Recent results from MAUS payloads

Project MAUS is a part of the German material sciences program and provides autonomous payloads for the Space Shuttle. These payloads are housed in canisters which are identical with those of NASA's Get-Away-Special program. The main components of the hardware are: a standard system consisting of power supply, experiment control, data acquisition and the experiment modules containing experiment specific hardware. Up to now, three MAUS modules with experiments from the area of material sciences have been flown as GAS payloads. Results will be reported from GAS Payload Number G-27 and G-28 flown aboard STS-51G

Ten past and ten future GAS/MAUS-payloads

MAUS (materials science autonomous experiments) is one out of a series of flight opportunities which the Space Program of West Germany offers to scientists from the disciplines of materials research and processing for performing materials science investigations under microgravity conditions. Up to now, ten MAUS experiments were flown which were dealing with the following scientific topics: decomposition of binary alloys with miscibility gap in the liquid state, interaction of a solidification front with dispersed particles, critical Marangoni number, investigation of the magnetic compound MnBi, shrinkage of gas bubbles in glass melts and slip casting. The ten future experiments are partly reflights with modification of the scientific objectives as well as new experiments in the fields of chemical reactions, heat transfer, glass technology and Ostwald ripening. Looking to ten flown payloads, the peculiarities of instrument technology in GAS-cans and its evolution is discussed with emphasis on structure, electronics and thermal design. A typical modern payload using 100 percent of the resource is presented

Multicultural Heritage of Villages in the Local Dimension on the Example of Dobroń Community

This paper presents the results of research on the issue of multiculturalism in the aspect of historical spatial layouts and selected objects of material heritage on the example of Dobroń community. The authors focused their attention on the genetic and settlement analysis and morphological reconstruction of selected villages, mainly related to so called „Olęder” and Frederician colonization from the 18th and 19th centuries. The article also presents the history and contemporary state of preservation of some objects associated with particular national and religious groups that left a clear traces in the cultural landscape of the examined area.Artykuł przedstawia wyniki badań dotyczących zagadnienia wielokulturowości wsi w aspekcie kształtowania historycznych układów przestrzennych oraz wybranych obiektów materialnego dziedzictwa na przykładzie gminy Dobroń. W opracowaniu skoncentrowano uwagę na dokonaniu analizy genetyczno-osadniczej i rekonstrukcji morfologicznej wybranych wsi, związanych głównie z kolonizacją olęderską i fryderycjańską w XVIII i XIX wieku. W artykule omówiono także dzieje i współczesny stan zachowania obiektów, powiązanych z konkretnymi grupami narodowymi oraz religijnymi, które pozostawiły wyraźny ślad w krajobrazie kulturowym na badanym obszarze

Syntactic Method for Vehicles Movement Description and Analysis

The syntactic primitives and the description language can be used for assignment and analysis of vehicles movement. The paper introduces a method that allows spotting vehicles’ manoeuvres on and between traffic lanes, observing images, registered by a video camera. The analysis algorithms of the vehicles’ movement trajectories were considered in this paper as well

Future MAUS payload and the TWIN-MAUS configuration

The German MAUS project (materials science autonomous experiments in weightlessness) was initiated in 1979 for optimum utilization of NASA's Get Away Special (GAS) program. The standard MAUS system was developed to meet GAS requirements and can accommodate a wide variety of GAS-type experiments. The system offers a range of services to experimenters within the framework of standardized interfaces. Four MAUS payloads being prepared for future space shuttle flight opportunities are described. The experiments include critical Marangoni convection, oscillatory Marangoni convection, pool boiling, and gas bubbles in glass melts. Scientific objectives as well as equipment hardware are presented together with recent improvements to the MAUS standard system, e.g., a new experiment control and data management unit and a semiconductor memory. A promising means of increasing resources in the field of GAS experiments is the interconnection of GAS containers. This important feature has been studied to meet the challenge of future advanced payloads. In the TWIN-MAUS configuration, electrical power and data will be transferred between two containers mounted adjacent to each other

Various aspects of vehicles image data-streams reduction for road traffic sufficient description

The on-line image processing was implemented for video-camera usage for traffic control. Due to reduce the immense data sets dimension various speculations of data sampling methods were introduced. At the beginning the needed sampling ratio has been found then simple but effective image processing algorithms have to be chosen, finally the hardware solutions for parallel processing are discussed. The PLA computing engine was involved for coping with this task; for fulfilling the assumed characteristics. The developer has to consider several restrictions and preferences. None universal algorithm is available up to now. The reported works, concern vehicles stream recorders development that has to do all recording and computing procedures in strictly defined time limits

Plant cell packs: a scalable platform for recombinant protein production and metabolic engineering

Industrial plant biotechnology applications include the production of sustainable fuels, complex metabolites and recombinant proteins, but process development can be impaired by a lack of reliable and scalable screening methods. Here, we describe a rapid and versatile expression system which involves the infusion of Agrobacterium tumefaciens into three‐dimensional, porous plant cell aggregates deprived of cultivation medium, which we have termed plant cell packs (PCPs). This approach is compatible with different plant species such as Nicotiana tabacum BY2, Nicotiana benthamiana or Daucus carota and 10‐times more effective than transient expression in liquid plant cell culture. We found that the expression of several proteins was similar in PCPs and intact plants, for example, 47 and 55 mg/kg for antibody 2G12 expressed in BY2 PCPs and N. tabacum plants respectively. Additionally, the expression of specific enzymes can either increase the content of natural plant metabolites or be used to synthesize novel small molecules in the PCPs. The PCP method is currently scalable from a microtiter plate format suitable for high‐throughput screening to 150‐mL columns suitable for initial product preparation. It therefore combined the speed of transient expression in plants with the throughput of microbial screening systems. Plant cell packs therefore provide a convenient new platform for synthetic biology approaches, metabolic engineering and conventional recombinant protein expression techniques that require the multiplex analysis of several dozen up to hundreds of constructs for efficient product and process development

Analize naprezanja i pomaka suvremenog postolja tokarilice metodom konačnih elemenata (MKE)

The Finite element method (FEM) was used in this study for the analysis of the strain and stress of a turning machine body. The final design decisions were made on the basis of stress and displacement field analysis of various design versions related to the structure of the considered machine tool. The results presented in this paper will be helpful for practical static and dynamic strength evaluation as well as for the appropriate design of machine tools using the FEM.Metoda konačnih elemenata (MKE) je primjenjena za analizu deformacija i naprezanja postolja stroja. Konačna odluka o oblikovanju je donešena na osnovi analize polja pomaka za različite varijante oblikovovanja elemenata razmatranih strojeva. Rezultati predstavljeni u ovom radu će biti korisni za procjenu statičke i dinamičke čvrstoće kao i za odgovarajuće oblikovanje strojnih alata korištenjem MKE