Effect of bacterial population density on germination wheat seeds and dynamics of simple artificial ecosystems.

Effect of the size of rhizospheric bacterial populations on germination of seeds and development of simple terrestrial "wheat plants--rhizospheric microorganisms--artificial soil" and "wheat plants-artificial soil" systems has been studied. Experiments demonstrated that within specify ranges in the inoculate, the rhizospheric bacteria are capable of increasing the yield of germinated seeds and stimulate the growth of plantlets. Germination of seeds inoculated with bacteria was either stimulated, or inhibited or remained at control levels depending on the amount of bacteria. Plant biomass growth and total photoassimilation has been found to depend on the amount of bacteria on the plant roots: the higher the amount of bacteria on plant roots, the smaller is the biomass of plants but the total photoassimilation is, higher. Thus, depending on the amount of bacteria on the roots of plants the system either increases the biomass of plants or increases the total photoassimilation, i.e. "pumps" carbon through itself involving bacteria. Grant numbers: N99-04-96017, N15.     

Estimation techniques for GMSK using linear detectors in satellite communications

This paper describes data-aided signal level and noise variance estimators for Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) when the observations are limited to the output of a filter matched to the first pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) pulse in the equivalent PAM representation. The estimators are based on the maximum likelihood (ML) principle and assume burst-mode transmission with known timing and a block of L₀ known bits. While it is well known that ML estimators are asymptotically unbiased and efficient, the analysis quantifies the rate at which the estimators approach these asymptotic properties. It is shown that the carrier phase, amplitude, and noise variance estimators are unbiased and can achieve their corresponding Cramer-Rao bounds with modest combinations of signal-to-noise ratio and observation length. The estimates are used to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio. It is shown that the mean squared error performance of the ratio increases with signal-to-noise ratio while the mean squared error performance of the ratio in decibels decreases with signal-to-noise ratio. Simulation results are provided to confirm the accuracy of the analytic results.     

ExoMars 2016 Schiaparelli Module Trajectory and Atmospheric Profiles Reconstruction

On 19^th October 2016 Schiaparelli module of the ExoMars 2016 mission flew through the Mars atmosphere. After successful entry and descent under parachute, the module failed the last part of the descent and crashed on the Mars surface. Nevertheless the data transmitted in real-time by Schiaparelli during the entry and descent, together with the entry state vector as initial condition, have been used to reconstruct both the trajectory and the profiles of atmospheric density, pressure and temperature along the traversed path.The available data-set is only a small sub-set of the whole data acquired by Schiaparelli, with a limited data rate (8 kbps) and a large gap during the entry because of the plasma blackout on the communications.This paper presents the work done by the AMELIA (Atmospheric Mars Entry and Landing Investigations and Analysis) team in the exploitation of the available inertial and radar data. First a reference trajectory is derived by direct integration of the inertial measurements and a strategy to overcome the entry data gap is proposed. First-order covariance analysis is used to estimate the uncertainties on all the derived parameters. Then a refined trajectory is computed incorporating the measurements provided by the on-board radar altimeter.The derived trajectory is consistent with the events reported in the telemetry and also with the impact point identified on the high-resolution images of the landing site.Finally, atmospheric profiles are computed tacking into account the aerodynamic properties of the module. Derived profiles result in good agreement with both atmospheric models and available remote sensing observations.     

Efficient implementation of Capon and APES for spectral estimation

Both the Capon and APES estimators can be shown to belong to the class of matched-filterbank spectral estimators and can be used to obtain complex spectral estimates that have more narrow spectral peaks and lower sidelobe levels than the fast Fourier transform (FFT) methods. It can also be shown that APES has better statistical performance than Capon. In this paper, we address the issue of how to efficiently implement Capon and APES for spectral estimation     

On electromagnetic phenomena in Mercury’s magnetosphere

Mercury has a small but intriguing magnetosphere. In this brief review, we discuss some similarities and differences between Mercury’s and Earth’s magnetospheres. In particular, we discuss how electric and magnetic field measurements can be used as a diagnostic tool to improve our understanding of the dynamics of Mercury’s magnetosphere. These points are of interest to the upcoming ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury.