NASA Lidar system support and MOPA technology demonstration

A series of lidar design and technology demonstration tasks in support of a CO2 lidar program is discussed. The first of these tasks is discussed in Section VI of this report under the heading of NASA Optical Lidar Design and it consists of detailed recommendations for the layout of a CO2 Doppler lidar incorporating then existing NASA optical components and mounts. The second phase of this work consisted of the design, development, and delivery to NASA of a novel acousto-optic laser frequency stabilization system for use with the existing NASA ring laser transmitter. The second major task in this program encompasses the design and experimental demonstration of a master oscillator-power amplifier (MOPA) laser transmitter utilizing a commercially available laser as the amplifier. The MOPA design including the low chirp master oscillator is discussed in detail. Experimental results are given for one, two and three pass amplification. The report includes operating procedures for the MOPA system

Handling George Eliot’s Fiction

An argument that George Eliot was a novelist intellectually, philosophically, and aesthetically ahead of the majority of her peers thankfully needs no defense two hundred years after her birth. This lofty status, however, does not mean that Eliot was impervious to the cultural preoccupations of her time. Quite the contrary. A central contention of this essay is that Eliot, despite her imposing intellectual reputation, engaged with her culture’s popular interest in human hands in ways that profoundly affected her fiction. As I have argued elsewhere,1 the Victorians became highly cognizant of the physicality of their hands in large part because unprecedented developments in mechanized industry and new advancements in evolutionary theory made them the first culture to experience a radical disruption of this supposedly age-old, God-given, “distinguishing” mark of their humanity. Eliot did not write any “industrial” novels per se, and so it may be fair to assume that she was relatively unmoved by the human hand’s supersession by mechanized industry. And though she was not religious in any traditional sense, she definitely maintained a keen interest in the rapidly changing scientific paradigms of her day. This scientific interest, as we shall see, plays an unusually interesting—and as of yet unconsidered—role in the development of her characters’ bodies

Idiomatic Surrogacy and (Dis)Ability in \u3ci\u3eDombey and Son\u3c/i\u3e

To assert that Charles Dickens possessed a mastery of language unique among nineteenth-century novelists for its vernacular inventiveness is hardly controversial. The Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms lists Dickens among its most cited sources (others include the Bible and Shakespeare). Dickens’s use of ordinary, unembellished, and what Anthony Trollope termed vulgarly “ungrammatical” lower-class language sets his novels apart in style and tone from those of his famous peers (249). William Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Thomas Hardy and others – despite their many differences – generally composed their fiction in higher, more formal linguistic registers than Dickens. The difference with Dickens is most likely the result of a complex amalgamation of circumstance and sensibility, but his unusual upbringing is undoubtably a major factor. His early life experiences gave him access to a range of rhetorical speech that his peers simply did not possess. Working as a young boy at Warren’s Blacking Factory, regularly visiting his father at the Marshalsea Prison, and later, spending time as a law clerk, a Parliamentary stenographer, and a newspaper editor gave Dickens a broad spectrum of linguistic resources from which to build his fictional idiolect. Garrett Stewart captures this exceptional sense of rhetorical ingenuity in his assessment that “it often seems as if the untapped reserves of the English vernacular were simply lying in wait for Dickens to inherit them – by marrying their riches to his storyteller’s instinct” (“Language” 136). Given Dickens’s unparalleled command of the English vernacular, I would like to focus on how one idiomatic figuration that has so far escaped critical attention works to produce meaning in one particular novel: the idiomatic expression “right-hand man” in Dombey and Son (1846–48). I concede that this phrase may have escaped critical attention for good reason; it appears only six times in Dombey and Son – Dickens’s longest novel at 356,610 words. But unlike virtually every other idiom that turns up in Dickens’s work, “right-hand man” appears only these six times in Dombey and never again his fictional oeuvre (comprised of twenty-one texts).

The Victorian Body

The nineteenth century is extremely important for the study of embodiment because it is the period in which the modern body, as we currently understand it, was most thoroughly explored. This was the era when modern medical models of the body were developed and disseminated, when modern political relations to the body were instantiated, and when modern identities in relation to class, race, and gender were inscribed. While questions about the distinctions between personhood and the body were studied by the ancients, nineteenth-century developments in technology, economics, medicine, and science rendered such categories newly important for Britons who were the first to experience a fully industrialized society. This entry is designed to outline the changing experiences of embodiment in the Victorian period, and is therefore divided into the following sections: anatomy, gender, femininity, masculinity, health and sickness, industrialized and technologized bodies, physiology and reading, evolution and race, disability, adolescence, and old age

Some effects of dust on photometry of high-z galaxies: Confounding the effects of evolution

Photometric observations of very distant galaxies--e.g., color vs. z or magnitude vs. z, have been used over the past decade or so in investigations into the evolution of the stellar component. Numerous studies have predicted significant color variations as a result of evolution, in addition to the shifting of different rest wavelengths into the band of observation. Although there is significant scatter, the data can be fit with relatively straightforward, plausible models for galaxian evolution. In very few cases are the effects of dust extinction included in the models. This is due in a large part to the uncertainty about the distribution and optical properties of the grains, and even whether or not they are present in significant numbers in some types of galaxies such as ellipticals. It is likely that the effects of dust on broadband observations are the greatest uncertainty in studies of very distant galaxies. We use a detailed Monte Carlo radiative transfer model within a spherical geometry for different star/dust distributions to examine the effects of dust on the broadband colors of galaxies as a function of redshift. The model fully accounts for absorption and angular redistribution in scattering. In this summary, we consider only the effects on color vs. redshift for three simple geometries each with the same total dust optical depth. Elsewhere at this conference, Capuano, Thronson, & Witt consider other effects of altering the relative dust/star distribution

Preventive Intervention as Means of Clarifying Direction of Effects in Socialization: Anxious-Withdrawn Preschoolers Case

An indicated preventive intervention research program integrating attachment, attributional, and behaviorist perspectives was conducted to test the hypothesis that parent-child relationship disturbances directly effect the child\u27s adjustment to the preschool. Anxious-withdrawn preschool children and their mothers were divided equally into treatment and control groups, and assessed on maternal self-report of parenting stress, behavioral ratings of mother-child interaction, and teacher ratings of the children in the preschool classroom. Results showed significant changes in the treatment group: mothers in the treatment group moderated their level of control to a more appropriate, less intrusive level, while children in the treatment group showed an increase in cooperation and enthusiasm during a problem solving task with mother. Teacher-rated social competence and anxious-withdrawn behavior indicated improvement, although only the former was significant. The demonstration of effects of this home intervention for the mother on the child\u27s behavior in the preschool confirm the transactional model underlying this study and demonstrate the utility of a parent-child interaction training component for the prevention of behavioral-emotional problems in young children

Star-dust geometries in galaxies: The effect of interstellar matter distributions on optical and infrared properties of late-type galaxies

The presence of substantial amounts of interstellar dust in late-type galaxies affects observable parameters such as the optical surface brightness, the color, and the ratio of far-infrared to optical luminosity of these galaxies. We conducted radiative transfer calculations for late-type galaxy environments to examine two different scenarios: (1) the effects of increasing amounts of dust in two fixed geometries with different star distributions; and (2) the effects of an evolving dust-star geometry in which the total amount of dust is held constant, for three different star distributions. The calculations were done for ten photometric bands, ranging from the far-ultraviolet to the near-infrared (K), and scattered light was included in the galactic surface brightness at each wavelength. The energy absorbed throughout these ten photometric bands was assumed to re-emerge in the far-infrared as thermal dust emission. We also considered the evolutionary contraction of a constant amount of dust relative to pre-existing star distributions

A note on cyclotomic polynomials and Linear Feedback Shift Registers

Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFRS) are tools commonly used in cryptography in many different context, for example as pseudo-random numbers generators. In this paper we characterize LFRS with certain symmetry properties. Related to this question we also classify polynomials f of degree n satisfying the property that if a is a root of f then $f(a^n)=0$. The classification heavily depends on the choice of the fields of coefficients of the polynomial; we consider the cases $K=\mathbb{F}_p$ and $K=\mathbb{Q}$.Comment: 12 page

A note on cyclotomic polynomials and Linear Feedback Shift Registers

Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFRS) are tools commonly used in cryptography in many different context, for example as pseudo-random numbers generators. In this paper we characterize LFRS with certain symmetry properties. Related to this question we also classify polynomials f of degree n satisfying the property that if a is a root of f then f(a^n)=0. The classification heavily depends on the choice of the fields of coefficients of the polynomial; we consider the cases K=Fp and K=Q