A damper for ground wind-induced launch vehicle oscillations

Prelaunch oscillatory bending deflections of the Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle are restrained by a damper mechanism mounted on the end of a horizontal boom supported from the umbilical tower. A single vertical pin on the vehicle engages the mechanism, and the damper is connected to the vehicle until liftoff. As the attach pin rises with the vehicle, a retractable arm mechanism provides initial clearance. An explosive release mechanism allows the boom to swing clear of the vehicle like a pendulum, while a snubber mechanism decelerates the free swinging boom and damper mechanism to a safe stop

Why universities and grant bodies shouldn’t try to over-manage research impact

Academics should be engaged with the wider world, but impact, if it is routinised, loses its potential to change the dynamic of a system. Chris Hackley writes that the research that influences policy should be celebrated but we must be wary of the risk that the impact measurement will begin to define what is to be measured

Failure of the Protestant Missionaries after 1590

This paper analyzes John Eliot and his missionary efforts in New England, with a special focus on the town of Natick. It examines his methods, and how his attempts to completely convert the Native Americans ultimately failed

Crap detecting. Autoethnographic reflections on critical practice in marketing pedagogy

In this commentary, I use selected autoethnographic passages from my life in teaching to reflect on what, if anything, the designation of ‘critical’ might mean in my own practice of marketing education. I draw selectively on some ideas from educational and critical theory, particularly the notion of interpellation as applied to marketing academics, to reach the conclusion that my personal idea of critical marketing pedagogy is probably closer to the notion of classroom education as a subversive practice than it is to any neo-Marxist versions of liberatory pedagogy. Ernest Hemingway suggested that the primary virtue of a writer’s education ought to be the refinement of the students’ ability to detect crap. By nurturing the fundamental transferable life-skill of crap detection, I like to think that marketing can fulfil a worthwhile pedagogic role alongside the other subjects in a liberal intellectual university curriculum

Amethyst, apotropaia, and the Eye of Re

Two specific aspects of Middle Kingdom Egyptian apotropaia, amethyst amulets and inscribed ivory wands, are connected by their religious, magical, and mythological connotations. The shared significance of these objects is made clear by iconographic similarities and textual references. The wands in particular are shown to represent a particular mythological moment, the return of the Solar Eye of Re to Egypt. Both amethyst objects and ivory wands reference this important mythological event in ways that illustrate the multi-level importance of the myth in the cultural landscape of the Middle Kingdom Egyptians

Correspondence - January 26, 1966 - Woodford B. Hackley, Virginia Baptist Historical Society

A correspondence from Woodford B. Hackley to Roland Leath about Madison Edwards Parrish.https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/first-baptist-shelby-madison-edward-parrish/1000/thumbnail.jp