1,655 research outputs found
The GEOSAT Follow-on (GFO) Altimeter
The NAVY GEOSAT Mission (1985-1990) demonstrated the ability of an altimeter equipped satellite to provide global measurements of mesoscale ocean features with 3 centimeter precision. The GEOSAT radar altimeter, developed by JHU/APL, was an enormous success. Built with early 1980\u27s technology, the GEOSAT altimeter weighed 191 pounds and consumed 146 watts. The GFO radar altimeter, under development by E-Systems Inc., will achieve the GEOSAT measurement capability, but at one-third the weight and one-half the power (48 pounds, excluding antenna, and 76 watts). The GFO altimeter uses the same proven linear FM waveform, pulse repetition frequency (PRF), pulse compression technique, and alpha-beta tracker design as the GEOSAT radar altimeter, but takes advantage of current RF and digital signal processing technologies to produce an instrument that is both light-weight and reliable. Also, thanks to a cooperative working relationship with JHU/APL, the GFO radar altimeter design encompasses lessons learned from both the GEOSAT and TOPEX programs. Analysis of the range, waveheight, and back-scattering cross section performance indicates that the GFO altimeter will achieve the GEOSAT performance in all areas. Finally, the GFO altimeter design encompasses features allowing economical expansion; including a C-band channel for improved range accuracy, and a 33% higher PRF for improved instrument noise performance. The GFO dual-channel altimeter would weigh 107 pounds and consume 156 watts
Event-related potentials in autistic and healthy children on an auditory choice reaction time task
Introduction: Childhood autism can occur in 5 out of 10,000 of the population. The condition covers problems of sensory modulation, comprehension and communication as it relates to both objects and people. Of the stages of information processing recorded in auditory event-related potentials (ERPs), reductions of N1 and P3 amplitude have been reported in many situations, but an increased P3 response to non-targets may represent difficulties in attributing differentially significance to some but not all stimuli..
Methods: Recordings were derived from midline and 4 lateral sites on the scalp of 7 children with autism and 7/13 healthy control children matched for age (median 139 vs. 135 months). A three-tone oddball paradigm was presented in a passive and active-task form (72% at 1 kHz, 14% at 0.5 kHz and 14% at 2.0 kHz)
Results:
a) Autistic subjects showed twice as many errors of omission and a higher beta criterion (signal detection) for targets.
b) For autistic subjects N1 latencies were shorter and N1 amplitude larger to deviants (especially nontargets).
c) However, subtraction of the ERPs in nontarget from target conditions showed that the processing negativity (PN) and especially the Negative difference (Nd) was smaller in autistic subjects.
d) In contrast the P3 amplitude (especially after the target) was smaller in autistic subjects.
e) Within autistic subjects the topography showed more early negativity after deviants at left frontal sites and more target induced late positivity at right parietal sites.
Conclusions: The ERPs of autistic children were more responsive to stimulus features (high frequency or deviance) and less responsive to the stimulus associations (target features). The ERPs also provide conflicting signs of neurodevelopment, -- precocious in the right-hemispheric emphasis for P3, but delayed in that P3 was not maximal at parietal sites
Event-related potentials and monoamines in autistic children on a clinical trial of fenfluramine
Introduction: As autistic persons have problems with selecting and encoding meaningful stimuli and multi-centre studies (Ritvo et al., 1983, 1986) had reported mild behavioural improvements following treatment with fenfluramine, event-related potential (ERP) stages of information processing were studied in childhood autism as part of a double blind crossover study of the efficacy of dl fenfluramine. .
Methods: Acceptable recordings were derived from midline and 4 lateral sites on the scalp of 7 from 14 young persons with autism who understood the task (6 male, 1 female 5.8-17.7 years-of-age). A three-tone oddball paradigm was presented in a passive and active-task form (72% at 1 kHz, 14% at 0.5 kHz and 14% at 2.0 kHz) under placebo and drug conditions (where each condition lasted 5 months). Eleven patients provided blood and urine samples for monoamine analyses in both conditions.
Results:
a) With fenfluramine treatment blood serotonin decreased and urinary catecholamine levels fell (25-45%, but dopamine utilization (HVA/DA) increased 2-4-fold.
b) Under fenfluramine autistic subjects responded non-significantly faster, with fewer errors of omission and improved /decreased beta criterion (signal detection). [IQ measures increased 7.5 points.]
c) N1 amplitudes (Fz) decreased and latencies increased in the fenfluramine condition.
Early negativity (especially on the right) correlated inversely with HVA/DA actvivity.
Subtraction of the ERPs in nontarget from target conditions showed that the Negative difference (Nd) increased during fenfluramine treatment.
d) P3 amplitudes (especially after the deviants) increased with fenfluramine treatment. But in the difference waveform (active-minus-passive condition) the P3 amplitude was halved. The distribution of the P3 component moved rostrally with treatment.
Conclusions: N1 and P3 components of the ERP were responsive to fenfluramine treament. Treatment appears to have mildly improved early stimulus processing at stages represented by the early negative components, but to have mildly impaired processing at the P3-stage. The N1 / Nd - related improvement seems to be related to increased dopamine activity (cf. neuroleptic-like properties of racemate fenfluramine)
Strong contribution to octet baryon mass splittings
We calculate the contribution to the mass splittings in baryonic
isospin multiplets using SU(3) chiral perturbation theory and lattice QCD.
Fitting isospin-averaged perturbation theory functions to PACS-CS and
QCDSF-UKQCD Collaboration lattice simulations of octet baryon masses, and using
the physical light quark mass ratio as input, allows ,
and to be evaluated from the
full SU(3) theory. The resulting values for each mass splitting are consistent
with the experimental values after allowing for electromagnetic corrections. In
the case of the nucleon, we find , with the
dominant uncertainty arising from the error in
Three point SUSY Ward identities without Ghosts
We utilise a non-local gauge transform which renders the entire action of
SUSY QED invariant and respects the SUSY algebra modulo the gauge-fixing
condition, to derive two- and three-point ghost-free SUSY Ward identities in
SUSY QED. We use the cluster decomposition principle to find the Green's
function Ward identities and then takes linear combinations of the latter to
derive identities for the proper functions.Comment: 20 pages, no figures, typos correcte
Recent results on nucleon sigma terms in lattice QCD
It has proven a significant challenge to experiment and phenomenology to
extract precise values of the nucleon sigma terms. This difficulty opens the
window for lattice QCD simulations to lead the field in resolving this aspect
of nucleon structure. Here we report on recent advances in the extraction of
nucleon sigma terms in lattice QCD. In particular, the strangeness component is
now being resolved to a precision that far surpasses best phenomenological
estimates.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure; prepared for Proc. 4th Int Symposium on Symmetries
in Subatomic Physics (SSP2009), Taipei, Taiwan, June 2-5 200
On a Light Spinless Particle Coupled to Photons
A pseudoscalar or scalar particle that couples to two photons but not
to leptons, quarks and nucleons would have effects in most of the experiments
searching for axions, since these are based on the coupling.
We examine the laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological constraints on
and study whether it may constitute a substantial part of the dark matter. We
also generalize the interactions to possess gauge
invariance, and analyze the phenomenological implications.Comment: LaTex, 20p., 6 figures. Changes in sections 4, 5 and figure 2, our
bounds are now more stringent. To be published in Physical Review
Multipole Amplitudes of Pion Photoproduction on Nucleons up to 2GeV within Dispersion Relations and Unitary Isobar Model
Two approaches for analysis of pion photo- and electroproduction on nucleons
in the resonance energy region are checked at using the results of
GWU(VPI) partial-wave analysis of photoproduction data. The approaches are
based on dispersion relations and unitary isobar model. Within dispersion
relations good description of photoproduction multipoles is obtained up to
. Within unitary isobar model, modified with increasing energy by
incorporation of Regge poles, and with unified Breit-Wigner parametrization of
resonance contributions, good description of photoproduction multipoles is
obtained up to .Comment: 23 pages, LaTe
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