Hearing the silence: Finding the middle ground in the spatial humanities?:Extracting and comparing perceived silence and tranquility in the English Lake District

We analyse silence and tranquillity in historical and contemporary corpora to explore ways landscapes were -- and are -- perceived in the Lake District National Park in England. Through macro and microreading we develop a taxonomy of aural experiences, and explore how changes to categories of silence from our taxonomy -- for instance, the overall decline in mentions of absolute silence -- provide clues to changes in the land- and soundscape of the Lake District. Modern authors often contrast silence with anthropogenic sounds, while historical authors adhere to a cultural construction where the Lake District is presented as a tranquil area by ignoring industrial sounds. Using sentiment analysis we show that silence and tranquil sounds in our corpora are, as a whole, more positively associated than random text from the corpora, with this difference being especially marked in contemporary descriptions. Focusing closely on individual texts allows us to illustrate how this increased positivity can be related to the emergence of silence and tranquillity as valuable components of landscape. Mapping our corpora confirmed the influence of Wordsworth's writing on descriptions of silence; and revealed the co-location of pockets of tranquillity near to transport arteries in contemporary descriptions

Around the Clock Observations of the Q0957+561 A,B Gravitationally Lensed Quasar II: Results for the second observing season

We report on an observing campaign in March 2001 to monitor the brightness of the later arriving Q0957+561 B image in order to compare with the previously published brightness observations of the (first arriving) A image. The 12 participating observatories provided 3543 image frames which we have analyzed for brightness fluctuations. From our classical methods for time delay determination, we find a 417.09 +/- 0.07 day time delay which should be free of effects due to incomplete sampling. During the campaign period, the quasar brightness was relatively constant and only small fluctuations were found; we compare the structure function for the new data with structure function estimates for the 1995--6 epoch, and show that the structure function is statistically non-stationary. We also examine the data for any evidence of correlated fluctuations at zero lag. We discuss the limits to our ability to measure the cosmological time delay if the quasar's emitting surface is time resolved, as seems likely.Comment: AAS LaTeX, 5 PostScript figure

2006 Whole Earth Telescope observations of GD358 : a new look at the prototype DBV

We report on the analysis of 436.1 hr of nearly continuous high-speed photometry on the pulsating DB white dwarf GD358 acquired with the Whole Earth Telescope (WET) during the 2006 international observing run, designated XCOV25. The Fourier transform (FT) of the light curve contains power between 1000 and 4000 μHz, with the dominant peak at 1234 μHz. We find 27 independent frequencies distributed in 10 modes, as well as numerous combination frequencies. Our discussion focuses on a new asteroseismological analysis of GD358, incorporating the 2006 data set and drawing on 24 years of archival observations. Our results reveal that, while the general frequency locations of the identified modes are consistent throughout the years, the multiplet structure is complex and cannot be interpreted simply as l =l modes in the limit of slow rotation. The high-k multiplets exhibit significant variability in structure, amplitude and frequency. Any identification of the m components for the high-k multiplets is highly suspect. The k = 9 and 8 modes typically do show triplet structure more consistent with theoretical expectations. The frequencies and amplitudes exhibit some variability, but much less than the high-k modes. Analysis of the k = 9 and 8 multiplet splittings from 1990 to 2008 reveal a long-term change in multiplet splittings coinciding with the 1996 sforzando event, where GD358 dramatically altered its pulsation characteristics on a timescale of hours. We explore potential implications, including the possible connections between convection and/or magnetic fields and pulsations.We suggest future investigations, including theoretical investigations of the relationship between magnetic fields, pulsation, growth rates, and convection