Journalism and the Problem of Progress

The book submitted in support of my application for a PhD by published work — Everything Explained That Is Explainable1 — is a definitive study of the creation of the 29-volume Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910-11), a reference work that gave shape and authority to a publishing model instrumental in developing new, interesting, occasionally profitable ways of designing, manufacturing, distributing and marketing books. The Eleventh’s most significant innovation: It was edited not by an esteemed academic, like Thomas Spencer Baynes, who was the principal editor of the Ninth edition (1875-1889), but by a journalist. For the Eleventh was not just a “collection of detached monographs”, to use the description of the Ninth by the Britannica’s new editor, Hugh Chisholm. The Eleventh was a “book”, one “planned on uniform lines as a single organism”. The book was about Progress. It was very long and very successful. Its story contains lessons useful in examining the topic of this essay. First, it was a project of journalism published in an era of dramatic transition. Where previous reference works were, as Chisholm remarked, simply serial compilations of entries arranged alphabetically, the Eleventh was a complex multifaceted examination of the topic that fascinated its editor, the Oxford-educated former editor of The St James’s Gazette, and his employer, an energetic American huckster named Horace Everett Hooper. All encyclopedias before the Eleventh had been compiled by scholars, each of whom had assiduously avoided a narrow focus or even a discernable point of view (with the possible exception of the first encyclopedia of the modern age, that created by Denis Diderot in 1751, which had a controversial focus on revolution and other similar expressions of Enlightenment understanding). But the Eleventh was radically different. Its focus on an “ideology of transition” mirrored a contemporary set of assumptions so pervasive that even though Progress was indeed the story it told in its 29 volumes, and 44 million words, not a single entry was devoted to “Progress” per se, just as none was given over to “Truth” or to “Beauty”. Some things defied simple explanation; besides, there was widespread belief in an unexamined virtue of Progress. Nobody was sure what it meant, but Chisholm meant to explain it by making sure every possible entry made reference, however indirect, to Progress. In an age of revolutionary scientific and philosophical assertions, an appetite for Progress and self-improvement that rivals our own gave rise to social and educational institutions that supported individual effort and received widespread cultural and commercial reinforcement. The Eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was an important element in constructing a worldview that reflected the optimistic assumptions of the age. And that produced its own problems, as this paper explains

Human ApoD, an apolipoprotein up-regulated in neurodegenerative diseases, extends lifespan and increases stress resistance in Drosophila

Apolipoprotein D (ApoD) expression increases in several neurological disorders and in spinal cord injury. We provide a report of a physiological role for human ApoD (hApoD): Flies overexpressing hApoD are long-lived and protected against stress conditions associated with aging and neurodegeneration, including hyperoxia, dietary paraquat, and heat stress. We show that the fly ortholog, Glial Lazarillo, is strongly up-regulated in response to these extrinsic stresses and also can protect in vitro-cultured cells in situations modeling Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). In adult flies, hApoD overexpression reduces age-associated lipid peroxide accumulation, suggesting a proximal mechanism of action. Similar data obtained in the mouse [Ganfornina, M.D., et al., (2008) Apolipoprotein D is involved in the mechanisms regulating protection from oxidative stress. Aging Cell 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2008.00395.] as well as in plants (Charron et al., personal communication) suggest that ApoD and its orthologs play an evolutionarily conserved role in response to stress, possibly managing or preventing lipid peroxidation

Snowmobiles in Antarctica

Snowmobiles are the main form of land transportation for field parties in Antarctica. Recently the United States Antarctic program turned almost exclusively to Ski-Doo Alpine 640-ER snowmobiles, the use and maintenance of which require specialized techniques. The first extensive Antarctic field test of these snowmobiles was made during three months of 1977-1978 while engaged in reconnaissance geologic and topographic exploration of the Orville Coast area. Snowmobiles are used to pull large loads of food and gear on two Nansen sledges. When crossing crevasse fields, they are driven remotely by persons on skis. To do this, modifications are made to the stock throttle to enable the engine both to be set at a constant speed and to be shorted out by pulling on a cord that trails behind the snowmobile; steering is by ropes attached to the front ski of the snowmobile. Proper "night" storage is necessary to ensure easiest starting in the morning and to minimize the effects of storms. A routine of trouble-shooting that rapidly isolated and corrected engine problems included first checking spark-plugs or gas-line filters, followed by checking carburetor jet adjustments, drive belt and oil/gas ratio. We found that Ski-Doos are well suited to Antarctica but would be more useful if carburetor fuel filters were replaced by in-line fuel filters and if snowmobiles were equipped with remote throttle controls, tachometers, speedometers, odometers, and a low-gear option

VLBI astrometry of PSR J2222-0137: a pulsar distance measured to 0.4% accuracy

The binary pulsar J2222-0137 is an enigmatic system containing a partially recycled millisecond pulsar and a companion of unknown nature. Whilst the low eccentricity of the system favors a white dwarf companion, an unusual double neutron star system is also a possibility, and optical observations will be able to distinguish between these possibilities. In order to allow the absolute luminosity (or upper limit) of the companion object to be properly calibrated, we undertook astrometric observations with the Very Long Baseline Array to constrain the system distance via a measurement of annual geometric parallax. With these observations, we measure the parallax of the J2222-0137 system to be 3.742 +0.013 -0.016 milliarcseconds, yielding a distance of 267.3 +1.2 -0.9 pc, and measure the transverse velocity to be 57.1 +0.3 -0.2 km/s. Fixing these parameters in the pulsar timing model made it possible to obtain a measurement of Shapiro delay and hence the system inclination, which shows that the system is nearly edge-on (sin i = 0.9985 +/- 0.0005). Furthermore, we were able to detect the orbital motion of J2222-0137 in our VLBI observations and measure the longitude of ascending node. The VLBI astrometry yields the most accurate distance obtained for a radio pulsar to date, and is furthermore the most accurate parallax for any radio source obtained at "low" radio frequencies (below ~5 GHz, where the ionosphere dominates the error budget). Using the astrometric results, we show the companion to J2222-0137 will be easily detectable in deep optical observations if it is a white dwarf. Finally, we discuss the implications of this measurement for future ultra-high-precision astrometry, in particular in support of pulsar timing arrays.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Reconstruction of photon statistics using low performance photon counters

The output of a photodetector consists of a current pulse whose charge has the statistical distribution of the actual photon numbers convolved with a Bernoulli distribution. Photodetectors are characterized by a nonunit quantum efficiency, i.e. not all the photons lead to a charge, and by a finite resolution, i.e. a different number of detected photons leads to a discriminable values of the charge only up to a maximum value. We present a detailed comparison, based on Monte Carlo simulated experiments and real data, among the performances of detectors with different upper limits of counting capability. In our scheme the inversion of Bernoulli convolution is performed by maximum-likelihood methods assisted by measurements taken at different quantum efficiencies. We show that detectors that are only able to discriminate between zero, one and more than one detected photons are generally enough to provide a reliable reconstruction of the photon statistics for single-peaked distributions, while detectors with higher resolution limits do not lead to further improvements. In addition, we demonstrate that, for semiclassical states, even on/off detectors are enough to provide a good reconstruction. Finally, we show that a reliable reconstruction of multi-peaked distributions requires either higher quantum efficiency or better capability in discriminating high number of detected photons.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Motor excitability during visual perception of known and unknown spoken languages

It is possible to comprehend speech and discriminate languages by viewing a speaker’s articulatory movements. Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have shown that viewing speech enhances excitability in the articulatory motor cortex. Here, we investigated the specificity of this enhanced motor excitability in native and non-native speakers of English. Both groups were able to discriminate between speech movements related to a known (i.e., English) and unknown (i.e., Hebrew) language. The motor excitability was higher during observation of a known language than an unknown language or non-speech mouth movements, suggesting that motor resonance is enhanced specifically during observation of mouth movements that convey linguistic information. Surprisingly, however, the excitability was equally high during observation of a static face. Moreover, the motor excitability did not differ between native and non-native speakers. These findings suggest that the articulatory motor cortex processes several kinds of visual cues during speech communication

Influence of Bridge Facility Attributes on Bicycle Travel Behavior

An unlabeled multinomial logit model is developed to estimate the impact bridge facility attributes have on bicycle travel behavior. Data were collected in Austin, Texas, via a GPS-based smartphone application. Three attributes are analyzed and interacted with varied demographic and trip purpose information: bridge accessibility, vehicular volume, and traffic separation. Due to the significant investment in bicycle facilities at the local, state, and federal levels and the increase in urban bicycle use, it is imperative that agencies fully understand the behavioral elements underlying bicycle travel patterns. Transportation planners cannot assume bicyclists are solely focused on minimizing travel time or distance—standard practice assumptions for vehicular modes. This paper focuses on the analysis of bridge characteristics that are attractive to bicyclists. While several others have looked at bicycle facility preferences, this is the first paper to focus exclusively on bridges. Bridge facilities are fundamentally different from the res