A Rising Image and a Brighter Future: Gettysburg College in Spring 1929

The spring semester of 1929 at Gettysburg College saw a unique combination of ambition and aspiration from many different quarters of the college community. While the college still struggled with antiquated student life and a male-dominated population, the college broke new ground by building its first ever library, winning the conference basketball title, and seeing a new generation of female students gain academic prominence. At the peak of the Roaring Twenties and led by College President Henry Hanson, Gettysburg College was creating for itself a brighter future

From Professor-Student to Collaborators

I had not met Michael Ritterson before he visited the Conservation Lab at Special Collections, where he was having a book mended, but I had certainly heard of him. A former faculty member of the German department, Mr. Ritterson is now a German translator, taking on projects from translating the work of a 17th German woman’s study of butterflies to the poetry of a Berlin leftist written during the 1968 Movement. And, by previous contact in the mail, he had heard of me. So after Mary Wooton showed him the fully repaired book, we were formally introduced and had the opportunity to discuss his translating projects. It was more than an opportunity to chat with an interesting visitor; it was an opportunity to share talents and abilities. [excerpt

Where Have All the Symbols Gone?: A Study of Sufis and Sufi Symbolism in Ottoman Miniature Paintings

Ottoman miniature paintings represent some of the best preserved and documented works of Islamic art still extant. They differ critically from other forms of miniature painting, such as Persian miniature painting, by not representing Sufi symbolism. In the two potential sources of such symbolism, Ottoman Sufism and Persian miniature painters in the Ottoman Empire, appear to have not critically influenced Ottoman miniature painting to produce Sufi symbols, do to political, religious, and cultural factors. Instead, political factors of the Ottoman imperial state and the economics and standards of production in the empire produced an art medium where Ottoman Sufi symbols were not introduced

MS – 196: “Meine Fahrten” Scrapbook

This scrapbook includes two sketches, 37 pages with originally 177 photographs (13 missing), three free photographs, and 3 magazine clippings. Below is a list of the places visited by Leiber in the course of the album and the images he included in the album, including their page numbers. Some of the images, particularly from pages 24-30, appear to be chronologically out of order. 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/1174/thumbnail.jp

Formation of Subgap States in Carbon Nanotubes Due to a Local Transverse Electric Field

We introduce two simple models to study the effect of a spatially localized transverse electric field on the low-energy electronic structure of semiconducting carbon nanotubes. Starting from the Dirac Hamiltonian for the low energy states of a carbon nanotube, we use scattering theory to show that an arbitrarily weak field leads to the formation of localized electronic states inside the free nanotube band gap. We study the binding energy of these subgap states as a function of the range and strength of the electrostatic potential. When the range of the potential is held constant and the strength is varied, the binding energy shows crossover behavior: the states lie close to the free nanotube band edge until the potential exceeds a threshold value, after which the binding energy increases rapidly. When the potential strength is held constant and the range is varied, we find resonant behavior: the binding energy passes through a maximum as the range of the potential is increased. Large electric fields confined to a small region of the nanotube are required to create localized states far from the band edge.Comment: 15 pages + 5 figures, 1 table in RevTe

Lexical stress information modulates the time-course of spoken-word recognition

Segmental as well as suprasegmental information is used by Dutch listeners to recognize words. The time-course of the effect of suprasegmental stress information on spoken-word recognition was investigated in a previous study, in which we tracked Dutch listeners' looks to arrays of four printed words as they listened to spoken sentences. Each target was displayed along with a competitor that did not differ segmentally in its first two syllables but differed in stress placement (e.g., 'CENtimeter' and 'sentiMENT'). The listeners' eye-movements showed that stress information is used to recognize the target before distinct segmental information is available. Here, we examine the role of durational information in this effect. Two experiments showed that initial-syllable duration, as a cue to lexical stress, is not interpreted dependent on the speaking rate of the preceding carrier sentence. This still held when other stress cues like pitch and amplitude were removed. Rather, the speaking rate of the preceding carrier affected the speed of word recognition globally, even though the rate of the target itself was not altered. Stress information modulated lexical competition, but did so independently of the rate of the preceding carrier, even if duration was the only stress cue present

Factors Affecting Biodiversity Protection in the Mediterranean Basin

Earth’s biodiversity includes all extant species; however, species are not evenly distributed across the planet. Species tend to be clustered in densely populated areas known as “biodiversity hotspots;” species which inhabit only a single area are also termed “endemic,” and tend to be highly vulnerable to population-reducing changes in their environment. Biodiversity hotspots are considered priorities for conservation if the area has a high rate of endemism as well as a notable and continual habitat loss (Noss et al., 2015). Preventing biodiversity loss is a complex and multi-level decision-making process about setting priorities and defining clear biodiversity protection areas. Biodiversity loss, or the loss of entire species or sub-populations in an area, can be driven by multiple processes, including land use changes, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species (Plexida et al. 2018). The Mediterranean Basin is one such hotspot, transecting multiple countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including European, Middle Eastern, and North African countries with different systems of government and cultural perceptions of environmental resources and biodiversity. Furthermore, the basin is one the most species-rich biodiversity hotspots on Earth in terms of endemic vascular plants and has high rates of endemism for amphibians and fish, as well as being an important migration corridor for many bird species (Cuttelod et al., 2008). The hotspot is at high risk for continued biodiversity loss due to 53 several human-driven factors including population increase and government-level environmental policies (Grainger, 2003)