Digital Literacy: A Demand for Nonlinear Thinking Styles

This paper makes a case for a direct relationship between digital literacy and nonlinear thinking styles, articulates a demand for nonlinear thinking styles in education and the workplace, and states implications for a connection between nonlinear thinking styles visual literacy, and intuitive artistic practice

A 12.5 GHz-Spaced Optical Frequency Comb Spanning >400 nm for near-Infrared Astronomical Spectrograph Calibration

A 12.5 GHz-spaced optical frequency comb locked to a Global Positioning disciplined oscillator for near-IR spectrograph calibration is presented. The comb is generated via filtering a 250 MHz-spaced comb. Subsequency nonlinear broadening of the 12.5 GHz comb extends the wavelength range to cover 1380 nm to 1820 nm, providing complete coverage over the H-band transmission widow of Earth's atmosphere. Finite suppression of spurious sidemodes, optical linewidth and instability of the comb have been examined to estmiate potential wavelength biases in spectrograph calibration. Sidemode suppression varies between 20 db and 45 dB, and the optical linewidth is ~350 kHz at 1550 nm. The comb frequency uncertainty is bounded by +/- 30 kHz (corresponding to a radial velocity of +/- 5 cm/s), limited by the Global Positioning System disciplined oscillator reference. These results indicate this comb can readily support radial velocity measurements below 1 m/s in the near-IR.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, new file fixes some readability problems on Mac

Tendinosis develops from age- and oxygen tension-dependent modulation of Rac1 activity.

Age-related tendon degeneration (tendinosis) is characterized by a phenotypic change in which tenocytes display characteristics of fibrochondrocytes and mineralized fibrochondrocytes. As tendon degeneration has been noted in vivo in areas of decreased tendon vascularity, we hypothesized that hypoxia is responsible for the development of the tendinosis phenotype, and that these effects are more pronounced in aged tenocytes. Hypoxic (1% O2 ) culture of aged, tendinotic, and young human tenocytes resulted in a mineralized fibrochondrocyte phenotype in aged tenocytes, and a fibrochondrocyte phenotype in young and tendinotic tenocytes. Investigation of the molecular mechanism responsible for this phenotype change revealed that the fibrochondrocyte phenotype in aged tenocytes occurs with decreased Rac1 activity in response to hypoxia. In young hypoxic tenocytes, however, the fibrochondrocyte phenotype occurs with concomitant decreased Rac1 activity coupled with increased RhoA activity. Using pharmacologic and adenoviral manipulation, we confirmed that these hypoxic effects on the tenocyte phenotype are linked directly to the activity of RhoA/Rac1 GTPase in in vitro human cell culture and tendon explants. These results demonstrate that hypoxia drives tenocyte phenotypic changes, and provide a molecular insight into the development of human tendinosis that occurs with aging

A near infrared frequency comb for Y+J band astronomical spectroscopy

Radial velocity (RV) surveys supported by high precision wavelength references (notably ThAr lamps and I2 cells) have successfully identified hundreds of exoplanets; however, as the search for exoplanets moves to cooler, lower mass stars, the optimum wave band for observation for these objects moves into the near infrared (NIR) and new wavelength standards are required. To address this need we are following up our successful deployment of an H band(1.45-1.7{\mu}m) laser frequency comb based wavelength reference with a comb working in the Y and J bands (0.98-1.3{\mu}m). This comb will be optimized for use with a 50,000 resolution NIR spectrograph such as the Penn State Habitable Zone Planet Finder. We present design and performance details of the current Y+J band comb.Comment: Submitted to SPIE, conference proceedings 845

A Near Infrared Laser Frequency Comb for High Precision Doppler Planet Surveys

We discuss the laser frequency comb as a near infrared astronomical wavelength reference, and describe progress towards a near infrared laser frequency comb at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and at the University of Colorado where we are operating a laser frequency comb suitable for use with a high resolution H band astronomical spectrograph.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Conference Proceedings, New Technologies for Probing the Diversity of Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets, Shanghai, China, 19-24 July, 2009. Submitted to Eur. Phys. J. Conference

An investigation of the relationship between vision development observations and reading performance

An investigation of the relationship between vision development observations and reading performanc

Turning gender inside out: delivering higher education in women’s carceral spaces

This article is a critical reflection of the role of gender in the delivery of a higher education course based on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme. Related concepts such as hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and intersectionality are discussed within the prison education setting. This reflection primarily draws on critical incidents from the experiences of the first three authors facilitating a higher education course in a women’s prison in England. One major reflection is that learning in a group of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ students, all self-identified women, who vary along the dimensions of age, class, ethnicity, nationality and sexual expression, presented unique dynamics. This included working with both collectiveness and difference, gender-aligned expectations about behaviour, and experiences of control, criminal justice and higher education. Additionally, all four authors' experiences of delivering various higher education courses under different prison-education partnership models in both men and women’s prisons allows for comparison and reflection on the institutional reproduction of gender norms. These reflections point to the conclusion that, despite the strong presence of intersectional divisions, gender can become a uniting force when working with an all-women student group, fostering critical thinking and engagement with challenging structural issues. However further reflection considers that being gender-conscious in the classroom should not be limited to all-women student cohorts, as this is exactly what may enable facilitators to tackle some of the issues produced by hegemonic masculinity in a mixed prison classroom

A method for colocating satellite X_(CO₂) data to ground-based data and its application to ACOS-GOSAT and TCCON

Satellite measurements are often compared with higher-precision ground-based measurements as part of validation efforts. The satellite soundings are rarely perfectly coincident in space and time with the ground-based measurements, so a colocation methodology is needed to aggregate "nearby" soundings into what the instrument would have seen at the location and time of interest. We are particularly interested in validation efforts for satellite-retrieved total column carbon dioxide (X_(CO₂)), where X_(CO₂) data from Greenhouse Gas Observing Satellite (GOSAT) retrievals (ACOS, NIES, RemoteC, PPDF, etc.) or SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY) are often colocated and compared to ground-based column X_(CO₂) measurement from Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON). Current colocation methodologies for comparing satellite measurements of total column dry-air mole fractions of CO₂ (X_(CO₂)) with ground-based measurements typically involve locating and averaging the satellite measurements within a latitudinal, longitudinal, and temporal window. We examine a geostatistical colocation methodology that takes a weighted average of satellite observations depending on the "distance" of each observation from a ground-based location of interest. The "distance" function that we use is a modified Euclidian distance with respect to latitude, longitude, time, and midtropospheric temperature at 700 hPa. We apply this methodology to X_(CO₂) retrieved from GOSAT spectra by the ACOS team, cross-validate the results to TCCON X_(CO₂) ground-based data, and present some comparisons between our methodology and standard existing colocation methods showing that, in general, geostatistical colocation produces smaller mean-squared error

Validation of northern latitude Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer stare ozone profiles with ARC-IONS sondes during ARCTAS: sensitivity, bias and error analysis

We compare Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) versions 3 and 4, V003 and V004, respectively, nadir-stare ozone profiles with ozonesonde profiles from the Arctic Intensive Ozonesonde Network Study (ARCIONS, http://croc.gsfc.nasa.gov/arcions/ during the Arctic Research on the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field mission. The ozonesonde data are from launches timed to match Aura's overpass, where 11 coincidences spanned 44° N to 71° N from April to July 2008. Using the TES "stare" observation mode, 32 observations are taken over each coincidental ozonesonde launch. By effectively sampling the same air mass 32 times, comparisons are made between the empirically-calculated random errors to the expected random errors from measurement noise, temperature and interfering species, such as water. This study represents the first validation of high latitude (>70°) TES ozone. We find that the calculated errors are consistent with the actual errors with a similar vertical distribution that varies between 5% and 20% for V003 and V004 TES data. In general, TES ozone profiles are positively biased (by less than 15%) from the surface to the upper-troposphere (~1000 to 100 hPa) and negatively biased (by less than 20%) from the upper-troposphere to the lower-stratosphere (100 to 30 hPa) when compared to the ozonesonde data. Lastly, for V003 and V004 TES data between 44° N and 71° N there is variability in the mean biases (from −14 to +15%), mean theoretical errors (from 6 to 13%), and mean random errors (from 9 to 19%)

Corporate Hierarchies and the Size of Nations: Theory and Evidence

Corporate organization varies within a country and across countries with country size. The paper starts by establishing some facts about corporate organization based on unique data of 660 Austrian and German corporations. The larger country (Germany) has larger firms with flatter more decentral corporate hierarchies compared to the smaller country (Austria). Firms in the larger country change their organization less fast than firms in the smaller country. Over time firms have been introducing less hierarchical organizations by delegating power to lower levels of the corporation. We develop a theory which explains these facts and which links these features to the trade environment that countries and firms face. We introduce firms with internal hierarchies in a Krugman (1980) model of trade. We show that international trade and the toughness of competition in international markets induce a power struggle in firms which eventually leads to decentralized corporate hierarchies. We offer econometric evidence which is consistent with the models predictions