The Spacelab-Mir-1 "Greenhouse-2" experiment.

The Spacelab-Mir-1 (SLM-1) mission is the first docking of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-71) with the Orbital Station Mir in June 1995. The SLM-1 "Greenhouse-2" experiment will utilize the Russian-Bulgarian-developed plant growth unit (Svet). "Greenhouse-2" will include two plantings (1) designed to test the capability of Svet to grow a crop of Superdwarf wheat from seed to seed, and (2) to provide green plant material for post-flight analysis. Protocols, procedures, and equipment for the experiment have been developed by the US-Russian science team. "Greenhouse-2" will also provide the first orbital test of a new Svet Instrumentation System (SIS) developed by Utah State University to provide near real time data on plant environmental parameters and gas-exchange rates. SIS supplements the Svet control and monitoring system with additional sensors for substrate moisture, air temperature, IR leaf temperature, light, oxygen, pressure, humidity, and carbon-dioxide. SIS provides the capability to monitor canopy transpiration and net assimilation of the plants growing in each vegetation unit (root zone) by enclosing the canopy in separate, retractable, ventilated leaf chambers. Six times during the seed-to-seed experiment, plant samples will be collected, leaf area measured, and plant parts fixed and/or dried for ground analysis. A second planting initiated 30 days before the arrival of a U.S. Shuttle [originally planned to be STS-71] is designed to provide green material at the vegetative development stage for ground analysis. [As this paper is being edited, the experiment has been delayed until after the arrival of STS-71.]     

Theories and models on the biology of cells in space.

A wide variety of observations on cells in space, admittedly made under constraining and unnatural conditions in many cases, have led to experimental results that were surprising or unexpected. Reproducibility, freedom from artifacts, and plausibility must be considered in all cases, even when results are not surprising. The papers in the symposium on "Theories and Models on the Biology of Cells in Space" are dedicated to the subject of the plausibility of cellular responses to gravity--inertial accelerations between 0 and 9.8 m/s2 and higher. The mechanical phenomena inside the cell, the gravitactic locomotion of single eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, and the effects of inertial unloading on cellular physiology are addressed in theoretical and experimental studies.     

The Suess-Urey mission (return of solar matter to Earth)

The Suess-Urey (S-U) mission has been proposed as a NASA Discovery mission to return samples of matter from the Sun to the Earth for isotopic and chemical analyses in terrestrial laboratories to provide a major improvement in our knowledge of the average chemical and isotopic composition of the solar system. The S-U spacecraft and sample return capsule will be placed in a halo orbit around the L1 Sun-Earth libration point for two years to collect solar wind ions which implant into large passive collectors made of ultra-pure materials. Constant Spacecraft-Sun-Earth geometries enable simple spin stabilized attitude control, simple passive thermal control, and a fixed medium gain antenna. Low data requirements and the safety of a Sun-pointed spinner, result in extremely low mission operations costs.     

Cyclotron masers and solar spike bursts

The theory of electron cyclotron maser emission and its application to solar spike bursts are reviewed. By analogy with the Earth's AKR, three sources of free energy are considered: a loss-cone anisotropy, a velocity-space hole, and a trapped distribution. The problem of how the radiation escapes through the second harmonic absorption layer is emphasized. Harmonic emission due to z mode coalescence may operate for some bursts, but the 2–5s delay between hard X-ray bursts and spike bursts suggests that some other mechanisms is required for most spike bursts. A model involving formation of a trapped distribution in low-density regions neighboring the flaring flux tube is considered.     

The effect of head-down tilt on brain potentials related to visual attention

To study the possible effect of simulated weightlessness on brain function state, the brain event-related potentials (ERPs) in a simple visual selective response task were compared between HDT and HUT in 9 normal subjects. The results were: The Target(T) and non-Target(NT) flash signals both induced significant slow positive potentials which were supposed to related to the attention state; the amplitude of the positive potentials in frontal regions decreased significantly especially for NT-ERPs during HDT comprared with that during HUT. The data reported provide new evidence indicating that more attention should be paid on the brain function study during space flight.     

直升机红外抑制器两种进气方式下的实验研究

利用地面模拟试验件通过实验比较分析了两种进气方式对红外抑制器性能的影响。为了模拟直升机前飞和悬停两种状态,在模型上端开口,分别引入旋翼下洗气流和前端进气,对比分析了这两种状态下模型壁面温度和红外辐射强度的大小。结果表明:引入速度为18 m/s的旋翼下洗气流使得模型壁面内外两侧均受到冷却气膜的保护,从而使壁面温度降低了36%;同时再引入流量为0.2 kg/s的前端进气,可使红外抑制器模型在3~5μm和8~14μm的红外辐射强度分别降低为原来的11%和28%。     

面向对象的双轴混排加力涡扇发动机详细非线性实时仿真模型研究

本文就双轴加力涡扇发动机详细非线性实时仿真模型进行了研究。采用框架灵活方便、具有可扩展性的 VC 语言 ,在 P 45 0计算机上实现了一台双轴混排加力涡扇发动机的实时仿真 ,可准确模拟发动机及其部件的工作状况。发动机流路的平均计算时间为 0 .5 42 ms,一个工作点的计算时间小于 2 5 ms。此模型的建模方法具有通用性 ,可适用于其他类型发动机的实时建模要求。经在火力 /飞行 /推进综合控制仿真系统中的应用 ,证明此模型完全满足实时模拟真实发动机的要求     

飞行控制系统的快速原型设计

飞行控制系统设计是一个涉及控制、机械、电子和计算机等多个分系统的复杂系统工程,需要进行多学科、多专业的协同设计,虚拟样机技术从建模和仿真分析等多个方面为协同设计提供了技术和方法上的支持,而快速原型设计是基于虚拟样机的,快速生成物理样机的一种技术,可以看作是我国现阶段虚拟样机技术应用的一个廉价快速的替代方案。介绍了快速原型设计的概念,针对飞行控制系统的快速原型设计,讨论了与其有关的设计仿真软件、关键技术和实施方法。     

基于CFD技术的鼻腔输药的流动特性研究

鼻腔输药作为一种新颖的输药方式,具有方便可靠的特点,不仅可以适用于局部而且适用于全身用药,已经受到广泛的重视。但由于人类的呼吸道复杂的立体结构使得鼻腔输药成为生物医药研究的一个长期的挑战。利用CFD(计算流体动力学,Computational Fluid Dynamics)技术对鼻腔输药的流动特性进行研究,对一个基于真实的人类鼻腔解剖的3D模型的输药的流动过程进行了分析,着重研究了不同的药物颗粒的流动和沉淀特性。利用CFD的商用软件FLUENT在层流情况下对不同的密度、直径和流动速率的药物颗粒在鼻腔中流动进行了数值模拟,并对计算结果进行了比较分析。CFD研究的结果为鼻腔输药这种新颖的药物输送方式的优化设计提供了依据。     

Probing the era of galaxy formation via TeV gamma ray absorption by the near infrared extragalactic background

We present models of the extragalactic background light (EBL) based on several scenarios of galaxy formation and evolution. We have treated galaxy formation with the Press-Schecter approximation for both cold dark matter (CDM) and cold+hot dark matter (CHDM) models, representing a moderate (z _f 3) and a late (z _f 1) era of galaxy formation respectively. Galaxy evolution has been treated by considering a variety of stellar types, different initial mass functions and star formation histories, and with an accounting of dust absorption and emission. We find that the dominant factor influencing the EBL is the epoch of galaxy formation. A recently proposed method for observing the EBL utilizing the absorption of 0.1 to 10 TeV gamma-rays from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is shown to be capable of discriminating between different galaxy formation epochs. The one AGN viewed in TeV light, Mrk 421, does show some evidence for a cutoff above 3 TeV; based on the EBL models presented here, we suggest that this is due to extinction in the source. The large absorption predicted at energies > 200 GeV for sources at z > 0.5 indicates that observations of TeV gamma-ray bursts (GRB) would constrain or eliminate models in which the GRB sources lie at cosmological distances.Now at University of Chicago, Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics.