MS-187: Papers of Gregory J. Landrey, Class of 1977

In January Term of his senior year, Gettysburg College history major Gregory J. Landrey ‘77 took an individualized study course under Professor Charles Glatfelter. His project—an up-to-date chronicle of the college’s real estate history including land purchases, demolished buildings, and recent construction projects—entailed extensive research in numerous college offices, as well as at the Adams County Historical Society. As the project proceeded, it also expanded, ultimately taking the entire spring semester to complete. Landrey’s final 68-page paper, titled A History of the Gettysburg College Campus, was submitted on May 27, 1977. Recognized as an important addition to the chronicles of the college, it was duplicated, bound, and added to Schmucker (now Musselman) Library’s general and special collections. Glatfelter later acknowledged Landrey’s work in his definitive institutional history, A Salutary Influence: Gettysburg College, 1832-1985 (1987). Today the Landrey monograph is frequently consulted by students in connection with their own college history projects. This collection contains, in addition to a few photocopied documents, Greg Landrey’s handwritten notes, survey drawings, and index cards. It also includes the complete holographic draft of A History of the Gettysburg College Campus. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1166/thumbnail.jp

Debris Thickness of Glaciers in the Everest Area (Nepal Himalaya) Derived from Satellite Imagery Using a Nonlinear Energy Balance Model

Debris thickness is an important characteristic of debris-covered glaciers in the Everest region of the Himalayas. The debris thickness controls the melt rates of the glaciers, which has large implications for hydrologic models, the glaciers' response to climate change, and the development of glacial lakes. Despite its importance, there is little knowledge of how the debris thickness varies over these glaciers. This paper uses an energy balance model in conjunction with Landsat7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) satellite imagery to derive thermal resistances, which are the debris thickness divided by the thermal conductivity. Model results are reported in terms of debris thickness using an effective thermal conductivity derived from field data. The developed model accounts for the nonlinear temperature gradient in the debris cover to derive reasonable debris thicknesses. Fieldwork performed on Imja-Lhotse Shar Glacier in September 2013 was used to compare to the modeled debris thicknesses. Results indicate that accounting for the nonlinear temperature gradient is crucial. Furthermore, correcting the incoming shortwave radiation term for the effects of topography and resampling to the resolution of the thermal band's pixel is imperative to deriving reasonable debris thicknesses. Since the topographic correction is important, the model will improve with the quality of the digital elevation model (DEM). The main limitation of this work is the poor resolution (60m) of the satellite's thermal band. The derived debris thicknesses are reasonable at this resolution, but trends related to slope and aspect are unable to be modeled on a finer scale. Nonetheless, the study finds this model derives reasonable debris thicknesses on this scale and was applied to other debris-covered glaciers in the Everest region.USAID Climate Change Resilient Development (CCRD) projectCenter for Research in Water Resource

Cross-linking of Polystyrene by Friedel–Crafts Chemistry to Improve Thermal Stability

Copolymers which contain either alcohol or chloride functionalized polystyrene units have been prepared and they participate in Friedel–Crafts chemistry to give cross-linked polymers by the evolution of either hydrogen chloride or water. Proof of cross-linking comes from the identification of the evolved gas, the insolubility of the product, and the thermal resistance of the newly formed polymer. The onset temperature for the degradation is raised by about 100°C relative to that of polystyrene and the fraction which is not volatile at 800°C ranges from 10% for the alcohol copolymers to 20% for the chloride copolymers

TGA/FTIR Studies on the Thermal Degradation of some Polymeric Sulfonic and Phosphonic Acids and Their Sodium Salts

The thermal degradation of poly(vinyl sulfonic acid) and its sodium salt, poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid) and its sodium salt, and poly(vinylphosphonic acid) was studied by a combination of techniques, including TGA/FTIR, to identify the volatile products which were evolved during the degradation as well as analysis of the residues which were obtained in order to propose a mechanism for the degradation. The motivation for the work was to attempt to identify new monomers which could be graft copolymerized onto a polymer in order to improve the thermal stability of that polymer

Misconceptions About General Relativity in Theoretical Black Hole Astrophysics

The fundamental role played by black holes in our study of microquasars, gamma ray bursts, and the outflows from active galactic nuclei requires an appreciation for, and at times some in-depth analysis of, curved spacetime. We highlight misconceptions surrounding the notion of coordinate transformation in general relativity as applied to metrics for rotating black holes that are beginning to increasingly appear in the literature. We emphasize that there is no coordinate transformation that can turn the metric of a rotating spacetime into that for a Schwarzschild spacetime, or more generally, that no coordinate transformation exists that can diagonalize the metric for a rotating spacetime. We caution against the notion of "local" coordinate transformation, which is often incorrectly associated with a global analysis of the spacetime.Comment: MNRAS accepte

Changes in Imja Tsho in the Mount Everest Region of Nepal

Imja Tsho, located in the Sagarmatha ( Everest) National Park of Nepal, is one of the most studied and rapidly growing lakes in the Himalayan range. Compared with previous studies, the results of our sonar bathymetric survey conducted in September of 2012 suggest that its maximum depth has increased from 90.5 to 116.3 +/- 5.2 m since 2002, and that its estimated volume has grown from 35.8 +/- 0.7 to 61.7 +/- 3.7 million m(3). Most of the expansion of the lake in recent years has taken place in the glacier terminus-lake interface on the eastern end of the lake, with the glacier receding at about 52 m yr(-1) and the lake expanding in area by 0.04 km(2) yr(-1). A ground penetrating radar survey of the Imja-Lhotse Shar glacier just behind the glacier terminus shows that the ice is over 200 m thick in the center of the glacier. The volume of water that could be released from the lake in the event of a breach in the damming moraine on the western end of the lake has increased to 34.1 +/- 1.08 million m(3) from the 21 million m(3) estimated in 2002.USAID Climate Change Resilient Development (CCRD) projectFulbright FoundationNational Geographic SocietyCenter for Research in Water Resource

Extensions to the Syrjala Test with Eye-Tracking Data Analysis Applications in R

Eye tracking is a process for measuring the movement of an individual’s eye(s) when that individual is looking at something. Many eye-tracking technologies exist to aid in calculating and recording data associated with what a person focuses their visual attention on. For example, eye-tracking technology can record points on an image that a person is looking at. Often the question arises as to whether two people, or groups of people, are looking at the same thing(s). This dissertation presents a new way (or test) to quantify those differences while taking into consideration the randomness associated with such data. Hence, the test can help to determine if the differences between what the two people, or groups of people, are looking at are caused by chance or not. However, the test is also useful to many other kinds of data similar to but outside of eye-tracking research. While this test takes longer for standard household computers to run than other alternative tests currently available, it is shown to be better in many cases at correctly identifying differences when those differences were not caused by randomness. The test is also better at identifying when the differences are caused by chance, and not necessarily by the people. The test is applied to eye-tracking data from a study held at Utah State University (USU), called the USU Posture Study, where many differences are found. The test is available online, and comes with a user manual and some examples of how to use it