What Kulch Accomplished; What Kulch Left Out

An analysis of the rights of terminated whistleblowers in Ohio, as mandated by section 4113.52 of the Ohio Revised Code and interpreted by Kulch v. Structural Fibers, Inc., 677 N.E.2d 308 (Ohio 1997)

Spatial electron density and electric field strength measurements in microwave cavity experiments

Measurements of electron density and electric field strength have been made in an argon plasma contained in a resonant microwave cavity at 2.45 GHz. Spatial measurements of electron density, n sub e, are correlated with fluorescence observations of the discharge. Measurements of n sub e were made with Stark broadening and compared with n sub 3 calculated from measured plasma conductivity. Additional measurements of n sub 3 as a function of pressure and in mixtures of argon and oxygen are presented for pressures from 10 Torr to 1 atm. Measurements in flowing gases and in static systems are presented. In addition, limitations of these measurements are identified

A framework for digital sunken relief generation based on 3D geometric models

Sunken relief is a special art form of sculpture whereby the depicted shapes are sunk into a given surface. This is traditionally created by laboriously carving materials such as stone. Sunken reliefs often utilize the engraved lines or strokes to strengthen the impressions of a 3D presence and to highlight the features which otherwise are unrevealed. In other types of reliefs, smooth surfaces and their shadows convey such information in a coherent manner. Existing methods for relief generation are focused on forming a smooth surface with a shallow depth which provides the presence of 3D figures. Such methods unfortunately do not help the art form of sunken reliefs as they omit the presence of feature lines. We propose a framework to produce sunken reliefs from a known 3D geometry, which transforms the 3D objects into three layers of input to incorporate the contour lines seamlessly with the smooth surfaces. The three input layers take the advantages of the geometric information and the visual cues to assist the relief generation. This framework alters existing techniques in line drawings and relief generation, and then combines them organically for this particular purpose

What Kulch Accomplished, What Kulch Left Out

The general rule that an at-will employee can be discharged at any time for any or no reason is not the case in Ohio, because it has developed a wrongful discharge exception to the employment at-will doctrine. Under this doctrine, an employer who wrongfully discharges an employee in violation of clear public policy is subject to an action for damages. The Ohio legislature enacted the Whistleblower’s Statute, which allows the terminated whistleblower to maintain a cause of action against his employer. The Ohio Supreme Court has strengthened protection by allowing the terminated employee to bring common law action for wrongful discharge as well. However, the court failed to properly address what exact remedies the whistleblower may be entitled to recover, merely stating that recovery may be cumulative, but disallowing double recovery. Part II of this article discusses the factual background of the Kulch case, Part III outlines the potential causes of action, and Parts IV and V discuss available remedies and recovery options. The article concludes by summarizing what the court accomplished and what issues are left to be resolved

A dense disk of dust around the born-again Sakurai's object

In 1996, Sakurai's object (V4334 Sgr) suddenly brightened in the centre of a faint Planetary Nebula (PN). This very rare event was interpreted as the reignition of a hot white dwarf that caused a rapid evolution back to the cool giant phase. From 1998 on, a copious amount of dust has formed continuously, screening out the star which has remained embedded in this expanding high optical depth envelope. The new observations, reported here, are used to study the morphology of the circumstellar dust in order to investigate the hypothesis that Sakurai's Object is surrounded by a thick spherical envelope of dust. We have obtained unprecedented, high-angular resolution spectro-interferometric observations, taken with the mid-IR interferometer MIDI/VLTI, which resolve the dust envelope of Sakurai's object. We report the discovery of a unexpectedly compact (30 x 40 milliarcsec, 105 x 140 AU assuming a distance of 3.5 kpc), highly inclined, dust disk. We used Monte Carlo radiative-transfer simulations of a stratified disk to constrain its geometric and physical parameters, although such a model is only a rough approximation of the rapidly evolving dust structure. Even though the fits are not fully satisfactory, some useful and robust constraints can be inferred. The disk inclination is estimated to be 75+/-3 degree with a large scale height of 47+/-7 AU. The dust mass of the disk is estimated to be 6 10^{-5} solar mass. The major axis of the disk (132+/-3 degree) is aligned with an asymmetry seen in the old PN that was re-investigated as part of this study. This implies that the mechanism responsible for shaping the dust envelope surrounding Sakurai's object was already at work when the old PN formed.Comment: A&A Letter, accepte

Symmetry Detection in Large Scale City Scans

In this report we present a novel method for detecting partial symmetries in very large point clouds of 3D city scans. Unlike previous work, which was limited to data sets of a few hundred megabytes maximum, our method scales to very large scenes. We map the detection problem to a nearestneighbor search in a low-dimensional feature space, followed by a cascade of tests for geometric clustering of potential matches. Our algorithm robustly handles noisy real-world scanner data, obtaining a recognition performance comparable to state-of-the-art methods. In practice, it scales linearly with the scene size and achieves a high absolute throughput, processing half a terabyte of raw scanner data over night on a dual socket commodity PC

Prolonged eruptive history of a compound volcano on Mercury: volcanic and tectonic implications

A 27 × 13 km ‘rimless depression’ 100 km inside the southwest rim of the Caloris 19 basin is revealed by high resolution orbital imaging under a variety of illuminations to 20 consist of at least nine overlapping volcanic vents, each individually up to 8 km in 21 diameter. It is thus a ‘compound’ volcano, indicative of localised migration of the site 22 of the active vent. The vent floors are at a least 1 km below their brinks, but lack the 23 flat shape characteristically produced by piston-like subsidence of a caldera floor or 24 by flooding of a crater bottom by a lava lake. They bear a closer resemblance to 25 volcanic craters sculpted by explosive eruptions and/or modified by collapse into void 26 spaces created by magma withdrawal back down into a conduit. This complex of 27 overlapping vents is at the summit of a subtle edifice at least 100 km across, with 28 flank slopes of about only 0.2 degrees, after correction for the regional slope. This is 29 consistent with previous interpretation as a locus of pyroclastic eruptions. 30 Construction of the edifice could have been contributed to by effusion of very low 31 viscosity lava, but high resolution images show that the vent-facing rim of a nearby 32 impact crater is not heavily embayed as previously supposed on the basis of lower 33 resolution fly-by imaging. Contrasts in morphology (sharpness versus blurredness of 34 the texture) and different densities of superposed sub-km impact craters inside each 35 vent are consistent with (but do not prove) substantial differences in the age of the 36 most recent activity at each vent. This suggests a long duration of episodic 37 magmagenesis at a restricted locus. The age range cannot be quantified, but could be 38 of the order of a billion years. If each vent was fed from the same point source, 39 geometric considerations suggest a source depth of at least 50 km. However, the 40 migration of the active vent may be partly controlled by a deep-seated fault that is 41 radial to the Caloris basin. Other rimless depressions in this part of the Caloris basin 42 fall on or close to radial lines, suggesting that elements of the Pantheon Fossae radial 43 fracture system that dominates the surface of the central portion of the Caloris basin 44 may continue at depth almost as far as the basin rim

NASA follow-on to the Bangladesh Agro-Climatic Environmental Monitoring Project

The NASA responsibility and activities for the follow-on to the original Agro-Climatic Environmental Monitoring Project (ACEMP) which was completed during 1987 is described. Five training sessions which comprise the NASA ACEMP follow-on are: Agrometeorology, Meteorology of Severe Storms Using GEMPAK, Satellite Oceanography, Hydrology, and Meteorology with TOVS. The objective of the follow-on is to train Bangladesh Government staff in the use of satellite data for remote sensing applications. This activity also encourages the scientific connection between NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and The Bangladesh Space and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARRSO)

Head-on collision of ultrarelativistic charges

We consider the head-on collision of two opposite-charged point particles moving at the speed of light. Starting from the field of a single charge we derive in a first step the field generated by uniformly accelerated charge in the limit of infinite acceleration. From this we then calculate explicitly the burst of radiation emitted from the head-on collision of two charges and discuss its distributional structure. The motivation for our investigation comes from the corresponding gravitational situation where the head-on collision of two ultrarelativistic particles (black holes) has recently aroused renewed interest.Comment: 4 figures, uses the AMSmat