The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring

Environment, conservation, green, and kindred movements look back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring as a milestone. The impact of the book, including on government, industry, and civil society, was immediate and substantial, and has been extensively described; however, the provenance of the book has been less thoroughly examined. Using Carson’s personal correspondence, this paper reveals that the primary source for Carson’s book was the extensive evidence and contacts compiled by two biodynamic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary T. Richards, of Long Island, New York. Their evidence was compiled for a suite of legal actions (1957-1960) against the U.S. Government and that contested the aerial spraying of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). During Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime, Spock and Richards both studied at Steiner’s Goetheanum, the headquarters of Anthroposophy, located in Dornach, Switzerland. Spock and Richards were prominent U.S. anthroposophists, and established a biodynamic farm under the tutelage of the leading biodynamics exponent of the time, Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. When their property was under threat from a government program of DDT spraying, they brought their case, eventually lost it, in the process spent US$100,000, and compiled the evidence that they then shared with Carson, who used it, and their extensive contacts and the trial transcripts, as the primary input for Silent Spring. Carson attributed to Spock, Richards, and Pfeiffer, no credit whatsoever in her book. As a consequence, the organics movement has not received the recognition, that is its due, as the primary impulse for Silent Spring, and it is, itself, unaware of this provenance

Image [&] Narrative journal editorship (in 2 issues) - The story of things: reading narrative in the visual

Based on the conference convened by Carson & Miller to accompany their project The Story of Things, these two journal issues of Image [&] Narrative explore the relationship between narrative and the visual. Issue 1: ‘Introduction’, Carson & Miller Part 1 – Telling the Story of Things ‘Relating Stories’, Dr. Patricia Allmer ‘Scrapbook (a visual essay)’, Carson & Miller Part 2 – Object as Catalyst: the Potential for Narrative within the Artefact ‘Artefacts and Anecdotes’, Prof. Karen Bassi ‘Ephemeral Art: Telling Stories to the Dead’, Dr. Mary O’ Neill ‘Belongings’, Lucy May Schofield & Sylvia Waltering Issue 2: ‘Introduction’, Carson & Miller Part 1 – Visualising the Remembered Narrative: Archetype, Biography, Autobiography ‘Rephrased, Replaced, Repainted: visual anachronism as a narrative device’, Gyöngyvér Horváth ‘Lost Children, the Moors & Evil Monsters: the photographic story of the Moors Murders’, Helen Pleasance ‘Read You Like A Book: Time and Relative Dimensions in Storytelling’, Mike Nicholson Part 2 – Authoring and Reading the Sequential Narrative: Linear and Non-Linear Approaches ‘The Pre-Narrative Monstrosity of Images: how images demand narrative’, Dr. William Brown ‘Towards Ephemeral Narrative’, Jacqueline Butler & Gavin Parry ‘Signification Under Sentence: examining how the juxtaposition of verse with film affects narrative’, Dr. Pete Atkinso

Solar neutrinos and the influence of radiative opacities on solar models

Use of new radiative opacities based on the hot Thomas-Fermi model of the atom yields a predicted solar neutrino flux which is still considerably larger than the flux observed in Davis's Cl-37 experiment

Array phasing device Patent

Apparatus for generating microwave signals at progressively related phase angles for driving antenna arra

Investigation of semiconductor clad optical waveguides

A variety of techniques have been proposed for fabricating integrated optical devices using semiconductors, lithium niobate, and glasses as waveguides and substrates. The use of glass waveguides and their interaction with thin semiconductor cladding layers was studied. Though the interactions of these multilayer waveguide structures have been analyzed here using glass, they may be applicable to other types of materials as well. The primary reason for using glass is that it provides a simple, inexpensive way to construct waveguides and devices

Preliminary catalog of pictures taken on the lunar surface during the Apollo 16 mission

A catalog of all pictures taken from the lunar module or the lunar surface during the Apollo 16 lunar stay is presented. The tabulations are arranged for the following specific uses: (1) given the number of a particular frame, find its location in the sequence of lunar surface activity, the station from which it was taken and the subject matter of the picture; (2) given a particular location or activity within the sequence of lunar surface activity, find the pictures taken at that time and their subject matter; and (3) given a sample number from the voice transcript listed, find the designation assigned to the same sample by the lunar receiving laboratory