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Fuel economy and reduction of harmful elements in lubricants are becoming important issues in the automotive industry. An approach to respond to these requirements is the potential use of low friction coatings in engine components exposed to boundary lubrication conditions. Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings present a wide range of tribological behavior, including friction coefficients in ultrahigh vacuum below 0.02. The engine oil environment which provides similar favorable air-free conditions might lead to such low friction levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal interactive systems offer a flexibility of interaction that increases their complexity. ICARE is a component-based approach to specify and develop multimodal interfaces using a fusion mechanism in a modality independent way. As ICARE is being reused to produce several multimodal applications, we want to ensure the correctness of its fusion mechanism. Therefore, we validated it using a test architecture based on Java technologies. This paper presents our validation approach, its results, its advantages and its limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an optimization methodology adapted to rehabilitation of the stay vanes within a Francis type hydraulic turbine. The proposed methodology enables to take into account the constraints and objectives specific to such a design problem. Results obtained with a multi-island genetic algorithm and a gradient-based algorithm are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three Canadian numerical air quality models: CHRONOS (Canadian Hemispheric and Regional Ozone and NOxSystem), AURAMS (A Unified Regional Air quality Modelling System) and GEM-AQ (Global Environmental Multiscale — Air Quality model) present different modelling approaches as well as different degrees of complexity in the way they represent the physicochemical interactions of the atmosphere. Large differences also exist in the way these three models are used or the kind of evaluations they have been subjected to. In order to establish a benchmark comparison, the three models will be evaluated over a one month period, starting in August, 2003. Ozone concentrations measured during the same period by air quality monitoring networks will constitute the evaluation database for this work. The three models will be compared in their native mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the numerical prediction of chemically speciated gas and particle phase components of the atmosphere has been driven by public health studies linking both gases and particles to adverse health effects. Three dimensional air-quality models containing detailed chemical and physical processes for gas and particle formation (Meng et al., 1998; Dennis et al., 1996; Ackermann et al., 1998) provide a means of linking and describing the complex non-linear processes leading to these adverse air-quality health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clouds play an active role in the processing and cycling of chemicals in the atmosphere. Gases and aerosols can enter cloud droplets through absorption/condensation (of soluble gases) and activation and impact scavenging (of aerosol particles). Once inside the cloud droplets these tracers can dissolve, dissociate, and undergo chemical reactions. It is believed that aqueous phase chemistry in cloud is the largest contributor to sulphate aerosol production. Some of the aqueousphase tracers will be removed from the atmosphere when precipitation forms and reaches the ground. However, the majority of clouds are non-precipitating, and upon cloud dissipation and evaporation, the tracers, physically and chemically altered, will be released back to the atmosphere. Updrafts and downdrafts in convective clouds are also efficient ways of redistributing atmospheric tracers in the vertical. It is therefore important to represent these cloud-related physical and chemical processes when modelling the transport and transformation of atmospheric chemical tracers, particularly aerosols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the summer of 2004, the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT) coordinated the largest field study related to air quality so far. Over 500 scientists from 5 different countries, 11 planes, 1 ship, 2 satellites and numerous ground sites were involved in characterizing the emissions of particulate matter (PM), ozone and their precursors, their chemical transformations, and their removal during transport to and over the North Atlantic and into Europe. The study was organized around three main objectives: characterizing the regional air quality in eastern North America; assessing the export of smog related air pollution from eastern North America and its evolution as it travels towards Europe; and assessing the possible effects of the PM associated with the smog on our climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indeed, the development of two-dimensional (2-D) electrophoresis technology has provided an important research tool for comparative proteomics. A number of other technologies for protein separation have also been investigated in the last few years, such as protein chips, liquid chromatography, and high-pressure liquid chromatography, to name just a few. However, 2-D gels are still considered the workhorse among research laboratories willing to accurately track changes in protein expression and to achieve differential proteomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this poster, we present some new algorithms concerning the mapmaking issue for CMB experiments as well as some steps performed in the far-side beam reconstruction, a problem of particular interest for the PLANCK satellite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These lecture notes discuss observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The theory of primary CMB anisotropies has been extensively covered in a recent Les Houches summer school; it is not developed here. The notes concentrate mostly on the observational situation and on future missions, with special emphasis on Planck which carries CMB instruments of the third generation, namely cryogenically cooled ones. We discuss rather extensively foregrounds and techniques to remove systematic effects from the data and compress it in steps, from time-ordered data from individual detectors to maps at several frequencies, then to a single map of the CMB anisotropies and finally to it's power spectrum and cosmological parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An asymmetry of optical emission lines that appeared in Sept. 1988 is interpreted as evidence of dust condensation within the metal-rich ejecta of SN 1987A. A quantitative analysis of this spectroscopic effect is given and shown to be compatible with the photometric record. Moreover, observational and theoretical estimates of the bolometric light curve come into agreement when the far-IR excess is interpreted as thermal emission by grains in the ejecta. A grain population comprising small silicate grains with an admixture of graphite or amorphous carbon particles is suggested by the data. The relevance of this discovery to suggestions that supernovae are major sources of interstellar dust is briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the poem "Attempted Departure," by James Dickey with André du Bouchet. First Line: I come back; Last Line: the only thing fleeing.