Revisiting a summer vacation: digital restoration and typesetter forensics

In 1979 the Computing Science Research Center (‘Center 127’) at Bell Laboratories bought a Linotron 202 typesetter from the Mergenthaler company. This was a ‘third generation’ digital machine that used a CRT to image characters onto photographic paper. The intent was to use existing Linotype fonts and also to develop new ones to exploit the 202’s line-drawing capabilities. Use of the 202 was hindered by Mergenthaler’s refusal to reveal the inner structure and encoding mechanisms of the font files. The particular 202 was further dogged by extreme hardware and software unreliability. A memorandum describing the experience was written in early 1980 but was deemed to be too “sensitive” to release. The original troff input for the memorandum exists and now, more than 30 years later, the memorandum can be released. However, the only available record of its visual appearance was a poor-quality scanned photocopy of the original printed version. This paper details our efforts in rebuilding a faithful retypeset replica of the original memorandum, given that the Linotron 202 disappeared long ago, and that this episode at Bell Labs occurred 5 years before the dawn of PostScript (and later PDF) as de facto standards for digital document preservation. The paper concludes with some lessons for digital archiving policy drawn from this rebuilding exercise

Organizational Alternatives to Achieve Greater Uniformity in State-wide Water Rights Management in Utah

In the distribution of water among users in the state of Utah there is lack of organizational uniformity. On some rivers, the state engineer is assisted by river sommissioners who have been appointed to measure and monitor water deliveries. On other rivers there are no comissioners; problems and disputes must be settled on a case by case basis by the state engineer. The responsibilities, arrangements, salaries, and methods of payment for commissioners vary from basin to basin. A more unifed distribution organization composed of state-employed water sommissioners would have several advantages over the existing system of commissioners employed by local water users. Advantages would include the development and retantion of a higher level of expertise, improved record keeping and reporting, more complete geographical coverage of river systems, and better balance of commissioner work loads. These advantages would come at a higher cost, but the impact on water users could be mitigated by dividing the cost of the system between the users and the general public in a dual financing arrangement

Adapting Water Services to Urban Growth: A Case Study of Salt Lake County

Urbanizing areas thorughout the nation are considering governmental reorganization or consolidation to coordinate planning and improve the cost effectiveness of the delivery of public services. More efficient water supply and wastewater services may become important in the political debate over reorganization. However water factors figure politically, accomplished reorganizations must carefully plan for efficent provision of water services. This study profiles the structure and interactions of municipalities and water service agencies in Utah\u27s Salt Lake County during the 1970s. Both 1975 and 1978 attempts to consolidate Salt Lake City and the unincorporated areas of the county failed. The voting patterns, interest ground positions, and issues are examined. One major water issue surfaced in a concern that service jurisdictions and financial obligations were not sufficiently defined to protect the communities previously bound through water service agreements but excluded from the consolidated government. Additionally, the proposed dissolution of the County Water Conservancy District raised doubts on the division of equity in water rights and distribution facilities. Any large water development stabilizes institutional arrangements to a degree which may become a financial and legal contrainst to desired change. Overall, nonwater issues dominated the decision in this water sensitive area. This implies that water service jurisdictional alignments are set by political decisions based on nonwater considerations. Water utilities must do their best to be effective in the resulting context

Meeting to Decide MTC Memory Selection Scheme, September 16, 1953

To help settle some of the questions raised by the prospect of having a 4096-register magnetic memory in MTC (See Memorandum M-2361), this meeting of MTC personnel and programmer was arranged. Opinion was heavily in favor of a bank-switching instruction which could include drum fields as banks. Certain other features desirable from a programming standpoint were also brought up

Retarding Sub- and Accelerating Super-Diffusion Governed by Distributed Order Fractional Diffusion Equations

We propose diffusion-like equations with time and space fractional derivatives of the distributed order for the kinetic description of anomalous diffusion and relaxation phenomena, whose diffusion exponent varies with time and which, correspondingly, can not be viewed as self-affine random processes possessing a unique Hurst exponent. We prove the positivity of the solutions of the proposed equations and establish the relation to the Continuous Time Random Walk theory. We show that the distributed order time fractional diffusion equation describes the sub-diffusion random process which is subordinated to the Wiener process and whose diffusion exponent diminishes in time (retarding sub-diffusion) leading to superslow diffusion, for which the square displacement grows logarithmically in time. We also demonstrate that the distributed order space fractional diffusion equation describes super-diffusion phenomena when the diffusion exponent grows in time (accelerating super-diffusion).Comment: 11 pages, LaTe

Predicting the redshift 2 Halpha luminosity function using [OIII] emission line galaxies

Upcoming space-based surveys such as Euclid and WFIRST-AFTA plan to measure Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs) in order to study dark energy. These surveys will use IR slitless grism spectroscopy to measure redshifts of a large number of galaxies over a significant redshift range. In this paper, we use the WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel Survey (WISP) to estimate the expected number of Halpha (Ha) emitters observable by these future surveys. WISP is an ongoing HST slitless spectroscopic survey, covering the 0.8-1.65micron wavelength range and allowing the detection of Ha emitters up to z~1.5 and [OIII] emitters to z~2.3. We derive the Ha-[OIII] bivariate line luminosity function for WISP galaxies at z~1 using a maximum likelihood estimator that properly accounts for uncertainties in line luminosity measurement, and demonstrate how it can be used to derive the Ha luminosity function from exclusively fitting [OIII] data. Using the z~2 [OIII] line luminosity function, and assuming that the relation between Ha and [OIII] luminosity does not change significantly over the redshift range, we predict the Ha number counts at z~2 - the upper end of the redshift range of interest for the future surveys. For the redshift range 0.7<z<2, we expect ~3000 galaxies/deg^2 for a flux limit of 3x10^{-16} ergs/s/cm^2 (the proposed depth of Euclid galaxy redshift survey) and ~20,000 galaxies/deg^2 for a flux limit of ~10^{-16} ergs/s/cm^2 (the baseline depth of WFIRST galaxy redshift survey).Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted ApJ versio

Schumpeterian economic dynamics as a quantifiable minimum model of evolution

We propose a simple quantitative model of Schumpeterian economic dynamics. New goods and services are endogenously produced through combinations of existing goods. As soon as new goods enter the market they may compete against already existing goods, in other words new products can have destructive effects on existing goods. As a result of this competition mechanism existing goods may be driven out from the market - often causing cascades of secondary defects (Schumpeterian gales of destruction). The model leads to a generic dynamics characterized by phases of relative economic stability followed by phases of massive restructuring of markets - which could be interpreted as Schumpeterian business `cycles'. Model timeseries of product diversity and productivity reproduce several stylized facts of economics timeseries on long timescales such as GDP or business failures, including non-Gaussian fat tailed distributions, volatility clustering etc. The model is phrased in an open, non-equilibrium setup which can be understood as a self organized critical system. Its diversity dynamics can be understood by the time-varying topology of the active production networks.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure

Infrared spectroscopy of phytochrome and model pigments

Fourier-transform infrared difference spectra between the red-absorbing and far-red-absorbing forms of oat phytochrome have been measured in H2O and 2H2O. The difference spectra are compared with infrared spectra of model compounds, i.e. the (5Z,10Z,15Z)- and (5Z,10Z,15E)-isomers of 2,3,7,8,12,13,17,18-octaethyl-bilindion (Et8-bilindion), 2,3-dihydro-2,3,7,8,12,13,17,18-octaethyl-bilindion (H2Et8-bilindion), and protonated H2Et8-bilindion in various solvents. The spectra of the model compounds show that only for the protonated forms can clear differences between the two isomers be detected. Since considerable differences are present between the spectra of Et8-bilindion and H2Et8-bilindion, it is concluded that only the latter compound can serve as a model system of phytochrome. The 2H2O effect on the difference spectrum of phytochrome supports the view that the chromophore in red-absorbing phytochrome is protonated and suggests, in addition, that it is also protonated in far-red-absorbing phytochrome. The spectra show that protonated carboxyl groups are influenced. The small amplitudes in the difference spectra exclude major changes of protein secondary structure

Patenting and licensing of university research: promoting innovation or undermining academic values?

Since the 1980s in the US and the 1990s in Europe, patenting and licensing activities by universities have massively increased. This is strongly encouraged by governments throughout the Western world. Many regard academic patenting as essential to achieve 'knowledge transfer' from academia to industry. This trend has far-reaching consequences for access to the fruits of academic research and so the question arises whether the current policies are indeed promoting innovation or whether they are instead a symptom of a pro-intellectual property (IP) culture which is blind to adverse effects. Addressing this question requires both empirical analysis (how real is the link between academic patenting and licensing and 'development' of academic research by industry?) and normative assessment (which justifications are given for the current policies and to what extent do they threaten important academic values?). After illustrating the major rise of academic patenting and licensing in the US and Europe and commenting on the increasing trend of 'upstream' patenting and the focus on exclusive as opposed to non-exclusive licences, this paper will discuss five negative effects of these trends. Subsequently, the question as to why policymakers seem to ignore these adverse effects will be addressed. Finally, a number of proposals for improving university policies will be made

Electrical properties of a-antimony selenide

This paper reports conduction mechanism in a-\sbse over a wide range of temperature (238K to 338K) and frequency (5Hz to 100kHz). The d.c. conductivity measured as a function of temperature shows semiconducting behaviour with activation energy $\Delta$E= 0.42 eV. Thermally induced changes in the electrical and dielectric properties of a-\sbse have been examined. The a.c. conductivity in the material has been explained using modified CBH model. The band conduction and single polaron hopping is dominant above room temperature. However, in the lower temperature range the bipolaron hopping dominates.Comment: 9 pages (RevTeX, LaTeX2e), 9 psfigures, also at http://pu.chd.nic.in/ftp/pub/san16 e-mail: gautam%[email protected]