Survival and death of the haloarchaeon Natronorubrum strain HG-1 in a simulated martian environment

Halophilic archaea are of interest to astrobiology due to their survival capabilities in desiccated and high salt environments. The detection of remnants of salty pools on Mars stimulated investigations into the response of haloarchaea to martian conditions. Natronorubrum sp. strain HG-1 is an extremely halophilic archaeon with unusual metabolic pathways, growing on acetate and stimulated by tetrathionate. We exposed Natronorubrum strain HG-1 to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, similar to levels currently prevalent on Mars. In addition, the effects of low temperature (4, −20, and −80 °C), desiccation, and exposure to a Mars soil analogue from the Atacama desert on the viability of Natronorubrum strain HG-1 cultures were investigated. The results show that Natronorubrum strain HG-1 cannot survive for more than several hours when exposed to UV radiation equivalent to that at the martian equator. Even when protected from UV radiation, viability is impaired by a combination of desiccation and low temperature. Desiccating Natronorubrum strain HG-1 cells when mixed with a Mars soil analogue impaired growth of the culture to below the detection limit. Overall, we conclude that Natronorubrum strain HG-1 cannot survive the environment currently present on Mars. Since other halophilic microorganisms were reported to survive simulated martian conditions, our results imply that survival capabilities are not necessarily shared between phylogenetically related species.     

Avionics systems maintenance improvement: a perception

This paper explores the possibility of applying recent developments in various fields of electronics, especially wireless personal communication services, to reduce avionics systems repair cycle time and to generally improve maintenance services. But before scaling these prospects, present-day maintenance services are touched upon and advances in associated technologies are also mentioned     

Simplified Solution for a Class of Fading Memory Filters

A fading memory filter is a least squares estimator (LSE) thatapplies an exponentially decaying weight to past measurements.When compared with a standard Kalman filter, its key advantagesare asymptotic stability and reduced sensitivity to modeling errors.This paper derives a simple solution for a class of fading memoryfilters, resulting in a reduction in computational complexity. Steadystate filter solutions are obtained for second-and third-order filtersused in a global positioning system (GPS) receiver for high dynamicvehicles.     

Permanent-Magnet Linear Alternators Part 1: Fundamental Equations

Powered by free-piston Stirling engines, linear alternators are proposed for space power stations as well as for isolated domestic applications, automotive, and on-Earth solar power plants. As the literature on the subject is sparse and base-design oriented, we present the general equations for both three-phase and single-phase winding configurations having permanent-magnet field excitations.     

Permanent-Magnet Linear Alternators Part II: Design Guidelines

Basic design guidelines are presented for a three-phase tubular linear alternator (LA). A numerical example for the design of a 25 kVA, 14.4 mls, 120/220 V, 60 Hz alternator is used to illustrate the procedure.     

Two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics calculations of the formation of O-B associations in dense molecular clouds

Two-dimensional calculations of ionization-shockwave propagation into a curved molecular cloud are presented. Density enhancement occurs due to the combined effects of cloud curvature and radiation flow. The star formation process is expected to be enhanced near the edges of irregularly shaped molecular clouds.Authors listed alphabetically     

A Parallel Adaptive 3D MHD Scheme for Modeling Coronal and Solar Wind Plasma Flows

A parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) scheme is described for solving the governing equations of ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in three space dimensions. This solution algorithm makes use of modern finite-volume numerical methodology to provide a combination of high solution accuracy and computational robustness. Efficient and scalable implementations of the method have been developed for massively parallel computer architectures and high performance achieved. Numerical results are discussed for a simplified model of the initiation and evolution of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the inner heliosphere. The results demonstrate the potential of this numerical tool for enhancing our understanding of coronal and solar wind plasma processes. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

ATC Beacon Interference Characteristics in the New York Area

An experimental program is described that had the objective of measuring the effects of the time-dependent structure of downlink (air craft to ground) interference generated by the Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System (ATCRBS) in an active air traffic terminal area that are relevant to system and ground controller response time. The results of this program indicate a number of interesting details concerning the correlation of the level of the downlink interference with changes in the arrival and departure rates of aircraft at the local terminal sites.     

The Primordial Helium-4 Abundance from Observations of a Large Sample of Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies

We use a sample of 45 low-metallicity H II regions in blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxies to determine the primordial helium abundance YP with a precision better than 5%. We have carefully investigated the physical effects which may make the He I line intensities deviate from their recombination values such as collisional and fluorescent enhancements, underlying He I stellar absorption and absorption by Galactic interstellar Na I. By extrapolating the Y vs. O/H and Y vs. N/H linear regressions to O/H = N/H = 0, we obtain YP = 0.244±0.002 and 0.245±0.001, respectively, higher than previous determinations (YP = 0.230 - 0.234). Part of the difference comes from the fact that previous investigators have not taken into account underlying He I stellar absorption, especially in the NW component of the BCD I Zw 18 which, because of its extremely low metallicity plays a key role in the determination of YP. We derive a slope dY/dZ = 2.3±1.0, considerably smaller than those derived before. With this smaller slope and taking into account the errors, chemical evolution models with an outflow of well-mixed material can be built for star-forming dwarf galaxies which satisfy all the observational constraints. Our YP gives _bh ₅₀ ² = 0.058±0.007,f consistent with the lower limit set by dynamical measurements and X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies. It is also consistent, within the framework of standard big bang nucleosynthesis theory, with measurements of primordial 7Li in galactic halo stars and with the D/H abundance measured in absorption systems toward quasars by Burles and Tytler (1997).