A Range Extension for Manayunkia aestuarina (Bourne, 1883) (Polychaeta: Sabellidae) to the Gulf Coast of the United States with a Review of Previous Habitat Information

The sabellid polychaete Manayunkia aestuarina (Bourne, 1883) is reported for the first time from the Gulf coast of the United States and from a Juncus roemerianus marsh. Individuals were collected from a brackish J. roemerianus marsh in St. Louis Bay, Mississippi, (30o22\u27N, 89o15\u27W) during the period of June 1979 to May 1980. Adults with eggs were first noted in early January and increased in number through May. Brooded young were observed from late January through May. Habitat comparisons are made between this and other North American and European populations. The present population is associated with lower salinities, more sandy sediments, and much less frequent tidal inundation than the others. A brief taxonomic discussion is presented

A Question of Influence: William Cowper Brann and Henry Louis Mencken

A major critic of H. L. Mencken and a co-worker of his on the Baltimore Sun have both theorized that Mencken was influenced by a little-remembered Texas iconoclast who was assassinated in 1898, William Cowper Brann. Investigation revealed that Brann and Mencken agreed on many topics such as Prohibition, politics and religion among others. Mencken\u27s early style compares well with Brann\u27s, and they shared many techniques and preferences for particular words standard in the debunker\u27s vocabulary. Research revealed that Mencken even published an article in 1900, at the age of twenty, in the magazine that had formerly been published by Brann, Brann\u27s Iconoclast. As Mencken matured, he moved away from some of the more obvious elements of the style which he shared with Brann. Included is a Brann bibliography

Space Software Defined Radio Characterization to Enable Reuse

NASA's Space Communication and Navigation Testbed is beginning operations on the International Space Station this year. The objective is to promote new software defined radio technologies and associated software application reuse, enabled by this first flight of NASA's Space Telecommunications Radio System architecture standard. The Space Station payload has three software defined radios onboard that allow for a wide variety of communications applications; however, each radio was only launched with one waveform application. By design the testbed allows new waveform applications to be uploaded and tested by experimenters in and outside of NASA. During the system integration phase of the testbed special waveform test modes and stand-alone test waveforms were used to characterize the SDR platforms for the future experiments. Characterization of the Testbed's JPL SDR using test waveforms and specialized ground test modes is discussed in this paper. One of the test waveforms, a record and playback application, can be utilized in a variety of ways, including new satellite on-orbit checkout as well as independent on-board testbed experiments

Common aetiology for diverse language skills in 41/2-year-old twins

Multivariate genetic analysis was used to examine the genetic and environmental aetiology of the interrelationships of diverse linguistic skills. This study used data from a large sample of 4 1/2 year-old twins who were tested on measures assessing articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory. Phenotypic analysis suggested two latent factors: articulation (2 measures) and general language (the remaining 7), and a genetic model incorporating these factors provided a good fit to the data. Almost all genetic and shared environmental influences on the 9 measures acted through the two latent factors. There was also substantial aetiological overlap between the two latent factors, with a genetic correlation of 0·64 and shared environment correlation of 1·00. We conclude that to a large extent, the same genetic and environmental factors underlie the development of individual differences in a wide range of linguistic skills

STRS Radio Service Software for NASA's SCaN Testbed

NASAs Space Communication and Navigation(SCaN) Testbed was launched to the International Space Station in 2012. The objective is to promote new software defined radio technologies and associated software application reuse, enabled by this first flight of NASAs Space Telecommunications Radio System(STRS) architecture standard. Pre-launch testing with the testbeds software defined radios was performed as part of system integration. Radio services for the JPL SDR were developed during system integration to allow the waveform application to operate properly in the space environment, especially considering thermal effects. These services include receiver gain control, frequency offset, IQ modulator balance, and transmit level control. Development, integration, and environmental testing of the radio services will be described. The added software allows the waveform application to operate properly in the space environment, and can be reused by future experimenters testing different waveform applications. Integrating such services with the platform provided STRS operating environment will attract more users, and these services are candidates for interface standardization via STRS

Design and Commissioning of the ISAC Control System at TRIUMF

The control system for the initial stage of the ISAC radioactive beam facility at TRIUMF was recently commissioned and the facility delivered the first radioactive beam to users in December of 1998. The control system is based on the EPICS toolkit. VME based Motorola MVME162 CPUs serve as input/output Controllers, SUN workstations as application servers, and PCs are used with X-terminal software as operator interface stations. Modicon PLCs control the vacuum system and ion sources. A network of CAN-bus based controllers is used for the beam guidance system. Custom VME modules were developed for beam diagnostics. 1 ISAC ISAC, an Online Isotope Separator and ACcelerator, is being built at TRIUMF and provided the first beams of short-lived radioactive isotopes to experiments in December of 1998. At present, ISAC is the world’s most intense source of low energy radioactive beams. By the end of next year it will also deliver the world’s most energetic radioactive beams (1.5 MeV/u). A 500 MeV proton beam of up to 10 µA from the TRIUMF cyclotron produces short-lived radioactive species in a hot (2000 °C) production target. They are extracted and accelerated to 60 keV in a target-ion-source and pass through a magnetic pre-separator before being isotopically separated in a high-resolution mass separator. This radioactive beam can either feed the low-energy experimental area or be further accelerated in a 19-ring radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) followed by a five-tank drift tube linac (DTL). For tuning purposes, an off-line ion source provides non-radioactive beams