Analogy between training for dancers and problems of adjustment to microgravity: an evaluation of the subjective vertical in dancers

"Moderne dance" (as opposed to a more academic or classical dance form) uses techniques from kinesiology, anatomy and improvization which are adapted to a cultural, technological and political environment. The function of a choreographic system is to take and give a measure of the world. This includes, with the present tendency of the evolution of culture, a new "naturalism" which seeks the secrets of the body. Dance movements express in terms of space the dimension fo the infinite. It gives somehow the measure of a world within which everything is relative. Except for the speed of light, time and space are bound together by the same principle. The qualities of body awareness and specific motricity in dancers imply--besides a strict discipline--balance, coordination, muscular performance and perfect orientation, problems that astronauts also encounter in microgravity. Could chosen exercises used in modern dance technique be applied to the training of astronauts? Dancer-choreographer Kitsou Dubois has been working in this direction since 1988. She was granted a "Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs" by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry on with her research at NASA, Houston, Tex. in April 1989. It allowed her to investigate the reality of this analogy. She intends to evaluate the dancers' subjective vertical refering to Mittelstaedt's observations on the proportional relationship between "space sickness" and some astronauts poor evaluation of the subjective vertical. This study should create a relationship between a choreographer's empirical intuition and a scientific reality.     

多致动液压振动台控制的理论与实践

引言对许多大型刚性试件进行振动试验,往往采用多致动振动台。当试验装置发生共振时,致动器之间会产生很大的相互作用力,即所谓动态交叉耦合,其结果往往造成振动试验条件不准确,控制不稳定。早期的多致动振动控制系统,组合了普通的单致动装置和特殊的多通道相位控制器,认识到交叉耦合是一个问题,但未予以直接处理。不久前Helmuth和Hunter对正     

跟踪与数据中继卫星系统第二套地面终端站

在九十年代及后续的时间里,跟踪与数据中继卫星系统(TDRSS)第二套地面终端站(STGT)将为NASA天基网(SN)的用户提供高可用性指令和控制能力及更高级的服务。TDRSS这一天基网(SN)将是国际空间站和其它用户航天器及其地面支持部分的主要通信关口。STGT含有一套带备份的分布式计算机系统,对带备份的射频(RF)到基带的设备链进行组配与控制,以完成用户数据的透明传输、用户星的跟踪测轨和中继卫星(TDRS)的控制和监视。STGT与位于哥达德航天中心(GSFC)的NASA测控网控制中心(NCC)有接口,通过该接口对STGT进行自动调度和控制。STGT还备有一个TDRSS本地操控中心(TOCC2)和一套与国内通信卫星(DOMSAT)的接口设备。TOCC2用于本地监视和备份控制,接口设备用于数据分发。本文专门介绍STGT,并重点描述为用户航天器进行中继业务的各部分的配置及其监控情况。     

Cyanobacterial emergence at 2.8 gya and greenhouse feedbacks

Apparent cyanobacterial emergence at about 2.8 Gya coincides with the negative excursion in the organic carbon isotope record, which is the first strong evidence for the presence of atmospheric methane. The existence of weathering feedbacks in the carbonate-silicate cycle suggests that atmospheric and oceanic CO2 concentrations would have been high prior to the presence of a methane greenhouse (and thus the ocean would have had high bicarbonate concentrations). With the onset of a methane greenhouse, carbon dioxide concentrations would decrease. Bicarbonate has been proposed as the preferred reductant that preceded water for oxygenic photosynthesis in a bacterial photosynthetic precursor to cyanobacteria; with the drop of carbon dioxide level, Archean cyanobacteria emerged using water as a reductant instead of bicarbonate (Dismukes et al., 2001). Our thermodynamic calculations, with regard to this scenario, give at least a tenfold drop in aqueous CO2 levels with the onset of a methane-dominated greenhouse, assuming surface temperatures of about 60 degrees C and a drop in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide from about 1 to 0.1 bars. The buildup of atmospheric methane could have been triggered by the boost in oceanic organic productivity that arose from the emergence of pre-cyanobacterial oxygenic phototrophy at about 2.8-3.0 Gya; high temperatures may have precluded an earlier emergence. A greenhouse transition timescale on the order of 50-100 million years is consistent with results from modeling the carbonate-silicate cycle. This is an alternative hypothesis to proposals of a tectonic driver for this apparent greenhouse transition.     

A Review of Density Holes Upstream of Earth's Bow Shock

Larmor size transient structures with density depletions as large as 99% of ambient solar wind density levels occur commonly upstream of Earth＇s collisionless bow shock. These ＂density holes＂ have a me...     

对下一代卫星操作控制的系统研究

自１９７５年发射首颗ＥＴＳ－１卫星以来，总计已发射了２８颗ＮＡＳＤＡ卫星。关于卫星的操作，ＮＡＳＤＡ已经开发了实时遥测／遥控处理系统，可通用于不同类型卫星。     

浅谈我国知识产权保护的形势和特点

我国重视知识产权保护，表面在知识产权在构成国家主权中的地位上升；国家在立法上进一步完善和健全知识产权保护；国家在执法上加大了对知识产权保护的力度；企业在保护知识产权方面正在走向成熟；知识产权界已开始研究讨论新技术的知识产权保护问题。     

Iron-sulfide-bearing chimneys as potential catalytic energy traps at life's emergence

The concept that life emerged where alkaline hydrogen-bearing submarine hot springs exhaled into the most ancient acidulous ocean was used as a working hypothesis to investigate the nature of precipitate membranes. Alkaline solutions at 25-70°C and pH between 8 and 12, bearing HS(-)±silicate, were injected slowly into visi-jars containing ferrous chloride to partially simulate the early ocean on this or any other wet and icy, geologically active rocky world. Dependent on pH and sulfide content, fine tubular chimneys and geodal bubbles were generated with semipermeable walls 4-100?μm thick that comprised radial platelets of nanometric mackinawite [FeS]±ferrous hydroxide [～Fe(OH)(2)], accompanied by silica and, at the higher temperature, greigite [Fe(3)S(4)]. Within the chimney walls, these platelets define a myriad of micropores. The interior walls of the chimneys host iron sulfide framboids, while, in cases where the alkaline solution has a pH>11 or relatively low sulfide content, their exteriors exhibit radial flanges with a spacing of ～4?μm that comprise microdendrites of ferrous hydroxide. We speculate that this pattern results from outward and inward radial flow through the chimney walls. The outer Fe(OH)(2) flanges perhaps precipitate where the highly alkaline flow meets the ambient ferrous iron-bearing fluid, while the intervening troughs signal where the acidulous iron-bearing solutions could gain access to the sulfidic and alkaline interior of the chimneys, thereby leading to the precipitation of the framboids. Addition of soluble pentameric peptides enhances membrane durability and accentuates the crenulations on the chimney exteriors. These dynamic patterns may have implications for acid-base catalysis and the natural proton motive force acting through the matrix of the porous inorganic membrane. Thus, within such membranes, steep redox and pH gradients would bear across the nanometric platelets and separate the two counter-flowing solutions, a condition that may have led to the onset of an autotrophic metabolism through the reduction of carbon dioxide.