Fine-tuning of process conditions to improve product uniformity of polystyrene particles used for wind tunnel velocimetry

Monodisperse polymer particles (having uniform diameter) were used for the last two decades in physical, biological, and chemical sciences. In NASA Langley Research Center monodisperse polystyrene particles are used in wind tunnel laser velocimeters. These polystyrene (PS) particles in latex form were formulated at the Engineering Laboratory of FENGD using emulsion-free emulsion polymerization. Monodisperse PS latices particles having different particle diameters were formulated and useful experimental data involving effects of process conditions on particle size were accumulated. However, similar process conditions and chemical recipes for polymerization of styrene monomer have often yielded monodisperse particles having varying diameters. The purpose was to improve the PS latex product uniformity by fine-tuning the process parameters based on the knowledge of suspension and emulsion polymerization

Higher Dimensional Szekeres' Space-time in Brans-Dicke Scalar Tensor Theory

The generalized Szekeres family of solution for quasi-spherical space-time of higher dimensions are obtained in the scalar tensor theory of gravitation. Brans-Dicke field equations expressed in Dicke's revised units are exhaustively solved for all the subfamilies of the said family. A particular group of solutions may also be interpreted as due to the presence of the so-called C-field of Hoyle and Narlikar and for a chosen sign of the coupling parameter. The models show either expansion from a big bang type of singularity or a collapse with the turning point at a lower bound. There is one particular case which starts from the big bang, reaches a maximum and collapses with the in course of time to a crunch

Construction of Near-Capacity Protograph LDPC Code Sequences with Block-Error Thresholds

Density evolution for protograph Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes is considered, and it is shown that the message-error rate falls double-exponentially with iterations whenever the degree-2 subgraph of the protograph is cycle-free and noise level is below threshold. Conditions for stability of protograph density evolution are established and related to the structure of the protograph. Using large-girth graphs, sequences of protograph LDPC codes with block-error threshold equal to bit-error threshold and block-error rate falling near-exponentially with blocklength are constructed deterministically. Small-sized protographs are optimized to obtain thresholds near capacity for binary erasure and binary-input Gaussian channels.Comment: to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Communication