They Soon Forgot Their Words - Documentary

This documentary film, They Soon Forgot Their Words, is about the language issues that threaten the Kaqchikel Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. It is one of 21 Mayan languages spoken in the country and is one of the most widely used with more than 500,000 speakers. Unfortunately, however, scholars have noticed that Kaqchikel is in a state of “shift” a process where one language combines with another in speech. As is the case with many Mayan languages in Guatemala, Kaqchikel is often combined with Spanish in speech. The colloquial name used for the combining of these two languages is “kaqchinol.” Shift is considered the first step in language loss and 90 percent of the world’s languages are expected to disappear within 100 years (Nettle & Romaine, 2000). This is the focus of the film. To provide an in-depth examination of one language threatened by a global issue: language attrition. There are two sides to this story which have shaped this documentary, one of language use in rural Guatemala and one of language use in urban Guatemala. Because of this, I have focused this film on individuals from opposing communities to provide a broad scope of the current language use/disuse, circumstances and issues that affect Kaqchikel and its continued vitality as a spoken language. I also rely on history and expert commentary to provide historical and social context. The goal of this film is to shed light on the global issue of language attrition, an issue that effects most of the worlds languages, by providing an in-depth look at the unique issues threatening one language

Comparing host and target environments for distributed Ada programs

The Ada programming language provides a means of specifying logical concurrency by using multitasking. Extending the Ada multitasking concurrency mechanism into a physically concurrent distributed environment which imposes its own requirements can lead to incompatibilities. These problems are discussed. Using distributed Ada for a target system may be appropriate, but when using the Ada language in a host environment, a multiprocessing model may be more suitable than retargeting an Ada compiler for the distributed environment. The tradeoffs between multitasking on distributed targets and multiprocessing on distributed hosts are discussed. Comparisons of the multitasking and multiprocessing models indicate different areas of application

A technique to correct for sample thickness variations for use with IDAPS X-ray radiograph analysis

The Image Data Processing System (IDAPS) at the Marshall Space Flight Center is used to analyze radiographs of metal samples to qualitatively and quantitatively map compositional variations across the samples. When the X-ray radiographs are of samples having thickness variations, corrections must be made to accomplish compositional analysis. A correction technique is described for cylindrical samples and is applied to radiographs of SPAR Experiment 74-18. Uncorrected and corrected images are shown

Ginny Frankenthaler Memorial Scholarship in Library Science

The 2002 Ginny Frankenthaler Memorial Scholarships in Library Science were awarded to Adrienne Lee and Ann Lafferty Lee at the SELA Conference

Rodent Populations and Activities On A Moderately Grazed Mixed Prairie Near Hays, Kansas

The purpose of this investigation was to study rodent populations on a moderately grazed mixed prairie. A working knowledge of the activities of these small mammals, has satisfied to a certain degree the curiosity of the writer. So little work has been done in this plains region that the author felt the need for such an investigation, and hoped to arouse the interest of others along similar lines

From the President

The article offers information on the COMO 2.0 conference of the Georgia Library Association, which will be held from October 15 to 17, 2008 in Athens, Greece