The SuperDARN HF coherent scatter radars (Greenwald et al., 1995) provide line-of-sight (l-o-s) velocity measurements of ionospheric convection flow over the polar regions of the northern and southern hemispheres. A number of techniques have been developed in order to obtain 2-D plasma flow vectors from these l-o-s observations. This study entails a comparison of the ionospheric flow vectors de...

Precise payload positioning by an overhead crane is difficult due to the fact that the payload can exhibit a pendulum-like swinging motion. The stabilization of loads that are carried by cranes is tedious, and the lack of truly efficient control strategies implies a large economical loss due to the additional time involved in the process. From a control theoretical point of view, cranes are und...

The swinging spring, or elastic pendulum, has a 2:1:1 resonance arising at cubic order in its approximate Lagrangian. The corresponding modulation equations are the wellknown three-wave equations that also apply, for example, in laser-matter interaction in a cavity. We use Hamiltonian reduction and pattern evocation techniques to derive a formula that describes the characteristic feature of thi...

We consider the propagation of solitons in media with an imprinted transverse periodic or parabolic refractive index modulation when the modulation depth fluctuates slightly along the propagation direction. We find that, under suitable spectral resonance conditions, small transverse soliton oscillations may get parametrically amplified.

Facts and views on the treatment of the menopause underwent dramatic swings during the last fifty years, from a non-issue fifty years ago to a must for the well-being of all postmenopausal women at the end of the 20 century. the enthusiasm for hormone replacement therapy (hRt) was smashed in 2002, after the publication of a large-scale prospective randomised study, the Whi trial, on health cost...