Trite

Everything is trite; nothing is new. Such is the expression of opinion I have heard in regard to all written and spoken thought - barring science. Who told that to me? Was it Miss Beuret? Have I heard it or read it from some other source? Never mind, the opinion probably is true

The role of social capital on the livelihood security of women in the Obbu region, northern Kenya

People who live in traditional societies, including pastoralists are known for strong social networks, which play vital role for their livelihood security means. This study seeks to understand the operations of marro network among women living in rural and peri-urban community(ies), and the benefits they gain from being members of the marro and organized women´s group. The study was drawn from a secondary data source collected in 2015 which was supplied by my supervisor from a larger study. Simple random sampling technique was utilized to select 51 households composed of women who were participants of social networks in the rural and peri-urban community (ies). Results show that women in their middle age participated more in the rural community, whilst the old women participated more in the peri-urban community. Also, most of the women had problems acquiring food due to high food prices in the rural, and low availability of food in the peri-urban community. Many women in both communities were involved in the marro network, and the women in both communities used cooperation and sharing as the main criteria to engage themselves in marro. Women from both communities who participated in the marro and the organized women´s group exchanged resources and gained benefits from the two groups. The benefits involved support for each other, building houses for projects and helping the needy. The most widely exchanged resources included farm produce, water, and firewood. The study recommends the implementation of responsive and sustainable food and livelihood security programmes and projects among pastoral women.M-D

Reminiscence of John Muir by Brown, Alfred Bradley

Mr WM [William] Frederic bade Boston, Mass. My Dear Sir, At your request [I] will send you as many of the letters of the late John Muir as I shall be able to find. One I received from him while I was in the [army] during the Civil War. I will also write a few personal reminiscences of our boyhood days and later. About the year 1856 the Muir family removed from a farm in one part of the township of Buffalo, Marquette Co. Wis. To another farm in the same township owned by Mr. Muir in our locality. This brought them within our school district. The following winter the Muir children including John and his two brothers David and Daniel. And I think two of his sisters Mary and Anna attended school at a log school house built by the early settlers of that time, the counterpart of the little “Red School house” in the Eastern States. The teacher who taught the school that winter was a Mr. George Branch from the state of N.Y. It was at this school that I first became acquainted with John Muir and ever after were life long friends. Upon invitation I visited him at this time at his home, where he showed me many inventions as a boy. Among them was a clock, a [model] for an automatic saw mill, and many other curious things. He had nearly completed a very large clock to be placed upon the farm, and in a very enthusiastic manner assured me that “they could tell the time of day from that clock any where on the farm.” The plan included that a hole be cut in the roof of the barn and the pendulum to swing inside. To this his father sternly objected and refused to allow him to put up the clock, greatly to the disappointment of the boy. He made another cock however that afterwards became famous. After his twenty first birth day he left home to attend the University at Madison Wis. taking his clock with him, carrying it in a grain sack, exciting the curiosity of many people that he met on the way. He also informed me that during the early part of his attendance at the University he desired to place his clock in one of the rooms of the building, and asked the President of the College for permission, and also where he should place it. After an examination of the cock the President told him “he could put it in any place that he desired, a boy that could construct a clock like that had the privilege of placing it in any room in the building that he saw fit.” In financing his way through college he was obliged to earn the money to do it, his father having refused to help him, and teaching school was one of the means of doin it. He engaged to teach school one winter south of the city of Madison. His boarding place was a long walk from the school house and the snow was deep. One [writer] says that “he built a machine which lighted the fire for him every evening.”Mr. Muir told the writer of these lines that he set the clock at night to start the fire at a given hour in the morning by uniting acids, forming a combustion, thus starting the fire. Before leaving the school house at night he made careful preparation for lighting the fire in the morning. He described the first morning that the clock started the fire as follows: “when the time arrived for the fire to be started the whole family where he boarded were out in the door yard watching the school house, soon a little smoke was seen coming out of the chimney, increasing in volume until there was a column of smoke rising gracefully in the frosty air and settled back in the adjacent forest.” in the summer of 1867 just before John Muir started on his botanical trip to the Gulf he made his parents and relations a visit also visiting among the old neighbors, when we were favored by a visit from him and his brother David at my home, where after a few hours visit he bade us adieu. O little realized at the time that it would be forty-one years before we would [ ] again. In the spring of 1908 I visited him at his home near Martinez, Calif, where he met me at the train and was received with a cordial greeting. He was at this time living alone by himself, his youngest daughter who had been ill was sent to a sanitarium in the south eastern part of the state, a few days previous to my arrival. Taking with her a pet dog and pony for companions. I spent nearly a week with him in a delightful visit was entertained and deeply interested in accounts of his travels, particularly in Alaska, the discovery of the glacier that bears his name, also his travels in Siberia and many other countries. The room or study containing his desk, which he called his “den” was practically a museum containing many wonderful collections of souvenirs and curios from nearly every country that he visited, particularly from the Alaskan Indians. Besides specimens of a large variety of mineral oars. Many times during my stay he would recall our school days at the “old log academy” as he termed it although over half a century had passed since our school days, he still remembered distinctly every student that attended the school. In those days it was a custom to “speak pieces” and read “compositions” every Saturday afternoon, and I was amazed to hear my old friend not only give the name of each student, but would tell what particular piece he recited and would repeat part of the piece himself, imitating the speaker in voice and gestures. He recalled the names of all the larger students and repeated a part of the piece that each one recited. I was most amused to hear him mimick a little girl who tried to read her composition and nearly broke down. She took her place upon the floor and commenced to read in a low tone of voice. The teacher requested her to read “a little louder.” She commenced again when the teacher says “a little louder Mary” and she commenced her composition again, but not in a much louder voice. The teacher interrupting her the third time to read louder, when she began to cry and read at the same time until she finished reading. My friend not only repeated part of her composition but mimicked the little girl crying and reading at the same time and in the same tone of voice. On the second or third day after my arrival at his home he informed me that he had been invited by the “Sierra Club” (I think he said) to come to San Francisco the following day as one of their guests, and he invited me to accompany him on the trip. They were to take some part in the reception of Admiral Robert [Evans] and officers of Uncle Sam’s fleet of battle ships, which were to visit San Francisco after its noted journey around the world. Taking the train the next morning we arrived at Berkeley and found the boat landing was crowded with people waiting to be ferried across the bay to San Francisco. Other train loads of people were arriving adding vast numbers to the large crowd that were already waiting. The boats were unable to ferry the people across the bay as fast as they arrived. When a boat landed for passengers there was a terrific crush and jamb to get aboard. Fearing we might be separated on going aboard we each took the other by the collar of his coat with one hand and were crowded onto the boat in that manner, but were not separated, for we were as inseparable as the celebrated Siamese twins. The fleet of battle ships passing the “Golden Gate” accompanied by the booming of cannon from the forts and the response from the battle ships was a wonderful inspiring spectacle, a sight never to be forgotten. Promptly at 4 o’clock we started upon our return to Mr. Muir’s home. Two more days soon passed and I took my departure, bidding my old friend what proved to be a last farewell. In conclusion I would say that to day Wisconsin feels proud of her worthy son. Having recently placed at the University in Madison to his memory, a statue which was unveiled with elaborate ceremonies in the early part of last summer, a fitting tribute to one of her illustrious sins. Sincerely yours, Alfred Bradley Brown Alexandria, So [South] Dakota April 9, 191

Knight\u27s Tours and Zeta Functions

Given an m × n chessboard, we get an associated graph by letting each square represent a vertex and by joining two vertices if there is a valid move by a knight between the corresponding squares. A knight’s tour is a sequence of moves in which the knight lands on every square exactly once, i.e., a Hamiltonian path on the associated graph. Knight’s tours have an interesting history. One interesting mistake regarding Knight’s Tours was made by the famous mathematician Euler. His mistake led to the further study of knight’s tours on 3 × n chessboards. We will explore and explain a method found by Donald Knuth for enumerating the number k(n) of all closed knight’s tours on a 3 × (2n + 8) chessboard for an integer n ≥ 1. Interestingly, there is a 21-term recurrence relation for k(n) discovered independently by Knuth and Elkies. This relation comes from studying generating functions which can be interpreted in the context of the Ihara zeta function of a certain graph

Letter from A[lfred] B[radley] Brown to John Muir, 1908 Apr 19 .

Pacific Grove, CalifApril 19. 1908,John Muir,Martinez Cal.Dear Friend,I am here visiting David, and expect to get up your way before long. I intend to stop at San Jose, and Modesto, each a few days, on my way, and perhaps at San Francisco also. Let me know where to find you, and if you intend to be absent from home for any length of time within the next two weeks.Hoping to see you soon I remain as everYour friendA. B. Brow

Piloted-simulation study of effects of vortex flaps on low-speed handling qualities of a Delta-wing airplane

A piloted-simulation study was conducted to investigate the effects of vortex flaps on low-speed handling qualities of a delta-wing airplane. The simulation math model was developed from wind tunnel tests of a 0.15 scale model of the F-106B airplane. Pilot evaluations were conducted using a six-degree-of-freedom motion base simulator. The results of the investigation showed that the reduced static longitudinal stability caused by the vortex flaps significantly degraded handling qualities in the approach-to-landing task. Acceptable handling qualities could be achieved by limiting the aft center-of-gravity location, consequently reducing the operational envelope of the airplane. Further improvement were possible by modifying the flight control force-feel system to reduce pitch-control sensitivity

Ridge Production in High-Multiplicity Hadronic Ultra-Peripheral Proton-Proton Collisions

An unexpected result at the RHIC and the LHC is the observation that high-multiplicity hadronic events in heavy-ion and proton-proton collisions are distributed as two "ridges", approximately flat in rapidity and opposite in azimuthal angle. We propose that the origin of these events is due to the inelastic collisions of aligned gluonic flux tubes that underly the color confinement of the quarks in each proton. We predict that high-multiplicity hadronic ridges will also be produced in the high energy photon-photon collisions accessible at the LHC in ultra-peripheral proton-proton collisions or at a high energy electron-positron collider. We also note the orientation of the flux tubes between the quark and antiquark of each high energy photon will be correlated with the plane of the scattered proton or lepton. Thus hadron production and ridge formation can be controlled in a novel way at the LHC by observing the azimuthal correlations of the scattering planes of the ultra-peripheral protons with the orientation of the produced ridges. Photon-photon collisions can thus illuminate the fundamental physics underlying the ridge effect and the physics of color confinement in QCD.Comment: Presented by SJB at Photon 2017: The International Conference on the Structure and the Interactions of the Photon and the International Workshop on Photon-Photon Collisions. CERN, May 22-26, 2017. References adde

Letter from Alfred Bradley Brown to John Muir, ca. 1858

1858 618 Well John I thought it was about time I was answering your letter. I have been so busy that I have not had much time to write. I thought you would get out of patience wating. So I thought I would begin to press [onward?] I guess I wont write poetry this time you see I ant so used to writing poetry as you be I liked your letter first rate I should like very much if I could write as goode one myself I should like first rate to meet over to the Old school house and speak prices and sing our old press onward song as we used to last winter I wonder where our teacher has gone and if he now and then thinks how his scholars are J Muir Es.getting along and of the may times we used to have last winter and I wish we might meet him again in the Old school house and hear him call us to order again and hear some of his wonderful speeches. ask Dave how he liked that awful C[illegible] I dont know but I have wrote enough I guess it is time to halt I am shure I suppose this is not as good a letter as you expected but I will try and do better next time answer this as soon as you can and excuse all mistakes. From your friend A B. Brown 00236