ablations with respect to algorithm and problem parameters, and present benchmarking over upsampled MNIST images, comparing to various recent algorithms over high-dimensional problems. The results suggest that our algorithm can be a useful addition to the practitioner's optimal transport toolkit