Tiffany\u27s

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. “The first time I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining. I remember because after I left her house I stopped to check the time when my pocket watch slipped from my hand to the ground. The rain violently splashed over and around the watch as if it was trying to erode the gentle gold backing into something fiercer. I picked up the watch and caught a quick reflection of her house on the back. Even in the gold backing the house looked pale, maybe the rain stole its glitter. Maybe I did.

Correlating Fiber Quality Assurance Tests for the NOvA Far Detector Modules

Neutrinos have perplexed the minds of particle physicists for over half a decade. Because they are massless and weakly interacting, detecting these leptons has been a challenging feat. However, large-scale collaborations, such as scientists working on NOvA, are now able to build detectors that capture information regarding a neutrino\u27s interaction with atomic matter. During their propagation through space, neutrinos oscillate between various flavor states. Physicists are interested in measuring parameters that describe these oscillations and yield important information about one of the most fundamental units of matter. Before installing a multi-billion dollar detector underground, physicists must ensure that their hardware is working properly. Two fiber quality assurance tests employed at the NOvA module factory are analyzed

[Review of] Joseph Bruchac, ed. The Light From Another Country: Poetry from American Prisons

In recent years, poetry anthologists have strayed from the literary field into the terrain of sociology, where they have collected an odd assortment of scriblings [scribblings]: poems focusing on female athletes, the children of alcoholics, Vietnam War veterans, gays and lesbians, scuba divers, and numerous other ethnic, social, and occupational groups. In fact, the proliferation of such anthologies has been so great that absurdity long ago set in and one expects shortly to see collections devoted to hangnail sufferers and carpet layers

Nurturing the acorn: helping a small software company onto the CMM ladder

We report on an interaction between a University and a small software development company within the framework of a Teaching Company Scheme. By exploiting the peculiar environment offered by a TCS, the University was able to help the company introduce measures to improve their software development process. Not only have these measures moved the company from level 1 to level 2 of the Capability Maturity Model; they are doubtless also responsible, at least in part, for the company's survival. The fundamental features of the environment which supported this success are discussed, and it is suggested how the approach might be applied elsewhere, either within or independently of a funding framework such as TCS