Conceptual design for spacelab pool boiling experiment

A pool boiling heat transfer experiment to be incorporated with a larger two-phase flow experiment on Spacelab was designed to confirm (or alter) the results of earth-normal gravity experiments which indicate that the hydrodynamic peak and minimum pool boiling heat fluxes vanish at very low gravity. Twelve small sealed test cells containing water, methanol or Freon 113 and cylindrical heaters of various sizes are to be built. Each cell will be subjected to one or more 45 sec tests in which the surface heat flux on the heaters is increased linearly until the surface temperature reaches a limiting value of 500 C. The entire boiling process will be photographed in slow-motion. Boiling curves will be constructed from thermocouple and electric input data, for comparison with the motion picture records. The conduct of the experiment will require no more than a few hours of operator time

On the Feasibility of Extending Social Experiments to Wider Applications

Background: When deciding how to allocate limited funds for social programs, policymakers and program managers increasingly ask for evidence of effectiveness based on studies that rely on solid methodology, providing credible scientific evidence. The basic claim for the “social experiment”—that the “coin flip” of randomization creates two statistically equivalent groups that do not diverge except through an intervention’s effects—makes resulting estimates unbiased. Despite the transparency and conceptual strength of the experimental strategy for revealing the causal connection between an intervention and the outcomes of its participants, the wisdom or feasibility of conducting social experiments is often questioned on a variety of grounds. Purpose: This article defines 15 common concerns about the viability and policy reliability of social experiments, in order to assess how much these issues need constrain the use of the method in providing policy evidence. Setting: NA Intervention: NA Research Design: The research uses the authors’ experience designing and conducting dozens of social experiments to examine the basis for and soundness of each concern.  It  provides examples from the scholarly literature and evaluations in practice of both the problems posed and responses to each issue. Data Collection and Analysis: NA Findings: We conclude that none of the 15 concerns precludes substantially extending the use of randomized experiments as a means of evaluating the impacts of government and foundation social policies and programs

Batrachospermum Roth. (Rhodophyta), a genus of red algae new to Iowa

Batrachospermum, a floridean red alga, is formally reported from Iowa. Populations have been observed by several workers at nine localities in eight counties: Black Hawk, Bremer, Des Moines, Dickinson, Dubuque, Emmet, Hancock, and Webster. The habitats include permanent and intermittent streams, a distrophic lake, and prairie marshes. To date, the species include B. ectocarpum Sir. from a stream in Webster County , and an undescribed species from a prairie marsh in Black Hawk County. A discussion of the taxonomy and occurrence of Batrachospermum in Iowa in presented. With this report, four genera of freshwater red algae are known from Iowa

Refractive Index of Humid Air in the Infrared: Model Fits

The theory of summation of electromagnetic line transitions is used to tabulate the Taylor expansion of the refractive index of humid air over the basic independent parameters (temperature, pressure, humidity, wavelength) in five separate infrared regions from the H to the Q band at a fixed percentage of Carbon Dioxide. These are least-squares fits to raw, highly resolved spectra for a set of temperatures from 10 to 25 C, a set of pressures from 500 to 1023 hPa, and a set of relative humidities from 5 to 60%. These choices reflect the prospective application to characterize ambient air at mountain altitudes of astronomical telescopes.Comment: Corrected exponents of c0ref, c1ref and c1p in Table

P3_6 Cavorite Pt 2: the Gravity of the Situation

We continue to explore the gravitational and atmospheric effects of Cavorite, a fictional material that is “opaque to gravitation”, by attempting to form a simplified gravitational model of the situation. This gravitational model was found to define the range at which gravitational acceleration will return to near normal as between 0.02 and 12 m. Further research is required to truly model the gravitational acceleration due to Cavorite

P3_3 On the Atmospheric Effects of Cavorite

We estimate the gravitational and atmospheric effects of a fictional substance known as Cavorite, a material proposed by H.G. Wells that is “opaque to gravitation”. We conclude that for a Cavorite sheet of radius 1 m the impact on the gravitational acceleration is only meaningful at less than 12 m above the plate, and is insignificant at heights greater than this. Therefore, the atmosphere is unlikely to vent away as claimed

P3_4 Elysium: Where'd the Atmosphere Go?

This paper determines whether the Elysium space station, from the 2013 film Elysium[1], could maintain an atmosphere. We found that Elysium, with a radius of 20 km[2], would not hold onto its atmosphere unless high wind speeds (183 ms^-1, 324 ms^-1, and 443 ms^-1; for the atmospheric rotations tested) are to be endured by its inhabitants

P3_9 Scooby and Shaggy: Metabolic Miracles

In the cartoon `What's New Scooby-Doo?' the characters Shaggy and Scooby are seen to eat large volumesof food without gaining any weight. Their effective temperatures in order to radiate away the excess energywere calculated to be T_Sh ~ 97 ± 033 °C for Shaggy, and T_Sc ~ 140 ± 43 °C for Scooby. It was concludedthat under normal circumstances, the subjects would perish of extreme hyperthermia. It was also notedthat Shaggy could survive if he was able to sweat continuously at the maximum rate for a human

P3_1 On the feasibility of neutrino sails

In this paper we consider whether a neutrino sail, a sheet of material absorbing neutrinos and gaining thrust from their momentum change, is a viable method of spacecraft propulsion. We calculate the thrust that could be achieved per unit area and compare this to that possible using a photon solar sail. We also calculate the thickness of sail necessary assuming that there are no special conditions under which the cross section for neutrino interactions with nuclei can be increased. We find that a thickness of 34000 light years would be necessary if a sheet of osmium were used, whereas neutron star matter could achieve this at 189 km thickness. We conclude that a neutrino sail is not a practical method of propulsion