A multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) has been applied to the multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) of a launch vehicle (LV) with a hybrid rocket engine (HRE) to investigate the ability of an HRE to serve as a sounding rocket from various perspectives. In this study, the flight evaluation was enhanced to 3-degree-of-freedom (3DoF) in order to consider the equations of motion for horizontal and vertical motion and rotation of the LV. In the consideration of the rotation of the LV, the time variation of the center of gravity due to the fuel burn was estimated. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was used to solve multi-objective problems (MoPs). Four design problems were examined in order to understand the practical physics of hybrid rocket. As a result, tradeoff information was observed for all design problems. The results for the present four design problems indicate that economical performance of LV is limited with the HRE in terms of the maximum altitude and maximum downrange distances achievable. The hypervolume, which was used as the metric to evaluate the difficulty of the design problems, reveals that the convergence of the solutions for not only altitude maximization in the case of a vertical launch but also the maximization of downrange at higher target altitudes was affected by the severe limitation. To observe the dependence of the design problems on the constraint, the design problems were visualized using a colored parallel coordinates plot (PCP), and the LV geometries determined from the nondominated solutions were successfully examined.

MOTIVATION: A whole set of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) from the Sf9 cell line of Spodoptera frugiperda is presented here for the first time. By this way we want to identify both conserved and specific genes of this pest species. We also expect from this analysis to find a class of protein sequences providing a tool to explore genomic features and phylogeny of Lepidoptera. RESULTS: The ESTs display both housekeeping as well as developmentally regulated genes, and a high percentage of sequences with unknown function. Among the identified ORFs, almost all ribosomal proteins (RPs) were found with high EST redundancy and hence sequence accuracy. The codon usage found among RP genes is in average surprisingly much less biased in Lepidoptera than in other organisms. Other Spodoptera genes also displayed a low bias, suggesting a general genome expression feature in this Lepidoptera. We also found that the L35A and L36 RP sequences, respectively, display 40 and 10 amino-acid insertions, both being present only in insects. Sequence analysis suggests that they are probably not subjected to a strong selective pressure and may be good phylogenetic markers for Lepidoptera. Most interestingly, the Lepidoptera sequences of 9 RP genes displayed a specific signature different from the canonical one. We conclude that the RP family allows valuable comparative genomics and phylogeny of Lepidoptera. AVAILABILITY: All EST sequence data are available from the private 'Spodo-Base' upon request.

This paper presents the self-excited walking of a four-link biped walking mechanism which possesses an actuated hip joint, passive knee joints and a curved feet. Instead of gravity potential energy, the natural walking motion of the four-link biped mechanism is self-excited by the hip joint torque which is proportional to the angle of the swing shank. In this paper, we show that this self-excitation control enables the 3-DOF planar biped model to walk on level ground by numerical simulation. From the parameter study of the feedback gain, we found that stable walking motion was possible over the wide range of this parameters, and walking velocity and periods were not so much affected. It was confirmed that the properties of this self-exciting walking, such as walking velocity and duration, were changed by the structural parameters of the walking model.