Technological Devices in the Archives: A Policy Analysis

Doing research in the archive is the cornerstone of humanities scholarship. Various archives institute policies regarding the use of technological devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, and cameras in their reading rooms. Such policies directly affect the scholars as the devices mediate the nature of their interaction with the source materials in terms of capturing, organizing, note taking, and record keeping for future use of found materials. In this paper, we present our analysis of the policies of thirty archives regarding the use of technology in their reading rooms. This policy analysis, along with data from interviews of scholars and archivists, is intended to serve as a basis for developing mobile applications for assisting scholars in their research activities. In this paper we introduce an early prototype of such a mobile application— AMTracker.Informatio

Recovering tradition in globalising rural China:Handicraft Birdcages in Da’ou village

This article explores a historic rural craft tradition as the focus of economic development through the valorisation of the local cultural heritage, or culture economy. The case‐study traces the revival of bamboo birdcage making in Da’ou village in Shandong Province, where the craft knowledge of making birdcages once prized by the Chinese imperial court has been passed on through generations and protected from outsiders. Since economic reforms in the 1980s, the birdcage craft has again become the major activity in Da’ou village, responding to new urban market demands, and bringing prosperity. Yet, through a conceptualisation of cultural heritage as a ‘prosaic third space’, the article reveals the dynamics and tensions involved in the incorporation of the birdcage tradition in local economic development strategies and the promotion of e‐commerce and tourism, and the processes of abstraction initiated. As such, it raises questions about the relationship between craft, knowledge and place that resonate beyond China. The research is based on semi‐structured interviews conducted in 2016 with respondents including local leaders, craftspeople, suppliers, and sellers

Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age: Secondary Distance Indicators

The formal division of the distance indicators into primary and secondary leads to difficulties in description of methods which can actually be used in two ways: with, and without the support of the other methods for scaling. Thus instead of concentrating on the scaling requirement we concentrate on all methods of distance determination to extragalactic sources which are designated, at least formally, to use for individual sources. Among those, the Supernovae Ia is clearly the leader due to its enormous success in determination of the expansion rate of the Universe. However, new methods are rapidly developing, and there is also a progress in more traditional methods. We give a general overview of the methods but we mostly concentrate on the most recent developments in each field, and future expectations. © 2018, The Author(s)

Request for One-Time Shipment of 32 Watt PU-328 Source in 9968 Packaging

The 9968 package is designed for surface shipment of fissile and other radioactive materials where a high degree of double containment is required. The use of the 9968 radioactive material package for a one time shipment of a 32 watt heat source versus the SARP approved maximum 30 watt heat source is addressed in this report. The analyses show that the small increase in heat load from 30 watts to 32 watts does not substantially increase internal temperatures or pressures that would approach limits for the package. Also, the weight of the content is within the current 9968 package limits. It is concluded that the 32-watt heat source can be safely shipped in the 9968 package and therefore a waiver to ship the source is justified

APET methodology for Defense Waste Processing Facility: Mode C operation

Safe operation of SRS facilities continues to be the highest priority of the Savannah River Site (SRS). One of these facilities, the Defense Waste Processing Facility or DWPF, is currently undergoing cold chemical runs to verify the design and construction preparatory to hot startup in 1995. The DWPFF is a facility designed to convert the waste currently stored in tanks at the 200-Area tank farm into a form that is suitable for long term storage in engineered surface facilities and, ultimately, geologic isolation. As a part of the program to ensure safe operation of the DWPF, a probabilistic Safety Assessment of the DWPF has been completed. The results of this analysis are incorporated into the Safety Analysis Report (SAR) for DWPF. The usual practice in preparation of Safety Analysis Reports is to include only a conservative analysis of certain design basis accidents. A major part of a Probabilistic Safety Assessment is the development and quantification of an Accident Progression Event Tree or APET. The APET provides a probabilistic representation of potential sequences along which an accident may progress. The methodology used to determine the risk of operation of the DWPF borrows heavily from methods applied to the Probabilistic Safety Assessment of SRS reactors and to some commercial reactors. This report describes the Accident Progression Event Tree developed for the Probabilistic Safety Assessment of the DWPF

What if LIGO's gravitational wave detections are strongly lensed by massive galaxy clusters?

Motivated by the preponderance of so-called ‘heavy black holes’ in the binary black hole (BBH) gravitational wave (GW) detections to date, and the role that gravitational lensing continues to play in discovering new galaxy populations, we explore the possibility that the GWs are strongly lensed by massive galaxy clusters. For example, if one of the GW sources were actually located at z = 1, then the rest-frame mass of the associated BHs would be reduced by a factor of ∼2. Based on the known populations of BBH GW sources and strong-lensing clusters, we estimate a conservative lower limit on the number of BBH mergers detected per detector year at LIGO/Virgo’s current sensitivity that are multiply-imaged, of Rdetect ≃ 10−5 yr−1. This is equivalent to rejecting the hypothesis that one of the BBH GWs detected to date was multiply-imaged at ≲4σ. It is therefore unlikely, but not impossible, that one of the GWs is multiply-imaged. We identify three spectroscopically confirmed strong-lensing clusters with well-constrained mass models within the 90 per cent credible sky localizations of the BBH GWs from LIGO’s first observing run. In the event that one of these clusters multiply-imaged one of the BBH GWs, we predict that 20–60 per cent of the putative next appearances of the GWs would be detectable by LIGO, and that they would arrive at Earth within 3yr of first detection

Deep and rapid observations of strong-lensing galaxy clusters within the sky localization of GW170814

We present observations of two strong-lensing galaxy clusters located within the 90 per cent credible sky localization maps released following LIGO-Virgo’s discovery of the binary black hole (BH-BH) gravitational wave (GW) source GW170814. Our objectives were (1) to search for candidate electromagnetic (EM) counterparts to GW170814 under the hypothesis that it was strongly-lensed, and thus more distant and less massive than inferred by LIGO-Virgo, and (2) to demonstrate the feasibility of rapid target of opportunity observations to search for faint lensed transient point sources in crowded cluster cores located within GW sky localizations. Commencing 20 hours after discovery, and continuing over 12 nights, we observed Abell 3084 (z = 0.22) and SMACS J0304.3−4401 (z = 0.46) with GMOS on the Gemini-South telescope, and Abell 3084 with MUSE on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. We detect no candidate EM counterparts in these data. Calibration of our photometric analysis methods using simulations yield 5σ detection limits for transients in difference images of the cores of these clusters of i = 25. This is the most sensitive photometric search to date for counterparts to GW sources, and rules out the possibility that GW170814 was lensed by these clusters with a kilonova-like EM counterpart. Based on the detector frame masses of the compact objects, and assuming that at least one Neutron Star (NS) is required in the merging system to produce a kilonova-like counterpart, implies that GW170814 was neither a NS-NS nor NS-BH merger at z > 8 lensed by either of these clusters. Also, in the first ever emission line search for counterparts to GW sources, we detected no lines down to a 5σ detection limit of 5 × 10−17erg s−1 cm−2