Assessment of possible environmental effects of space shuttle operations

The potential of shuttle operations to contribute to atmospheric pollution is investigated. Presented in this interim report are results of the study to date on rocket exhaust inventory, exhaust interactions, dispersion of the ground cloud, detection and measurement of hydrochloric acid and aluminum oxide, environmental effects of hydrochloric acid and aluminum oxide, stratospheric effects of shuttle effluents, and mesospheric and ionospheric effects of orbiter reentry. The results indicate space shuttle operation will not result in adverse environmental effects if appropriate launch constraints are met

Expansion of the half retinal projection to the tectum in goldfish: An electrophysiological and Anatomical study

The topographical retino-tectal projection of goldfish was electrophysiologically mapped at various intervals after surgical removal of the nasal half of the retina and pigment epithelium. The remaining projection was initially restricted to the appropriate rostral half of the tectum, even if the nerve was crushed and allowed to regenerate. But later, after 137 days or more, it showed a progressive expansion onto the foreign caudal half of the tectum. The magnification factor, the number of micrometers of tectum per degree in the visual field, doubled in the rostro-caudal but not in the medio-lateral direction. Analysis of the sequence of the expansion showed that a few fibers originally projecting nearest the denervated area were the first to spread over it. Then, progressively more fibers moved caudally until a nearly uniform representation of the half retina was established on the tectum. Radioautography also demonstrated that retinal fiber terminals had invaded the caudal tectum. The retinae of these fish were also examined histologically. The density of ganglion cells had not increased, but they consistently showed the axonal reaction. This was not found to be associated with any initial surgical trauma, but rather with the movement of their fiber terminals within the tectum. Frozen sections, through half retinal and normal eyes, were cut and photographed for comparison of ocular geometry. Operated eyes were normal except for a slight but consistent loss of ocular volume. Analysis of the optical geometry showed that recording with fish in air produced two effects: Myopia (10° blur circle, or less) and enlargement of the visual field by 15% to 20%.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50003/1/901770206_ftp.pd

Impact of space shuttle orbiter reentry on mesospheric NOx.

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76223/1/AIAA-1973-525-785.pd

Engineering a new loop-free shortest paths routing algorithm

International audienceWe present LFR (Loop Free Routing), a new loop-free distance vector routing algorithm, which is able to update the shortest paths of a distributed network with n nodes in fully dynamic scenarios. If Phi is the total number of nodes affected by a set of updates to the network, and phi is the maximum number of destinations for which a node is affected, then LFR requires O(Phi*Delta) messages and O(n + phi*Delta) space per node, where Delta is the maximum degree of the nodes of the network. We experimentally compare LFR with DUAL, one of the most popular loop-free distance vector algorithms, which is part of CISCO's EIGRP protocol and requires O(Phi*Delta) messages and Θ(n*Delta) space per node. The experiments are based on both real-world and artificial instances and show that LFR is always the best choice in terms of memory require- ments, while in terms of messages LFR outperforms DUAL on real-world instances, whereas DUAL is the best choice on artificial instances

Reasoning mechanism for cardinal direction relations

In the classical Projection-based Model for cardinal directions [6], a two-dimensional Euclidean space relative to an arbitrary single-piece region, a, is partitioned into the following nine tiles: North-West, NW(a); North, N(a); North-East, NE(a); West, W(a); Neutral Zone, O(a);East, E(a); South-West, SW(a); South, S(a); and South-East,SE(a). In our Horizontal and Vertical Constraints Model [9], [10] these cardinal directions are decomposed into sets corresponding to horizontal and vertical constraints. Composition is computed for these sets instead of the typical individual cardinal directions. In this paper, we define several whole and part direction relations followed by showing how to compose such relations using a formula introduced in our previous paper [10]. In order to develop a more versatile reasoning system for direction relations, we shall integrate mereology, topology, cardinal directions and include their negations as well. © 2010 Springer-Verlag

Anisotropic Local Stress and Particle Hopping in a Deeply Supercooled Liquid

The origin of the microscopic motions that lead to stress relaxation in deeply supercooled liquid remains unclear. We show that in such a liquid the stress relaxation is locally anisotropic which can serve as the driving force for the hopping of the system on its free energy surface. However, not all hopping are equally effective in relaxing the local stress, suggesting that diffusion can decouple from viscosity even at local level. On the other hand, orientational relaxation is found to be always coupled to stress relaxation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Trends in source gases

Source gases are defined as those gases that, by their breakdown, introduce into the stratosphere halogen, hydrogen, and nitrogen compounds that are important in stratospheric ozone destruction. Given here is an update of the existing concentration time series for chlorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and methane. Also reviewed is information on halogen containing species and the use of these data for establishing trends. Also reviewed is evidence on trends in trace gases that influence tropospheric chemistry and thus the tropospheric lifetimes of source gases, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, or nitrogen oxides. Much of the information is given in tabular form

Enhancing the computation of distributed shortest paths on real dynamic networks

International audienceThe problem of finding and updating shortest paths in distributed networks is considered crucial in today's practical applications. In the recent past, there has been a renewed interest in devising new efficient distance-vector algorithms as an attractive alternative to link-state solutions for large-scale Ethernet networks, in which scalability and reliability are key issues or the nodes can have limited storage capabilities. In this paper we present Distributed Computation Pruning (DCP), a new technique, which can be combined with every distance-vector routing algorithm based on shortest paths, allowing to reduce the total number of messages sent by that algorithm and its space occupancy per node. To check its effectiveness, we combined DCP with DUAL (Diffuse Update ALgorithm), one of the most popular distance-vector algorithm in the literature, which is part of CISCO's widely used EIGRP protocol, and with the recently introduced LFR (Loop Free Routing) which has been shown to have good performances on real networks. We give experimental evidence that these combinations lead to a significant gain both in terms of number of messages sent and memory requirements per node

Structural Relaxation, Self Diffusion and Kinetic Heterogeneity in the Two Dimensional Lattice Coulomb Gas

We present Monte Carlo simulation results on the equilibrium relaxation dynamics in the two dimensional lattice Coulomb gas, where finite fraction $f$ of the lattice sites are occupied by positive charges. In the case of high order rational values of $f$ close to the irrational number $1-g$ ($g\equiv(\sqrt{5} -1)/2$ is the golden mean), we find that the system exhibits, for wide range of temperatures above the first-order transition, a glassy behavior resembling the primary relaxation of supercooled liquids. Single particle diffusion and structural relaxation show that there exists a breakdown of proportionality between the time scale of diffusion and that of structural relaxation analogous to the violation of the Stokes-Einstein relation in supercooled liquids. Suitably defined dynamic cooperativity is calculated to exhibit the characteristic nature of dynamic heterogeneity present in the system.Comment: 12 pages, 20 figure