“Nothing wrong with prejudice and discrimination:” Omaha newspaper coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in 1968

This thesis discusses Omaha newspaper coverage of the Civil Rights Movement from January to April 1968. As the Vietnam War raged, racial tension continued to build in the United States, including Omaha, Nebraska. Despite its desegregation, a primarily white, male government controlled the city. The visit of Alabama Governor George Wallace, a widely known white-supremacist presidential candidate, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exacerbated the anger already felt by black communities throughout the city. This thesis examines the accuracy and contrasting content of the Omaha Star, a newspaper created to serve the black community, and the Omaha World-Herald, which mainly published articles written by white men

Detector Systems Engineering for Extremely Large Instruments

The scientific detector systems for the ESO ELT first-light instruments, HARMONI, MICADO, and METIS, together will require 27 science detectors: seventeen 2.5 $\mu$m cutoff H4RG-15 detectors, four 4K x 4K 231-84 CCDs, five 5.3 $\mu$m cutoff H2RG detectors, and one 13.5 $\mu$m cutoff GEOSNAP detector. This challenging program of scientific detector system development covers everything from designing and producing state-of-the-art detector control and readout electronics, to developing new detector characterization techniques in the lab, to performance modeling and final system verification. We report briefly on the current design of these detector systems and developments underway to meet the challenging scientific performance goals of the ELT instruments.Comment: Proceedings of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Conference 202

The GRAVITY+ Project: Towards All-sky, Faint-Science, High-Contrast Near-Infrared Interferometry at the VLTI

The GRAVITY instrument has been revolutionary for near-infrared interferometry by pushing sensitivity and precision to previously unknown limits. With the upgrade of GRAVITY and the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in GRAVITY+, these limits will be pushed even further, with vastly improved sky coverage, as well as faint-science and high-contrast capabilities. This upgrade includes the implementation of wide-field off-axis fringe-tracking, new adaptive optics systems on all Unit Telescopes, and laser guide stars in an upgraded facility. GRAVITY+ will open up the sky to the measurement of black hole masses across cosmic time in hundreds of active galactic nuclei, use the faint stars in the Galactic centre to probe General Relativity, and enable the characterisation of dozens of young exoplanets to study their formation, bearing the promise of another scientific revolution to come at the VLTI.Comment: Published in the ESO Messenge

Programm- und Outputevaluation einer Intervention zur Förderung des sozialen Selbstkonzepts im Sportunterricht

Neben den positiven Effekten auf die körperliche und motorische Entwicklung wird dem Sportunterricht auch attestiert, psychische Merkmale von Kindern auf eine positive Weise zu beeinflussen. Die vorliegende quasi-experimentelle Längsschnittstudie untersuchte die Effekte einer 14-wöchigen Intervention zur Förderung des sozialen Selbstkonzepts. 307 Schülerinnen und Schüler (MAlter = 10.92, SD = 0.64) nahmen an der Studie teil, bei welcher sie einen Fragebogen zu fünf Facetten des sozialen Selbstkonzepts ausfüllten. Varianzanalysen mit Messwiederholung zeigten, dass insbesondere eine intensive Schulung und Begleitung der Lehrkräfte zu einer verbesserten Implementationsqualität führt und dass nur diese erhöhte Implementationsqualität das Selbstkonzept der Kooperationsfähigkeit der Schülerinnen und Schüler positiv zu beeinflussen vermag. Die Erweiterung des Sportunterrichts mit kognitiven Methoden und die Steuerung der Implementationsqualität scheinen für die Förderung des sozialen Selbstkonzepts von zentraler Bedeutung zu sein.In addition to the positive effects on the physical and motor development, physical education is also assumed to influence psychological factors of children in a positive way. The present quasi-experimental study examined the effects of a 14-week intervention to promote children’s social self-concept. 307 pupils (Mage = 10.92, SD = 0.64) participated in the study, during which they completed a questionnaire on five facets of the social self-concept. Analyses of variance with repeated measures show that mainly the intense coaching of the participating teachers leads to an enhanced quality of implementation. Only this augmented quality of implementation fosters a positiv development of children’s self-concept of cooperation. The extension of physical education with cognitive methods and the control of the quality of implementation seem to be a condition for the promotion of social self-concept

ASSIST ::the test setup for the VLT AO facility

ASSIST: The Adaptive Secondary Setup and Instrument STimulator is the test setup for the verification and calibration of three elements of the VLT Adaptive Optics Facility.; the Deformable Secondary Mirror (DSM) the AO system for MUSE and HAWK-I (GALACSI and GRAAL). In the DSM testing mode the DSM will be tested using both interferometry and fast wave front sensing. In full AO mode, ASSIST will allow testing of the AO systems under realistic atmospheric conditions and optically equivalent to the conditions on the telescope. ASSIST is nearing its final design review and in this paper we present the current optical and mechanical design of ASSIST. In this paper we highlight some of the specific aspects of ASSIST that we are developing for ASSIST

Respiratory syncytial virus potentiates ABCA3 mutation-induced loss of lung epithelial cell differentiation

International audienceATP-binding cassette transporter A3 (ABCA3) is a lipid transporter active in lung alveolar epithelial type II cells (ATII) and is essential for their function as surfactant-producing cells. ABCA3 mutational defects cause respiratory distress in newborns and interstitial lung disease (ILD) in children. The molecular pathomechanisms are largely unknown; however, viral infections may initiate or aggravate ILDs. Here, we investigated the impact of the clinically relevant ABCA3 mutations, p.Q215K and p.E292V, by stable transfection of A549 lung epithelial cells. ABCA3 mutations strongly impaired expression of the ATII differentiation marker SP-C and the key epithelial cell adhesion proteins E-cadherin and zonula occludens-1. Concurrently, cells expressing ABCA3 mutation acquired mesenchymal features as observed by increased expression of SNAI1, MMP-2 and TGF-beta1, and elevated phosphorylation of Src. Infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most common viral respiratory pathogen in small children, potentiated the observed mutational effects on loss of epithelial and acquisition of mesenchymal characteristics. In addition, RSV infection of cells harboring ABCA3 mutations resulted in a morphologic shift to a mesenchymal phenotype. We conclude that ABCA3 mutations, potentiated by RSV infection, induce loss of epithelial cell differentiation in ATII. Loss of key epithelial features may disturb the integrity of the alveolar epithelium, thereby comprising its functionality. We suggest the impairment of epithelial function as a mechanism by which ABCA3 mutations cause ILD

The ERIS adaptive optics system

The Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) is the new Adaptive Optics based instrument for ESO's VLT aiming at replacing NACO and SINFONI to form a single compact facility with AO fed imaging and integral field unit spectroscopic scientific channels. ERIS completes the instrument suite at the VLT adaptive telescope. In particular it is equipped with a versatile AO system that delivers up to 95% Strehl correction in K band for science observations up to 5 micron It comprises high order NGS and LGS correction enabling the observation from exoplanets to distant galaxies with a large sky coverage thanks to the coupling of the LGS WFS with the high sensitivity of its visible WFS and the capability to observe in dust embedded environment thanks to its IR low order WFS. ERIS will be installed at the Cassegrain focus of the VLT unit hosting the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF). The wavefront correction is provided by the AOF deformable secondary mirror while the Laser Guide Star is provided by one of the four launch units of the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility for the AOF. The overall layout of the ERIS AO system is extremely compact and highly optimized: the SPIFFI spectrograph is fed directly by the Cassegrain focus and both the NIX's (IR imager) and SPIFFI's entrance windows work as visible/infrared dichroics. In this paper we describe the concept of the ERIS AO system in detail, starting from the requirements and going through the estimated performance, the opto-mechanical design and the Real-Time Computer design