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

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

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

Back Cover

A look at some of our fall athlete

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

Investing in Young Men of Color as Community Assets

Living in resource-poor communities, many young men of color have less access to high-performing and adequately funded schools, opportunities to work, positive youth development experiences, and social capital. However, many young men of color in poor and low-income communities are thriving; their resilience and tenacity, as well as local leadership, positive adult connections, and effective programs, have helped them overcome the odds

Preventing Employer Misclassification of Student Interns and Trainees

[Excerpt] The legality of unpaid internships has been recently examined in the media with news of Harper’s Bazaar’s former intern Xuedan “Diana” Wang filing suit against the Hearst Corporation on February 1, 2012. Ms. Wang was “head intern,” responsible for supervising eight interns in her charge. As intern to the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, she worked 40 to 55 hours weekly transporting clothing to public relations firms as an unofficial messenger service. Ms. Wang is part of a class action lawsuit against the Hearst Corporation seeking back pay for compensation of five months of unpaid labor

Automated tone transcription

In this paper I report on an investigation into the problem of assigning tones to pitch contours. The proposed model is intended to serve as a tool for phonologists working on instrumentally obtained pitch data from tone languages. Motivation and exemplification for the model is provided by data taken from my fieldwork on Bamileke Dschang (Cameroon). Following recent work by Liberman and others, I provide a parametrised F_0 prediction function P which generates F_0 values from a tone sequence, and I explore the asymptotic behaviour of downstep. Next, I observe that transcribing a sequence X of pitch (i.e. F_0) values amounts to finding a tone sequence T such that P(T) {}~= X. This is a combinatorial optimisation problem, for which two non-deterministic search techniques are provided: a genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing algorithm. Finally, two implementations---one for each technique---are described and then compared using both artificial and real data for sequences of up to 20 tones. These programs can be adapted to other tone languages by adjusting the F_0 prediction function.Comment: 12 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses examples.sty, newapa.sty, latex-acl.sty, ipamacs.st