Space flight experiment on Chinese silkworm on board the Russian 10th Biosatellite.

Space flight experiments on Chinese silkworm (Bombyx mori L.) were conducted on board the Russian 10th Biosatellite for 12 days. The samples included silkworm eggs, larvae, cocoons, pupae and moths. The processes of spinning, cocooning, mating, oviposition, larval hatching, pupation and moth emergence all completed well in space. The following effects of space flight on silkworm development were observed: The times of hatching and oviposition in the flight group were 2 to 3 days earlier than in the control group; the hatching rate of diapause eggs during space flight seemed higher than that of the control group; the life span of 2 of the 7 varieties flown was shortened; genetical variations appeared in 3 varieties. The results showed that the embryonic stage was probably the period most sensitive to the space flight environment.     

Low Altitude Cusp–Cleft Region Signatures of Strong Geomagnetic Disturbances

The polar cusp being a region of the free access of the solar wind into the inner magnetosphere is also the site of turbulent plasma flow. The cusp area at low altitudes acts like a focus of a variety type of instability and disturbances from different regions of the Earth. Daily f ₀ F2 frequencies are discussed regarding the cusp position. The high time resolution wave measurements together with electron and ion energetic spectra measurements registered on the board the Freja satellite and Magion-3 and the electron density at the peak of f ₀ F2 layers collected from ground-based ionosonde measurements were used to study the response of ionospheric plasma within the cusp–cleft region to the strong geomagnetic storm. In this paper we present the response of the ionospheric plasma to the disturbed conditions seen in the topside wave measurements and in the ionospheric characteristics maps obtained from the ground-based VI network. The need of the cusp feature model for radio communication purposes is advocated.     

Geosynchronous magnetic field response to the large and fast solar wind dynamic pressure change

We present a comparison of large and sharp solar wind dynamic pressure changes, observed by several spacecraft, with fast disturbances in the magnetospheric magnetic field measured by the GOES-8, 9 and 10 geosynchronous satellites. Almost 400 solar wind pressure changes in the period 1996–2003 were selected for this study. Using the large statistics we confirmed that increases (decreases) in the dynamic pressure always results in increases (decreases) in the magnitude of geosynchronous B_z component. The amplitude of the geosynchronous B_z response strongly depends on the location of observer relative to the noon meridian, from the value of solar wind pressure before the disturbance arriving and firstly – from the amplitude of the pressure change.     

The gravitational field and brain function.

The frontal cortex is recognized as the highest adaptive control center of the human brain. The principle of the "frontalization" of human brain function offers new possibilities for brain research in space. There is evolutionary and experimental evidence indicating the validity of the principle, including it's role in nervous response to gravitational stimulation. The gravitational field is considered here as one of the more constant and comprehensive factors acting on brain evolution, which has undergone some successive crucial steps: "encephalization", "corticalization", "lateralization" and "frontalization". The dominating effects of electrical responses from the frontal cortex have been discovered 1) in experiments under gravitational stimulus; and 2) in processes potentially relating to gravitational adaptation, such as memory and learning, sensory information processing, motor programing, and brain state control. A brain research experiment during space flight is suggested to test the role of the frontal cortex in space adaptation and it's potentiality in brain control.     

Frequency Domain Error Correction for Monopulse Radar Signals

Angle-measurement error of a coherent monopulse radar signalresulting from imbalances between in-phase and quadraturecomponents, as well as between sigma and delta channels, arecorrected in a simple procedure. No correction is needed for I,Qimbalances in the time domain [1]. Instead, a postintegrationcorrection is performed. This reduces the number of calibrationoperations of the monopulse signal by a factor X, 2 ? X ? N (N isthe number of DFT samples), depending on the degree of filtering.It also reduces the number of numerical operations necessary forthe production of the correction term by a factor of three. A firstorderrder estimation is made of the residual error after correction, dueto bias and image sidelobes.     

Narrative psychological content analysis as a tool for psychological status monitoring of crews in isolated,confined and extreme settings

This paper is about a pilot application of narrative psychological content analysis in the psychological status monitoring of Crew 71 of a space analog simulation environment, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). Both the method and its theoretical framework, Scientific Narrative Psychology, are original developments by Hungarian psychologists [5] (László, 2008). The software was NooJ, a multilingual linguistic development environment [11] (Silberztein, 2008). Three measures were conceptualized and assessed: emotional status, team spirit and subjective physical comfort. The results showed the patterns of these three measures on a daily basis at group level, and allowed for detecting individual differences as well. The method is adaptable to languages involved in space psychology, e.g. Russian, French and German in addition to English.     

Modeling gas exchange in a closed plant growth chamber.

Fluid transport models for fluxes of water vapor and CO2 have been developed for one crop of wheat and three crops of soybean grown in a closed plant growth chamber. Correspondence among these fluxes is discussed. Maximum fluxes of gases are provided for engineering design requirements of fluid recycling equipment in growth chambers. Furthermore, to investigate the feasibility of generalized crop models, dimensionless representations of water vapor fluxes are presented. The feasibility of such generalized models and the need for additional data are discussed.     

Effects of salts and temperatures on post-irradiation growth of penicillium exposed to ultraviolet

The growth of Penicillium notatum colonies after UV irradiation of dried mycelium or spores was studied in relation to post-irradiation temperature and salt environment. Dried mycelium and spores behaved differently with respect to sensitivity to temperature, salts and UV, especially the latter. Threshold inhibitory doses for spores were modified markedly either at 4°C or in magnesium and calcium chlorides. It is suggested that these temperature and salt effects are related to prevention of photochemical membrane damage.     

Corotating events in the energy range 4–13 MeV as observed on board Helios 1 and 2 in 1975 and 1976

Intensity increases of 4 – 13 MeV protons correlated with recurrent high speed solar wind streams were observed on board Helios 1 and 2 at heliocentric distances between 0.3 and 1.0 AU. Study of events which occurred in the time period 1975 – 1976 showed that recurrent fast solar wind streams were sometimes not accompanied by corotating events and small events were more frequently observed than large corotating events, which occurred only occasionally. The explanation for these phenomena seems to be the variation of the number of suprathermal particles injected into the acceleration process. Radial gradients of corotating events from February till April 1976 were investigated. The gradient changed its sign in successive solar rotations and exhibited strong time dependence inside 1 AU. Clearly negative gradients were measured in corotating events which occurred in February and April 1976. These observations showed that probably there were no stationary corotating structures in interplanetary space. We suggest that this effect is related to local disturbances of solar origin, e. g. flare initiated shocks.     

Effect of gravity on the velocity of a crystallization front

The crystal growth from a liquid can be studied by methods of non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a discontinuity surface. These methods are used to derive the dependence of the crystalization velocity on transport and surface phenomena across and along an interface solid-liquid and on the acceleration of gravity.