41,245 research outputs found
Five a Day
Musings on how we can best provide students with assessment opportunities
Ignis, Sing I: A Neroic Ode
The poem below is a palindromic summary of Nero\u27s musings during the burning of Rome
Musings in Returning Home
Postcard from Moniqa Beatty, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japa
Musings on Encodings and Expressiveness
This paper proposes a definition of what it means for one system description
language to encode another one, thereby enabling an ordering of system
description languages with respect to expressive power. I compare the proposed
definition with other definitions of encoding and expressiveness found in the
literature, and illustrate it on a case study: comparing the expressive power
of CCS and CSP.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244
RRATs: New Discoveries, Timing Solutions & Musings
We describe observations of Rotating RAdio Transients (RRATs) that were
discovered in a re-analysis of the Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey (PMPS). The
sources have now been monitored for sufficiently long to obtain seven new
coherent timing solutions, to make a total of 14 now known. Furthermore we
announce the discovery of 7 new transient sources, one of which may be
extragalactic in origin (with ) and would then be a second example of
the so-called `Lorimer burst'. The timing solutions allow us to infer neutron
star characteristics such as energy-loss rate, magnetic field strength and
evolutionary timescales, as well as facilitating multi-wavelength followup by
providing accurate astrometry. All of this enables us to consider the question
of whether or not RRATs are in any way special, i.e. a distinct and separate
population of neutron stars, as has been previously suggested. We see no reason
to consider 'RRAT' as anything other than a detection label, the subject of a
selection effect in the parameter space searched. However, single-pulse
searches can be utilised to great effect to identify pulsars difficult, or
impossible, to find by other means, in particular those with long-periods (half
of the PMPS RRATs have periods greater than 4 seconds), high-magnetic field
strengths ( G) and pulsars approaching the 'death valley'.
The detailed nulling properties of such pulsars are unknown but the mounting
evidence suggests a broad range of behaviour in the pulsar population. The
group of RRATs fit in to the picture where pulsar magnetospheres switch between
stable configurations.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS, 17 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
Realization: Reflections on the 150th
Though my own musings have led me to doubt the traditional interpretation of the Battle of Gettysburg’s military importance, I still hold Gettysburg to be the greatest battle of the American Civil War, without question worthy and deserving of continued study. In order to reconcile these two points of view I pondered further, attempting to unearth other, less-thought-of reasons for the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg to the course of the American Civil War. [excerpt
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