Highly integrated digital electronic control: Digital flight control, aircraft model identification, and adaptive engine control

The highly integrated digital electronic control (HIDEC) program at NASA Ames Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Facility is a multiphase flight research program to quantify the benefits of promising integrated control systems. McDonnell Aircraft Company is the prime contractor, with United Technologies Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, and Lear Siegler Incorporated as major subcontractors. The NASA F-15A testbed aircraft was modified by the HIDEC program by installing a digital electronic flight control system (DEFCS) and replacing the standard F100 (Arab 3) engines with F100 engine model derivative (EMD) engines equipped with digital electronic engine controls (DEEC), and integrating the DEEC's and DEFCS. The modified aircraft provides the capability for testing many integrated control modes involving the flight controls, engine controls, and inlet controls. This paper focuses on the first two phases of the HIDEC program, which are the digital flight control system/aircraft model identification (DEFCS/AMI) phase and the adaptive engine control system (ADECS) phase

OBSERVING EXOPLANET TRANSITS WITH THE CITIZEN CONTINENTAL-AMERICA TELESCOPIC ECLIPSE (CATE) EXPERIMENT TELESCOPE NETWORK

The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment established a standardized set of observation procedures and 72 volunteer observation teams with identical equipment along the path of the 2017 total solar eclipse. CATE successfully imaged the solar corona from 66 of the 72 observation sites resulting in a high dynamic range animation of 90 minutes of solar corona data collected by volunteer citizen science teams. A subgroup of CATE began work in the fall of 2017 to evaluate use of the standard CATE observation setup for exoplanet transit observations. Light curves and analysis of data using AstroImageJ of two well know transiting exoplanets, HD209458b (V = 7.65, depth = 1.5%) and HD189733b (V= 7.67, depth=2.4%) are presented along with modifications to CATE telescopes required for successful exoplanet follow up observations

Is the magnitude of the Peccei-Quinn scale set by the landscape?

Rather general considerations of the string theory landscape imply a mild statistical draw towards large soft SUSY breaking terms tempered by the requirement of proper electroweak symmetry breaking where SUSY contributions to the weak scale are not too far from m(weak)~ 100 GeV. Such a picture leads to the prediction that m_h~ 125 GeV while most sparticles are beyond current LHC reach. Here we explore the possibility that the magnitude of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) scale f_a is also set by string landscape considerations within the framework of a compelling SUSY axion model. First, we examine the case where the PQ symmetry arises as an accidental approximate global symmetry from a more fundamental gravity-safe Z(24)^R symmetry and where the SUSY mu parameter arises from a Kim-Nilles operator. The pull towards large soft terms then also pulls the PQ scale as large as possible. Unless this is tempered by rather severe (unknown) cosmological or anthropic bounds on the density of dark matter, then we would expect a far greater abundance of dark matter than is observed. This conclusion cannot be negated by adopting a tiny axion misalignment angle theta_i because WIMPs are also overproduced at large f_a. Hence, we conclude that setting the PQ scale via anthropics is highly unlikely. Instead, requiring soft SUSY breaking terms of order the gravity-mediation scale m_{3/2}~ 10-100 TeV places the mixed axion-neutralino dark matter abundance into the intermediate scale sweet zone where f_a~ 10^{11}-10^{12} GeV. We compare our analysis to the more general case of a generic SUSY DFSZ axion model with uniform selection on theta_i but leading to the measured dark matter abundance: this approach leads to a preference for f_a~ 10^{12} GeV.Comment: 24 pages plus 10 figure

Measuring Whitespace Patterns as an Indication of Plagiarism

There are several different methods of comparing source code from different programs to find copying1 . Perhaps the most common method is comparing source code statements, comments, strings, identifiers, and instruction sequences. However, there are anecdotes about the use of whitespace patterns in code. These virtually invisible patterns of spaces and tabs have been used in litigation to imply copying, but no formal study has been performed that shows that these patterns can actually identify copied code. This paper presents a detailed study of whitespace patterns and the uniqueness of these patterns in different programs. Keywords: Copyright Infringement, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Open Source, Plagiarism, Source Code, Source Code Similarity, Whitespace

On the Role of Volterra Integral Equations in Self-Consistent, Product-Limit, Inverse Probability of Censoring Weighted, and Redistribution-to-the-Right Estimators for the Survival Function

This paper reconsiders several results of historical and current importance to nonparametric estimation of the survival distribution for failure in the presence of right-censored observation times, demonstrating in particular how Volterra integral equations of the first kind help inter-connect the resulting estimators. The paper begins by considering Efron's self-consistency equation, introduced in a seminal 1967 Berkeley symposium paper. Novel insights provided in the current work include the observations that (i) the self-consistency equation leads directly to an anticipating Volterra integral equation of the first kind whose solution is given by a product-limit estimator for the censoring survival function; (ii) a definition used in this argument immediately establishes the familiar product-limit estimator for the failure survival function; (iii) the usual Volterra integral equation for the product-limit estimator of the failure survival function leads to an immediate and simple proof that it can be represented as an inverse probability of censoring weighted estimator (i.e., under appropriate conditions). Finally, we show that the resulting inverse probability of censoring weighted estimators, attributed to a highly influential 1992 paper of Robins and Rotnitzky, were implicitly introduced in Efron's 1967 paper in its development of the redistribution-to-the-right algorithm. All results developed herein allow for ties between failure and/or censored observations.Comment: 21 page