Water Vapour Content of the Atmosphere in Relation to Surface Humidity

The theoretical relationship between precipitate water vapour in the atmosphere & surface humidity has been investigated. By introducing the concept of a lapse parameter alpha, a method has been devised for estimation of precipitable water vapour. Results have been compared for six Indian Stations for which upper air data were available

Aids Awareness, Knowledge And Attitude Amongst The Senior Secondary School Teachers In East Delhi Schools

Research Problem: What is the level of awareness about AIDS amongst senior secondary school teach­ers? Objective: To study the level of awareness, knowl­edge and attitudes regarding HIV/AIDS amongst senior secondary school teachers. Study Design: Cross-sectional study by question­naire method. Setting: 2 randomly selected government schools of East. Delhi. Sample Size: 74 school teachers. Study Variables: Mode of transmission, preventive measures, social outcasting, Family Life Style Edu­cation. Statistical Analysis: By tests of significance. Result: 25.6% respondents thought that HIV/AIDS was curable after IEC intervention. In general, the awareness level increased after the IEC intervention. 77% of the teachers recommended that Family Life Style Education should be started from middle school level onwards. 47.2% recommended doctors as the most suitable persons to impart the same

Fe XI emission lines in a high resolution extreme ultraviolet spectrum obtained by SERTS

New calculations of radiative rates and electron impact excitation cross sections for Fe XI are used to derive emission line intensity ratios involving 3s^23p^4 - 3s^23p^33d transitions in the 180-223 A wavelength range. These ratios are subsequently compared with observations of a solar active region, obtained during the 1995 flight Solar EUV Research Telescope and Spectrograph (SERTS). The version of SERTS flown in 1995 incorporated a multilayer grating that enhanced the instrumental sensitivity for features in the 170 - 225 A wavelength range, observed in second-order between 340 and 450 A. This enhancement led to the detection of many emission lines not seen on previous SERTS flights, which were measured with the highest spectral resolution (0.03 A) ever achieved for spatially resolved active region spectra in this wavelength range. However, even at this high spectral resolution, several of the Fe XI lines are found to be blended, although the sources of the blends are identified in the majority of cases. The most useful Fe XI electron density diagnostic line intensity ratio is I(184.80 A)/I(188.21 A). This ratio involves lines close in wavelength and free from blends, and which varies by a factor of 11.7 between N_e = 10^9 and 10^11 cm^-3, yet shows little temperature sensitivity. An unknown line in the SERTS spectrum at 189.00 A is found to be due to Fe XI, the first time (to our knowledge) this feature has been identified in the solar spectrum. Similarly, there are new identifications of the Fe XI 192.88, 198.56 and 202.42 A features, although the latter two are blended with S VIII/Fe XII and Fe XIII, respectively.Comment: 21 pages, 9 gigures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Load-Balancing for Parallel Delaunay Triangulations

Computing the Delaunay triangulation (DT) of a given point set in $\mathbb{R}^D$ is one of the fundamental operations in computational geometry. Recently, Funke and Sanders (2017) presented a divide-and-conquer DT algorithm that merges two partial triangulations by re-triangulating a small subset of their vertices - the border vertices - and combining the three triangulations efficiently via parallel hash table lookups. The input point division should therefore yield roughly equal-sized partitions for good load-balancing and also result in a small number of border vertices for fast merging. In this paper, we present a novel divide-step based on partitioning the triangulation of a small sample of the input points. In experiments on synthetic and real-world data sets, we achieve nearly perfectly balanced partitions and small border triangulations. This almost cuts running time in half compared to non-data-sensitive division schemes on inputs exhibiting an exploitable underlying structure.Comment: Short version submitted to EuroPar 201

Emission lines of Fe XI in the 257--407 A wavelength region observed in solar spectra from EIS/Hinode and SERTS

Theoretical emission-line ratios involving Fe XI transitions in the 257-407 A wavelength range are derived using fully relativistic calculations of radiative rates and electron impact excitation cross sections. These are subsequently compared with both long wavelength channel Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) spectra from the Hinode satellite (covering 245-291 A), and first-order observations (235-449 A) obtained by the Solar Extreme-ultraviolet Research Telescope and Spectrograph (SERTS). The 266.39, 266.60 and 276.36 A lines of Fe XI are detected in two EIS spectra, confirming earlier identifications of these features, and 276.36 A is found to provide an electron density diagnostic when ratioed against the 257.55 A transition. Agreement between theory and observation is found to be generally good for the SERTS data sets, with discrepancies normally being due to known line blends, while the 257.55 A feature is detected for the first time in SERTS spectra. The most useful Fe XI electron density diagnostic is found to be the 308.54/352.67 intensity ratio, which varies by a factor of 8.4 between N_e = 10^8 and 10^11 cm^-3, while showing little temperature sensitivity. However, the 349.04/352.67 ratio potentially provides a superior diagnostic, as it involves lines which are closer in wavelength, and varies by a factor of 14.7 between N_e = 10^8 and 10^11 cm^-3. Unfortunately, the 349.04 A line is relatively weak, and also blended with the second-order Fe X 174.52 A feature, unless the first-order instrument response is enhanced.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 13 tables; MNRAS in pres

CHIANTI - an Atomic Database for Emission Lines. Paper VI: Proton Rates and Other Improvements

The CHIANTI atomic database contains atomic energy levels, wavelengths, radiative transition probabilities and electron excitation data for a large number of ions of astrophysical interest. Version 4 has been released, and proton excitation data is now included, principally for ground configuration levels that are close in energy. The fitting procedure for excitation data, both electrons and protons, has been extended to allow 9 point spline fits in addition to the previous 5 point spline fits. This allows higher quality fits to data from close-coupling calculations where resonances can lead to significant structure in the Maxwellian-averaged collision strengths. The effects of photoexcitation and stimulated emission by a blackbody radiation field in a spherical geometry on the level balance equations of the CHIANTI ions can now be studied following modifications to the CHIANTI software. With the addition of H I, He I and N I, the first neutral species have been added to CHIANTI. Many updates to existing ion data-sets are described, while several new ions have been added to the database, including Ar IV, Fe VI and Ni XXI. The two-photon continuum is now included in the spectral synthesis routines, and a new code for calculating the relativistic free-free continuum has been added. The treatment of the free-bound continuum has also been updated.Comment: CHIANTI is available at http://wwwsolar.nrl.navy.mil/chianti.htm

Fluctuations as probe of the QCD phase transition and freeze-out in heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC

We discuss the relevance of higher order moments of net baryon number fluctuations for the analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC. Using properties of O(4) scaling functions, we discuss the generic structure of these higher moments at vanishing baryon chemical potential and apply chiral model calculations to explore their properties at non-zero baryon chemical potential. We show that the ratios of the sixth to second and eighth to second order moments of the net baryon number fluctuations change rapidly in the transition region of the QCD phase diagram. Already at vanishing baryon chemical potential they deviate considerably from the predictions of the hadron resonance gas model which reproduce the second to fourth order moments of the net proton number fluctuations at RHIC. We point out that the sixth order moments of baryon number and electric charge fluctuations remain negative at the chiral transition temperature. Thus, they offer the possibility to probe the proximity of the thermal freeze-out to the crossover line.Comment: 24 pages, 12 EPS files, revised version, to appear in EPJ

The coronal FeXXI 1354.094 line in AB Doradus

The active late-type star AB Doradus was observed in February 1996 with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph of the Hubble Space Telescope using the low resolution G140L grating. The observations covered one half of the star's rotation cycle (P = 0.514 d) with 11.5 min time resolution. The strong coronal Fe XXI 1354.094 line formed at 10^7 K was analysed and its emission measure (EM) derived. This EM is much higher than that derived from recent XMM-Newton observations (Guedel et al. 2001), and earlier EXOSAT (Collier Cameron et al. 1988) and ASCA/EUVE (Mewe et al. 1996) data, as well, requiring a variability by a factor of 5. The physical reason for the variability remains unknown, since (outside flares) the observed broad band variability of AB Dor is much smaller.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for Astronomy and Astrophysics, May 200

Event-by-Event Fluctuations in Particle Multiplicities and Transverse Energy Produced in 158.A GeV Pb+Pb collisions

Event-by-event fluctuations in the multiplicities of charged particles and photons, and the total transverse energy in 158$\cdot A$ GeV Pb+Pb collisions are studied for a wide range of centralities. For narrow centrality bins the multiplicity and transverse energy distributions are found to be near perfect Gaussians. The effect of detector acceptance on the multiplicity fluctuations has been studied and demonstrated to follow statistical considerations. The centrality dependence of the charged particle multiplicity fluctuations in the measured data has been found to agree reasonably well with those obtained from a participant model. However for photons the multiplicity fluctuations has been found to be lower compared to those obtained from a participant model. The multiplicity and transverse energy fluctuations have also been compared to those obtained from the VENUS event generator.Comment: To appear in Physical Review C; changes : more detailed discussion on errors and few figures modifie

Best Practices for Reliable and Robust Spacecraft Structures

A study was undertaken to capture the best practices for the development of reliable and robust spacecraft structures for NASA s next generation cargo and crewed launch vehicles. In this study, the NASA heritage programs such as Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program were examined. A series of lessons learned during the NASA and DoD heritage programs are captured. The processes that "make the right structural system" are examined along with the processes to "make the structural system right". The impact of technology advancements in materials and analysis and testing methods on reliability and robustness of spacecraft structures is studied. The best practices and lessons learned are extracted from these studies. Since the first human space flight, the best practices for reliable and robust spacecraft structures appear to be well established, understood, and articulated by each generation of designers and engineers. However, these best practices apparently have not always been followed. When the best practices are ignored or short cuts are taken, risks accumulate, and reliability suffers. Thus program managers need to be vigilant of circumstances and situations that tend to violate best practices. Adherence to the best practices may help develop spacecraft systems with high reliability and robustness against certain anomalies and unforeseen events