33,185 research outputs found

    The Great Albatross Philippine Expedition and Its Fishes

    Get PDF
    The Philippine Expedition of 1907-10 was the longest and most extensive assignment of the Albatross's 39-year career. It came about because the United States had acquired the Philippines following the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the bloody Philippine Insurection of 1899-1902. The purpose of the expedition was to surbey and assess the aquatic resources of the Philippine Islands. Dr. Hugh M. Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, was the Director of the Expedition. Other scientific participants were Frederick M. Chamberlain, Lewis Radcliffe, Paul Bartsch, Harry C. Fasset, Clarence Wells, Albert Burrows, Alvin Seale, and Roy Chapman Andrews. The expedition consisted of a series of cruises, each beginning and ending in Manila and exploring a different part of the island group. In addition to the Philippines proper, the ship also explored parts of the Dutch East Indies and areas around Hong Kong and Taiwan. The expedition returned great quantities of fish and invertebrate speciments as well as hydrographic and fisheries data; most of the material was eventually deposited in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. The fisehs were formally accessioned into the museum in 1922 and fell under the car of Barton A. Bean, Assistant Curator of Fishes, who then recruited Henry W. Fowler to work up the material. Fowler completed his studies of the entire collection, but only part of it was ever published, due in part to the economic constraints caused by the Depression. The material from the Philippine Expedition constituted the largest single accession of fishes ever received by the museum. These speciments are in good condition today and are still being used in scientific research

    The Economics of 'Acting White'

    Get PDF
    This paper formalizes a sociological phenomenon entitled 'acting white'. The key idea is that individuals face a tension between signaling their type to the outside labor market and signaling their type to a peer group: signals that induce high wages can be signals that induce peer rejection. We prove three basic results: (1) there exists no equilibria in which all types of individuals adopt distinct educational investment levels; (2) when individuals are not too patient, all equilibria satisfying a standard refinement involve a binary partition of the type space in which all types accepted by the group pool on a common low education level and all types rejected by the group separate at distinctly higher levels of education with correspondingly higher wages; and (3) when individuals are very patient, there is an increase in the variation of education levels within the group and an increase in the variance of types deemed acceptable by the group. The more those involved discount the future, the more salient peer pressure becomes and the more homogenous groups become.

    War of the Worlds Revisited: The Effect of Watching The Day After on Mood State

    Get PDF
    In the fall of 1983, The Day After, a fictional account of a nuclear attack on a civilian population, was broadcast on television in the United States and viewed by I00 million Americans . The Day After was said to differ from previous movie treatments of nuclear war by the vividness with which it forced its audience to experience the ground zero effects of a nuclear blast on human beings (I) . In what was described as the most horrifically searing footage ever to pass a network censor, the audience was shown group immolation, a carnage of mass vaporization and graphic images of death (I). It was widely predicted that this movie would have stressful psychological effects because it dealt with a potentially real disaster. Warnings of possible psychiatric side effects of the film were issued by the American Psychiatric Association , the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Broadcasting Company (1,2,3). So seriously were these warnings taken that the Federal Emergency Management Agency increased its staffing in anticipation of the movie\u27s psychological fallout (2). After the movie was shown, however, there was little systematic documentation of its psychological effects on the public. Since similarly graphic movies addressing the effects of nuclear war continue to be released and a replanned for the future, we feel the issue of the psychological effects of these films remains salient

    Journal publishing with Acrobat: the CAJUN project

    Get PDF
    The publication of material in electronic form should ideally preserve, in a unified document representation, all of the richness of the printed document while maintaining enough of its underlying structure to enable searching and other forms of semantic processing. Until recently it has been hard to find a document representation which combined these attributes and which also stood some chance of becoming a de facto multi-platform standard. This paper sets out experience gained within the Electronic Publishing Research Group at the University of Nottingham in using Adobe Acrobat software and its underlying PDF (Portable Document Format) notation. The CAJUN project1 (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) began in 1993 and has used Acrobat software to produce electronic versions of journal papers for network and CD-ROM dissemination. The paper describes the project's progress so far and also gives a brief assessment of PDF's suitability as a universal document interchange standard

    Atlas of albedo and absorbed solar radiation derived from Nimbus 7 Earth radiation budget data set, November 1978 to October 1985

    Get PDF
    An atlas of monthly mean global contour maps of albedo and absorbed solar radiation is presented. This atlas contains 7 years of continuous data from November 1978 through October 1985. The data were retrieved from measurements made by the second Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) wide field-of-view instrument, which flew on the Nimbus 7 spacecraft in 1978. The deconvolution method used to produce these data is briefly discussed here so that the user may understand their generation and limitations. These geographical distributions of albedo and absorbed solar radiation are provided as a resource for researchers studying the radiation budget of the Earth. This atlas of albedo and absorbed solar radiation complements the atlases of outgoing longwave radiation by Bess and Smith, also based on the Nimbus 6 and 7 ERB data

    Atlas of albedo and absorbed solar radiation derived from Nimbus 6 earth radiation budget data set, July 1975 to May 1978

    Get PDF
    An atlas of monthly mean global contour maps of albedo and absorbed solar radiation is presented. The atlas is based on 35 months of continuous measurements from July 1975 through May 1978. The data were retrieved from measurements made by the shortwave wide field-of-view radiometer of the first Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) instrument, which flew on the Nimbus 6 spacecraft in 1975. Profiles of zonal mean albedos and absorbed solar radiation are tabulated. These geographical distributions are provided as a resource for studying the radiation budget of the earth. This atlas of albedo and absorbed solar radiation complements the atlases of outgoing longwave radiation by Bess and Smith in NASA-RP-1185 and RP-1186, also based on the Nimbus 6 and 7 ERB data

    Rapid modulation of sensory processing induced by stimulus conflict

    Get PDF
    Humans are constantly confronted with environmental stimuli that conflict with task goals and can interfere with successful behavior. Prevailing theories propose the existence of cognitive control mechanisms that can suppress the processing of conflicting input and enhance that of the relevant input. However, the temporal cascade of brain processes invoked in response to conflicting stimuli remains poorly understood. By examining evoked electrical brain responses in a novel, hemifield-specific, visual-flanker task, we demonstrate that task-irrelevant conflicting stimulus input is quickly detected in higher level executive regions while simultaneously inducing rapid, recurrent modulation of sensory processing in the visual cortex. Importantly, however, both of these effects are larger for individuals with greater incongruency-related RT slowing. The combination of neural activation patterns and behavioral interference effects suggest that this initial sensory modulation induced by conflicting stimulus inputs reflects performance-degrading attentional distraction because of their incompatibility rather than any rapid task-enhancing cognitive control mechanisms. The present findings thus provide neural evidence for a model in which attentional distraction is the key initial trigger for the temporal cascade of processes by which the human brain responds to conflicting stimulus input in the environment

    Development of a Full-Spectrum Raman Device for Detection of Environmental Contaminants

    Get PDF
    NASA needs sensors to accurately monitor the water and atmospheric quality in its space habitat. Concerns for health and safety necessitate the development of sensors to measure common atmospheric gas concentrations, as well as trace contaminants (low ppm or ppb), including both combustible and noncombustible gases. The University of Utah is developing an enhanced Raman monitoring system to detect airborne, environmental contaminants. We have collected laboratory data to benchmark current laser Raman technology for gas analysis, which provides a reference for future developments. The objective of this project was to design a prototype gas-phase monitor, incorporating new technology that would provide an accurate assessment of air quality aboard the space habitat. To accomplish this task, the monitoring system would need to be real-time, with full-spectrum capabilities for detection of all gas species contained in a sample. Finally, the instrument requires a high degree of sensitivity to detect gas concentrations in the low part-per-million range. Evaluation of the prototype instrument was performed to experimentally measure the lower detection limits for nitrogen and carbon monoxide. The experiments revealed several factors which were limiting the sensitivity of the system. These limitations can be resolved, and improvements will be implemented in a modified version of the device

    Can We Save the Traditional Family Farm?

    Get PDF
    What is a traditional family farm? Is it a family of four living on a farm and supplying all of the labor, capital and management or is it a family corporation with four families supplying all of the capital and management? These types of questions continue to arise in policy debates, as they have for many years. While subject to heated debate and the core of many people’s positions on farm programs the answer is more sociological as it is becoming less and less economically relevant. Whether these types of farms or any other farm sizes should survive is not a question that can be answered by a policy analyst. The job of an analyst is to determine if and under what conditions family farms can survive. To this end, this paper reviews the various definitions of family farms and draws inferences as to the economic and financial survival of these different size farms using the results generated from simulating representative farms.Agricultural and Food Policy,
    corecore