Airborne scatterometers: investigating ocean backscatter under low and high-wind conditions

Attempting to understand and predict weather on a local and global basis has challenged both the scientific and engineering communities. One key parameter in understanding the weather is the ocean surface wind vector because of its role in the energy exchange at the air-sea surface. scatterometers, radars that measure the reflectivity of a target offer a tool with which to remotely monitor these winds from tower-, aircraft-, and satellite-based platforms. This paper introduces three current airborne scatterometer systems, and presents data collected by these instruments under low-, moderate-, and high-wind conditions. The paper focuses on airborne scatterometers because of their ability to resolve submesoscale variations in wind fields. Discrepancies between existing theory and the observations are noted and the concerns in measuring low-wind speeds discussed. Finally, the application of using this technology for estimating the surface-wind vector during a hurricane is demonstrated     

Symptomatic subclavian steal syndrome four decades after operation for dysphagia lusoria

Congenital abnormalities of the aortic arch may lead to signs and symptoms of tracheal and esophageal obstruction secondary to a restrictive vascular ring. There are many case reports and monographs concerning the surgical management of dysphagia lusoria. This case provides the first example of long-term follow-up of surgical intervention for relief of dysphagia lusoria. A 45-year-old laborer presented with a several year history of episodic bilateral blindness and a more recent onset of "drop attacks." Notably this patient had presented at the age of 18 months with difficulty breathing and eating since birth. The patient also had frequent upper respiratory infections and episodes of pneumonia. Workup revealed a right-sided aortic arch with a left ligamentum arteriosum. When he was first seen in our clinic, history and physical examination revealed claudication and diminished pulses in the left upper extremity. Arteriography and duplex studies confirmed reversal of flow in the patient's left vertebral artery. The arteriogram demonstrated the presence of a right-sided aortic arch and descending aorta along with the proximal stump of the previously ligated left subclavian artery. He underwent left carotid to left axillary artery bypass for the treatment of symptomatic subclavian steal syndrome. His symptoms have resolved with return of antegrade vertebral flow and the presence of normal pulses in the left arm. Congenital aortic abnormalities that lead to tracheal and esophageal compromise are numerous and varied. Surgical management requires a thorough understanding of the person's anatomy and preoperative planning. The life expectancy of patients with dysphagia lusoria necessitates consideration of the long-term consequences of surgical intervention.     

Trading Off Cache Capacity for Low-Voltage Operation

Two proposed techniques let microprocessors operate at low voltages despite high memory-cell failure rates. They identify and disable defective portions of the cache at two granularities: individual words or pairs of bits. Both techniques use the entire cache during high-voltage operation while sacrificing cache capacity during low-voltage operation to reduce the minimum voltage below 500 mV.     

Testing interruptions in reactive systems

Modelling and testing of reactive systems with interruptions are discussed. These systems are commonly found in portable devices, where interruptions to a running application can be demanded at any time, due to concurrent execution of processes sharing a single resource, such as screen, as well as arrival of calls from network distributed services. Since the possible number of combinations of allowed interruptions is large, proper test case selection activities need to be performed. But, in order to systematically investigate and select test cases, it is fundamental to explicitly model interruption behaviour in a compositional way, avoiding the need for explicit enumeration. This work presents a strategy for testing interruptions in reactive systems that covers modelling for testing of systems with interruptions, generation and selection of sound test cases. The strategy is supported by the LTS-BT tool. Moreover, a formal model of an environment devoted to execution of test cases with interruptions is presented. Finally, a case study illustrates its applicability in the mobile phone application domain.     

Investigation of a Dipole Model for Transient Analysis of Electromagnetic Field Coupling into Long Cables

The authors describe a mathematical model for a long conductor exposed to a high-intensity transient electric field to aid in determining interface requirements at connected equipment. Dipole characteristics of the conductors are used to simulate the impedance and in turn to calculate the induced currents. Example calculations for four models, two conductor lengths, and two conductor sizes, are presented and compared.     

Trace metal composition of Green River retorted shale oil

Crude shale oils from an aboveground and two in-situ retorting processes were characterized for 26 trace element constituents. The shale oils were pyrolysed from Green River Formation oil shale by pilot plant or semiworks-sized facilities. Trace elements were resolved into those predominantly associated with suspended shale fines or emulsified water, and those more intimately associated with the shale oil matrix. The abundance of the metals As, Co, Fe, Hg, Mo, Ni, Sb, Se, V and Zn were quantified in whole and fractionated shale oil samples; the possible chemical nature of several metals is discussed. Based on the shale oils examined, the following observations were noted: the shale oils contained moderately high levels of Fe (33–63 ppm) and As (9.3–29 ppm), and lower quantities of Co, Mo, Ni, Se and Zn (≈1–10 ppm); most trace metals were associated with asphaltene or resin components; relative to reported mean values for petroleum, the As, Co, Fe, Mo and Se were more prevalent in Green River shale oil; in-situ retorting processes appeared to introduce Mo into the product shale oil.     

Hemming of Aluminum Alloy Sheets Using Electromagnetic Forming

Hemming is usually the last stage of production for automotive closures, and therefore has a critical effect on the quality of the final assemblies. The insufficient formability of aluminum alloys creates a considerable problem in the hemming process. To address this issue, electromagnetic forming was utilized to hem aluminum alloy sheets. Electromagnetic forming is a high strain rate forming process that is currently being investigated by both academia and industry. Past studies have shown that the formability of metals can be significantly improved during electromagnetic forming, which benefits the hemming of aluminum alloys. This article presents the experimental results of hemming Al 6061-T6 sheets using electromagnetic forming. The effects of the parameters of electromagnetic hemming on the hem quality are discussed. In addition, the numerical simulation results of electromagnetic hemming are presented to enhance the understanding of the process and to determine the efficacy on an industrial scale.     

The Chlamydomonas reinhardtii ODA3 gene encodes a protein of the outer dynein arm docking complex

We have used an insertional mutagenesis/ gene tagging technique to generate new Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutants that are defective in assembly of the uter ynein rm. Among 39 insertional oda mutants characterized, two are alleles of the previously uncloned ODA3 gene, one is an allele of the uncloned ODA10 gene, and one represents a novel ODA gene (termed ODA12). ODA3 is of particular interest because it is essential for assembly of both the outer dynein arm and the outer dynein arm docking complex (ODA-DC) onto flagellar doublet microtubules (Takada, S., and R. Kamiya. 1994. J. Cell Biol. 126:737- 745). Beginning with the inserted DNA as a tag, the ODA3 gene and a full-length cDNA were cloned. The cloned gene rescues the phenotype of oda3 mutants. The cDNA sequence predicts a novel 83. 4-kD protein with extensive coiled-coil domains. The ODA-DC contains three polypeptides; direct amino acid sequencing indicates that the largest of these polypeptides corresponds to ODA3. This protein is likely to have an important role in the precise positioning of the outer dynein arms on the flagellar axoneme.