Plant mineral nutrition,gas exchange and photosynthesis in space: A review

Successful growth and development of higher plants in space rely on adequate availability and uptake of water and nutrients, and efficient energy distribution through photosynthesis and gas exchange. In the present review, literature has been reviewed to assemble the relevant knowledge within space plant research for future planetary missions. Focus has been on fractional gravity, space radiation, magnetic fields and ultimately a combined effect of these factors on gas exchange, photosynthesis and transport of water and solutes.     

Solar Variation and Stratospheric Response

We have shown in several recent publications that it is necessary to group the meteorological data according to the phase of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) throughout the year, in order to find a clear signal of the 11-year sunspot cycle (SSC). This work is summarized here. It is the purpose of this paper (1) to update earlier results of the solar cycle – QBO relationship for the northern winter, (2) to stress the interaction between the hemispheres and (3) to summarize the influence of the QBO on the solar variability signal, as well as the influence of the solar variability signal on the QBO throughout the year. For this, the constructed annual mean of the solar cycle – QBO relationship is introduced.     

On the Response of the Climate System to Solar Forcing

The climate response to changes in radiative forcing depends crucially on climate feedback processes, with the consequence that solar and greenhouse gas forcing have both similar response patterns in the troposphere. This circumstance complicates significantly the attribution of the causes of climate change. Additionally, the climate system displays a high level of unforced intrinsic variability, and significant variations in the climate of many parts of the world are due to internal processes. Such internal modes contribute significantly to the variability of climate system on various time scales, and thus compete with external forcing in explaining the origin of past climate extremes. This highlights the need for independent observations of solar forcing including long-term consistent observational records of the total and spectrally resolved solar irradiance. The stratospheric response to solar forcing is different from its response to greenhouse gas forcing, thus suggesting that stratospheric observations could offer the best target for the identification of the specific influence of solar forcing on climate.     

Total solar irradiance absolute level from DIARAD/SOVIM on the International Space Station

Current measurements from DIARAD/VIRGO, PMO6V/VIRGO and ACRIM3 radiometers are of the same order of magnitude, but differ from TIM/SORCE by about 4.5 W m⁻². This difference is higher than the sum of the claimed individual absolute uncertainties of the instruments. In this context, the SOLAR payload on the International Space Station embarks the SOVIM package. We give the results of the differential absolute radiometer DIARAD/SOVIM and discuss its associated uncertainties. Compared to DIARAD/VIRGO, all possible efforts have been made to improve the absolute accuracy. Substantial progress has been made in the aperture area and electrical power measurements. The measured TSI value from the left channel of DIARAD/SOVIM during three days of June 2008 is 1364.50 ± 1.38 W m⁻² (Total) or ±0.49 W m⁻² (if we combine the individual contributions in quadrature). The right channel gives 1364.75 W m⁻² with the same uncertainties. These values are about 1.2 W m⁻² lower than DIARAD/VIRGO and about 4 W m⁻² higher than TIM/SORCE. The difference between the left and right channels measurements is as low as 0.25 W m⁻² which is within the improved uncertainty limits.     

Cosmic ray anisotropies in the outer heliosphere

The observation of the directional distribution of energetic and cosmic ray particles has been done with the Voyager spacecraft over a long period. Since 2002, when the first flux enhancements of charged particles associated with the approach of Voyager 1 to the solar wind termination shock were observed, these anisotropy measurements have become of special interest. They play an important role to understand the magnetic field and shock structure and the basics of the modulation of cosmic ray and anomalous particles at and beyond the termination shock. They also serve as motivation to study the spatial behavior of galactic and anomalous cosmic ray anisotropies with numerical modulation models in order to illustrate how the radial anisotropy, at different energies, change from upstream to downstream of the termination shock. Observations made by Voyager 1 indicate that the termination shock is a complicated region than previously thought, hence the effects of the latitude dependence of the termination shock’s compression ratio and injection efficiency on the radial anisotropies of galactic and anomalous protons will be illustrated. We find that the magnitude and direction of the radial anisotropy strongly depends on the position in the heliosphere and the energy of particles. The effect of the TS on the radial anisotropy is to abruptly increase its value in the heliosheath especially in the A > 0 cycle for galactic protons and in both polarity cycles for anomalous protons. Furthermore, the global effect of the latitude dependence of the shock’s compression ratio is to increase the radial anisotropy for galactic protons throughout the heliosphere, while when combined with the latitude dependence of the injection efficiency this increase depends on modulation factors for anomalous protons and can even alter the direction of the radial anisotropy.     

太阳能热推进的研究与发展

概述了太阳能热推进(STP)的系统组成和工作原理,重点介绍了STP的研究进展、关键技术及其在潜在应用领域中的性能优势,关键技术有高性能太阳能主聚光器的研制和吸收器／推力室高温热结构的设计,并根据国外研究现状,提出了国内开展太阳能热推进研究的若干建议。     

九开关变换器驱动六相电机的载波调制PWM控制

针对九开关变换器驱动六相永磁同步电机系统的断相运行状态,研究了一种基于有效作用时间的载波调制PWM控制方法。给出了九开关变换器及基于有效作用时间的载波调制PWM控制的基本原理,建立了正常情况下六相PMSM的数学模型,根据单相和两相断路后电机相应的约束条件,采用空间解耦变换矩阵,分别建立了单相断路和两相断路后的电机数学模型,在Matlab/Simulink中进行了仿真实验,验证了所提控制方法的可行性。     

High energy cosmic ray nuclei results on Ulysses: 1. Mission overview

The cosmic ray flux observed with the Kiel Electron Telescope on board the ULYSSES spaceprobe varies with solar activity as well as with heliospheric position. Determination of the latitudinal gradients requires a careful analysis of the influences of the current sheet tilt angle, the number of major solar flares, interplanetary shocks and interaction regions evolving in the expanding solar wind. In this paper we concentrate on nuclei with rigidity above 1 GV. We discuss the effects of the variable solar activity in the declining phase of the present solar cycle and the variation with radial distance as a basis for separating latitudinal effects. We show that during this phase of the solar cycle modulation of GV nuclei is ordered by temporal evolution, radial distance and negligible latitudinal effects even at latitudes between 30° and 50° South.     

The Progress of the Taiwan Oscillation Network Project

We describe the present status of the project of the Taiwan Oscillation Network (TON) and discuss a scientific result using the TON data. The TON is a ground-based network to measure solar intensity oscillations for the study of the solar interior. Four telescopes have been installed in appropriate longitudes around the world. The TON telescopes take K-line full-disk solar images of diameter 1000 pixels at a rate of one image per minute. The data has been collected since October of 1993. The TON high-spatial-resolution data are specially suitable for the study of local properties of the Sun. In 1997 we developed a new method, acoustic imaging, to construct the acoustic signals inside the Sun with the acoustic signals measured at the solar surface. From the constructed signals, we can form intensity map and phase-shift map of an active region at various depths. The direct link between these maps and the subsurface wave-speed perturbation suffers from the poor vertical resolution of acoustic imaging. Recently an inversion method has been developed to invert the measured phase travel time perturbation to estimate the distribution of wave-speed perturbation based on the ray approximation. This technique of acoustic imaging has been used to image the far-side of the Sun that could provides information on space weather prediction. The TON Team includes: Antonio Jimenez (Instituto Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain); Guoxiang Ai and Honqi Zhang (Huairou Solar Observing Station, P.R.C.); Philip Goode and William Marquette (Big Bear Solar Observatory, U.S.A.); Shuhrat Ehgamberdiev and Oleg Ladenkov (Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute, Uzbekistan) This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Working Group 3 Report: Coronal Hole Boundaries and Interactions with Adjacent Regions

Summarized below are the discussions of working group 3 on "Coronal hole boundaries and interactions with adjacent regions" which took place at the 7th SOHO workshop in Northeast Harbor, Maine, USA, 28 September to 1 October 1998. A number of recent observational and theoretical results were presented during the discussions to shed light on different aspects of coronal hole boundaries. The working group also included presentations on streamers and coronal holes to emphasis the difference between the plasma properties in these regions, and to serve as guidelines for the definition of the boundaries. Observations, particularly white light observations, show that multiple streamers are present close to the solar limb at all times. At some distance from the sun, typically below 2 R, these streamers merge into a relatively narrow sheet as seen, for example, in LASCO and UVCS images. The presence of multiple current sheets in interplanetary space was also briefly addressed. Coronal hole boundaries were defined as the abrupt transition from the bright appearing plasma sheet to the dark coronal hole regions. Observations in the inner corona seem to indicate a transition of typically 10 to 20 degrees, whereas observations in interplanetary space, carried out from Ulysses, show on one hand an even faster transition of less than 2 degrees which is in agreement with earlier Helios results. On the other hand, these observations also show that the transition happens on different scales, some of which are significantly larger. The slow solar wind is connected to the streamer belt/plasma sheet, even though the discussions were still not conclusive on the point where exactly the slow solar wind originates. Considered the high variability of plasma characteristics in slow wind streams, it seems most likely that several types of coronal regions produce slow solar wind, such as streamer stalks, streamer legs and open field regions between active regions, and maybe even regions just inside of the coronal holes. Observational and theoretical studies presented during the discussions show evidence that each of these regions may indeed contribute to the solar slow wind. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.