The Fringe Reading Facility at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Stroemungsforschung

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is used for optical flow measurements in a transonic wind tunnel. Holographic interferograms are reconstructed by illumination with a He-Ne-laser and viewed by a video camera through wide angle optics. This setup was used for investigating industrial double exposure holograms of truck tires in order to develop methods of automatic recognition of certain manufacturing faults. Automatic input is achieved by a transient recorder digitizing the output of a TV camera and transferring the digitized data to a PDP11-34. Interest centered around sequences of interferograms showing the interaction of vortices with a profile and subsequent emission of sound generated by this process. The objective is the extraction of quantitative data which relates to the emission of noise

British Romanticism and the Global Climate

As a result of developments in the meteorological and geological sciences, the Romantic period saw the gradual emergence of attempts to understand the climate as a dynamic global system that could potentially be affected by human activity. This chapter examines textual responses to climate disruption cause by the Laki eruption of 1783 and the Tambora eruption of 1815. During the Laki haze, writers such as Horace Walpole, Gilbert White, and William Cowper found in Milton a powerful way of understanding the entanglements of culture and climate at a time of national and global crisis. Apocalyptic discourse continued to resonate during the Tambora crisis, as is evident in eyewitness accounts of the eruption, in the utopian predictions of John Barrow and Eleanor Anne Porden, and in the grim speculations of Byron’s ‘Darkness’. Romantic writing offers a powerful analogue for thinking about climate change in the Anthropocene

Les vrais et les faux calendriers agricoles romains chez Caton, Varron et Columelle

Otta Wenskus. The « True » and the « False » Roman Agricultural Calendars. While the Greek peasant, from Homer to Theophrastus, told the time of year by the risings and settings of several prominent stars as well as by tne solstices, the Roman agricultural year attached far more importance to the equinoxes and the solstices, but seemed to take no account of the stars. This is the state of affairs mirrored in the Elder Cato's treatise on agriculture. Greek influence is far more evident in the agricultural writings of Varro and Columella ; as far as popular astronomy is concerned, though, it is almost exclusively restricted to a few chapters.Otta Wenskus. Les vrais et les faux calendriers agricoles romains chez Caton, Varron et Columelle. Alors que, de Homère à Théophraste, les paysans grecs déterminaient l'époque de l'année grâce aux levers et aux couchers d'un certain nombre ď étoiles d'importance majeure et également grâce aux solstices, l'année agricole romaine attachait une importance beaucoup plus grande aux equinoxes et aux solstices, mais ne paraissait pas tenir compte des étoiles. Tel est le tableau qui est décrit dans le traité sur l'agriculture de Caton l'Ancien. L'influence grecque est bien plus manifeste dans les écrits de Varron et de Columelle sur l'agriculture ; même si en ce qui concerne l'astronomie populaire, elle se limite presque exclusivement à quelques chapitres.Wenskus Otta. Les vrais et les faux calendriers agricoles romains chez Caton, Varron et Columelle. In: Histoire & Mesure, 1986 volume 1 - n°3-4. Varia. pp. 107-118