Power Spectrum of Cosmic Momentum Field Measured from the SFI Galaxy Sample

We have measured the cosmic momentum power spectrum from the peculiar velocities of galaxies in the SFI sample. The SFI catalog contains field spiral galaxies with radial peculiar velocities derived from the I-band Tully-Fisher relation. As a natural measure of the large-scale peculiar velocity field, we use the cosmic momentum field that is defined as the peculiar velocity field weighted by local number of galaxies. We have shown that the momentum power spectrum can be derived from the density power spectrum for the constant linear biasing of galaxy formation, which makes it possible to estimate \beta_S = \Omega_m^{0.6} / b_S parameter precisely where \Omega_m is the matter density parameter and b_S is the bias factor for optical spiral galaxies. At each wavenumber k we estimate \beta_S(k) as the ratio of the measured to the derived momentum power over a wide range of scales (0.026 h^{-1}Mpc <~ k <~ 0.157 h^{-1}Mpc) that spans the linear to the quasi-linear regimes. The estimated \beta_S(k)'s have stable values around 0.5, which demonstrates the constancy of \beta_S parameter at scales down to 40 h^{-1}Mpc. We have obtained \beta_S=0.49_{-0.05}^{+0.08} or \Omega_m = 0.30_{-0.05}^{+0.09} b_S^{5/3}, and the amplitude of mass fluctuation as \sigma_8\Omega_m^{0.6}=0.56_{-0.21}^{+0.27}. The 68% confidence limits include the cosmic variance. We have also estimated the mass density power spectrum. For example, at k=0.1047 h Mpc^{-1} (\lambda=60 h^{-1}Mpc) we measure \Omega_m^{1.2} P_{\delta}(k)=(2.51_{-0.94}^{+0.91})\times 10^3 (h^{-1}Mpc)^3, which is lower compared to the high-amplitude power spectra found from the previous maximum likelihood analyses of peculiar velocity samples like Mark III, SFI, and ENEAR.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Crime Bill of 1994 and the Law of Character Evidence: Congress Was Right About Consent Defense Cases

There is considerable debate as to whether to admit evidence of past sexual assaults in cases where the accused presents a defense of consent to a current sexual assault charge. The consent defense presents a unique situation where, due to the probative value of evidence that suggests propensity to rape, a strong justification can be made to admit this information as evidence. However, critics of this opinion have argued that admitting propensity evidence about the accused in a rape case is inconsistent with the rape shield rule which excludes propensity evidence about the victim. This argument is flawed in the sense that it does not properly take into account the full purpose of rape shield laws, nor does it acknowledge that evidence of a victim\u27s sexual history is less probative than evidence regarding the history of the accused

A concept for magazine Bimat processor

Concept utilizes existing film magazines to process photographic film as the film is exposed. A standard magazine can be converted to a Bimat processor by adding three stainless steel rollers. All chemicals required for processing and fixing the negative are contained in the Bimat film

A review of shock waves around aeroassisted orbital transfer vehicles

Aeroassisted orbital transfer vehicles (AOTVs) are a proposed type of reusable spacecraft that would be used to transport cargoes from one Earth-bound orbit to another. Such vehicles could be based on the proposed space station and used to transport commercial satellites from the space station to geostationary orbits or to polar orbits and return. During a mission, AOTVs would fly through Earth's atmosphere, thus generating aerodynamic forces that could be used for decelerating the vehicles or changing their direction. AOTV research findings were concerned with the shock-wave-induced, high-temperature airflows that would be produced around these vehicles during atmospheric flight. Special emphasis was placed on the problems of: (1) the chemical physics of multitemperature, ionizing, nonequilibrium air flows, and (2) the dynamics of the flows in the base region of a blunt body with complex afterbody geometry

Genus Topology of the Cosmic Microwave Background from the WMAP 3-Year Data

We have independently measured the genus topology of the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background seen in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 3-year data. A genus analysis of the WMAP data indicates consistency with Gaussian random-phase initial conditions, as predicted by standard inflation. We set 95% confidence limits on non-linearities of -101 < f_{nl} < 107. We also find that the observed low l (l <= 8) modes show a slight anti-correlation with the Galactic foreground, but not exceeding 95% confidence, and that the topology defined by these modes is consistent with that of a Gaussian random-phase distribution (within 95% confidence).Comment: MNRAS LaTeX style (mn2e.cls), EPS and JPEG figure

Hybridization and Decay of Magnetic Excitations in two-dimensional Triangular Lattice Antiferromagnets

Elementary quasiparticles in solids such as phonons and magnons occasionally have nontrivial interactions between them, as well as among themselves. As a result, their energy eigenvalues are renormalized, the quasiparticles spontaneously decay into a multi-particle continuum state, or they are hybridized with each other when their energies are close. As discussed in this review, such anomalous features can appear dominantly in quantum magnets but are not, a priori, negligible for magnetic systems with larger spin values and noncollinear magnetic structures. We review the unconventional magnetic excitations in two-dimensional triangular lattice antiferromagnets and discuss their implications on related issues.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Optimal Remote State Estimation for Self-Propelled Particle Models

We investigate the design of a remote state estimation system for a self-propelled particle (SPP). Our framework consists of a sensing unit that accesses the full state of the SPP and an estimator that is remotely located from the sensing unit. The sensing unit must pay a cost when it chooses to transmit information on the state of the SPP to the estimator; and the estimator computes the best estimate of the state of the SPP based on received information. In this paper, we provide methods to design transmission policies and estimation rules for the sensing unit and estimator, respectively, that are optimal for a given cost functional that combines state estimation distortion and communication costs. We consider two notions of optimality: joint optimality and person-by-person optimality. Our main results show the existence of a jointly optimal solution and describe an iterative procedure to find a person-by-person optimal solution. In addition, we explain how the remote estimation scheme can be applied to tracking of animal movements over a costly communication link. We also provide experimental results to show the effectiveness of the scheme.Comment: a part of the article was submitted to IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 201