Autonomous attitude estimation via star sensing and pattern recognition

Results are reported on the development of an autonomous, onboard, near real time spacecraft attitude estimation technique. The approach uses CCD based star sensors to digitize relative star positions. Three microcomputers are envisioned, configured in parallel, to: (1) determine star image centroids and delete spurious images; (2) identify measured stars with stars in an onboard catalog and determine discrete attitude estimates; (3) integrate gyro rate measurements and determine optimal real time attitude estimates for use in the control system and for feedback to the star identification algorithm. Algorithms for the star identification are presented. The discrete attitude estimation algorithm recovers thermally varying interlock angles between two star sensors. The optimal state estimation process recovers rate gyro biases in addition to real time attitude estimates

Theft of virtual items in online multiplayer computer games: an ontological and moral analysis

In 2009 Dutch judges convicted several minors for theft of virtual items in the virtual worlds of online multiplayer computer games. From a legal point of view these convictions gave rise to the question whether virtual items should count as “objects” that can be “stolen” under criminal law. This legal question has both an ontological and a moral component. The question whether or not virtual items count as “objects” that can be “stolen” is an ontological question. The question whether or not they should count as such under criminal law is of a moral nature. The purpose of this paper is to answer both the ontological question and the moral question underlying the legal question

Scrambling on Defense: An Anatomy of Anthropological Responses to the Mead/Freeman Controversy

In 1984 Derek Freeman launched a crusade against Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, claiming to have definitively falsified her central claims. Anthropologists responded in a proliferating variety of ways, while failing to project scientific coherence. Underlying anthropology’s inability was its changing, and increasingly fissuring, conception of itself as a discipline. Was it a humanistic field or a science, and if a science what kind of science? Most saliently revealed was the discipline’s failure to recognize its own tacit acceptance of Mead’s impact on the American reading public without clearly—and earlier—advancing critical views of Mead’s earliest work

The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929

In the early part of the Dirty Thirties, the Canadian prairie city was a relatively safe haven. Having faced recession before the Great War and then again in the early 1920s, municipalities already had relief apparatuses in place to deal with poverty and unemployment. Until 1933, responsibilty for the care of the urban poor remained with local governments, but when the farms failed that year, and the Depression deepened, western Canadian cities suffered tremendously. Recognizing the severity of the crisis, the national government intervened. Evolving federal programs and policies took over responsibility for the delivery of relief to the single unemployed, while the government simultaneously withdrew financing for all public works projects. Setting municipal relief administrations of the 1930s within a wider literature on welfare and urban poor relief, Strikwerda highlights the legacy on which relief policymakers relied in determining policy directions, as well as the experiences of the individuals and families who depended on relief for their survival. Focusing on three prairie cities—Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg—Strikwerda argues that municipal officials used their power to set policy to address what they perceived to be the most serious threats to the social order stemming from the economic crisis. By analyzing the differing ways in which local relief programs treated married and single men, he also explores important gendered dynamics at work in the response of city administrators to the social and economic upheaval of the Depression. Probing the mindset of local elites struggling in extraordinary circumstances, The Wages of Relief describes the enduring impact of the policy changes made in the 1930s in the direction of a broad, national approach to unemployment—an approach that ushered in Canada’s modern welfare system

Masculinity among the Amish: Characteristics, Hegemony, and \u27Soft Patriarchy\u27

This article examines both Amish masculine cultural norms and practices and the characteristics of Amish men specifically as men. The first goal is to pull together information from the secondary literature on Amish men and masculinity. Salient characteristics or traits such as egalitarianism, pacifism, and rationality are discussed, and placed in the context of Gelassenheit (yieldedness), of the gender relations within families, and of Raewyn Connell’s notion of “hegemonic masculinity.” The second goal is to assess the appropriateness of general characterizations of the Amish gender regime, such as one with women as second-class citizens to men or as a “soft patriarchy.” It is argued that Amish society is better described as a “strong patriarchy” with a questionable gender power imbalance. Throughout, the intent is to show the mutual relevance of Amish Studies, Men’s Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. [Abstract by author.