139 research outputs found
"Live in the country with faith": Jane and Ralph Whitehead, The Simple Life Movement, and Arts and Crafts in The United States, England, and on The Continent, 1870-1930
American artist Jane Byrd McCall Whitehead (1858-1955) and her English husband Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead (1854-1929) are best known for co-founding the Byrdcliffe Art and Crafts school and colony in Woodstock, New York, which was active from 1903 into the present. Long before Byrdcliffe, however, the Whiteheads formulated plans for an "art convent" founded on principles of the simple life movement. A rejection of repressive social mores and materialistic behavior and a critique of social inequality in the modern world, the Whiteheads' simple life was enacted in rural places where nature served as a model for spirituality and aesthetics in art and the built environment, and where handwork in the form of art and craft and working the land were balanced with intellectual activity, leisure time and socializing in order to improve physical and psychological well being. This dissertation uses the wealth of primary source material on the Whiteheads--their personal papers, photographs documenting their lives, arts and crafts by them and their circle, built environs and landscapes--to trace the evolution of simple living as it was holistically expressed in the lifestyle and environs they constructed in their early years abroad; their first attempt at simple living as a married couple at Arcady in Montecito, California; and finally, their mature expression at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, New York. Incorporating an interdisciplinary methodology involving a material culture approach that looks at the man-altered world as evidence for social and cultural history, this is the first scholarly effort to explore what simple living meant and looked like to these particular individuals, and the first project to look at the interconnectedness of simple living on a bi-coastal United States and trans-Atlantic scale between 1870-1930. It also seeks to restore an understanding of Jane's contributions to the simple life environs and art schools she formulated collaboratively with her husband, which were previously attributed solely to Ralph
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A method for generating skewed random numbers using two overlapping uniform distributions
The objective of this work was to implement and evaluate a method for generating skewed random numbers using a combination of uniform random numbers. The method provides a simple and accurate way of generating skewed random numbers from the specified first three moments without an a priori specification of the probability density function. We describe the procedure for generating skewed random numbers from unifon-n random numbers, and show that it accurately produces random numbers with the desired first three moments over a range of skewness values. We also show that in the limit of zero skewness, the distribution of random numbers is an accurate approximation to the Gaussian probability density function. Future work win use this method to provide skewed random numbers for a Langevin equation model for diffusion in skewed turbulence
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NARAC SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCE: ADAPTING FORMALISM TO MEET VARYING NEEDS
The National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) provides tools and services that predict and map the spread of hazardous material accidentally or intentionally released into the atmosphere. NARAC is a full function system that can meet a wide range of needs with a particular focus on emergency response. The NARAC system relies on computer software in the form of models of the atmosphere and related physical processes supported by a framework for data acquisition and management, user interface, visualization, communications and security. All aspects of the program's operations and research efforts are predicated to varying degrees on the reliable and correct performance of this software. Consequently, software quality assurance (SQA) is an essential component of the NARAC program. The NARAC models and system span different levels of sophistication, fidelity and complexity. These different levels require related but different approaches to SQA. To illustrate this, two different levels of software complexity are considered in this paper. As a relatively simple example, the SQA procedures that are being used for HotSpot, a straight-line Gaussian model focused on radiological releases, are described. At the other extreme, the SQA issues that must be considered and balanced for the more complex NARAC system are reviewed
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Overview of the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center's urban research and development activities
This presentation describes the tools and services provided by the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for modeling the impacts of airborne hazardous materials. NARAC provides atmospheric plume modeling tools and services for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear airborne hazards. NARAC can simulate downwind effects from a variety of scenarios, including fires, industrial and transportation accidents, radiation dispersal device explosions, hazardous material spills, sprayers, nuclear power plant accidents, and nuclear detonations. NARAC collaborates on radiological dispersion source terms and effects models with Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NARAC was designated the interim provider of capabilities for the Department of Homeland Security's Interagency Modeling and Atmospheric Assessment Center by the Homeland Security Council in April 2004. The NARAC suite of software tools include simple stand-alone, local-scale plume modeling tools for end-user's computers, and Web- and Internet-based software to access advanced modeling tools and expert analyses from the national center at LLNL. Initial automated, 3-D predictions of plume exposure limits and protective action guidelines for emergency responders and managers are available from the center in 5-10 minutes. These can be followed immediately by quality-assured, refined analyses by 24 x 7 on-duty or on-call NARAC staff. NARAC continues to refine calculations using updated on-scene information, including measurements, until all airborne releases have stopped and the hazardous threats are mapped and impacts assessed. Model predictions include the 3-D spatial and time-varying effects of weather, land use, and terrain, on scales from the local to regional to global. Real-time meteorological data and forecasts are provided by redundant communications links to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force, as well as an in-house mesoscale numerical weather prediction model. NARAC provides an easy-to-use Geographical Information System (GIS) for display of plume predictions with affected population counts and detailed maps, and the ability to export plume predictions to other standard GIS capabilities. Data collection and product distribution is provided through a variety of communication methods, including dial-up, satellite, and wired and wireless networks. Ongoing research and development activities will be highlighted. The NARAC scientific support team is developing urban parameterizations for use in a regional dispersion model (see companion paper by Delle Monache). Modifications to the numerical weather prediction model WRF to account for characteristics of urban dynamics are also in progress, as is boundary-layer turbulence model development for simulations with resolutions greater than 1km. The NARAC building-resolving computational fluid dynamics capability, FEM3MP, enjoys ongoing development activities such as the expansion of its ability to model releases of dense gases. Other research activities include sensor-data fusion, such as the reconstruction of unknown source terms from sparse and disparate observations
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A Real-Time Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling System
This paper describes a new 3-D multi-scale atmospheric dispersion modeling system and its on-going evaluation. This system is being developed for both real-time operational applications and detailed assessments of events involving atmospheric releases of hazardous material. It is part of a new, modernized Department of Energy (DOE) National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) emergency response computer system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This system contains coupled meteorological data assimilation and dispersion models, initial versions of which were described by Sugiyama and Chan (1998) and Leone et al. (1997). Section 2 describes the current versions of these models, emphasizing new features. This modeling system supports cases involving both simple and complex terrain, and multiple space and time scales from the microscale to mesoscale. Therefore, several levels of verification and evaluation are required. The meteorological data assimilation and interpolation algorithms have been previously evaluated by comparison to observational data (Sugiyama and Chan, 1998). The non-divergence adjustment algorithm was tested against potential flow solutions and wind tunnel data (Chan and Sugiyama, 1997). Initial dispersion model results for a field experiment case study were shown by Leone et al. (1997). A study in which an early, prototype version of the new modeling system was evaluated and compared to the current NARAC operational models showed that the new system provides improved results (Foster et al., 1999). In Section 3, we show example results from the current versions of the models, including verification using analytic solutions to the advection-diffusion equation as well as on-going evaluation using microscale and mesoscale dispersion field experiments
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ARAC-3, A New Generation Emergency Response Modeling System
A description of the new ARAC-3 (Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability) modeling system is presented. Among the major new capabilities are a prognostic forecast model and entirely new diagnostic and dispersion models. Various components of the system are being tested to determine their performance both individually and within an integrated setting. When completed in 1999, ARAC-3 will contain all the features of the current ARAC-2 system as well as new capabilities that will enable ARAC to function as a state-of-the-art emergency response system well into the next decade
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