Living Aloha: Portraits of Resilience, Renewal, Reclamation, and Resistance

When Native Hawaiians move away from the islands, they risk losing their cultural identity and heritage. This dissertation utilizes a Hawaiian theoretical framework based in Indigenous research practices and uses phenomenology, ethnography, heuristics, and portraiture to tell the stories of leadership, change, and resilience of five Native Hawaiians who as adults, chose to permanently relocate to the United States mainland. It explores the reasons why Kanaka Maoli (politically correct term for Native Hawaiians) leave the \u27āina (land; that which feeds) in the first place and eventually become permanent mainland residents. Some Hawaiians lose their culture after relocating to the United States mainland, giving in to societal pressures demanding conformance, assimilation, and acculturation. Some who have lost their cultural identity are able to later regain it, yet others, resilient, found a way to retain their cultural identity despite the traumatic transition. This study focuses on those who have retained or regained their Native Hawaiian identity after relocating to the United States mainland, and questions, “What caused them to relocate?” and “How do they maintain cultural practices far away from the \u27āina?” I begin by situating myself as the researcher, review the literature, offer an historical chronology of events that occurred in Hawai‘i, and explain the research methodology. Four Native Hawaiians who have relocated to the mainland United States as adults and have continued Native Hawaiian cultural practices were interviewed. I painted their individual portraits as well as my own—using the art and science of portraiture—which includes aesthetic writing that focuses on the “good” that is found in within context. I constructed the portraits with data from the interviews, observations, pictures, music, poetic sayings, video clips, sound bites, and my own reflections. The phenomenon of “walking in two worlds” is explored. This study provides examples of leadership in portraying how Native Hawaiians perpetuate ‘ūlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language, poems, songs), mo’olelo (stories, myths, folklore), mo’ok ū’auhau (genealogy), hula (Hawaiian dance), and many other cultural practices far away from home. The electronic version of this dissertation is available in the open access OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/et

A Low Noise Receiver for Submillimeter Astronomy

A broadband, low noise heterodyne receiver, suitable for astronomical use, has been built using a Pb alloy superconducting tunnel junction (SIS). The RF coupling is quasioptical via a bowtie antenna on a quartz lens and is accomplished without any tuning elements. In its preliminary version the double sideband receiver noise temperature rises from 205 K at 116 GHz to 815 K at 466 GHz. This is the most sensitive broadband receiver yet reported for sub-mm wavelengths. Its multi-octave sensitivity and low local oscillator power requirements make this receiver ideal for remote ground observatories or space-borne telescopes such as NASA's Large Deployable Reflector. A version of this receiver is now being built for NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory

Living Aloha: Portraits of Resilience, Renewal, Reclamation, and Resistance

When Native Hawaiians move away from the islands, they risk losing their cultural identity and heritage. This dissertation utilizes a Hawaiian theoretical framework based in Indigenous research practices and uses phenomenology, ethnography, heuristics, and portraiture to tell the stories of leadership, change, and resilience of five Native Hawaiians who as adults, chose to permanently relocate to the United States mainland. It explores the reasons why Kanaka Maoli (politically correct term for Native Hawaiians) leave the \u27āina (land; that which feeds) in the first place and eventually become permanent mainland residents. Some Hawaiians lose their culture after relocating to the United States mainland, giving in to societal pressures demanding conformance, assimilation, and acculturation. Some who have lost their cultural identity are able to later regain it, yet others, resilient, found a way to retain their cultural identity despite the traumatic transition. This study focuses on those who have retained or regained their Native Hawaiian identity after relocating to the United States mainland, and questions, “What caused them to relocate?” and “How do they maintain cultural practices far away from the \u27āina?” I begin by situating myself as the researcher, review the literature, offer an historical chronology of events that occurred in Hawai‘i, and explain the research methodology. Four Native Hawaiians who have relocated to the mainland United States as adults and have continued Native Hawaiian cultural practices were interviewed. I painted their individual portraits as well as my own—using the art and science of portraiture—which includes aesthetic writing that focuses on the “good” that is found in within context. I constructed the portraits with data from the interviews, observations, pictures, music, poetic sayings, video clips, sound bites, and my own reflections. The phenomenon of “walking in two worlds” is explored. This study provides examples of leadership in portraying how Native Hawaiians perpetuate ‘ūlelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language, poems, songs), mo’olelo (stories, myths, folklore), mo’ok ū’auhau (genealogy), hula (Hawaiian dance), and many other cultural practices far away from home. The electronic version of this dissertation is available in the open access OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/et

A Low Noise Receiver for Submillimeter Astronomy

A broadband, low noise heterodyne receiver, suitable for astronomical use, has been built using a Pb alloy superconducting tunnel junction (SIS). The RF coupling is quasioptical via a bowtie antenna on a quartz lens and is accomplished without any tuning elements. In its preliminary version the double sideband receiver noise temperature rises from 205 K at 116 GHz to 815 K at 466 GHz. This is the most sensitive broadband receiver yet reported for sub-mm wavelengths. Its multi-octave sensitivity and low local oscillator power requirements make this receiver ideal for remote ground observatories or space-borne telescopes such as NASA's Large Deployable Reflector. A version of this receiver is now being built for NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory

The Octant Module of the ATLAS Level-1 Muon to Central Trigger Processor Interface

The Muon to Central Trigger Processor Interface (MUCTPI) of the ATLAS Level-1 trigger receives data from the sector logic modules of the muon trigger at every bunch crossing and calculates the total multiplicity of muon candidates, which is then sent to the Central Trigger Processor where the final Level-1 decision is taken. The MUCTPI system consists of a 9U VME crate with a special backplane and 18 custom designed modules. We focus on the design and implementation of the octant module (MIOCT). Each of the 16 MIOCT modules processes the muon candidates from 13 sectors of one half-octant of the detector and forms the local muon candidate multiplicities for the trigger decision. It also resolves the overlaps between chambers in order to avoid double-counting of muon candidates that are detected in more than one sector. The handling of overlapping sectors is based on Look-Up-Tables (LUT) for maximum flexibility. The MIOCT also sends the information on the muon candidates over the custom backplane via the Readout Driver module to the Level-2 trigger and the DAQ systems when a Level-1 Accept is received. The design is based on state-of-the-art FPGA devices and special attention was paid to low-latency in the data transmission and processing

The ATLAS Level-1 Muon to Central Trigger Processor Interface

The Muon to Central Trigger Processor Interface (MUCTPI) is part of the ATLAS Level-1 trigger system and connects the output of muon trigger system to the Central Trigger Processor (CTP). At every bunch crossing (BC), the MUCTPI receives information on muon candidates from each of the 208 muon trigger sectors and calculates the total multiplicity for each of six transverse momentum (pT) thresholds. This multiplicity value is then sent to the CTP, where it is used together with the input from the Calorimeter trigger to make the final Level-1 Accept (L1A) decision. In addition the MUCTPI provides summary information to the Level-2 trigger and to the data acquisition (DAQ) system for events selected at Level-1. This information is used to define the regions of interest (RoIs) that drive the Level-2 muontrigger processing. The MUCTPI system consists of a 9U VME chassis with a dedicated active backplane and 18 custom designed modules. The design of the modules is based on state-of-the-art FPGA devices and special attention was paid to low-latency in the data transmission and processing. We present the design and implementation of the final version of the MUCTPI. A partially populated MUCTPI system is already installed in the ATLAS experiment and is being used regularly for commissioning tests and combined cosmic ray data taking runs

The Configuration System of the ATLAS Trigger

The ATLAS detector at CERN’s LHC will be exposed to proton-proton collisions at a rate of 40 MHz. To reduce the data rate to a manageable final output rate of 200Hz, only potentially interesting events are selected by a three-level trigger system. A system has been designed and implemented that enables the configuration of all three trigger levels from a centrally maintained relational database, for the purpose of both online data taking and offline trigger simulation. We present the current status of this trigger configuration system, covering the database design, client software and user interface tools, and putting emphasis on its multiple uses for data-taking, Monte-Carlo simulation, and trigger validation on express-stream data

System Test of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer in the H8 Beam at the CERN SPS

An extensive system test of the ATLAS muon spectrometer has been performed in the H8 beam line at the CERN SPS during the last four years. This spectrometer will use pressurized Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) chambers and Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) for precision tracking, Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) for triggering in the barrel and Thin Gap Chambers (TGCs) for triggering in the end-cap region. The test set-up emulates one projective tower of the barrel (six MDT chambers and six RPCs) and one end-cap octant (six MDT chambers, A CSC and three TGCs). The barrel and end-cap stands have also been equipped with optical alignment systems, aiming at a relative positioning of the precision chambers in each tower to 30-40 micrometers. In addition to the performance of the detectors and the alignment scheme, many other systems aspects of the ATLAS muon spectrometer have been tested and validated with this setup, such as the mechanical detector integration and installation, the detector control system, the data acquisition, high level trigger software and off-line event reconstruction. Measurements with muon energies ranging from 20 to 300 GeV have allowed measuring the trigger and tracking performance of this set-up, in a configuration very similar to the final spectrometer. A special bunched muon beam with 25 ns bunch spacing, emulating the LHC bunch structure, has been used to study the timing resolution and bunch identification performance of the trigger chambers. The ATLAS first-level trigger chain has been operated with muon trigger signals for the first time

The TriggerTool Graphical User Interface to the ATLAS Trigger Configuration Database

A system has been designed and implemented to configure all three levels of the ATLAS trigger system from a centrally provided relational database, in which an archive of all trigger configurations used in data taking is also maintained. The user interaction with this database is via a Java-based graphical user interface known as the TriggerTool. We describe here how the TriggerTool has been designed to fulfill several different roles for users of varying expertise, from being a browser of the database to a tool for creating and modifying configuration