Examples of finite element mesh generation using SDRC IDEAS

IDEAS (Integrated Design Engineering Analysis Software) offers a comprehensive package for mechanical design engineers. Due to its multifaceted capabilities, however, it can be manipulated to serve the needs of electrical engineers, also. IDEAS can be used to perform the following tasks: system modeling, system assembly, kinematics, finite element pre/post processing, finite element solution, system dynamics, drafting, test data analysis, and project relational database

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Fundamental Rights in the European Community Legal Order

The role of the courts in the protection of human rights in any legal system is a constitutionally sensitive one. The observance and protection of such rights articulate with many aspects of the exercise of governmental and legislative power. The value nature of human rights accentuates these sensibilities. Some have viewed sovereign law as an essential ingredient in the make-up of national identity, a perception which tends to confirm a presumption that legal systems, while responsive to new pressures, are nonetheless holistic, coherent, and state-bound. National law is a rampart against outside corruption of the national ethos. Inevitably all of this poses particular challenges for a supranational court with jurisdiction to pass judgment on human rights compliance, directly or indirectly, by states that are justly proud of their own legal democratic traditions. The exercise by the European Court of Justice (“Court of Justice” or “Court”) of jurisdiction to protect the individual from breaches of their fundamental rights is a constitutional role which trammels not only the exercise of political power by the institutions of the European Community (the “Community”) but indirectly (and often directly) the use of governmental and legislative power at a national level. This constitutional role, exercised in the context of the doctrines of primacy and direct effect, challenges the ideology of a state\u27s legal autonomy and the associated sense of self-determination. Not surprisingly, the Court of Justice at the early stages showed a marked reluctance to be drawn into this area

An apparent medieval stereogram incorporating a symbol for optical illusion

Stereograms mark a threshold in understanding visual perception. Modern study of stereopsis began with Wheatstone's invention of the stereogram and stereoscope (~ 1832), important tools in vision research and technical imagery ever since. Stereoscopic images formed with frieze and wallpaper patterns in illuminated Insular manuscripts such as the Book of Durrow (~ 680 CE), Lindisfarne Gospels (~ 700-720), and Book of Kells (~ 800) show that, long before spectacle-quality magnifying lenses (~ 1286), illuminators somehow copied multicolored, microscopically detailed designs _freehand_ with an accuracy unsurpassed in scientific instruments until the Renaissance (but well within the power of normally sighted humans' stereoscopic discrimination). If the artists accomplished this feat by free fusion using the unaided eyes as a magnifying stereocomparator, as suggested, they should have been able to create autostereograms. Did they? Here I report two examples of an apparent stereopair from the Book of Durrow, which gives a sharp, strongly three-dimensional image that includes, among other symbols, an eye-shaped sign identified with mirages (Fig. 1). Apparently, precocious empirical knowledge of stereopsis played more than a technical role in the creation of some of the world's more famous graphic art

An Early Warning System for Asteroid Impact

Earth is bombarded by meteors, occasionally by one large enough to cause a significant explosion and possible loss of life. Although the odds of a deadly asteroid strike in the next century are low, the most likely impact is by a relatively small asteroid, and we suggest that the best mitigation strategy in the near term is simply to move people out of the way. We describe an "early warning" system that could provide a week's notice of most sizable asteroids or comets on track to hit the Earth. This system, dubbed "Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System" (ATLAS), comprises two observatories separated by about 100km that simultaneously scan the visible sky twice a night, and can be implemented immediately for relatively low cost. The sensitivity of ATLAS permits detection of 140m asteroids (100 Mton impact energy) three weeks before impact, and 50m asteroids a week before arrival. An ATLAS alarm, augmented by other observations, should result in a determination of impact location and time that is accurate to a few kilometers and a few seconds. In addition to detecting and warning of approaching asteroids, ATLAS will continuously monitor the changing universe around us: most of the variable stars in our galaxy, many micro-lensing events from stellar alignments, luminous stars and novae in nearby galaxies, thousands of supernovae, nearly a million quasars and active galactic nuclei, tens of millions of galaxies, and a billion stars. With two views per day ATLAS will make the variable universe as familiar to us as the sunrise and sunset.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in PASP, Jan 201