“By Reason of Age and Necessity”: Pension Claims of Veterans of the War in South Africa

Under the War Veterans Allowance Act (1930) some veterans of the War in South Africa (1899-1902) became eligible for support from the Canadian government. The terms of eligibility and the discourse around granting these pension allowances echo debates during the war itself, with a focus on the men’s physicality and an ambiguity about the country’s relations with the British Empire. The act required both military service and impecunity of the veterans it proposed to assist. The veterans’ interactions with the government, asserting both need and earned reward, position the Act as a significant point of transition in the country’s discourse about what supports citizens had a right to expect from their government

A comparison of light traps and zooplankton grabs for assessing invertebrate assemblages in muskellunge nursery bays

The near shore invertebrate assemblages of four bays along the St. Lawrence River were surveyed as an extension of a juvenile muskellunge survival study to better understand the potential prey base. Zooplankton and macroinvertebrates were collected using light trap and zooplankton grab sampling methods. Since larval muskellunge are visual predators and are dependent on invertebrate consumption prior to their complete conversion to piscivory during ontogeny, there is a need to understand the potential prey community composition. Two gears were compared to determine the optimal approach to represent invertebrate community structure within critical Muskellunge nursery habitats in bays. The light traps were set at night simultaneously for thirty minutes at each of four bays. In the laboratory, samples were scanned under a dissection microscope for rare organisms and subsampled to a minimum of 200 organisms counted in milliliter increments. The zooplankton grabs were performed during daytime by taking three 2L samples sieved through 60μ mesh within a 1 meter square plot, and were subsampled underneath a dissecting microscope in full milliliter increments to a minimum of 100 organisms. The two sampling methods produced similar species composition, but with very different community structure. The light traps had greater overall abundance and greater richness; however they likely selected for photopositive organisms. The zooplankton grabs do not discriminate among organisms in the water column, but may be missing organisms which exhibit patchy distributions or are diurnally benthic. The differences observed with each method highlight the importance of using multiple sampling methods, and indicated that a selection bias may exist for surveys that employ a single gear and time

Please, Sir, Can We Have More? Suggestions for Teaching Creative Writing in Secondary Education

The instruction of creative writing encourages students to engage in creative thinking. This leads to students using a variety of approaches to solve problems, analyze multiple viewpoints, adapt ideas, and arrive to new solutions. The purpose of this research is to identify ways educators can improve the incorporation and use of creative writing for secondary aged students. I surveyed students enrolled in creative writing class at USU about their previous school writing as well as interviewed former secondary school teachers about their experiences with creative writing in secondary school. In this study, I dive into some of the different lessons that have been taught in the past, what some students took away from the classes they participated in, and skills that both teacher and student wished had been taught. The one piece of feedback most heavily received was this: we want more. More creative writing courses, more teachers integrating creative writing in their curriculum and more chances to write creatively in secondary school.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2022/1012/thumbnail.jp

Characterization of Martian Surfaces using Mechanical and Spectrophotometric Models

Two recent in situ Mars missions, the Phoenix Mars Lander and the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, have explored two quite different locations on the surface of Mars. The Phoenix lander investigated the polygonal terrain and associated soil and icy soil deposits of a high northern latitude site: 68.22° N, 234.25° E). The Opportunity rover, the only currently operational spacecraft on the surface of Mars, is located much closer to the equator: 1.95° S, 354.47° E), and has been exploring the plains and sedimentary rocks in Meridiani Planum. Concurrent with in situ Opportunity and Phoenix observations, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars: CRISM) was in orbit around Mars collecting hyperspectral data. In this dissertation, surface and orbital data are used to explore and characterize surface material properties at the Phoenix and Opportunity sites. The Phoenix soil physical properties experiments involved the analysis of forces determined from motor currents from the Robotic Arm: RA)’s trenching activities. Using this information and images of the landing site, soil cohesion and angle of internal friction were determined. Soil dump pile slopes were used to determine the angle of internal friction of loose soil: 38° ± 5°. Additionally, an excavation model that treated walls and edges of the RA’s scoop as retaining walls was used to calculate mean in situ soil cohesion values for several trenches in the Phoenix landing site workspace. These cohesions were found to be consistent with the stability of steep trench slopes. Cohesions varied from 0.20.4−0.2 kPa to 1.21.8−1.2 kPa, with the exception of a subsurface platy horizon unique to a shallow trough for which cohesion will have to be determined using other methods. Soil on a nearby polygon mound had the greatest cohesion: 1.21.8−1.2 kPa). This high cohesion value was most likely due to the presence of adsorbed water or pore ice above the shallow icy soil surface. Further evidence for enhanced soil cohesion above the ice table includes lateral increase in excavation force, by over 30 N, as the RA approached ice. The behavior of soil near the ice table interface is of particular interest considering that many of the high-latitude and mid–latitude regions of Mars are underlain by ice. For the region traversed by Opportunity in the vicinity of Victoria crater, normalized spectral radiances from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars: CRISM) were used to retrieve surface scattering properties. Estimates agree with those retrieved in previous photometric studies which used Opportunity–s Panoramic Camera: Pancam) data, and I was able to extend estimates of the Hapke single particle scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter: from the one–term Henyey Greenstein single particle phase function) to a greater spatial and spectral range. Results are useful for determining the boundaries between surface units that otherwise look relatively uniform spectrally. This work also provides photometric functions essential for converting spectra to a single viewing geometry which will yield more accurate spectral comparisons. Results were obtained through simultaneous modeling of surface and atmospheric contributions, iterating through surface scattering parameters until a Levenberg–Marquardt least squares best fit was achieved. Retrieved single scattering albedos range from 0.42 to 0.57: 0.5663 − 2.2715 micrometers), and retrieved asymmetry parameters range from −0.27 to −0.17: moderately backscattering). All surfaces become more backscattering with increasing wavelength. The majority of Victoria crater’s ejecta apron is more backscattering than surrounding regions, indicating a change in physical properties. Images taken when the rover traversed this unit show a cover of basaltic soil with superposed millimeter–scale hematitic spherules, providing agreement with previous analyses of lab experiments showing increased backscattering with the addition of hematitic spherules. Dark wind streaks on the apron appear smooth: low backscatter) because basaltic sands have partly buried spherules, lessening millimeter–scale roughness: in agreement with previous near–surface wind streak analyses). The CRISM–derived scattering parameters also show that bedrock–dominated surfaces are less backscattering than soil–covered surfaces, largely due to lower areal abundance of spherules. The ability to analyze surface unit spherule cover is important because it relates to a wetter period during which spherules formed in Meridiani

Accurate first-derivative nonadiabatic couplings for the H3 system

A conical intersection exists between the ground (1 2 A[prime]) and the first-excited (2 2A[prime]) electronic potential energy surfaces (PESs) of the H3 system for C3v geometries. This intersection induces a geometric phase effect, an important factor in accurate quantum mechanical reactive scattering calculations, which at low energies can be performed using the ground PES only, together with appropriate nuclear motion boundary conditions. At higher energies, however, such calculations require the inclusion of both the 1 2A[prime] and 2 2A[prime] electronic PESs and the corresponding nuclear derivative couplings. Here we present ab initio first-derivative couplings for these states obtained by analytic gradient techniques and a fit to these results. We also present a fit to the corresponding 1 2A[prime] and 2 2A[prime] adiabatic electronic PESs, obtained from the ab initio electronic energies. The first-derivative couplings are compared with their approximate analytical counterparts obtained by Varandas et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 86, 6258 (1987)] using the double many-body expansion method. As expected, the latter are accurate close to conical intersection configurations but not elsewhere. We also present the contour integrals of the ab initio couplings along closed loops around the above-mentioned conical intersection, which contain information about possible interactions between the 2 2A[prime] and 3 2A[prime] states

Transverse Flutes by London Makers, 1750-1900, in the Collections of The Shrine to Music Museum

In London during the early 19th century, the flute achieved a degree of popularity that some writers have called “flutomania.” The city was home to many instrument makers who created a dazzling array of flutes to meet the demands of the many professional and amateur players. This master\u27s thesis, completed at the University of South Dakota, explores the history of English flutemaking from the mid-18th century to the end of the 19th-century. It includes a catalog of 73 flutes from the collections of the Shrine to Music Museum, which is now the National Music Museum (http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/)