Design and physical characteristics of the Transonic Aircraft Technology (TACT) research aircraft

The Transonic Aircraft Technology (TACT) research program provided data necessary to verify aerodynamic concepts, such as the supercritical wing, and to gain the confidence required for the application of such technology to advanced high performance aircraft. An F-111A aircraft was employed as the flight test bed to provide full scale data. The data were correlated extensively with predictions based on data obtained from wind tunnel tests. An assessment of the improvement afforded at transonic speeds in drag divergence, maneuvering performance, and airplane handling qualities by the use of the supercritical wing was included in the program. Transonic flight and wind tunnel testing techniques were investigated, and specific research technologies evaluated were also summarized

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF AGRICULTURAL POLICY REFORM: AN INTERREGIONAL COMPARISON

Mathematical programming results revealed that moving toward more flexible agricultural policies would generate substantial economic and environmental gains in a North Carolina diversified cropping region. But in a Washington-Idaho dryland grains region, only the use of relatively new and sometimes problematic alternative cropping systems permitted environmental and economic gains under policy reform. In both regions, a recoupling policy, which links government payments to resource-conserving farming practices, was needed to protect environmental quality when market prices for program crops were high.Agrichemical leaching, Agricultural policy, Alternative agriculture, Erosion, Mathematical programming, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Why Limits on Contributions to Super PACs Should Survive \u3ci\u3eCitizens United\u3c/i\u3e

Soon after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, the D.C. Circuit held all limits on contributions to super PACs unconstitutional. Its decision in SpeechNow.org v. FEC created a regime in which contributions to candidates are limited but in which contributions to less responsible groups urging votes for these candidates are unbounded. No legislator voted for this system of campaign financing, and the judgment that the Constitution requires it is astonishing. Forty-two years ago, Buckley v. Valeo held that Congress could limit contributions to candidates because these contributions are corrupting or create an appearance of corruption. According to the D.C. Circuit, however, Congress may not prohibit multi-million-dollar contributions to satellite campaigns because these contributions do not create even an appearance of corruption. The D.C. Circuit said that a single sentence of the Citizens United opinion compelled its result. It wrote, “In light of the Court’s holding as a matter of law that independent expenditures do not corrupt or create the appearance of corruption, contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures also cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption.” This Article contends that, contrary to the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning, contributions to super PACs can corrupt even when expenditures by these groups do not. Moreover, the statement that the D.C. Circuit took as its premise was dictum, and the Supreme Court did not mean this statement to be taken in the way the D.C. Circuit took it. The Supreme Court’s long-standing distinction between contribution limits and expenditure limits does not rest on the untenable proposition thatcandidates cannot be corrupted by funds paid to and spent on their behalf by others. Rather, Buckley noted five differences between contributions and expenditures. A review of these differences makes clear that contributions to super PACs cannot be distinguished from the contributions to candidates whose limitation the Court upheld. The ultimate question posed by Buckley is whether super PAC contributions create a sufficient appearance of corruption to justify their limitation. This Article reviews the statements of candidates of both parties in the 2016 presidential election, the views of Washington insiders, and public opinion polls. It shows that SpeechNow has sharpened class divisions and helped to tear America apart. The Justice Department did not seek Supreme Court review of the SpeechNow decision. In a statement that belongs on a historic list of wrong predictions, Attorney General Holder explained that the decision would “affect only a small subset of federally regulated contributions.” Although eight years have passed since SpeechNow, the Supreme Court has not decided whether the Constitution guarantees the right to give unlimited funds to super PACs. A final section of this Article describes the efforts of members of Congress and candidates for Congress to bring that question before the Court. The Federal Election Commission is opposing their efforts, offering arguments that, if accepted, would be likely to keep the Court from ever deciding the issue

Photoluminescence measurements of quantum-dot-containing semiconductor microdisk resonators using optical fiber taper waveguides

Fiber taper waveguides are used to improve the efficiency of room temperature photoluminescence measurements of AlGaAs microdisk resonant cavities with embedded self-assembled InAs quantum dots. As a near-field collection optic, the fiber taper improves the collection efficiency from microdisk lasers by a factor of ~ 15-100 times in comparison to conventional normal incidence free-space collection techniques. In addition, the fiber taper can serve as a efficient means for pumping these devices, and initial measurements employing fiber pumping and collection are presented. Implications of this work towards chip-based cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Using the LANDSAT data collection system for field geophysics: Operations in the British Virgin Islands

This particular application was to vertical geodesy by tide gauge and tiltmeter on a small desert island in the British Virgin Islands. The performance of the LANDSAT system under potentially marginal circumstances was found to be excellent

Adaption of the ex vivo mycobacterial growth inhibition assay for use with murine lung cells.

In the absence of a correlate(s) of protection against human tuberculosis and a validated animal model of the disease, tools to facilitate vaccine development must be identified. We present an optimised ex vivo mycobacterial growth inhibition assay (MGIA) to assess the ability of host cells within the lung to inhibit mycobacterial growth, including Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) Erdman. Growth of BCG was reduced by 0.39, 0.96 and 0.73 log10 CFU following subcutaneous (s.c.) BCG, intranasal (i.n.) BCG, or BCG s.c. + mucosal boost, respectively, versus naïve mice. Comparatively, a 0.49 (s.c.), 0.60 (i.n.) and 0.81 (s.c. + mucosal boost) log10 reduction in MTB CFU was found. A BCG growth inhibitor, 2-thiophenecarboxylic acid hydrazide (TCH), was used to prevent quantification of residual BCG from i.n. immunisation and allow accurate MTB quantification. Using TCH, a further 0.58 log10 reduction in MTB CFU was revealed in the i.n. group. In combination with existing methods, the ex vivo lung MGIA may represent an important tool for analysis of vaccine efficacy and the immune mechanisms associated with vaccination in the organ primarily affected by MTB disease

Optical loss and lasing characteristics of high-quality-factor AlGaAs microdisk resonators with embedded quantum dots

Optical characterization of AlGaAs microdisk resonant cavities with a quantum dot active region is presented. Direct passive measurement of the optical loss within AlGaAs microdisk resonant structures embedded with InAs/InGaAs dots-in-a-well (DWELL) is performed using an optical-fiber-based probing technique at a wavelength (lambda~1400 nm) that is red-detuned from the dot emission wavelength (lambda~1200 nm). Measurements in the 1400 nm wavelength band on microdisks of diameter D = 4.5 microns show that these structures support modes with cold-cavity quality factors as high as 360,000. DWELL-containing microdisks are then studied through optical pumping at room temperature. Pulsed lasing at lambda ~ 1200 nm is seen for cavities containing a single layer of InAs dots, with threshold values of ~ 17 microWatts, approaching the estimated material transparency level. Room-temperature continuous wave operation is also observed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Educational Innovations: Categories of Bulletin Board Postings Designed to Increase Awareness of Contemporary Pharmaceutical Policy Issues

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this project was to categorize and classify bulletin board postings pertaining to pharmaceutical policy from both the professional and lay press. METHODS: Bulletin board postings were used to supplement in-class discussion to keep students, faculty and staff up-to-date on emerging trends. A bulletin board located in the main classroom area of the College of Pharmacy Building where students would pass by on the way to class and congregate during break periods was used to display articles from various sources concerning topics related to pharmaceutical policy. Information is presented about the primary subject matters addressed in the articles, the types of publications from which they were drawn, and the top ten sources of articles displayed. RESULTS: This project showed that coverage of issues related to pharmacists is predominantly seen in newspapers and most pertinent issues are business related. CONCLUSIONS: It can be seen from this analysis that the issues facing pharmacists are varied. The pharmaceutical policy field is transforming and many of these changes are very relevant to the general population. This is seen from the coverage of all of these issues in the lay press

Superradiance for atoms trapped along a photonic crystal waveguide

We report observations of superradiance for atoms trapped in the near field of a photonic crystal waveguide (PCW). By fabricating the PCW with a band edge near the D$_1$ transition of atomic cesium, strong interaction is achieved between trapped atoms and guided-mode photons. Following short-pulse excitation, we record the decay of guided-mode emission and find a superradiant emission rate scaling as $\bar{\Gamma}_{\rm SR}\propto\bar{N}\cdot\Gamma_{\rm 1D}$ for average atom number $0.19 \lesssim \bar{N} \lesssim 2.6$ atoms, where $\Gamma_{\rm 1D}/\Gamma_0 =1.1\pm0.1$ is the peak single-atom radiative decay rate into the PCW guided mode and $\Gamma_{0}$ is the Einstein-$A$ coefficient for free space. These advances provide new tools for investigations of photon-mediated atom-atom interactions in the many-body regime.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Self-optimization of optical confinement in ultraviolet photonic crystal slab laser

We studied numerically and experimentally the effects of structural disorder on the performance of ultraviolet photonic crystal slab lasers. Optical gain selectively amplifies the high-quality modes of the passive system. For these modes, the in-plane and out-of-plane leakage rates may be automatically balanced in the presence of disorder. The spontaneous optimization of in-plane and out-of-plane confinement of light in a photonic crystal slab may lead to a reduction of the lasing threshold.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure