Interesting Business in Astronomy

International Astronomical Union Colloquium ◽

10.1017/s0252921100092976 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 98 ◽

pp. 215-215

Author(s):

Michel Lyonnet du Moutier

Keyword(s):

Special Issue ◽

Professional Journal ◽

Southern France ◽

Cordillera De Los Andes ◽

Comet Halley ◽

A Company

Support from firms is of increasing importance in amateur astronomy. Two projects were described. In the first, a company running a winter resort in Argentina was persuaded to hold Halley observation sessions at their site in the Cordillera de los Andes. A similar event was later held by the same company at a new resort in southern France. The second project involved interesting a professional journal for construction engineers in producing a special issue devoted to Comet Halley. This was speedily exhausted, most of the demand for back numbers coming not from the engineers themselves but from their families.

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Multiobjective optimization and decision making in engineering sciences

Optimization and Engineering ◽

10.1007/s11081-021-09627-x ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jussi Hakanen ◽

Richard Allmendinger

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Multiobjective Optimization ◽

Data Science ◽

Multiple Criteria Decision Making ◽

Multiple Criteria ◽

Special Issue ◽

Environmental Aspects ◽

Effective Combination ◽

Engineering Sciences ◽

A Company

AbstractReal-world decision making problems in various fields including engineering sciences are becoming ever more challenging to address. The consideration of various competing criteria related to, for example, business, technical, workforce, safety and environmental aspects increases the complexity of decision making and leads to problems that feature multiple competing criteria. A key challenge in such problems is the identification of the most preferred trade-off solution(s) with respect to the competing criteria. Therefore, the effective combination of data, skills, and advanced engineering and management technologies is becoming a key asset to a company urging the need to rethink how to tackle modern decision making problems. This special issue focuses on the intersection between engineering, multiple criteria decision making, multiobjective optimization, and data science. The development of new models and algorithmic methods to solve such problems is in the focus as much as the application of these concepts to real problems. This special issue was motivated by the 25th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM2019) held in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2019.

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Hydrogen Cyanide Polymers from the Impact of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter

International Astronomical Union Colloquium ◽

10.1017/s025292110001469x ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 161 ◽

pp. 179-187

Author(s):

Clifford N. Matthews ◽

Rose A. Pesce-Rodriguez ◽

Shirley A. Liebman

Keyword(s):

Amino Acids ◽

Solar System ◽

Hydrogen Cyanide ◽

Nitrogen Heterocycles ◽

Laboratory Studies ◽

Heterogeneous Solids ◽

The Many ◽

Comet Halley ◽

The Impact ◽

By Products

AbstractHydrogen cyanide polymers – heterogeneous solids ranging in color from yellow to orange to brown to black – may be among the organic macromolecules most readily formed within the Solar System. The non-volatile black crust of comet Halley, for example, as well as the extensive orangebrown streaks in the atmosphere of Jupiter, might consist largely of such polymers synthesized from HCN formed by photolysis of methane and ammonia, the color observed depending on the concentration of HCN involved. Laboratory studies of these ubiquitous compounds point to the presence of polyamidine structures synthesized directly from hydrogen cyanide. These would be converted by water to polypeptides which can be further hydrolyzed to α-amino acids. Black polymers and multimers with conjugated ladder structures derived from HCN could also be formed and might well be the source of the many nitrogen heterocycles, adenine included, observed after pyrolysis. The dark brown color arising from the impacts of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter might therefore be mainly caused by the presence of HCN polymers, whether originally present, deposited by the impactor or synthesized directly from HCN. Spectroscopic detection of these predicted macromolecules and their hydrolytic and pyrolytic by-products would strengthen significantly the hypothesis that cyanide polymerization is a preferred pathway for prebiotic and extraterrestrial chemistry.

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