VERITAS observations of the Cygnus Region

The Cygnus region of the galaxy is one of the richest regions of gas and star formation and is the brightest region of diffuse GeV emission in the northern sky. VERITAS has conducted deep observations (approximately 300 hours) in the direction of Cygnus region, reaching an average sensitivity of a few percent of the Crab nebula flux. We present the results of these observations and an analysis of over seven years of Fermi-LAT data above 1 GeV. In addition to a search for new sources in the region, we present updated spectra and morphologies of the known TeV gamma-ray sources and a study of their relationship with the GeV emission from the region. These results are discussed in their multiwavelength context including the recently published HAWC observatory gamma-ray catalog. A comparison is also made to the H.E.S.S. galactic plane survey.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. In Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Busan (South Korea

The origin of beach sediments on the North Queensland coast

Petrographic and granulometric analyses of North Queensland beach sediments indicate their affinity with sediments delivered to the coast by rivers, and it is shown that the beaches are largely derived from fluvial sediment reworked, sorted and distributed by the dominant south-easterly waves in coastal waters. Beach sediments are generally quartzose, with subordinate felspars and admixtures of coralline sediment near fringing reefs and lithic material near river mouths and rocky shore sectors. The prevailing northerly drift of shore sediment is reduced, and locally reversed, on sectors sheltered from the dominant south-easterly waves by headlands, reefs and islands. Variations in beach sediment are related to wave conditions, distance from river-mouth sources, and patterns of drift. Four Mile Beach, near Port Douglas, is identified as anomalous in its morphological and sedimentological characteristics. It has been cut off from former sources of sediment, both fluvial and longshore, as a result of reef extension around the mouth of Mowbray River, and is now essentially a relict beach system attaining sedimentological maturity

Orthography and Identity in Cameroon

The tone languages of sub-Saharan Africa raise challenging questions for the design of new writing systems. Marking too much or too little tone can have grave consequences for the usability of an orthography. Orthography development, past and present, rests on a raft of sociolinguistic issues having little to do with the technical phonological concerns that usually preoccupy orthographers. Some of these issues are familiar from the spelling reforms which have taken place in European languages. However, many of the issues faced in sub-Saharan Africa are different, being concerned with the creation of new writing systems in a multi-ethnic context: residual colonial influences, the construction of new nation-states, detribalization versus culture preservation and language reclamation, and so on. Language development projects which crucially rely on creating or revising orthographies may founder if they do not attend to the various layers of identity that are indexed by orthography: whether colonial, national, ethnic, local or individual identity. In this study, I review the history and politics of orthography in Cameroon, with a focus on tone marking. The paper concludes by calling present-day orthographers to a deeper and broader understanding of orthographic issues

Observing FRB 121102 with VERITAS; Searching for Associated TeV Emission

Fast radio bursts are bright, unresolved and short flashes of radio emission originating from outside the Milky Way. The origin of these mysterious outbursts is unknown, but their high luminosity and short duration has prompted much speculation. The discovery that FRB 121102 repeats has enabled multiwavelength follow up, which has identified the host galaxy. VERITAS has observed the location of FRB 121102, including coincident observations with Arecibo. We present the results of a search for steady very high energy gamma-ray emission and the methodology for searching for short timescale, transient optical and very high energy gamma-ray emission.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. In Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2017), Busan (South Korea

Strategies for Representing Tone in African Writing Systems

Tone languages provide some interesting challenges for the designers of new orthographies. One approach is to omit tone marks, just as stress is not marked in English (zero marking). Another approach is to do phonemic tone analysis and then make heavy use of diacritic symbols to distinguish the `tonemes' (exhaustive marking). While orthographies based on either system have been successful, this may be thanks to our ability to manage inadequate orthographies rather than to any intrinsic advantage which is afforded by one or the other approach. In many cases, practical experience with both kinds of orthography in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that people have not been able to attain the level of reading and writing fluency that we know to be possible for the orthographies of non-tonal languages. In some cases this can be attributed to a sociolinguistic setting which does not favour vernacular literacy. In other cases, the orthography itself might be to blame. If the orthography of a tone language is difficult to user or to learn, then a good part of the reason, I believe, is that the designer either has not paid enough attention to the function of tone in the language, or has not ensured that the information encoded in the orthography is accessible to the ordinary (non-linguist) user of the language. If the writing of tone is not going to continue to be a stumbling block to literacy efforts, then a fresh approach to tone orthography is required, one which assigns high priority to these two factors. This article describes the problems with orthographies that use too few or too many tone marks, and critically evaluates a wide range of creative intermediate solutions. I review the contributions made by phonology and reading theory, and provide some broad methodological principles to guide someone who is seeking to represent tone in a writing system. The tone orthographies of several languages from sub-Saharan Africa are presented throughout the article, with particular emphasis on some tone languages of Cameroon

A lexical database tool for quantitative phonological research

A lexical database tool tailored for phonological research is described. Database fields include transcriptions, glosses and hyperlinks to speech files. Database queries are expressed using HTML forms, and these permit regular expression search on any combination of fields. Regular expressions are passed directly to a Perl CGI program, enabling the full flexibility of Perl extended regular expressions. The regular expression notation is extended to better support phonological searches, such as search for minimal pairs. Search results are presented in the form of HTML or LaTeX tables, where each cell is either a number (representing frequency) or a designated subset of the fields. Tables have up to four dimensions, with an elegant system for specifying which fragments of which fields should be used for the row/column labels. The tool offers several advantages over traditional methods of analysis: (i) it supports a quantitative method of doing phonological research; (ii) it gives universal access to the same set of informants; (iii) it enables other researchers to hear the original speech data without having to rely on published transcriptions; (iv) it makes the full power of regular expression search available, and search results are full multimedia documents; and (v) it enables the early refutation of false hypotheses, shortening the analysis-hypothesis-test loop. A life-size application to an African tone language (Dschang) is used for exemplification throughout the paper. The database contains 2200 records, each with approximately 15 fields. Running on a PC laptop with a stand-alone web server, the `Dschang HyperLexicon' has already been used extensively in phonological fieldwork and analysis in Cameroon.Comment: 7 pages, uses ipamacs.st

Orientation of non-spherical particles in an axisymmetric random flow

The dynamics of non-spherical rigid particles immersed in an axisymmetric random flow is studied analytically. The motion of the particles is described by Jeffery's equation; the random flow is Gaussian and has short correlation time.The stationary probability density function of orientations is calculated exactly. Four regimes are identified depending on the statistical anisotropy of the flow and on the geometrical shape of the particle. If {\lambda} is the axis of symmetry of the flow, the four regimes are: rotation about {\lambda}, tumbling motion between {\lambda} and -{\lambda}, combination of rotation and tumbling, and preferential alignment with a direction oblique to {\lambda}.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure