Review of \u3ci\u3ePeople of the Great Plains\u3c/i\u3e By Peter Miller

In his introduction, Peter Miller declares of the Great Plains: This is a metaphysical land. By the time both he and his reader, however, make their way through the visual and literary territory covered in this. handsome volume, the Great Plains come to seem far less metaphysical and far more problematical a place. While Miller reinforces some of the traditional mythology of the Plains in his complementary texts and photographs-the elemental and inherent freedom of Plains life, the stubborn resilience of its people, the soul that resides in geography-he also explores the contradictions that have come in time to trouble and radically alter the character of the region. What Miller intends in this book is an extended portrait of a landscape done both in wide-angle and detailed close-up. People of the Great Plains is a book of images rendered in the razor-cut clarity of black and white, but the stories contained in those images (and in the worded narratives of Miller\u27s subjects) suggest the economic and political confusion that is the current reality of this place. Miller fights the good fight against nostalgia; the book is informed by a real tension between what he wishes the Great Plains to be and what he actually finds. His photographs and his stories inscribe an isolated, hyper-rural landscape frightfully conscious of its own mortality. Many of the voices Miller listens to in his 3000 miles of travel are gradually falling silent; we learn that several of his subjects die in the lapsed ti~e between the recording of word and image and their publication. Dying, too, are the small towns Miller purposely goes in search ofLaSalle, Colorado; Velva, North Dakota; Turkey, Texas. A kind of morbidness informs this book, its photos and text singing a kind of elegy-of-place. Still, Miller preserves important stories. Stark, expansive landscapes reveal the pleasures of line and curve, suggesting the aesthetic possibilities of the Great Plains. Intimate visual anatomies of weathered faces and sinew-thin bodies-Anglo, Native American, Hispanic-delineate the history of a particular part of the contemporary Plains experience. At the same time, Miller uncovers familiar narratives of persistence and survival telling themselves over again in the vital infusions of new blood to the Plains. This peculiar demography of the Great Plains isola to is not an especially happy one, Miller ultimately suggests, but one compelling enough to demand its rendering into art

Japan, Russia and the "northern territories" dispute : neighbors in search of a good fence

Russo-Japanese relations are held hostage by a group of four islands just north of Hokkaido. This thesis attempts to answer whether the dispute may be solved, and what is necessary for resolution. The argument is made that the islands have little strategic or material value of themselves, but symbolically they are of great value to both Russia and Japan. Public opinion and domestic politics in both countries drives the debate and is the reason for the stalemate, as there is almost no room for negotiators to work with. There is increased cooperation and better relations between Japan and Russia, and both countries recognize benefits that would come about if the territorial dispute was resolved. However, because the issue is swathed in pride and symbolism, resolution in the near term is unlikely unless an external stimulus provides an incentive to change the paradigm upon which Russo-Japanese relations are based.http://archive.org/details/japanrussiandnor109454801Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Low-speed aerodynamic characteristics of a twin-engine general aviation configuration with aft-fuselage-mounted pusher propellers

An investigation was conducted to determine the aerodynamic characteristics of an advanced turboprop aircraft model with aft-pylon-mounted pusher propellers. Tests were conducted through an angle-of-attack range of -8 to 28 degrees, and an angle-of-sideslip range of -20 to 20 degrees at free-stream conditions corresponding to Reynolds numbers of 0.55 to 2.14 x 10 to the 6th power based on mean aerodynamic chord. Test results show that for the unpowered configurations the maximum lift coefficients for the cruise, takeoff, and landing configurations are 1.45, 1.90, and 2.10, respectively. Nacelle installation results in a drag coefficient increase of 0.01. Increasing propeller thrust results in a significant increase in lift for angles of attack above stall and improves the longitudinal stability. The cruise configuration remains longitudinally stable to an angle of attack 5 degrees beyond the stall angle, the takeoff configuration is stable 4 degrees beyond stall angle, and the landing configuration is stable 3 degrees beyond stall angle. The predominant effect of symmetric thrust on the lateral-directional aerodynamic characteristics is in the post-stall region, where additional rudder control is available with power on

Inclusion of Adolescents in STI/HIV Biomedical Prevention Trials: Autonomy, Decision Making, and Parental Involvement

In order to develop new methods for prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infection (STI) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), clinical trials must be conducted in relevant populations. In the U.S., half of all STI incident infections are among 15-24 year olds (Satterwhite et al., 2013), making healthy adolescents a highly relevant population. The inclusion of adolescents in STD/HIV prevention research is critical for developing appropriate strategies to promote adolescent sexual health. Results from adult studies may not generalize to adolescents, given their biological and psychosocial developmental status (Hwang et al., 2009). In order to understand the extent to which these differences are applicable to safety, efficacy, and acceptability, the products must be tested in minors. Enrolling adolescents who have not reached the legal age of majority in sexual health research, though, poses legal and ethical challenges. Investigators have been described as facing moral conflict between their responsibility to protect the scientific rigor of the study and the well-being of the participants (Merritt, 2005). Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) must balance the interests of minors, their parents, and the institution (Knopf et al., 2016). Data suggest that adolescents are under-represented in biomedical trials of HIV and STD prevention (Tolley et al., 2014; Hoffman et al., 2016). We propose that the inclusion of these adolescents in sexual health research is not only ethically permissible but is ethically required

Sustainable Transportation for Maine’s Future

Maine is dependent on its transportation infrastructure for continued economic strength and growth, particularly on the 22,670 miles of public roads. Maine ranks fourteenth in the nation for the largest number of highway miles traveled annually per capita - 14,912 per year. Maine is highly reliant on its road system because large areas of the State lack transportation alternatives. This means that the current and future condition of the roadways is a major concern. How such a crucial infrastructure will continue to be supported and enhanced financially to meet the growing needs of the State must be considered carefully

Brane Structure from a Scalar Field in Warped Spacetime

We deal with scalar field coupled to gravity in five dimensions in warped geometry. We investigate models described by potentials that drive the system to support thick brane solutions that engender internal structure. We find analytical expressions for the brane solutions, and we show that they are all linearly stable.Comment: 10 pages, 7 eps figures; version to be published in JCA

Natural Wormholes as Gravitational Lenses

Visser has suggested traversable 3-dimensional wormholes that could plausibly form naturally during Big Bang inflation. A wormhole mouth embedded in high mass density might accrete mass, giving the other mouth a net *negative* mass of unusual gravitational properties. The lensing of such a gravitationally negative anomalous compact halo object (GNACHO) will enhance background stars with a time profile that is observable and qualitatively different from that recently observed for massive compact halo objects (MACHOs) of positive mass. We recommend that MACHO search data be analyzed for GNACHOs.Comment: 4 pages; plus 4 figures; ReV_TeX 3.0; DOE/ER/40537-001/NPL94-07-01

Cambrian stem-group annelids and a metameric origin of the annelid head

The oldest fossil annelids come from the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet and Guanshan biotas and Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. While these are among the best preserved polychaete fossils, their relationship to living taxa is contentious, having been interpreted either as members of extant clades or as a grade outside the crown group. New morphological observations from five Cambrian species include the oldest polychaete with head appendages, a new specimen of Pygocirrus from Sirius Passet, and an undescribed form from the Burgess Shale. We propose that the palps of Canadia are on an anterior segment bearing neuropodia and that the head of Phragmochaeta is formed of a segment bearing biramous parapodia and chaetae. The unusual anatomy of these taxa suggests that the head is not differentiated into a prostomium and peristomium, that palps are derived from a modified parapodium and that the annelid head was originally a parapodium-bearing segment. Canadia, Phragmochaeta and the Marble Canyon annelid share the presence of protective notochaetae, interpreted as a primitive character state subsequently lost in Pygocirrus and Burgessochaeta, in which the head is clearly differentiated from the trunk

Core Structure of Global Vortices in Brane World Models

We study analytically and numerically the core structure of global vortices forming on topologically deformed brane-worlds with a single toroidally compact extra dimension. It is shown that for an extra dimension size larger than the scale of symmetry breaking the magnitude of the complex scalar field at the vortex center can dynamically remain non-zero. Singlevaluedness and regularity are not violated. Instead, the winding escapes to the extra dimension at the vortex center. As the extra dimension size decreases the field magnitude at the core dynamically decreases also and in the limit of zero extra dimension size we reobtain the familiar global vortex solution. Extensions to other types of defects and gauged symmetries are also discussed.Comment: 6 two column pages, 3 figure