Three dimensional tracking with misalignment between display and control axes

Human operators confronted with misaligned display and control frames of reference performed three dimensional, pursuit tracking in virtual environment and virtual space simulations. Analysis of the components of the tracking errors in the perspective displays presenting virtual space showed that components of the error due to visual motor misalignment may be linearly separated from those associated with the mismatch between display and control coordinate systems. Tracking performance improved with several hours practice despite previous reports that such improvement did not take place

Telerobotics: A simulation facility for university research

An experimental telerobotics (TR) simulation suitable for studying human operator (H.O.) performance is described. Simple manipulator pick-and-place and tracking tasks allowed quantitative comparison of a number of calligraphic display viewing conditions. A number of control modes could be compared in this TR simulation, including displacement, rate and acceleratory control using position and force joysticks. A homeomorphic controller turned out to be no better than joysticks; the adaptive properties of the H.O. can apparently permit quite good control over a variety of controller configurations and control modes. Training by optimal control example seemed helpful in preliminary experiments. An introduced communication delay was found to produce decrease in performance. In considerable part, this difficulty could be compensated for by preview control information. That neurological control of normal human movement contains a data period of 0.2 second may relate to this robustness of H.O. control to delay. The Ames-Berkeley enhanced perspective display was utilized in conjunction with an experimental helmet mounted display system (HMD) that provided stereoscopic enhanced views

Session G: Nuclear Power/Climate Change – TerraPower’s Traveling Wave Reactor

TerraPower is moving forward with detailed plans for a sustainable, economic, and safe nuclear reactor. The Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) – a reactor in the 500-megawatt electric range – uses unique core physics to initiate a breed and burn wave which can be completely sustained in fertile material. This process allows the TWR to convert depleted uranium waste into usable fuel as the reactor operates, providing a sustainable base-load power source. TerraPower is the first company to create a practical engineering embodiment of this previously studied concept thanks to a powerful advanced reactor modeling interface, developed in-house, which enables the analysis of traveling wave reactor technology in a way that has not been possible before. This presentation will provide more detail about the origins of the TWR, the project’s current status as well as some of the safety differences between TWRs and currently operating light water reactors

Gamma rays from dark matter annihilation in the Draco and observability at ARGO

The CACTUS experiment recently observed a gamma ray excess above 50 GeV from the direction of the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Considering that Draco is dark matter dominated the gamma rays may be generated through dark matter annihilation in the Draco halo. In the framework of the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model we explore the parameter space to account for the gamma ray signals at CACTUS. We find that the neutralino mass is constrained to be approximately in the range between 100 GeV ~ 400 GeV and a sharp central cuspy of the dark halo profile in Draco is necessary to explain the CACTUS results. We then discuss further constraints on the supersymmetric parameter space by observations at the ground based ARGO detector. It is found that the parameter space can be strongly constrained by ARGO if no excess from Draco is observed above 100 GeV.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Leveraging DNA-Methylation Quantitative-Trait Loci to Characterize the Relationship between Methylomic Variation, Gene Expression, and Complex Traits

Characterizing the complex relationship between genetic, epigenetic, and transcriptomic variation has the potential to increase understanding about the mechanisms underpinning health and disease phenotypes. We undertook a comprehensive analysis of common genetic variation on DNA methylation (DNAm) by using the Illumina EPIC array to profile samples from the UK Household Longitudinal study. We identified 12,689,548 significant DNA methylation quantitative trait loci (mQTL) associations (p 60 human traits by using summary-data-based Mendelian randomization (SMR) to identify 1,662 pleiotropic associations between 36 complex traits and 1,246 DNAm sites. We also use SMR to characterize the relationship between DNAm and gene expression and thereby identify 6,798 pleiotropic associations between 5,420 DNAm sites and the transcription of 1,702 genes. Our mQTL database and SMR results are available via a searchable online database as a resource to the research community

Probing Physics at Extreme Energies with Cosmic Ultra-High Energy Radiation

The highest energy cosmic rays observed possess macroscopic energies and their origin is likely to be associated with the most energetic processes in the Universe. Their existence triggered a flurry of theoretical explanations ranging from conventional shock acceleration to particle physics beyond the Standard Model and processes taking place at the earliest moments of our Universe. Furthermore, many new experimental activities promise a strong increase of statistics at the highest energies and a combination with gamma-ray and neutrino astrophysics will put strong constraints on these theoretical models. We give an overview over this quickly evolving research field with focus on testing new particle physics.Comment: 12 latex pages, 2 postscript figures included; based on invited talk at the WHEPP-7 Conference, Allahabad, India (January, 2002

Exploring the dynamics of compliance with community penalties

In this paper, we examine how compliance with community penalties has been theorized hitherto and seek to develop a new dynamic model of compliance with community penalties. This new model is developed by exploring some of the interfaces between existing criminological and socio-legal work on compliance. The first part of the paper examines the possible definitions and dimensions of compliance with community supervision. Secondly, we examine existing work on explanations of compliance with community penalties, supplementing this by drawing on recent socio-legal scholarship on private individuals’ compliance with tax regimes. In the third part of the paper, we propose a dynamic model of compliance, based on the integration of these two related analyses. Finally, we consider some of the implications of our model for policy and practice concerning community penalties, suggesting the need to move beyond approaches which, we argue, suffer from compliance myopia; that is, a short-sighted and narrowly focused view of the issues

Expansion of the HSFY gene family in pig lineages : HSFY expansion in suids.

BACKGROUND: Amplified gene families on sex chromosomes can harbour genes with important biological functions, especially relating to fertility. The Y-linked heat shock transcription factor (HSFY) family has become amplified on the Y chromosome of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa), in an apparently independent event to an HSFY expansion on the Y chromosome of cattle (Bos taurus). Although the biological functions of HSFY genes are poorly understood, they appear to be involved in gametogenesis in a number of mammalian species, and, in cattle, HSFY gene copy number may correlate with levels of fertility. RESULTS: We have investigated the HSFY family in domestic pig, and other suid species including warthog, bushpig, babirusa and peccaries. The domestic pig contains at least two amplified variants of HSFY, distinguished predominantly by presence or absence of a SINE within the intron. Both these variants are expressed in testis, and both are present in approximately 50 copies each in a single cluster on the short arm of the Y. The longer form has multiple nonsense mutations rendering it likely non-functional, but many of the shorter forms still have coding potential. Other suid species also have these two variants of HSFY, and estimates of copy number suggest the HSFY family may have amplified independently twice during suid evolution. CONCLUSIONS: The HSFY genes have become amplified in multiple species lineages independently. HSFY is predominantly expressed in testis in domestic pig, a pattern conserved with cattle, in which HSFY may play a role in fertility. Further investigation of the potential associations of HSFY with fertility and testis development may be of agricultural interest.We gratefully acknowledge the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute core teams for fingerprinting, mapping, archiving, library construction, sequence improvement and sequencing and Genus for providing the Duroc boar samples. This work was funded by BBSRC grant BB/F021372/1. The Flow Cytometry and Cytogenetics Core Facilities at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Sanger investigators are funded by the Wellcome Trust (grant number WT098051)

Gamma-ray and synchrotron emission from neutralino annihilation in the Large Magellanic Cloud

We calculate the expected flux of gamma-ray and radio emission from the LMC due to neutralino annihilation. Using rotation curve data to probe the density profile and assuming a minimum disk, we describe the dark matter halo of the LMC using models predicted by N-body simulations. We consider a range of density profiles including the NFW profile, a modified NFW profile proposed by Hayashi et al.(2003) to account for the effects of tidal stripping, and an isothermal sphere with a core. We find that the gamma-ray flux expected from these models may be detectable by GLAST for a significant part of the neutralino parameter space. The prospects for existing and upcoming Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes are less optimistic, as unrealistically long exposures are required for detection. However, the effects of adiabatic compression due to the baryonic component may improve the chances for detection by ACTs. The maximum flux we predict is well below EGRET's measurements and thus EGRET does not constrain the parameter space. The expected synchrotron emission generally lies below the observed radio emission from the LMC in the frequency range of 19.7 to 8550 MHz. As long as <2x 10^-26 cm^3 s^-1 for a neutralino mass of 50 GeV, the observed radio emission is not primarily due to neutralinos and is consistent with the assumption that the main source is cosmic rays. We find that the predicted fluxes, obtained by integrating over the entire LMC, are not very strongly dependent on the inner slope of the halo profile, varying by less than an order of magnitude for the range of profiles we considered.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures; detailed discussion of how the neutralino induced signals compare with the cosmic-ray induced ones was added. Main conclusions unchanged. Matches accepted version, to appear in Astroparticle Physic

Sporting embodiment: sports studies and the (continuing) promise of phenomenology

Whilst in recent years sports studies have addressed the calls ‘to bring the body back in’ to theorisations of sport and physical activity, the ‘promise of phenomenology’ remains largely under-realised with regard to sporting embodiment. Relatively few accounts are grounded in the ‘flesh’ of the lived sporting body, and phenomenology offers a powerful framework for such analysis. A wide-ranging, multi-stranded, and interpretatively contested perspective, phenomenology in general has been taken up and utilised in very different ways within different disciplinary fields. The purpose of this article is to consider some selected phenomenological threads, key qualities of the phenomenological method, and the potential for existentialist phenomenology in particular to contribute fresh perspectives to the sociological study of embodiment in sport and exercise. It offers one way to convey the ‘essences’, corporeal immediacy and textured sensuosity of the lived sporting body. The use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is also critically addressed. Key words: phenomenology; existentialist phenomenology; interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA); sporting embodiment; the lived-body; Merleau-Pont