Radio observations of comets

Three general techniques of radio science used to attempt to observe comets are discussed: spectral line, continum and radar observations. Of these, only radio spectral line observations achieved a degree of success but, more often than not, the results was negative. Cometary excitation and reasons why radio searches can fail were examined

Experimental study of the impedance of a short dipole in a plasma for parallel and perpendicular orientation with respect to the dc magnetic field

Impedance measurements on small dipole immersed in anisotropic plasma with external electric fiel

Fabrication of lightweight parabolic concentrators from a glass master Final report

Forming of optical lightweight solar concentrator on glass master - spray technique for resin substrate layer

The Impact of Income on Mortality: Evidence from the Social Security Notch

There is widespread and longstanding agreement that life expectancy and income are positively correlated. However, it has proven much more difficult to establish a causal relationship since income and health are jointly determined. We use a major change in the Social Security law as exogenous variation in income to examine the impact of income on mortality in an elderly population. The legislation created a notch' in Social Security benefits based upon date of birth; those born before January 1, 1917 generally receive higher benefits than those born afterwards. We compare mortality rates after age 65 for males born in the second half of 1916 and the first half of 1917. Data from restricted-use versions of the National Mortality Detail File combined with Census data allows us to count all deaths among elderly Americans between 1979 and 1993. We find that the higher income group has a statistically significantly higher mortality rate, contradicting the previous literature. We also find that the younger cohort responded to lower incomes by increasing post-retirement work effort. These results suggest that moderate employment has beneficial health effects for the elderly.

Coal feed component testing for CDIF

Investigations conducted during the conceptual design of the Montana MHD Component Development and Integration Facility (CDIF) identified commercially available processing and feeding equipment potentially suitable for use in a reference design. Tests on sub-scale units of this equipment indicated that they would perform as intended

A Non-Parametric Learning Approach to Identify Online Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is among the most challenging law enforcement problems which demands persistent fight against from all over the globe. In this study, we leverage readily available data from the website "Backpage"-- used for classified advertisement-- to discern potential patterns of human trafficking activities which manifest online and identify most likely trafficking related advertisements. Due to the lack of ground truth, we rely on two human analysts --one human trafficking victim survivor and one from law enforcement, for hand-labeling the small portion of the crawled data. We then present a semi-supervised learning approach that is trained on the available labeled and unlabeled data and evaluated on unseen data with further verification of experts.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics 2016 Conference (ISI 2016

Radio detections of cometary molecular transitions: A review

Radio detections of CH, OH, HCN, CH3CN, and several unidentified species in comet Kohoutek and the detection of H2O emission from comet Bradfield are discussed in terms of the similarities and differences between cometary molecules and interstellar molecules. Emphasis is placed on excitation and chemistry. The observed projected densities and resulting gas production rates are considered along with the feasibility of future radio molecular observations of comets

Radar interferometric studies of comets

Our objectives are to use radio interferometry to study composition, velocity distribution, maser excitation, and plasma interactions of cometary gas. Two new cometary chemistry programs were started with radio interferometers: (1) the VLA used to search for HC3N emission from Comet Brorsen-Metcalf at 3.3 cm wavelength; and (2) the BIMA millimeter array used to observe Comet Austin in HCN