Project Chariot - Phase III: Progress Report

This is a preliminary report and is NOT FOR PUBLICATIONBotanical investigations of the Cape Thompson - Ogotoruk Creek region of northwest Alaska were initiated in May, 1959 by the University of Alaska under contract with the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Contract No. AT (04 -3 ) - 310). The first summer's field work was largely exploratory and descriptive in nature and included a species inventory of the vascular plants, mosses, and lichens; a qualitative description of the main vegetation types in Ogotoruk Valley; and a preliminary mapping of the vegetation types within the valley. The results of the first summer's field work and winter visits have been partially reported in two reports: Ogotoruk Valley Botanical Project, December, 1959 Report, and the Phase II Interim Pinal Report, Ogotoruk Valley Botanical Project, June, 1960. For brevity, these will be referred to as the December, 1959 Botanical Report, and the June, 1960 Botanical Report. Materials reported in these earlier reports will not be repeated in this December, 1960 report. Botanical investigations were continued during the summer and fall of 1960. The objectives of the 1960 field season were as follows: 1. To measure the frequency, cover, and synthetic features of the main vegetation types in Ogotoruk Valley. 2. To establish control vegetation plots in areas outside the potential blast and fallout area and to extend our understanding of the vegetation of the northwestern Alaska Coast. 3. To complete records of species occurrence in the area by continuing plant collections and identifications. 4. To revise and complete the vegetation map of the area. 5. To continue seed germination studies on certain species. 6. To commence palynological studies of bog and lacustrine sediments. 7. To initiate studies on some of the ecological problems in the Ogotoruk Valley area. a. to understand the relationship between permafrost, annual freezing-thawing cycles, and plant distribution. b. to understand the inter-relationships of the activities of the arctic ground squirrel and vegetation in the valley. Preliminary results of the 1960 field work and additional information from the 1959 season are included in this report

Phytic acid degradation by phytase – as viewed by 31P NMR and multivariate curve resolution

The 31P NMR method is a most direct and useful method to describe the degradation of phytic acid to lower inositol phosphates by the action of the enzyme phytase. The use of chemometric and CARS visualizes and helps in the interpretation of the results. By means of LatentiX it has been possible to visualize the time-dependent hydrolysis of phytic acid and by PCA the complexity of the phytic acid is shown in the score plots. By modeling the spectra in CARS it is possible to identify and quantify each of the inositol phosphates

Learning a Structured Neural Network Policy for a Hopping Task

In this work we present a method for learning a reactive policy for a simple dynamic locomotion task involving hard impact and switching contacts where we assume the contact location and contact timing to be unknown. To learn such a policy, we use optimal control to optimize a local controller for a fixed environment and contacts. We learn the contact-rich dynamics for our underactuated systems along these trajectories in a sample efficient manner. We use the optimized policies to learn the reactive policy in form of a neural network. Using a new neural network architecture, we are able to preserve more information from the local policy and make its output interpretable in the sense that its output in terms of desired trajectories, feedforward commands and gains can be interpreted. Extensive simulations demonstrate the robustness of the approach to changing environments, outperforming a model-free gradient policy based methods on the same tasks in simulation. Finally, we show that the learned policy can be robustly transferred on a real robot.Comment: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 201

Geolinguistics and haematology : the case of Britain

The spatial stratification of human and cultural facts on the one hand and of biological facts on the other have indeed attracted scholars' attention for a rather long time. With the discovery of the human blood groups in Würzburg, near Bamberg, Germany, early this century these interdisciplinary attempts gained new momentum. Is there a connection between blood group and membership in a tribe or race and between blood group and language, even between dialectal differences within individual languages? The latter aspect is being addressed in this article mainly with regard to England

Remodelling of an Oil Platform

The objective of this project is to show that a total misappropriation of a technical structure is possible and also that it can be used in a commercial way. The remit of this project is, to divert an overage oil platform from her intended use, with the primary target, to remodel it into a commercial useable entertainment island. However the current structure should be left sustainable as far as possible and should be integrated and shown in the remodeling. Due to the fact that an oil drilling rig has an enormous effective area, it is now possible, to generate facilities like hotels, restaurants, entertainment- and exhibition areas, as well as living space. Also the transport connection and the required infrastructures should be assured to fulfill the high claims of the prospective patronage. Via architectonical aspects should be visualized, that nothing advises the visitor, that he is located on an oil platform far away from the coast. Design plans, detailed plans, models and 3D studies will show how far misappropriations of structures, which have been only functionally so far, can be possible also in an economic and reasonable wa