This proposal describes work combining active and passive ground-based methods to better understand the physical properties of aerosols to improve the retrieval of these properties from passive satellite data. The proposal joins the resources of the Atmospheric Remote Sensing Laboratory (ARSL) and the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) of the University of Arizona to capitalize on the expertise of both...

The idea of passive euthanasia has recently been attacked in a particularly clear and explicit way by an ‘‘Ethics Task Force’’ established by the European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) in February 2001. It claims that the expression ‘‘passive euthanasia’’ is a contradiction in terms and hence that there can be no such thing. This paper critically assesses the main arguments for the Task...

Excitation-contraction coupling is the physiological process of converting an electrical stimulus into a mechanical response. In muscle, the electrical stimulus is an action potential and the mechanical response is active contraction. The classical Hill model characterizes muscle contraction though one contractile element, activated by electrical excitation, and two non-linear springs, one in s...

Knee and hip joint replacement implants involve a sliding contact between the femoral component and the tibial or acetabular component immersed in body fluids, thus making the metallic parts susceptible to tribocorrosion. Micro-motions occur at points of fixation leading to debris and ion release by fretting corrosion. β-Titanium alloys are potential biomaterials for joint prostheses due to the...

The accretion of ice and frost on various infrastructure is ubiquitous in cold and humid environments, causing economic losses amounting to billions of dollars every year worldwide. The past couple of decades have seen unprecedented advances in the fields of surface chemistry and micro/nanofabrication, enabling the development of hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces that promote facile dei...

Controlled pumping of fluids through microfluidic networks is a critical unit operation ubiquitous to lab-on-a-chip applications. Although there have been a number of studies involving the creation of passive flows within lab-on-a-chip devices, none has shown the ability to create temporally stable flows for periods longer than several minutes. Here a passive pumping approach is presented in wh...

Flapping-wing kinematics for insect flight has been studied for decades, especially since engineers became interested in flapping-wing micro air vehicles (FWMAVs). Previous work mainly focused on understanding kinematic patterns employed by different insects from the perspective of their trajectories and aerodynamics, and on optimization of kinematic parameters to enhance the understanding. How...

Few years ago Power Systems consisted mainly of large generation plants supplying distant loads through the utility grids. The last years, though, a number of factors lead this structure to change gradually. Small generators of some MW have been already dispersed (DGs) throughout the transmission grid. The distribution of smaller generation units throughout the distribution system as near as po...

iv v What are the possibilities of small but movable machines? They may or may not be useful, but they surely would be fun to make. in his talk " There's plenty of room at the bottom " Abstract Being currently performed on highly complex and expensive equipments, active optical alignment of single mode 10 Gb/s transmitters and receivers is proving to be the bottleneck process for high volume ma...

Dynamically stable biped robots mimicking human locomotion have received significant attention over the last few decades. Formerly, the existence of stable periodic gaits for straight walking of passive biped walkers was well known and investigated as the notion of passive dynamic walking. This study is aimed to elaborate this notion in the case of three dimensional (3D) walking and extend it f...