Revisions in Need of Revising: What Went Wrong in the Iraq War

Though critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration\u27s conduct of the Iraq war, the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers—criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups—were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the act of war itself. Military and civilian planners were culpable in failing to plan for certain tasks, but the most serious problems had no good solution. Even so, there are lessons to be learned. These include the danger that the imperatives of force protection may sacrifice the broader political mission of U.S. forces and the need for skepticism over the capacity of outsiders to develop the skill and expertise required to reconstruct decapitated states.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1725/thumbnail.jp

Timing of the Acadian Orogeny in northern New Hampshire

New U‐Pb geochronology constrains the timing of the Acadian orogeny in the Central Maine Terrane of northern New Hampshire. Sixteen fractions of one to six grains each of zircon or monazite have been analyzed from six samples: (1) an early syntectonic diorite that records the onset of the Acadian; (2) a schist, a migmatite, and two granites that together record the peak of the Acadian; and (3) a postkinematic pluton that records the end of the Acadian. Zircon from the syntectonic Wamsutta Diorite gives a 207Pb/206Pb age of circa 408 Ma, the time at which the boundary between the deforming orogenic wedge and the foreland basin was in the vicinity of the Presidential Range. This age agrees well with the Emsian position of the northwest migrating Acadian orogenic front and records the beginning of the Acadian in this part of the Central Maine Terrane. We propose a possible Acadian tectonic model that incorporates the geochronologic, structural, and stratigraphic data. Monazite from the schist, migmatite, Bigelow Lawn Granite, and Slide Peak Granite gives 207Pb/206U ages, suggesting the peak of Acadian metamorphism and intrusion of two‐mica granites occurred at circa 402–405 Ma, the main pulse of Acadian orogenesis. Previously reported monazite ages from schists that likely record the peak metamorphism in the Central Maine Terrane of New Hampshire and western Maine range from circa 406–384 Ma, with younger ages in southeastern New Hampshire and progressively older ages to the west, north, and northeast. Acadian orogenesis in the Presidential Range had ended by circa 355 Ma, the 207Pb/235U age of monazite from the Peabody River Granite. From 408 to perhaps at least 394 Ma, Acadian orogenesis in the Presidential Range was typical of the tectonic style, dominated by synkinematic metamorphism, seen in central and southern New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. From no earlier than 394 Ma to as late as 355 Ma, the orogenesis was typical of the style in parts of Maine dominated by postkinematic metamorphism

Mercury Trapped Ion Frequency Standard for Ultra-Stable Reference Applications

An atomic clock including an ion trap assembly, a C-field coil positioned for generating a first magnetic field in the interrogation region of the ion trap assembly, a compensation coil positioned for generating a second magnetic field in the interrogation region, wherein the combination of the first and second magnetic fields produces an ion number-dependent second order Zeeman shift (Zeeman shift) in the resonance frequency that is opposite in sign to an ion number-dependent second order Doppler shift (Doppler shift) in the resonance frequency, the C-field coil has a radius selected using data indicating how changes in the radius affect an ion-number-dependent shift in the resonance frequency, such that a difference in magnitude between the Doppler shift and the Zeeman shift is controlled or reduced, and the resonance frequency, including the adjustment by the Zeeman shift, is used to obtain the frequency standard

The Cut & Enhance method : selecting clusters of galaxies from the SDSS commissioning data

We describe an automated method, the Cut & Enhance method (CE) for detecting clusters of galaxies in multi-color optical imaging surveys. This method uses simple color cuts, combined with a density enhancement algorithm, to up-weight pairs of galaxies that are close in both angular separation and color. The method is semi-parametric since it uses minimal assumptions about cluster properties in order to minimize possible biases. No assumptions are made about the shape of clusters, their radial profile or their luminosity function. The method is successful in finding systems ranging from poor to rich clusters of galaxies, of both regular and irregular shape. We determine the selection function of the CE method via extensive Monte Carlo simulations which use both the real, observed background of galaxies and a randomized background of galaxies. We use position shuffled and color shuffled data to perform the false positive test. We have also visually checked all the clusters detected by the CE method. We apply the CE method to the 350 deg^2 of the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) commissioning data and construct a SDSS CE galaxy cluster catalog with an estimated redshift and richness for each cluster. The CE method is compared with other cluster selection methods used on SDSS data such as the Matched Filter (Postman et al. 1996, Kim et al. 2001), maxBCG technique (Annis et al. 2001) and Voronoi Tessellation (Kim et al. 2001). The CE method can be adopted for cluster selection in any multi-color imaging surveys.Comment: 62 pages, 32 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, "the CE galaxy cluster catalog can be downloaded from, http://astrophysics.phys.cmu.edu/~tomo/ce/

Coherent Frequency Reference System for the NASA Deep Space Network

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) requires state-of-the-art frequency references that are derived and distributed from very stable atomic frequency standards. A new Frequency Reference System (FRS) and Frequency Reference Distribution System (FRD) have been developed, which together replace the previous Coherent Reference Generator System (CRG). The FRS and FRD each provide new capabilities that significantly improve operability and reliability. The FRS allows for selection and switching between frequency standards, a flywheel capability (to avoid interruptions when switching frequency standards), and a frequency synthesis system (to generate standardized 5-, 10-, and 100-MHz reference signals). The FRS is powered by redundant, specially filtered, and sustainable power systems and includes a monitor and control capability for station operations to interact and control the frequency-standard selection process. The FRD receives the standardized 5-, 10-, and 100-MHz reference signals and distributes signals to distribution amplifiers in a fan out fashion to dozens of DSN users that require the highly stable reference signals. The FRD is also powered by redundant, specially filtered, and sustainable power systems. The new DSN Frequency Distribution System, which consists of the FRS and FRD systems described here, is central to all operational activities of the NASA DSN. The frequency generation and distribution system provides ultra-stable, coherent, and very low phase-noise references at 5, l0, and 100 MHz to between 60 and 100 separate users at each Deep Space Communications Complex

Ovarian Cancer Incidence Corrected for Oophorectomy

Current reported incidence rates for ovarian cancer may significantly underestimate the true rate because of the inclusion of women in the calculations who are not at risk for ovarian cancer due to prior benign salpingo-oophorectomy (SO). We have considered prior SO to more realistically estimate risk for ovarian cancer. Kentucky Health Claims Data, International Classification of Disease 9 (ICD-9) codes, Current Procedure Terminology (CPT) codes, and Kentucky Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Data were used to identify women who have undergone SO in Kentucky, and these women were removed from the at-risk pool in order to re-assess incidence rates to more accurately represent ovarian cancer risk. The protective effect of SO on the population was determined on an annual basis for ages 5–80+ using data from the years 2009–2013. The corrected age-adjusted rates of ovarian cancer that considered SO ranged from 33% to 67% higher than age-adjusted rates from the standard population. Correction of incidence rates for ovarian cancer by accounting for women with prior SO gives a better understanding of risk for this disease faced by women. The rates of ovarian cancer were substantially higher when SO was taken into consideration than estimates from the standard population

Loose Groups of Galaxies in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey

A ``friends-of-friends'' percolation algorithm has been used to extract a catalogue of dn/n = 80 density enhancements (groups) from the six slices of the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS). The full catalogue contains 1495 groups and includes 35% of the LCRS galaxy sample. A clean sample of 394 groups has been derived by culling groups from the full sample which either are too close to a slice edge, have a crossing time greater than a Hubble time, have a corrected velocity dispersion of zero, or contain a 55-arcsec ``orphan'' (a galaxy with a mock redshift which was excluded from the original LCRS redshift catalogue due to its proximity to another galaxy -- i.e., within 55 arcsec). Median properties derived from the clean sample include: line-of-sight velocity dispersion sigma_los = 164km/s, crossing time t_cr = 0.10/H_0, harmonic radius R_h = 0.58/h Mpc, pairwise separation R_p = 0.64/h Mpc, virial mass M_vir = (1.90x10^13)/h M_sun, total group R-band luminosity L_tot = (1.30x10^11)/h^2 L_sun, and R-band mass-to-light ratio M/L = 171h M_sun/L_sun; the median number of observed members in a group is 3.Comment: 32 pages of text, 27 figures, 7 tables. Figures 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 are in gif format. Tables 1 and 3 are in plain ASCII format (in paper source) and are also available at http://www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000/~dtucker/LCLG . Accepted for publication in the September 2000 issue of ApJ