Language and ethnic national identity in Europe: the importance of Gaelic and Sorbian to the maintenance of associated cultures and ethno cultural identities

As many other ethno-cultural identities in Europe, the collective self perceptions of Scotland's Gaels and the Sorbs of Lusatia are undergoing considerable changes. Proceeding from the post-structuralist premise that discourse plays a crucial part in the generation of knowledge, power and social behaviour (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard), the study addresses the ways in which the Gaelic and Sorbian elites incorporate the language aspect into narratives on cultural continuity and considers the implications of accelerated language shift towards English/German and the survivalist promotion of the ancestral medium for the maintenance of group boundaries. Its primary empirical data corpus comprises more than 100 interviews and a questionnaire survey (n=201) conducted during the late 1990s in peripheral parts of the Ghidhealtachd and bilingual territories of Lusatia, publications by Gaelic and Sorbian organisations, and relevant items from the local and national media. A brief exploration of the ways in which the two communities came to think of themselves as distinct reveals that a substantial legacy of cultural nationalism and pan-Slavism allowed the Sorbian intelligentsia to sustain a strong sense of ethnic difference throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas Scotland's Gaels have never overtly embraced this paradigm in political terms. Their elite was confronted with its premises during their reinvention as Scotland's Celts and combined linguistic patriotism with calls for socioeconomic improvements during the 1880s, but it has been rather reluctant to portray contemporary and future users of the ancestral language as a distinct nation or ethnic group. To the present day, Gaels are inclined to perceive themselves to be a key component, and arguably the kernel, of the Scottish nation. The most significant overlap between Gaelic- and Sorbian-related revival discourses has been the notion that a complete decline of the traditional medium would seal the fate of the associated culture, though the underlying rationales indicate a gradual shift from an essentialising agenda of preservation and exclusion to a more liberal and pluricentric approach. A desire to withstand the homogenising forces of capitalist globalisation fuels purist attitudes with regard to specific cultural forms, many of which are thought to depend on the traditional medium and put native speakers with heartland links into positions of authority. At the same time, the Gaelic and Sorbian heritage are treated as sources of alternative values and wisdom, in which context Gaelic/Sorbian language ability is primarily valued as an access tool. Tensions between essentialist and dynamic perspectives also occur over the development of the languages themselves. They are enhanced by the assumption that the 'survival' of Gaelic and Sorbian depends in part on individuals who acquire and transmit them outside the bilingual districts, where an ability in the minority medium is more likely to generate subcultural, regional and political identities than a radical ethno-cultural reorientation. According to this study's findings, the linguocentric agendas of many Gaelic and Sorbian organisations can neither be attributed to a naive belief in linguistic determinism nor be dismissed as an entirely symbolic ingredient for the restoration of justice and pride where historic circumstances inflicted marginalisation and oppression. They are based on a justified concern that the complete demise of a linguistic boundary would make it impossible to generate separate discursive spaces, to which Gaelic and Sorbian culture have in most locations become reduced and for which a separate literature and separate electronic media are indispensable

The Limitations in Resolution and Discrimination in Brightness Differences for Light Amplifier Systems Using Contrast Enhancement

Author Institution: Aeronautical Research Laboratory, Air Force Research Division, Air Research and Development Command, United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohi

Limitations for Daytime Detection of Stars Using the Intensifier Image Orthicon

Author Institution: Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohi

Optical Radar and Passive Optoelectronic Ranging

Author Institution: Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OhioThe purpose of this paper is to present the fundamental technical arrangement involved for optical radar, its resolution, and requirements concerning the light source for use with it. Some basic optical radar problems are explained and pertinent equations are derived. The paper shows that 1017 quanta per pulse at a repetition rate of 77 per second are sufficient to achieve optical radar. For this a minimum volume of only 1 mm3 is required for a luminescent semiconductor to produce this quanta flux. The light source does not necessarily have to be a laser, since the narrow bandwidth of the lasers cannot, by the present state of the art, be fully utilized with the overall optical bandwidth of such a system. If a source can produce the necessary quanta flux with a bandwidth of not more than about 20 A, the job will be as well performed by this source as by a laser. Very promising luminescent semiconductors for such an endeavor, using the visible spectrum, seem to be the II-VI compounds. An automatic passive optical range-finder system using a special pick-up transducer (conceived by the author) which automatically suppresses any background structure (clouds, etc.) is explained

The Limitations for Night-Time Detection of Celestial Bodies Employing the Intensifier-Storage-Image Orthicon

Author Institution: Aeronautical Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohi

Neolithisation and sustainable sedentarisation of the Arabian Peninsula

This contribution’s broad and in parts essayistic approach to Arabia’s Neolithic is less a discussion of findings than an explicit advocacy for future holistic research strategies. Based on the contribution’s meta‐theoretical inputs, it suggests two sets of theses to be tested by the hitherto gained fragmentary information and future research on Arabia’s Neolithic. It aims to encourage an “emancipation” of Arabia’s early to mid‐Holocene research from conceptions developed outside its regions, and to identify the Neolithic elements and developments of the Arabian lands by distinguishing incursions from primarily autochthonous and/or autonomous adaptations in their own right. It is suggested that productive lifeways are considered to be the only crucial parameter to testify a Neolithic status. In our view this is the case, provokingly enough, for the productive foraging management of natural resources which attests surplus and pre‐planning strategies and contacts with established Neolithic socio‐economies. Polylinear incursions and autochthonous adaptations are discussed as the two poles between which early to mid‐Holocene developments in Arabia took place. A set of basic and a set of trajectory hypotheses on Arabia’s neolithisation and finally sustainable sedentarisation (reliance on oases economies) is presented, offered as a possible framework for future multi‐/ transdisciplinary research

Astronomical Photographic Recording with and Without Electronic Light Intensification

Author Institution: Solid State Physics Research Laboratory, Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohi

Conversion Yields of Some Photographic Emulsions and Related Factors

Author Institution: Aerospace Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OhioA method is presented for the determination of the effective average projected grain diameter (d-a) using visual analysis of enlargements of Kodak Tri-X Pan and Kodak Royal-X Pan emulsions. Each was exposed to three light sources of color temperatures 6100°K, 2850°K, and 2040°K, and was developed in Kodak developers HC-110, DK-50, and D-19 for 5, 8, 12, and 20 minutes at 68°F. For 5- to 20-minute developing times, dA was determined, from a total of over 12,000 counts, to be from ~ 2.1 to ~ 2.4 u for both films. A method for calculating the conversion yield -q (number of grains to total number of quanta focused on the emulsion) is derived. The value y is a function of film density (D); it was found that rj first increases and then decreases, and a theory which explains this behavior in connection with grain formation is proposed; that is, 77 is the result of a superposition of an increasing and a decreasing function. The first is caused by the fact that a photographic nucleus made up of three silver atoms has a lesser probability for development than a four-atom nucleus, where with the increased exposure (number of quanta per unit area), the ratio increases in favor of the latter, resulting in an increasing function. However, the photographic plate, unlike the photoemitter, is a "non-speciereplacing" device; as a result, the percentage of nonactivated silver halides decreases with exposure, making the latter a decreasing function. Typical values for 77 showing this behavior are: Tri-X Pan; 6100°K, spectral region 375 to 700 m/x; HC-110, 8 min, 68°F; ij~0.1% at D = 0.10, T7~O.3% at D = 0.30, rj~0.1% at D = 1.00, and' ^ 0 . 0 0 9% at D = 2.00. For A = 466 mn (peak of P-ll phosphor), r, increases from ~ 0.09% at D = 0.10 to ~ 0.4% at D = 0.40, then decreases to ~ 0.2% at D = 1.00 and ~ 0.01% at D = 2.00