The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The Day after Christmas Blizzard 26 December 2010

Abstract: A high impact winter storm brought heavy snow to southern New York and southern New England on 12 January 2011. The heaviest snowfall developed north of a rapidly deepening surface cyclone in a region where an intense easterly 850 hPa jet developed. The 850 hPa u-wind anomalies were on the order of -5σ below normal near and slightly after the period of intense banding and heaviest snowfall. Radar data showed that an intense north-south band of snow developed over western New Jersey and southern New York State. This band intensified and produced some of the higher 20 to 31 inch snow reports in western Massachusetts and west-central Connecticut. This band also contributed to the area of 15 to 20 inches of snow over Long Islands. This band formed west of the higher and most anomalous low-level easterly flow. The 4km NAM was able to predict the snow bands and had some indication of the north-south band that produced the heaviest snowfall. The NCEP SREF provided useful guidance 24 to 60 hours prior to the onset of heavy snow. The SREF predicted the evolution of the strong low-level jet north of the cyclone and produced the maximum QPF in the general region impacted by this feature. The SREF also predicted a 3-6 hour period of extremely heavy snowfall in close proximity to where the heaviest snow and snowfall rates were observed. 1

It's Parties That Choose Electoral Systems (or, Duverger's Laws Upside Down)

This article presents, discusses and tests the hypothesis that it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way around. Already-existing politi-cal parties tend to choose electoral systems that, rather than generate new party systems by them-selves, will crystallize, consolidate or reinforce previously existing party configurations. A general model develops the argument and presents the concept of ‘behavioral-institutional equilibrium’ to account for the relation between electoral systems and party systems. The most comprehensive dataset and test of these notions to date, encompassing 219 elections in 87 countries since the 19th century, are presented. The analysis gives strong support to the hypotheses that political party configurations dominated by a few parties tend to establish majority rule electoral systems, while multi-party systems already existed before the introduction of proportional representation. It also offers the new theoretical proposition that strategic party choice of electoral systems leads to a general trend toward proportional representation over time. This article suggests that we may look as Duverger’s ‘laws ’ (or hypotheses) upside down: it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way round. The emphasis on this line of causality doe