Analytical Study of Optical Wavefront Aberrations Using Maple

This paper describes a package for analytical ray tracing of relatively simple optical systems. AESOP (An Extensible Symbolic Optics Package) enables analysis of the effects of small optical element misalignments or other perturbations. (It is possible to include two or more simultaneous independent perturbations.) Wavefront aberrations and optical path variations can be studied as functions of the perturbation parameters. The power of this approach lies in the fact that the results can be manipulated algebraically, allowing determination of misalignment tolerances as well as developing physical intuition, especially in the picometer regime of optical path length variations.Comment: To appear in MapleTech vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 52-62. 11 pages, 5 figures. PDF may also be accessed at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AESOP

Stress in Laboratory Animal Studies: Preconceptions Misconceptions

Abstract not availabl

The Teachers of the English Teachers : the Influence of the School, the Community and the Training Institution

At the moment, teacher educators are being forced to contemplate their contribution to the making of a good teacher more seriously than before. Those who feel most vulnerable are the method teachers, since the failures of students in their first year of teaching are most often attributed to the method teacher. I will take English teachers as my example partly because that is my area of immediate concern, partly because so many teachers trained in other areas find themselves teaching English at some stage, and partly because in most states English is a compulsory study up to the end of secondary school

William Blathwayt\u27s Empire: Politics And Administration In England And The Atlantic Colonies, 1668-1710

William Blathwayt (?1649-1717) served five monarchs in as many as five posts at one time, from the wholly clerical to the semi-ministerial. The career of such a prodigious and durable pluralist in a period hardly noted for its political stability raises several interesting questions. The most substantial study of Blathwayt, by Gertrude Jacobsen, was written at a time when the leading interpretations of late seventeenth century English history was substantially Whig and the changes wrought by the Glorious Revolution seemed its most compelling feature. Since the 1930s, other historians have suggested that the main emphasis of studies of 1688-9 should be on continuity, a continuity which, superficially, seems admirably illustrated by the career of William Blathwayt. In recent years, the historiographical wheel has come full circle and the emphasis has again been placed on the contrast between pre- and post-revolution England.;Blathwayt\u27s main posts, Secretary at War (1683-1704), acting Secretary at State (1692-1701), Secretary to the plantations committee (1679-1696) and then member of the Board of Trade (1696-1707), Auditor General of plantation revenues (1680-1717) and clerk of the Privy Council (1678-1717) put him at the centre of the English administrative system. His career can serve as a test case. His success as client and patron, his views on parliament and prerogative and on colonial administration, his contribution whether as policy-maker, co-ordinator of the policies of others, or plain clerical assistant, can help us reach conclusions concerning the precise significance of the Glorious Revolution. If the personality of the man fails to impress, the dimensions of his bureaucratic empire do, and so also do the spoils of that empire in the form of his palatial country house, Dyrham Park near Bath. How did the dimensions of that empire change over time, how far were the offices which Blathwayt held integrated and what aid does this give in our interpretation of politics and administration, both at home and in the colonies, in the last three decades of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth?;An essentially narrative and biographical approach to Blathwayt does not seem suitable, particularly in view of the existing Jacobsen study. Instead a combined thematic and chronological approach is used; the tripartite division of the thesis reflects the nature of the conclusions reached. . . . (Author\u27s abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of school.) UM

English Literature as a Liberal Study in Primary Teachers\u27 Colleges.

In 1972, in a survey of literature teaching in Victorian primary teachers\u27 colleges, all but one had a year of compulsory adult literature. At the time, most English lecturers considered this to be essential. However, now much has changed, and literature lecturers, faced with offering courses which are no longer compulsory, have thought again