Communicating bioastronautics research to students, families and the nation

The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) is supporting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) education mission through a comprehensive Education and Public Outreach Program (EPOP) that communicates the excitement and significance of space biology to schools, families, and lay audiences. The EPOP is comprised of eight academic institutions: Baylor College of Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Morehouse School of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Texas A&M University, University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston, Rice University, and the University of Washington. This paper describes the programs and products created by the EPOP to promote space life science education in schools and among the general public. To date, these activities have reached thousands of teachers and students around the US and have been rated very highly.     

Summary of the workshop on gamma-ray burst afterglows at the 34th COSPAR meeting

A summary is given of the presentations at the COSPAR workshop on γ-ray bursts with some personal commentary on the contributions, the SN/GRB connection, and on the role of magnetic fields in γ-ray bursts and their afterglows. Of special interest were the accumulated arguments for strong collimation and associated reduction in the total required energy for γ-ray bursts. Significant discussion was also devoted to the issues associated with iron and metal lines in X-ray spectra. It is important to note that some of the afterglows seem to require ambient densities 1 g cm⁻³, rather incompatible with a massive star environment. Of associated difficulty is the fact that few, if any, afterglows seem consistent with the r⁻² wind expected for a massive star model. There are reasons to think that if γ-ray bursts are associated with supernovae they are of Type Ic. This suggests that any wind present might be rich in carbon and oxygen, not hydrogen or helium. If γ-ray bursts are narrowly collimated, then the burst is only probing a small portion of any wind, perhaps just that time-dependent and isotropic structure directly along the rotation axis. The characteristics of “hypernovae” may be the result of orientation effects in a mildly inhomogeneous set of progenitors, rather than requiring an excessive total energy or luminosity. The recent event GRB 021004 provided a rich photometric and spectroscopic record and perhaps the most direct evidence yet for the association of a specific γ-ray burst with a massive star progenitor. If the magnetic field plays a significant role in launching a relativistic γ-ray burst jet from within a collapsing star, then the magnetic field may also play a role in the propagation, collimation, and stability of that jet within and beyond the star. The magneto-rotational instability (MRI) can operate under conditions of moderate rotation. This means that the MRI will be at work generating strong fields exponentially rapidly even as the disk of material begins to form and makes a transition from a non-Keplerian to quasi-Keplerian flow in the collapsar and related models.     

Multiple generations of carbon in the apex chert and implications for preservation of microfossils

While the Apex chert is one of the most well-studied Archean deposits on Earth, its formation history is still not fully understood. Here, we present Raman spectroscopic data collected on the carbonaceous material (CM) present within the matrix of the Apex chert. These data, collected within a paragenetic framework, reveal two different phases of CM deposited within separate phases of quartz matrix. These multiple generations of CM illustrate the difficulty of searching for signs of life in these rocks and, by extension, in other Archean sequences.     

四川烹饪:火辣辣的口味火辣辣的性情

"西餐很乏味,没味没趣,"在成都最好的川菜馆之一蜀风园,侯伟一边吃着清蒸牛蛙一边说:"小孩子倒是喜欢吃西餐,但四川人很挑剔,如果味道不好,我们不会吃."     

Understanding high-density matter through analysis of surface spectral lines and burst oscillations from accreting neutron stars

We discuss millisecond period brightness oscillations and surface atomic spectral lines observed during type I X-ray bursts from a neutron star in a low mass X-ray binary system. We show that modeling of these phenomena can constrain models of the dense cold matter at the cores of neutron stars. We demonstrate that, even for a broad and asymmetric spectral line, the stellar radius-to-mass ratio can be inferred to better than 5%. We also fit our theoretical models to the burst oscillation data of the low mass X-ray binary XTE J1814-338, and find that the 90% confidence lower limit of the neutron star’s dimensionless radius-to-mass ratio is 4.2.     

Aircraft Navigation Using Omega

This paper describes a study of those aspects of Omega navigationthat are unique to aircraft applications. The main effort of the studyis to use a digital computer to simulate the reception of Omega signals.Three principal conclusions are drawn: the poorer signal-to-noiseratio environment will not preclude reception; interfering carriers willnot preclude reception; and the required velocity-aiding accuracy isquite modest in terms of that which is readily available from inertialsystems.     

Multi-target state estimation and track continuity for the particle PHD filter

Particle filter approaches for approximating the first-order moment of a joint, or probability hypothesis density (PHD), have demonstrated a feasible suboptimal method for tracking a time-varying number of targets in real-time. We consider two techniques for estimating the target states at each iteration, namely k-means clustering and mixture modelling via the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. We present novel techniques for associating the targets between frames to enable track continuity.     

Experimental investigation of the effects of gravity on thermosolutal convection and compositional homogeneity in bridgman grown,compound semiconductors

Lead-tin-telluride has been grown in a thermally stable mode (solutally unstable) and in a solutally stable (thermally unstable) mode in a Bridgman configuration. Significant differences in the crystal morphology and the compositional homogeneity have been found between the two configurations. In addition, for the solutally stable configuration, evidence has been found that the flow characteristics in the melt change drastically during the course of the run.