The Presidio Trust and our National Parks: Not a Model to be Trusted

The Presidio is unique. As a large area of natural habitat in a congested urban landscape, as a site which retains centuries of historic and prehistoric artifacts, as the longest continually operating military base in the United States, and as the southern promontory of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the world\u27s most recognized vistas, the Presidio is without equal. Also unique are the politics which led to the terms under which this national park is now being managed. The 104th Congress, and particularly its leadership, mounted an unprecedented assault on America\u27s public lands, including our national parks. Those leaders called for no less than eliminating parks and ending federal ownership and control of vast areas of the public estate. While unsuccessful in this frontal attack, they did succeed in inserting elements of their agenda into otherwise positive or innocuous legislation. The Presidio Trust bill, the topic of this article, came nowhere near accomplishing what those leaders hoped to accomplish. Yet a close analysis reveals troubling provisions heretofore unthinkable for management of our national parks. In sum, while the Presidio Trust legislation could have been worse, it needs to be improved for the sake of the Presidio and cannot be viewed as a model for the management of other parks

CMB-S4: Forecasting Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves

CMB-S4---the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment---is set to significantly advance the sensitivity of CMB measurements and enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Universe, from the highest energies at the dawn of time through the growth of structure to the present day. Among the science cases pursued with CMB-S4, the quest for detecting primordial gravitational waves is a central driver of the experimental design. This work details the development of a forecasting framework that includes a power-spectrum-based semi-analytic projection tool, targeted explicitly towards optimizing constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, in the presence of Galactic foregrounds and gravitational lensing of the CMB. This framework is unique in its direct use of information from the achieved performance of current Stage 2--3 CMB experiments to robustly forecast the science reach of upcoming CMB-polarization endeavors. The methodology allows for rapid iteration over experimental configurations and offers a flexible way to optimize the design of future experiments given a desired scientific goal. To form a closed-loop process, we couple this semi-analytic tool with map-based validation studies, which allow for the injection of additional complexity and verification of our forecasts with several independent analysis methods. We document multiple rounds of forecasts for CMB-S4 using this process and the resulting establishment of the current reference design of the primordial gravitational-wave component of the Stage-4 experiment, optimized to achieve our science goals of detecting primordial gravitational waves for $r > 0.003$ at greater than $5\sigma$, or, in the absence of a detection, of reaching an upper limit of $r < 0.001$ at $95\%$ CL.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, submitted to ApJ. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1907.0447

CMB-S4: Forecasting Constraints on Primordial Gravitational Waves

Abstract: CMB-S4—the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment—is set to significantly advance the sensitivity of CMB measurements and enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe. Among the science cases pursued with CMB-S4, the quest for detecting primordial gravitational waves is a central driver of the experimental design. This work details the development of a forecasting framework that includes a power-spectrum-based semianalytic projection tool, targeted explicitly toward optimizing constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, in the presence of Galactic foregrounds and gravitational lensing of the CMB. This framework is unique in its direct use of information from the achieved performance of current Stage 2–3 CMB experiments to robustly forecast the science reach of upcoming CMB-polarization endeavors. The methodology allows for rapid iteration over experimental configurations and offers a flexible way to optimize the design of future experiments, given a desired scientific goal. To form a closed-loop process, we couple this semianalytic tool with map-based validation studies, which allow for the injection of additional complexity and verification of our forecasts with several independent analysis methods. We document multiple rounds of forecasts for CMB-S4 using this process and the resulting establishment of the current reference design of the primordial gravitational-wave component of the Stage-4 experiment, optimized to achieve our science goals of detecting primordial gravitational waves for r > 0.003 at greater than 5σ, or in the absence of a detection, of reaching an upper limit of r < 0.001 at 95% CL

The Presidio Trust and our National Parks: Not a Model to be Trusted

The Presidio is unique. As a large area of natural habitat in a congested urban landscape, as a site which retains centuries of historic and prehistoric artifacts, as the longest continually operating military base in the United States, and as the southern promontory of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the world\u27s most recognized vistas, the Presidio is without equal. Also unique are the politics which led to the terms under which this national park is now being managed. The 104th Congress, and particularly its leadership, mounted an unprecedented assault on America\u27s public lands, including our national parks. Those leaders called for no less than eliminating parks and ending federal ownership and control of vast areas of the public estate. While unsuccessful in this frontal attack, they did succeed in inserting elements of their agenda into otherwise positive or innocuous legislation. The Presidio Trust bill, the topic of this article, came nowhere near accomplishing what those leaders hoped to accomplish. Yet a close analysis reveals troubling provisions heretofore unthinkable for management of our national parks. In sum, while the Presidio Trust legislation could have been worse, it needs to be improved for the sake of the Presidio and cannot be viewed as a model for the management of other parks

The Sagebrush Rebellion: The West against Itself--Again

[No abstract

The Sagebrush Rebellion: The West against Itself--Again

[No abstract

The Sagebrush Rebellion: The West against Itself--Again

[No abstract