Alignment system for encoders

An improved encoder alignment system is disclosed which provides an indication of the extent of misalignment and a measure of the rate at which the misalignment may be changing. The invention is adapted for use with a conventional encoder which provides a digital coarse word having at least significant bit and a digital fine word having a least significant bit and a most significant bit. The invention generates the exclusive or of the least significant bit of the coarse digital signal and the least significant bit of the fine digital signal to provide a first signal. The invention then generates the exclusive or of the first signal and the complement of the most significant bit of the fine digital signal to provide an output signal which represents the misalignment of the encoder

Incommensurate magnetism in cuprate materials

In the low doping region an incommensurate magnetic phase is observed in LSCO. By means of the composite operator method we show that the single-band 2D Hubbard model describes the experimental situation. In the higher doping region, where experiments are not available, the incommensurability is depressed owing to the van Hove singularity near the Fermi level. A proportionality between the incommensurability amplitude and the critical temperature is predicted, suggesting a close relation between superconductivity and incommensurate magnetism.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures in one Postscript file, RevTe

Viabilità minore motore di sviluppo

Nel mondo, molte strade extraurbane (viabilità minore o locale) si caratterizzano per il ridotto transito giornaliero dei veicoli, transito che assume un valore variabile in relazione ai diversi contesti. Però è soltanto questa rete secondaria che assicura i collegamenti indispensabili per la popolazione insediata lontano dai grandi centri urbani, popolazione che, pur potendo provvedere al proprio sostentamento, attingendo alle sole risorse presenti di fatto dipende, per tutte le funzioni di ordine superiore (commercio, educazione, sanità, servizi) da questa rete stradale. Strade quindi che sono indispensabili per chi risiede lontano dai centri urbani. Ma le risorse assegnate per la manutenzione sono molto scarse. Quando si tratta di pianificare e di investire sulla rete locale, si fa ricorso ai modelli tradizionali di investimento (ivi inclusa l’analisi costi-benefici e la stima dei costi sociali connessi), modelli utilizzati per le reti di traffico di una certa rilevanza ma del tutto inappropriati se applicati a contesti locali

Estimation of Local Mean Population Densities of Japanese Beetle Grubs (Scarabaeidae: Coleoptera)

Insect populations tend to be patchy in distribution. Even when the mean population density is low, there may be local patches with high densities. As a result, estimates of mean populations may provide little information about the size or intensity of local patches within the sampled area. We compared the following 3 methods of estimating local population densities of insects: (1) with moving averages, a local mean population density is estimated as the mean of samples taken within a given radius of a central point, (2) with inverse distances, local means are estimated as weighted averages of samples; each sample is given a weight proportional to a power of the reciprocal of its distance from the center of the region for which the mean is to be estimated, (3) kriging is a geostatistical algorithm for estimating local means as weighted averages of samples. Weighting is based on the spatial covariance of the samples, or the degree to which samples that are near to each other are related. The first 2 methods are relatively easy to calculate but were unreliable when used with standard parameters to estimate local Japanese beetle grub densities. When an optimum radius was used with moving averages and an optimum exponent was used with inverse distances, the advantage of ease of calculation was lost, yet both methods were still inferior to kriging in providing accurate estimates of local mean

The Hubbard model in the two-pole approximation

The two-dimensional Hubbard model is analyzed in the framework of the two-pole expansion. It is demonstrated that several theoretical approaches, when considered at their lowest level, are all equivalent and share the property of satisfying the conservation of the first four spectral momenta. It emerges that the various methods differ only in the way of fixing the internal parameters and that it exists a unique way to preserve simultaneously the Pauli principle and the particle-hole symmetry. A comprehensive comparison with respect to some general symmetry properties and the data from quantum Monte Carlo analysis shows the relevance of imposing the Pauli principle.Comment: 12 pages, 8 embedded Postscript figures, RevTeX, submitted to Int. Jou. Mod. Phys.

Characterization of extreme weather events on Italian roads

According to climate modellers, probability, frequency, duration, intensity (seriousness) of extreme weather events (extreme temperatures and rainfall) are increasing and will be more frequent in future. The former will lead to higher surface runoff and flood events while the latter will cause landslides phenomena and a break of roads network. The impact of such events depends greatly on the physical hydraulic and mechanical properties of soils. Increasing numbers of extreme events in winter time in recent years have demonstrated the paramount importance of effective and integrated management of land resources in the protection of the environment and of the road network. In Italy more than 10% of the territory has been classified as having a high or very high hydro-geological risk, affecting 80% of the Italian municipalities. The impacts on population and the economic damages are relevant. In Italy over the last 20 years, floods and landslides had an impact on more than 70 000 people and caused economic damage of at least 11 billion euro. Since 2000, the Italian Ministry for the Environment entrusted ISPRA the task of monitoring the programmes of emergency measures toreduce hydrogeological risk. (ReNDiS project, database of mitigation measures against floods and landslides)