An electrostatic-tube storage system

"March 27, 1950."Bibliography: p. 32.Army Signal Corps Contract No. W36-039-sc-32037 Project No. 102B Dept. of the Army Project No. 3-99-10-022A.J. Lephakis

Digital Light

Light symbolises the highest good, it enables all visual art, and today it lies at the heart of billion-dollar industries. The control of light forms the foundation of contemporary vision. Digital Light brings together artists, curators, technologists and media archaeologists to study the historical evolution of digital light-based technologies. Digital Light provides a critical account of the capacities and limitations of contemporary digital light-based technologies and techniques by tracing their genealogies and comparing them with their predecessor media. As digital light remediates multiple historical forms (photography, print, film, video, projection, paint), the collection draws from all of these histories, connecting them to the digital present and placing them in dialogue with one another. Light is at once universal and deeply historical. The invention of mechanical media (including photography and cinematography) allied with changing print technologies (half-tone, lithography) helped structure the emerging electronic media of television and video, which in turn shaped the bitmap processing and raster display of digital visual media. Digital light is, as Stephen Jones points out in his contribution, an oxymoron: light is photons, particulate and discrete, and therefore always digital. But photons are also waveforms, subject to manipulation in myriad ways. From Fourier transforms to chip design, colour management to the translation of vector graphics into arithmetic displays, light is constantly disciplined to human purposes. In the form of fibre optics, light is now the infrastructure of all our media; in urban plazas and handheld devices, screens have become ubiquitous, and also standardised. This collection addresses how this occurred, what it means, and how artists, curators and engineers confront and challenge the constraints of increasingly normalised digital visual media. While various art pieces and other content are considered throughout the collection, the focus is specifically on what such pieces suggest about the intersection of technique and technology. Including accounts by prominent artists and professionals, the collection emphasises the centrality of use and experimentation in the shaping of technological platforms. Indeed, a recurring theme is how techniques of previous media become technologies, inscribed in both digital software and hardware. Contributions include considerations of image-oriented software and file formats; screen technologies; projection and urban screen surfaces; histories of computer graphics, 2D and 3D image editing software, photography and cinematic art; and transformations of light-based art resulting from the distributed architectures of the internet and the logic of the database. Digital Light brings together high profile figures in diverse but increasingly convergent fields, from academy award-winner and co-founder of Pixar, Alvy Ray Smith to feminist philosopher Cathryn Vasseleu

Digital light

Light symbolises the highest good, it enables all visual art, and today it lies at the heart of billion-dollar industries. The control of light forms the foundation of contemporary vision. Digital Light brings together artists, curators, technologists and media archaeologists to study the historical evolution of digital light-based technologies. Digital Light provides a critical account of the capacities and limitations of contemporary digital light-based technologies and techniques by tracing their genealogies and comparing them with their predecessor media. As digital light remediates multiple historical forms (photography, print, film, video, projection, paint), the collection draws from all of these histories, connecting them to the digital present and placing them in dialogue with one another.Light is at once universal and deeply historical. The invention of mechanical media (including photography and cinematography) allied with changing print technologies (half-tone, lithography) helped structure the emerging electronic media of television and video, which in turn shaped the bitmap processing and raster display of digital visual media. Digital light is, as Stephen Jones points out in his contribution, an oxymoron: light is photons, particulate and discrete, and therefore always digital. But photons are also waveforms, subject to manipulation in myriad ways. From Fourier transforms to chip design, colour management to the translation of vector graphics into arithmetic displays, light is constantly disciplined to human purposes. In the form of fibre optics, light is now the infrastructure of all our media; in urban plazas and handheld devices, screens have become ubiquitous, and also standardised. This collection addresses how this occurred, what it means, and how artists, curators and engineers confront and challenge the constraints of increasingly normalised digital visual media.While various art pieces and other content are considered throughout the collection, the focus is specifically on what such pieces suggest about the intersection of technique and technology. Including accounts by prominent artists and professionals, the collection emphasises the centrality of use and experimentation in the shaping of technological platforms. Indeed, a recurring theme is how techniques of previous media become technologies, inscribed in both digital software and hardware. Contributions include considerations of image-oriented software and file formats; screen technologies; projection and urban screen surfaces; histories of computer graphics, 2D and 3D image editing software, photography and cinematic art; and transformations of light-based art resulting from the distributed architectures of the internet and the logic of the database.Digital Light brings together high profile figures in diverse but increasingly convergent fields, from academy award-winner and co-founder of Pixar, Alvy Ray Smith to feminist philosopher Cathryn Vasseleu

Entrepreneurial Discovery and Information Complexity in Knowledge-Intensive Industries

Why are some firms better able than others to exploit new opportunities? I posit that differences in the type and level of complexity of the information obtained through the entrepreneurial discovery process may be a meaningful indicator of the likelihood that a firm is able to exploit a new opportunity. Specifically, I investigate knowledge reproduction processes for product replication (internal copying) and imitation (external copying) as a means of exploiting opportunities and building competitive advantage. Integrating concepts from information theory and the knowledge-based view of the firm, I introduce a generalized model and quantitative methods for estimating the inherent complexity of any unit of knowledge, such as a strategy, technology, product, or service, as long as the unit is represented in algorithm form. Modeling organizations as information processing systems, I develop measures of the information complexity of an algorithm representing a unit of knowledge in terms of the minimum amount of data (algorithmic complexity) and the minimum number of instructions (computational complexity) required to fully describe and execute the algorithm. I apply this methodology to construct and analyze a unique historical dataset of 91 firms (diversifying and de novo entrants) and 853 new product introductions (1974-2009), in a knowledge-intensive industry, digital signal processing. I find that: (1) information complexity is negatively and significantly related to product replication and imitation; (2) replicators have the greatest advantage over imitators at moderate levels of information complexity; (3) intellectual property regimes strengthening the patentability of algorithms significantly increase product replication, without significantly decreasing imitation; (4) outbound licensing of patented technologies decreases product replication and increases imitation; (5) products introduced by de novo entrants are less likely to be replicated and more likely to be imitated than products introduced by diversifying entrants; and (6) diversifying entrants have the greatest advantage over de novo entrants at high and low levels of information complexity; neither type of entrant has a significant advantage at moderate levels of complexity. These empirical findings support and extend predictions from earlier simulation studies. The model is applicable to other aspects of organizational strategy and has important implications for researchers, managers, and policymakers.Doctor of Philosoph

A method of active system safety

The concept of Active Safety proposed originally by Prof Schagaev [3][4][5][6] can be applied to provide additional improvement in safety of a system over its operational lifecycle by continuous analysis and assessment of the state of the system in real time of its operation and reacting dynamically to improve its safety. This thesis develops the concept, theory and an implementation for a Method of Active System Safety (MASS) for application in the field of Aviation. The thesis has three parts: Part 1 researches the Aviation domain and current safety practices. General and Civil Aviation flight statistics are analysed to gain and understanding of flight risks, their causes and opportunities to improve safety. Current approaches to safety management are reviewed then the Principle of Active Safety (PASS) is introduced. Part 2 explores how PASS can be used as a basis for improving operational reliability, and so safety; the PASS algorithm is presented. A theoretical reliability model is then developed for the operational lifecycle of an aircraft and then conditional, preventive and PASS assisted maintenance strategies are evaluated. The beneficial effect of introducing PASS is then demonstrated at 2 levels: first during the lifecycle of use of an aircraft showing how apparent reliability can be improved and unnecessary maintenance reduced and second during each flight, using PASS to improve flight reliability. This uses an operational model (flight modes and limits) and a physical aircraft model (elements and fault detection) using dependency and recovery matrices. A means is proposed to provide timely and relevant safety advice based on continuous PASS analysis in real time of flight operations. A prototype implementation is described and a process proposed for characterisation of the system for a particular aircraft. The state of the art in Active Safety is reviewed and suggestions for further research are outlined. Part 3 contains supportive information in the Appendices. The contribution made to the knowledge of Active Safety is a theoretical and practical development of the concept in terms of aircraft classification, flight risk analysis, operational reliability modelling, fault analysis, the application of PASS in aviation and a system design for an Active Safety Monitor which operates in real time of flight