I've decided to move to the Blogspot arena. Hope it reaches a larger audience.

Regards.

-- please visit
http://sciencity.blogspot.com

www.navier-stokes.net

This web site includes well-organized information about fluid dynamics. Done by a professor, named M.S. Cramer. Thanks to him, and other people who prefer to share information regarding science, universe and everything.

You should also check www.fluidmech.net which is also developed by the same professor, M.S. Cramer. Especially the Gallery contains exciting and spectacular images of fluid phenomena, such as shock waves, vortices, etc.

an informational text about clusters, made from old computer equipment.

http://kulustur.org/Docs/Scientific%20American%20Feature%20Article%20The%20Do-It-Yourself%20Supercomputer%20August%202001.htm

The extract (see below) comes from an email list, don't know the real source, or who said it. (not a scientific approach at all, yet, seems to be an objective view, and gives some other information related to passenger airplanes.) -- gürkan
___________

It is possible all the warnings went off, we know the oxygen masks
dropped down so it is likely the 10,000 foot warning went off too.

In the case of a rapid depressurization it is easy to pass out before
you get on your oxygen mask. This should be obvious thru the report on
the Air Trans event in 1996 from message #2. I think the co-pilot was
probably trying to call to the pilot (who was out of the cockpit) to say
"we have a problem up here" and did not get his mask on quick enough.
His proper response should have been to point the nose down! Even if he
passed out he would wake up at about 12,000 feet. In the 1996 incident
you notice the co-pilot did not care and did not help when the pilot,
engineer, and attendent lost consciousness at various times. He was busy
getting the plane below 12,000 feet.

With the release of the F-16 observations, I think it is more obvious. I
think a passenger or steward that put on a mask and stayed there until
the plane got down to 2000 feet then took off their mask and went into
the cockpit to try and control the aircraft.

Why they did not communicate on the radio or find a better emergency
landing site or even head for an airport is unknown. I can only assume
most people were brain damaged from the 1-2 hours of high altitude and
the only people that were coherent knew absolutely nothing about
airplanes. They fly around for 20 minutes until out of fuel.

-----
they "now' admit they know who was at the controls. how did they know
that? the stew pilot didn't know how to work a radio?

answer they had voice communications with the f16s
that's why the greeks are talking about the missing flight records.
diversion

interview the f 16 pilots
------------------

do not know what dash number this particular 737 is. On the dash 200
series, the pressurization system consists of automatic, standby, manual
ac, and manual dc subsystems. such redundancy is built into the aircraft
as a fail-safe measure. In addition, there are warning systems, and if
it comes to the worst, oxygen masks would deploy.
The reports indicate that the pilot reported pressurization problems
that were fixed later. I wonder what the problem was and how it was
"fixed". News reports also indicate that the pilot was not in the
cockpit at the time of the crash. Did he step out to investigate some
problem?

The Wasteland
Starved of federal funding for years, rotorcraft research in the United States is in the worst shape ever. Specialists in the field wonder whether it can be saved.
By James T. McKenna

At the heart of the second flooor of an academic building northeast of Washington, behind locked doors, researchers are coming up with a new kind of helicopter. It is designed to be fairly autonomous, capable of carrying a variety of sensor packages and expendable (read inexpensive).
There are three prototype aircraft in the conference room of this project, one of which has accumulated a fair amount of flight time. Inside a frame of four arching, slender wires designed to protect it during testing, this helicopter features a compact drive train, powerplant and fuel supply suspended from coaxial rotors. The aircraft is remotely piloted and self powered and can fly for more than 15 min. The entire package, wire frame included, is about the size of a basketball or over-inflated soccer ball. The aircraft's rotor diameter is about 9 in. (23 cm.). The total aircraft weighed, at the time of Rotor & Wing's visit in mid-April, about 0.3 lb. (135 grams). The researchers' objective is to pare that weight to 0.22 lb. (100 grams).
If successful, the researchers' work could yield vehicles for combat troops as well as emergency response units to conduct surveillance over the hill and around the corner for urban warfare and rescue purposes, detect biological and chemical agents, and perform other missions. Such systems obviously would be man-portable.

Along the way, the researchers have helped expand our understanding of how small-scale rotors perform differently from traditional, large-scale ones and answer questions about how to best design rotors for such vehicles. Much of their work involves better understanding rotor dynamics at low Reynolds numbers--a measure of the interaction among an airfoil size, speed and shape and the air around it. That may sound like arcane work, unless perhaps you are a unit leader in the field who needs a better way to figure out where, in that warren of structures in front of you, the bad guys are hiding or where in the rubble a collapsed building the survivors lay.
"Micro air vehicles could have the ability to fly inside caves, tunnels, clear out houses, provide that situational awareness inside a building that troops lack today," said Dr. Darryll Pines, a professor at the Gessow Center and an advisor on the micro air vehicle project.

<<<>>>

www.dewo05.net

Euroavia would like to invite you to show your enthusiasm, motivation and knowledge by writing an essay about rotorcraft. You can present your views about the future of helicopters and tiltrotors, about their roles and operation, market prospects or about advantages and flaws compared to fixed wing aircraft. Also, you can write about aerodynamics, flight mechanics, new design, innovations in materials and production, propulsion, avionics and equipment... These are only some examples - the choice is up to you!

www.euroavia.net

not so much aerospace at first look, but this idea may open new horizons to mankind... such as an intergalactic holiday trip.

Cryptobiosis
The way that tardigrades have adapted to environmental stress is to reversibly suspend their metabolism and to effectively isolate themselves from the changes. This state is known as cryptobiosis and is a truly death-like state. Cessation of metabolism in other organisms is called death. Metabolism in tardigrades can lower to less than 0.01% of normal, or be entirely undetectable and the water content of the body may decrease to less than 1%. Tardigrades have been revived from this state after more than 100 years and shown signs of life! However, experiments have only shown cryptobiosis under natural conditions of 12 years but frozen they could theoretically survive for ever! The change in environmental conditions determine which cryptobiotic method—anhydrobiosis, cryobiosis, osmobiosis, and anoxybiosis—will occur.Most studies of cryptobiosis have been done on anhydrobiosis, the form of cryptobiosis initiated by desiccation. Tardigrades living in a limno-terrestrial habitat, such as moss or lichens, require that they can survive long periods of dryness. Anhydrobiosis involves an almost complete loss of body water and the animal can stay in this state for an long period of time. Tun formation is an essential part of the process, which can be done repeatedly throughout the life cycle, even by adults, resulting in a body that is constricted and folded up. The limbs invaginate, the body contracts and becomes folded.The tun formation is an active process requiring metabolism and synthesis of a protective sugar Trehelose. After the tun is formed further desiccation can take place in 0 % relative humidity and the tardigrade can still survive. Revival typically takes a few hours from natural habitats but depends upon how long the tardigrade has been in the anhydrobiotic condition.Cryobiosis is cryptobiosis which is initiated by a reduction in temperature to below 0 °C and involves the ordered freezing of water within the body cells .

Osmobiosis is a form of cryptobiosis initiated by a decreased water potential due to increased solute concentration in the surrounding solution.A reduction of the % of oxygen initiates a suspended state in tardigrades, but is mostly not considered a form of cryptobiosis—tardigrades in this state remain extended, turgid, and immobile but it can only last for days before they die.

Here's an announcement for one of my interest-areas, though I have no concrete work on Road Vehicle Aerodynamics (except for helicopters, if you count them as road vehicles).

The von Karman Institute would like to draw your attention towards a Lecture Series entitled "Road Vehicle Aerodynamics (RVAD)" that will take place at the VKI from May 30 to June 3, 2005.

This Lecture Series is designed for engineers working in the automotive industry who have an interest in extending and refreshing their knowledge on RVAD, for students with an interest in fluid dynamics and vehicles, and for specialists in the field of RVAD from industry as well as universities.

The Lecture Series is focused on a broad spectrum of vehicles and includes both experimental (wind tunnel) and numerical (CFD) approaches. Relevant topics within RVAD like drag reduction, directional stability, vehicle soiling, and aero acoustics will be addressed in detail. Moreover, participants will take part in laboratory sessions organized in the VKI wind tunnel.
Participants will also have the opportunity to present their current research and problems to the audience and to the lecturers for feedback during a workshop organized on Wednesday afternoon. Details are included in the announcement.

This Lecture Series is organized in collaboration with Prof. L. Löfdahl from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden).

Please visit our website on http://www.vki.ac.be/educat/lect-ser/index.html where you can easily register online and ask for a hotel reservation. Please draw also the attention of your colleagues to this opportunity.

DESIGN WORKSHOP 2005
Topic: Heavy Lift Helicopter
25 students will take free-place in the EUROAVIA DESIGN WORKSHOP 2005, to merge into teams to design a heavy lift helicopter with the sponsorship of AGUSTA WESTLAND and Politecnico di Milano, in ITALY, summer 2005!

visit: www.dewo05.net.