A generic operational simulation for early design civil unmanned aerial vehicles

Contemporary aerospace programmes often suffer from large cost overruns, delivery delays and inferior product quality. This is caused in part by poor predictive quality of the early design phase processes with regards to the operational environment of a product. This paper develops the idea of a generic operational simulation that can help designers to rigorously analyse and test their early product concepts. The simulation focusses on civil Unmanned Air Vehicle products and missions to keep the scope of work tractable. The research agenda is introduced along with ideas, initial results and future work. Designers specify details about their product, its environment and anticipated operational procedures. The simulation returns information that can help to estimate the value of the product using the value-driven design approach. Information will include recurring and non-recurring mission cost items. The research aim is to show that an operational simulation can improve early design concepts, thereby reducing delays and cost overruns. Moreover, a trade-off between mission fidelity and model generality is sought along with a generic ontology of civil Unmanned Air Vehicle missions and guidelines about capturing operational informatio

Geological and Petrological Studies of the Mikabu Greenstones in Eastern Shikoku, Southwest Japan

This paper presents geological and petrological studies on the Mikabu greenstones and their associated rocks in three areas in eastern Shikoku, i.e., Kamiyama (Myozai-gun, Tokushima Pref.), Higashiiya (Miyoshi-gun, Tokushima Pref.) — Toyonaga (Otoyo-cho, Nagaoka-gun, Kochi Pref.) and and Jizoji (Tosa-cho, Tosa-gun, Kochi Pref.) areas. An emphasis is placed on the analysis of geological structures of the Mikabu belt and its relation to the Sambagawa belt in the north and to the Chichibu belt in the south. Petrological and petrochemical characteristics of the Mikabu greenstones are analyzed and examined in order to compare them with those of typical ophiolites and with those of similar rocks of various origins. The major results are listed below. 1) The Mikabu belt is a large-scale nappe (Mikabu nappe) which is covered by the sedimentary se-quences of the Chichibu belt and overlies the Sambagawa crystalline schists across a thrust. The Mikabu nappe appears to have been thrust over the Sambagawa belt during the Late Triassic. 2) Folding in a large scale occurred in two distinct stages in the Mikabu belt, and they correspond to the Nagahama-Ozu phase and the Hijikawa phase (the Latest Jurassic or the Early Cretaceous) of de-formation in the Sambagawa belt. 3) The Mikabu greenstones consist of pillow lava — hyalocalastite sequence interbedded with thin layers of sediments (chert, pelite and limestone), diabase dikes and gabbro sills intruded into the volcanic sequence, and peridotite-gabbro complexes. The peridotite-gabbro complexes occur as small lenses (less than about 500 m in major axis) mostly aligned in rows parallel to the thrusts within the Mikabu belt, and they seem to have been taken tectonically into the Mikabu belt in a solid state nearly contemporaneously with the movement of the Mikabu nappe. The Mikabu greenstones do not show the complete sequence of typical ophiolites. 4) Petrochemical analysis of the volcanic rocks reveals that picrite-basalts, tholeiitic basalts and alkali basalts coexist within the Mikabu greenstones. This is in marked contrast with typical ophiolites which consist of abyssal tholeiites. The origin of the Mikabu greenstones can not be explained as being derived from a single magma. 5) The tholeiitic basalts in the Mikabu greenstones are similar to abyssal tholeiites which have been depleted in incompatible elements. But the Mikabu tholeiites are poorer in A12O3 than are the abyssal tholeiites, and in this respect they are similar to oceanic-island tholeiites. 6) Based mainly on the petrochemical data of the Mikabu tholeiites combined with geological data on the Mikabu belt and its surrounding areas, it is argued that the Mikabu greenstones probably formed during the Early Pennsylvanian or slightly before in a marginal basin. This conclusion is still somewhat speculative and complete understanding of the origin of the Mikabu greenstones must await future studies.Doctoral thesis (Science) presented to the Hiroshima University in 198

Trimmed Density Ratio Estimation

Density ratio estimation is a vital tool in both machine learning and statistical community. However, due to the unbounded nature of density ratio, the estimation procedure can be vulnerable to corrupted data points, which often pushes the estimated ratio toward infinity. In this paper, we present a robust estimator which automatically identifies and trims outliers. The proposed estimator has a convex formulation, and the global optimum can be obtained via subgradient descent. We analyze the parameter estimation error of this estimator under high-dimensional settings. Experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the estimator.Comment: Made minor revisions. Restructured the introductory section

BLOODHOUND@University workshop discussion and ideas

This is the summary of the lively discussion at the bLOODHOUND@University kick-off meeting held at the University of the West of England Bristol on 15th September 2009

Preferred Lattice Orientation of Quartz in Shear Deformation

The quartz fabrics of shear belts in granite of the Teshima district, Kagawa Pref., Japan, have been examined, in order to understand the nature of preferred lattice orientation of quartz developed by shear deformation. The strains in the shear belts are referred to the type of two dimensional strain with rotation. The stable pattern of the c-axis fabric of quartz in the shear belts appears in shear strain larger than ca. 1.80 and is characterized by two maxima with wide spreading on "pseudo-two-girdle", showing approximately orthorhombic symmetry whose symmetry planes are parallel to the principal planes of the strain ellipsoid of mean strain of the system concerned. The positions of two maxima coincide with the intersecting points of the "pseudo-two-girdle" which are situated on the plane containing the shortest and the intermediate principal axes of strain ellipsoid at the angle of ca. 30° to the latter axis. The one component girdle of the "pseudo-two-girdle" is a partial great-cicle girdle containing the two maxima and the intermediate principal axis, and the other component girdle would be regarded as two cro-ssed small-circle-like girdles, which cut across the plane of the longest and the shortest principal axes of the strain ellipsoid at the angle of ca. 40° to the latter axis, and whose intersecting points correspond to the positions of the two maxima. It has been concluded that the c-axis fabrics of quartz in the shear belts are mainly determined by the principal strain

Time-domain Ramsey interferometry with interacting Rydberg atoms

We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a gas of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms subject to a time-domain Ramsey interferometry protocol. The many-body dynamics is governed by an Ising-type Hamiltonian with long range interactions of tunable strength. We analyze and model the contrast degradation and phase accumulation of the Ramsey signal and identify scaling laws for varying interrogation times, ensemble densities, and ensemble dimensionalities.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure