A Realistic Roadmap to Formation Flying Space Interferometry

The ultimate astronomical observatory would be a formation flying space interferometer, combining sensitivity and stability with high angular resolution. The smallSat revolution offers a new and maturing prototyping platform for space interferometry and we put forward a realistic plan for achieving first stellar fringes in space by 2030

The vernacularization of democracy: political participation and popular politics in North India

Anthropologists have largely left unexplored the analysis of how ideas and practices of democracy have been internalized in the popular consciousness of different societies and neglected the development of an anthropology of democratization processes. Using the political ethnography of a powerful northern India caste (the Yadavs), the article unravels what I call the process of vernacularization of democratic politics, meaning the ways in which values and practices of democracy become embedded in particular cultural and social practices, and in the process become entrenched in the consciousness of ordinary people. The analysis of how the local idioms of caste, kinship, kingship, religion, and politics (‘the vernacular’) inform popular perceptions of the political world and of how the democratic process shapes in turn ‘the vernacular’ provides a line of inquiry to understand the rise of popular politics in different parts of the world.© Royal Anthropological Institute 2007. Published by John Wiley & Sons. The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page

Astro2020 Science White Paper. The Future of Exoplanet Direct Detection

International audienc

The Future of Exoplanet Direct Detection

Diffraction fundamentally limits our ability to image and characterize exoplanets. Interferometry offers some advantages in exoplanet detection and characterization and we explore in this white paper some of the potential scientific breakthroughs possible

Imaging the Key Stages of Planet Formation

In this white paper, we explore how higher angular resolution beyond ALMA and 8m-class telescopes can extend our understanding of the key stages of planet formation, to resolve accreting circumplanetary disks themselves, and to watch planets forming in situ for the nearest star-forming regions