“Tentative Relations: Secession and War in the Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862”

In the fall of 1859, John Brown launched a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and in so doing arguably fired the first salvo of the Civil War. That his raid occurred in the border area between North and South should come as no surprise because it was in that area where Americans were the most divided. Citizens across the border state region–that area that comprised the lower North and upper South–soon found themselves caught between two hostile sections. Based on an analysis of letters, journals, newspapers, and public documents, this dissertation is a study of one portion of that border region, the central Ohio River Valley, during the momentous years between Brown’s raid and the early weeks of 1862, when Indiana Senator Jesse Bright was expelled from the United States Senate for treasonous behavior. Citizens who lived in the river counties between Cincinnati and Louisville shared important economic, cultural, and socio-political views that united them and created a regional bond capable of withstanding the centrifugal pull of sectionalism despite the omnipresent influence of slavery. These trans-river bonds moderated their response to secession and reinforced their Unionist proclivities. Their fidelity to the Union strengthened Abraham Lincoln’s hand and helped to insure that the Union would endure

A molecular line and continuum study of water maser sources

Recent observations at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and elsewhere have identified a class of very deeply embedded, possibly protostellar, sources which are not associated with any of the traditional indicators of star formation, such as HII regions and near-infrared emission, but which do lie close to otherwise isolated H2O masers. This thesis describes a search, based on catalogues of known water maser positions, for new deeply embedded cores similar to those found in S106 and M17. In addition to millimetre molecular line and submillimetre continuum observations, 22 GHz and 8 GHz radio observations have been made of a number of the sources in order to obtain more accurate maser positions and to search for any associated compact HII regions. Observing sources such as these in less active star forming regions provides a cleaner environment in which to examine the maser excitation and the ongoing process of star formation. A sample of 44 water maser sources was observed from which submillimetre continuum emission was detected from 40 (91 per cent). The most striking feature of the data is the close association of the masers with the submillimetre cores: the data are consistent with masers occurring within 6000 AU of the embedded core. The results can be summarised as follows: o High temperature gas has been detected, and most of the submillimetre cores have mean densities greater than 10^6 /cm^3. o The masers have low velocities with respect to the molecular cloud and are uniformly distributed within 6600 AU of the submillimetre core. o The isotropic maser luminosity is proportional to the far-infrared luminosity over more than 5 orders of magnitude. o There is no obvious correlation between the near-infrared spectral class and the maser emission. o Where a radio spectral index is known the majority of sources are optically thin HII regions. The bulk of the remainder are undetected and have a flux density less than 1 mJy. o Masers not associated directly with a submillimetre core show explicit evidence for shocks. Embedded cores \emph{have} been detected with this survey and the maser emission is consistent with collisionally excited pump models

Overview of the distributed image processing infrastructure to produce the Legacy Survey of Space and Time

International audienceThe Vera C. Rubin Observatory is preparing to execute the most ambitious astronomical survey ever attempted, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Currently the final phase of construction is under way in the Chilean Andes, with the Observatory’s ten-year science mission scheduled to begin in 2025. Rubin’s 8.4-meter telescope will nightly scan the southern hemisphere collecting imagery in the wavelength range 320–1050 nm covering the entire observable sky every 4 nights using a 3.2 gigapixel camera, the largest imaging device ever built for astronomy. Automated detection and classification of celestial objects will be performed by sophisticated algorithms on high-resolution images to progressively produce an astronomical catalog eventually composed of 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars and their associated physical properties.In this article we present an overview of the system currently being constructed to perform data distribution as well as the annual campaigns which reprocess the entire image dataset collected since the beginning of the survey. These processing campaigns will utilize computing and storage resources provided by three Rubin data facilities (one in the US and two in Europe). Each year a Data Release will be produced and disseminated to science collaborations for use in studies comprising four main science pillars: probing dark matter and dark energy, taking inventory of solar system objects, exploring the transient optical sky and mapping the Milky Way.Also presented is the method by which we leverage some of the common tools and best practices used for management of large-scale distributed data processing projects in the high energy physics and astronomy communities. We also demonstrate how these tools and practices are utilized within the Rubin project in order to overcome the specific challenges faced by the Observatory

LSST data management software development practices and tools

International audienceThe Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an 8.4m optical survey telescope being constructed on Cerro Pach´on in Chile. The data management system being developed must be able to process the nightly alert data, 20,000 expected transient alerts per minute, in near real time, and construct annual data releases at the petabyte scale. The development team consists of more than 90 people working in six different sites across the US developing an integrated set of software to realize the LSST science goals. In this paper we discuss our agile software development methodology and our API and developer decision making process. We also discuss the software tools that we use for continuous integration and deployment

Addition of sodium caseinate to skim milk increases nonsedimentable casein and causes significant changes in rennet-induced gelation, heat stability, and ethanol stability

peer-reviewedThe protein content of skim milk was increased from 3.3 to 4.1% (wt/wt) by the addition of a blend of skim milk powder and sodium caseinate (NaCas), in which the weight ratio of skim milk powder to NaCas was varied from 0.8:0.0 to 0.0:0.8. Addition of NaCas increased the levels of nonsedimentable casein (from ∼6 to 18% of total casein) and calcium (from ∼36 to 43% of total calcium) and reduced the turbidity of the fortified milk, to a degree depending on level of NaCas added. Rennet gelation was adversely affected by the addition of NaCas at 0.2% (wt/wt) and completely inhibited at NaCas ≥0.4% (wt/wt). Rennet-induced hydrolysis was not affected by added NaCas. The proportion of total casein that was nonsedimentable on centrifugation (3,000 × g, 1 h, 25°C) of the rennet-treated milk after incubation for 1 h at 31°C increased significantly on addition of NaCas at ≥0.4% (wt/wt). Heat stability in the pH range 6.7 to 7.2 and ethanol stability at pH 6.4 were enhanced by the addition of NaCas. It is suggested that the negative effect of NaCas on rennet gelation is due to the increase in nonsedimentable casein, which upon hydrolysis by chymosin forms into small nonsedimentable particles that physically come between, and impede the aggregation of, rennet-altered para-casein micelles, and thereby inhibit the development of a gel network