Carbon dioxide and oxygen budgets of a plant cultural system in a CELSS--a case of cultivation of lettuce and turnips.

In order to collect basic data about CO2 and O2 budgets of a plant cultural system in a CELSS, the variation of the CO2 absorption rates of lettuce and turnips were observed during the growing period, under different conditions. The O2 release rates were deduced from the CO2 absorption rates multiplied by 32/44. As a result, when the light intensity, the photoperiod and the atmospheric CO2 concentration increased, the rates also increased. The effects on the turnips were more significant than those on the lettuce. Turnips at 310 micromoles/m2/s of PPFD, 24 hours of photoperiod and 1100 ppm of CO2 concentration grew most actively in the present experimental conditions. One turnip absorbed 32.3 g CO2 and released 23.5 g O2 for 6 days between 24 days and 30 days after sowing.     

Application of Gram-Schmidt algorithm to fully adaptive arrays

The Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (GSO) algorithm has excellent numerical performance and is readily applicable to systolic implementations such as in a field of adaptive cancellation systems. A modified GSO algorithm for a fully adaptive array is proposed and computer simulations show that the proposed algorithm gives superior performance. A systolic implementation of the proposed GSO algorithm for fully adaptive array is presented. A feedback mode GSO algorithm for use with analog weights is also presented and has been shown to have excellent performance in the presence of weight errors     

Public Attitudes Towards Space Science

Astronomy and space science, including their associated basic research activities, enjoy broad popular backing. People generally support them, and say that they follow their results with interest. This article summarizes some of the detailed results of public surveys in the United States, focusing on popular opinions and attitudes, and the somewhat paradoxical finding that despite being interested and supportive, people are often ignorant about the basic facts. I explore some of the reasons for the popularity of space science, and suggest ways of justifying space science research in the broader context of science research. I argue that vigorous and innovative education and outreach programs are important, and can be made even more effective. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Problem of precision missile guidance: LQR and H/sup /spl infin// control frameworks

Addressed here is the precision missile guidance problem where the successful intercept criterion has been defined in terms of both minimizing the miss distance and controlling the missile body attitude with respect to the target at the terminal point. We show that the H/sup /spl infin// control theory, when suitably modified, provides an effective framework for the precision missile guidance problem. The existence of feedback controllers (guidance laws) is investigated for the case of finite horizon and non-zero initial conditions. Both state feedback and output feedback implementations are explored.     

Automated video protection, monitoring & detection

The latest generation of computer vision technology is revolutionizing concepts, applications, and products in video surveillance and CCTV. This is of prime relevance to security for large outdoor facilities such as commercial airfields, refineries, power plants, and office/industrial campuses. Most airfields, for example, have open (unfenced) perimeters, high volume heterogeneous traffic, are easily accessed on foot or by water, and exist in areas where regulations providing a safety buffer are difficult to legislate or enforce. And all airfields require 24/7 outdoor monitoring - snow, fog, rain, or shine. Likewise, most high-value facilities appealing to criminals and terrorists are in close proximity to public areas (roads, residences, city, etc.). The appeal of automated real-time surveillance is obvious $maximizing efficiency and effectiveness of security personnel and resources while increasing the probability of preventing a serious security breach. Computer vision based solutions have the potential for very discriminating detection and very low false alarms. The bottom line is that applied computer vision has the potential for the greatest return on investment (ROI), both short-term and long-term.     

Structure of the Venusian atmosphere from surface up to 100 km

The goal of this paper is to summarize the experimental data on the atmosphere of Venus obtained after 1985, when the VIRA (Venus International Reference Atmosphere) or COSPAR model was published. Among the most important results that have appeared since then are the following: measurements of the vertical temperature profile by the VEGA spacecraft with high precision and high altitude resolution; measurements made with balloons of the VEGA spacecraft; radio occultation measurements of Magellan, Venera-15, and Venera-16; and temperature profiles derived from the data of infrared spectrometry obtained by Venera-15. The new result as compared to VIRA is the creation of a model of the atmosphere in the altitude range 55 to 100 km dependent on local time. This model is presented in our paper in tabulated form.     

Covariance matrix estimation for adaptive CFAR detection incompound-Gaussian clutter

We address the estimation of the structure of the covariance matrix and its application to adaptive radar detection of coherent pulse trains in clutter-dominated disturbance modeled as a compound-Gaussian process. For estimation purposes we resort to range cells in spatial proximity with that under test and assume that these cells, free of signal components, can be clustered into groups of data with one and the same value of the texture. We prove that, plugging the proposed estimator of the structure of the covariance matrix into a previously derived detector, based upon the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT), leads to an adaptive detector which ensures the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property with respect to the clutter covariance matrix as well as the statistics of the texture. Finally, we show that this adaptive receiver has an acceptable loss with respect to its nonadaptive counterpart in cases of relevant interest for radar applications     

Numerical modelling of radiance of the presumed dust torus around Mars in the 0.350-1 μm spectral range

Currently conducted studies on modelling of scattered solar radiation in the 0.350-1.00 μm range along the Phobos orbit around Mars are presented. Our calculations include various types of grains, various densities and scattering angles. The calculations are performed with the aid of LOWTRAN7 program. These studies are directly related to the photometer coupled to PFS (Planetary Fourier Spectrometer) planned for the Mars-96 mission.     

Measuring the matter distribution within z = 0.2 cluster lenses with XMM-Newton

We present an analysis of seven clusters observed by XMM-Newton as part of our survey of 17 most X-ray luminous clusters of galaxies at z  0.2 selected for a comprehensive and unbiased study of the mass distribution in massive clusters. Using the public software FTOOLS and XMMSAS we have set up an automated pipeline to reduce the EPIC MOS and pn spectro-imaging data, optimized for extended sources analysis. We also developped a code to perform intensive spectral and imaging analysis particularly focussing on proper background estimate and removal. XMM-Newton deep spectro-imaging of these clusters allowed us to fit a standard β-model to their gas emission profiles as well as a standard MEKAL emission model to their extracted spectra, and test their inferred characteristics against already calibrated relations.