Times, life and thought of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen 1618 - 1635

There has only been one attempt to construct anything like a full account of the life of Patrick Forbes. This was by G.P.Shand in his introduction to the funeral orations and pieces offered in honour of the Bishop and published by the Spottiswoode Society in 1845. Shand's Memoir is valuable but enters into no detailed analysis of Forbes's thought, nor of the movements of the time which formed the background of his life and in which he played a notable part. The author is content to follow the brief references of Garden to the Bishops work as Chancellor of Aberdeen University and does not attempt to assess the extent of his influence upon seventeenth century religious life and thought. Besides Shand did not have before him the printed editions of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland which throw additional and interesting light upon Forbes as a statesman and a diocesan.A recent valuable addition to a fuller understanding of the life and influence of Patrick Forbes is contained in Professor G. D. Henderson's Religious Life in Seventeenth Century Scotland. The most useful parts of Henderson's essay on Forbes are those which deal with his work in connection with King's College, Aberdeen and his influence throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century. Henderson helps us to fill in the gaps left by Shand and I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to these two scholars.A recent valuable addition to a fuller understanding of the life and influence of Patrick Forbes is contained in Professor G. D. Henderson's Religious Life in Seventeenth Century Scotland. The most useful parts of Henderson's essay on Forbes are those which deal with his work in connection with King's College, Aberdeen and his influence throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century. Henderson helps us to fill in the gaps left by Shand and I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to these two scholars.It has been said that when God appoints a man to some special work or witness His preparatory action is to be seen in the circumstances of hereditary descent. Forbes's ancestry has been fully explored in Chapter 1 with such comment as appeared necessary and his degree of kinship with Andrew Melville, usually left vague, indicated. From time to time suggestions which seemed historically reasonable have been offered and erroneous or misleading statements challenged. Material not previously used by those who have written of Patrick Forbes, from Registers of the Privy Council of Scotland and from the Ecclesiastical Records of Aberdeen, has been used, while the closest attention has been given to Forbes's own writings.It has not been easy to keep Forbes continually in the picture, but I have tried, chiefly by use of Appendices, to avoid Russell Lowell's criticism of Masson's Life of Milton - that Milton was sometimes only an incident in his own biography. Opportunity has been taken to explain the principles governing Episcopal Elections during the First Scottish Episcopate and to elucidate other points frequently omitted or glossed over in text books. Particularly have I tried to stress the decisive nature of the economic and political motives which underlay the national Covenant of 1638, for these nave not been correctly guaged by Episcopalian historians who have too frequently tended to represent the issue as a clear-cut one between Episcopacy and Presbyterianism

Asteroseismic Signatures of Stellar Magnetic Activity Cycles

Observations of stellar activity cycles provide an opportunity to study magnetic dynamos under many different physical conditions. Space-based asteroseismology missions will soon yield useful constraints on the interior conditions that nurture such magnetic cycles, and will be sensitive enough to detect shifts in the oscillation frequencies due to the magnetic variations. We derive a method for predicting these shifts from changes in the Mg II activity index by scaling from solar data. We demonstrate this technique on the solar-type subgiant beta Hyi, using archival International Ultraviolet Explorer spectra and two epochs of ground-based asteroseismic observations. We find qualitative evidence of the expected frequency shifts and predict the optimal timing for future asteroseismic observations of this star.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures and 1 table, MNRAS Letters accepte

Precision determination of absolute neutron flux

A technique for establishing the total neutron rate of a highly-collimated monochromatic cold neutron beam was demonstrated using a method of an alpha-gamma counter. The method involves only the counting of measured rates and is independent of neutron cross sections, decay chain branching ratios, and neutron beam energy. For the measurement, a target of 10B-enriched boron carbide totally absorbed the neutrons in a monochromatic beam, and the rate of absorbed neutrons was determined by counting 478keV gamma rays from neutron capture on 10B with calibrated high-purity germanium detectors. A second measurement based on Bragg diffraction from a perfect silicon crystal was performed to determine the mean de Broglie wavelength of the beam to a precision of 0.024 %. With these measurements, the detection efficiency of a neutron monitor based on neutron absorption on 6Li was determined to an overall uncertainty of 0.058 %. We discuss the principle of the alpha-gamma method and present details of how the measurement was performed including the systematic effects. We also describe how this method may be used for applications in neutron dosimetry and metrology, fundamental neutron physics, and neutron cross section measurements.Comment: 44 page

FUSE Measurements of Far Ultraviolet Extinction. I. Galactic Sight Lines

We present extinction curves that include data down to far ultraviolet wavelengths (FUV; 1050 - 1200 A) for nine Galactic sight lines. The FUV extinction was measured using data from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. The sight lines were chosen for their unusual extinction properties in the infrared through the ultraviolet; that they probe a wide range of dust environments is evidenced by the large spread in their measured ratios of total-to-selective extinction, R_V = 2.43 - 3.81. We find that extrapolation of the Fitzpatrick & Massa relationship from the ultraviolet appears to be a good predictor of the FUV extinction behavior. We find that predictions of the FUV extinction based upon the Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis (CCM) dependence on R_V give mixed results. For the seven extinction curves well represented by CCM in the infrared through ultraviolet, the FUV extinction is well predicted in three sight lines, over-predicted in two sight lines, and under-predicted in 2 sight lines. A Maximum Entropy Method analysis using a simple three component grain model shows that seven of the nine sight lines in the study require a larger fraction of grain materials to be in dust when FUV extinction is included in the models. Most of the added grain material is in the form of small (radii < 200 A) grains.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 31 pages with 7 figure

On The Reddening in X-ray Absorbed Seyfert 1 Galaxies

There are several Seyfert galaxies for which there is a discrepancy between the small column of neutral hydrogen deduced from X-ray observations and the much greater column derived from the reddening of the optical/UV emission lines and continuum. The standard paradigm has the dust within the highly ionized gas which produces O~VII and O~VIII absorption edges (i.e., a ``dusty warm absorber''). We present an alternative model in which the dust exists in a component of gas in which hydrogen has been stripped, but which is at too low an ionization state to possess significant columns of O~VII and O~VIII (i.e, a ``lukewarm absorber''). The lukewarm absorber is at sufficient radial distance to encompass much of the narrow emission-line region, and thus accounts for the narrow-line reddening, unlike the dusty warm absorber. We test the model by using a combination of photoionization models and absorption edge fits to analyze the combined ROSAT/ASCA dataset for the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy, NGC 3227. We show that the data are well fit by a combination of the lukewarm absorber and a more highly ionized component similar to that suggested in earlier studies. We predict that the lukewarm absorber will produce strong UV absorption lines of N V, C IV, Si IV and Mg II. Finally, these results illustrate that singly ionized helium is an important, and often overlooked, source of opacity in the soft X-ray band (100 - 500 eV).Comment: 17 pages, Latex, includes 1 figure (encapsulated postscript), one additional table in Latex (landscape format), to appear in the Astrophysical Journa

An introduction to crowdsourcing for language and multimedia technology research

Language and multimedia technology research often relies on large manually constructed datasets for training or evaluation of algorithms and systems. Constructing these datasets is often expensive with significant challenges in terms of recruitment of personnel to carry out the work. Crowdsourcing methods using scalable pools of workers available on-demand offers a flexible means of rapid low-cost construction of many of these datasets to support existing research requirements and potentially promote new research initiatives that would otherwise not be possible

Search for antiproton decay at the Fermilab Antiproton Accumulator

A search for antiproton decay has been made at the Fermilab Antiproton Accumulator. Limits are placed on thirteen antiproton decay modes. The results include the first explicit experimental limits on the muonic decay modes of the antiproton, and the first limits on the decay modes e- gamma gamma, and e- omega. The most stringent limit is for the decay mode pbar-> e- gamma. At 90% C.L. we find that tau/B(pbar-> e- gamma) > 7 x 10^5 yr. The most stringent limit for decay modes with a muon in the final state is for the decay pbar-> mu- gamma. At 90% C.L. we find that tau/B(pbar-> mu- gamma) > 5 x 10^4 yr.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Final results on 13 channels (was 15) are presente