An altitude chamber rescue ensemble

Altitude chamber tests accomplished with the astronaut crews in the spacecraft at a simulated altitude of above 200,000 ft requires that a rescue team be provided in the event of an accident in the spacecraft. The rescue crew is stationed in an airlock maintained at an altitude of 18,000 ft. A protective ensemble provides the rescue crew with life support capabilities, communications, and protection in the event of an emergency. In the event of an emergency, repressurization of the chamber is initiated; as the chamber descends, the airlock ascends and the two meet at 25,000 ft. This phase of the emergency repressurization takes less than 30 sec

A community of teachers: Using Activity Theory to investigate the implementation of ICTE in a remote Indigenous school

In 2001-2002, an innovative project entitled Reach In-Reach Out has been conducted in Far North Queensland. Its aim was to use telecommunications and Internet tools to facilitate communication between the children of Lockhart River who attend secondary school in such centres as Cairns, Townsville and Herberton and their families. This study was the first (of three) to investigate the impact of this project. Its focus is on the teachers of Lockart River State School and the changes made to their practice by the implementation of the project. The study described in this paper was conducted in Lockhart River which is situated on Kanthanumpu (Southern Kuuku Ya'u) land in Far North Queensland. The current population is estimated between 650 (Education Queensland, 2001a) and 800 (Lockhart River Land and Sea Management Agency, 2001) residents. The student population of Lockhart River State School in 2001was 26 (Kindy), 105 (Primary) and 30 (Alternate secondary/VET) programs) (Education Queensland, 2001a). At the end of 1999, the secondary school of Lockhart River was closed following a community decision to do so. This necessitated the majority of post-primary students having to leave Lockhart River to continue their education at boarding school. At the beginning of 2002, 38 students left the Lockhart River Community to attend boarding schools (and 8 remained to take part in the Alternate Secondary/VET program offered at the school). Table 1 details the secondary enrolments of Lockhart River students from 1998 to 2001, including the period covered by this study (2001)

Symmetry-enhanced supertransfer of delocalized quantum states

Coherent hopping of excitation rely on quantum coherence over physically extended states. In this work, we consider simple models to examine the effect of symmetries of delocalized multi-excitation states on the dynamical timescales, including hopping rates, radiative decay, and environmental interactions. While the decoherence (pure dephasing) rate of an extended state over N sites is comparable to that of a non-extended state, superradiance leads to a factor of N enhancement in decay and absorption rates. In addition to superradiance, we illustrate how the multi-excitonic states exhibit `supertransfer' in the far-field regime: hopping from a symmetrized state over N sites to a symmetrized state over M sites at a rate proportional to MN. We argue that such symmetries could play an operational role in physical systems based on the competition between symmetry-enhanced interactions and localized inhomogeneities and environmental interactions that destroy symmetry. As an example, we propose that supertransfer and coherent hopping play a role in recent observations of anomolously long diffusion lengths in nano-engineered assembly of light-harvesting complexes.Comment: 6 page

Animal Spirits Meets Creative Destruction

We show how a Schumpeterian process of creative destruction can induce coordination in the timing of entrepreneurial activities across diverse sectors of the economy.Consequently, a multi-sector economy, in which sector-specific, productivity improvements are made by independent, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, can exhibit regular booms, slowdowns and downturns as an inherent part of the long-run growth process.The cyclical equilibrium that we study has a higher long-run growth rate but lower welfare than the corresponding acyclical one.We find that the cycles generated by our model share some features of actual business cycles, and that across cycling economies, a negative relationship emerges between volatility and growth.economic growth;entrepreneurship;innovation;business cycles

Co-movement, Capital and Contracts: 'Normal' Cycles Through Creative Destruction

We develop a unified theory of endogenous business cycles in which expansions are neoclassical growth periods driven by productivity improvements and capital accumulation, while downturns are the result of Keynesian contractions in aggregate demand below potential output. Recessions allow skilled labor to be reallocated to growth promoting activities which fuel subsequent expansions. However, rigidities in production and contractual limitations, inherent to the process of creative destruction, leave capital severely underutilized. A key feature of our equilibrium is the endogenous emergence of long term supply contracts between capitalist owners and producers.Long-term contracting;investment irreversibility;putty-clay technology;asset- specificity;Endogenous cycles and growth

Large eddy simulations of a circular cylinder at Reynolds numbers surrounding the drag crisis

Large eddy simulations of the flow around a circular cylinder at high Reynolds numbers are reported. Five Reynolds numbers were chosen, such that the drag crisis was captured. A total of 18 cases were computed to investigate the effect of gridding strategy, domain width, turbulence modelling and numerical schemes on the results. It was found that unstructured grids provide better resolution of key flow features, when a ‘reasonable’ grid size is to be maintained.When using coarse grids for large eddy simuation, the effect of the turbulence models and numerical schemes becomes more pronounced. The dynamic mixed Smagorinsky model was found to be superior to the Smagorinsky model, since the model coefficient is allowed to dynamically adjust based on the local flow and grid size. A blended upwind-central convection scheme was also found to provide the best accuracy, since a fully central scheme exhibits artificial wiggles which pollute the entire solution.Mean drag, fluctuating lift and Strouhal number are compared to experiments and empirical estimates for Reynolds numbers ranging from 6.31 × 104 ? 5.06 × 105. In terms of the drag coefficient, the drag crisis is well captured by the present simulations, although the other integral quantities (rms lift and Strouhal number) less so. For the lowest Reynolds number, the drag is seen to be most sensitive to the domain width, while at the higher Reynolds numbers the grid resolution plays a more important role