andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1261 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory for four summers during high school and college. I spent much of my time writing a computer program to do thermal analysis for an experiment that we put on the space shuttle. The facility I developed with the finite-element method came in handy in my job at Bell Labs the following summers. I was working for C. H. Tsao and Jim Adams in the Laboratory for Cosmic Ray Physics. We were estimating the distribution of isotopes in cosmic rays using a pile of track detectors. To get accurate measurements, you want these plastic disks to be as close as possible to a constant temperature, so we designed an elaborate wrapping of thermal blankets. My program computed the temperature of the detectors during the year that the Long Duration Exposure Facility (including our experiment and a bunch of others) was scheduled to be in orbit. The input is the heat from solar radiation (easy enough to compute given the trajectory). On the computer I tr
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1 I spent much of my time writing a computer program to do thermal analysis for an experiment that we put on the space shuttle. [sent-4, score-0.442]
2 My program computed the temperature of the detectors during the year that the Long Duration Exposure Facility (including our experiment and a bunch of others) was scheduled to be in orbit. [sent-11, score-0.323]
3 On the computer I tried a bunch of configurations of blankets—it turns out that it’s possible to wrap the detectors too much—and we finally decided on a design, which the people in the lab implemented. [sent-13, score-0.368]
4 Later on my bosses gave me the the opportunity to go to the space shuttle launch in Florida in October. [sent-14, score-0.432]
5 We heard that the shuttle launch a year later that was scheduled to bring the experiments back to earth was pre-empted for a military mission. [sent-17, score-0.397]
6 I don’t know if our plastic discs were ever etched and marked for cosmic ray events, but my guess is that that the data wouldn’t have been good for much. [sent-21, score-0.499]
7 and Jim, the cosmic ray physics lab featured a couple of old guys with Ph. [sent-36, score-0.568]
8 We must have been working on similar projects and we were sitting in the same lab but we never ever talked about work. [sent-52, score-0.384]
9 ) There were also a cute-looking girl summer student in another lab in our building, but I’d only ever see her from the distance, and I was too much of a loser to actually go up to her or anything. [sent-55, score-0.421]
10 Liam Healy, is building on extensive research and experience in orbit dynamics, orbit determination, space navigation and guidance, algorithm development and scientific programming. [sent-81, score-0.377]
11 I sent Jim Adams an email last year telling him what I’d been working on, and in reply he gave me an update on his research (he’s now at NASA): I [Jim] am working on some of the same things we worked on and some others. [sent-102, score-0.34]
12 I am currently working on a probabilistic model for solar particle events. [sent-103, score-0.45]
13 The idea is that the user will specify the launch date, mission duration and confidence level and we will provide a worst-case that should not be exceeded during the specified mission at the specified confidence level. [sent-105, score-0.329]
14 Besides this I am investigating cosmic ray modulation in the outer heliosphere and I am the PI of a proposal for US participation in the Extreme Universe Space Observatory, a major experiment planned for the International Space Station (see http://jemeuso. [sent-106, score-0.499]
15 Since TRIS was re-flown, we flew and experiment to the Moon on Clementine, a series of flights on the Russian RESURS-1 satellites and an experiment on the Brazilian SACI-1 satellite, all before 1999. [sent-110, score-0.438]
16 From that experiment we learned the ionic charge state of solar energetic particles. [sent-117, score-0.64]
17 It was quite low compared to expectations at the time, which were based on the assumption that solar energetic particles came from solar flares. [sent-118, score-0.946]
18 Our results were consistent with a new idea at the time, that solar energetic particles were being accelerated by coronal mass ejections. [sent-119, score-0.928]
19 We know that solar energetic particles are accelerated both ways, but the big solar particle events caused by coronal mass ejections. [sent-120, score-1.293]
20 The LDEF results are regarded as one of the most convincing proofs that coronal mass ejections accelerate solar energetic particles. [sent-121, score-0.694]
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