Stellar spectrophotometry in the far ultraviolet Final report, Jul. 1959 - Dec. 1963

Stellar spectrophotometry in vacuum ultraviolet - feasibility of ultraviolet spectrophotometric satellite, interference filter fabrication, vacuum calibration, and X-15 rocket aircraf

A Bayesian Framework for Parameter Estimation in Dynamical Models with Applications to Forecasting

Mathematical models in Biology are powerful tools for the study and exploration of complex dynamics. Nevertheless, bringing theoretical results to an agreement with experimental observations involves acknowledging a great deal of uncertainty intrinsic to our theoretical representation of a real system.
Proper handling of such uncertainties, is key to the successful usage of models to predict experimental or field observations. This problem has been addressed over the years by many tools for model calibration an parameter estimation. In this article we present a general framework for uncertainty analysis and parameter estimation which is designed to handle uncertainties associated with the modeling of dynamic biological systems while remaining agnostic as to the type of model used. We apply the framework to two Influenza transmission models: one deterministic and the other stochastic. The results show that the framework can be applied without modifications to the two types of models and that it performs equally well on both. We also discuss the application of the framework to calibrate models for forecasting purposes.
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The "song triptych": reflections on a Debussyan genre

Debussy composed eight sets of three songs between 1891 and 1913. Containing almost all the mélodies of these years, the series tracks his development from post-Wagnerian maturity to ‘late’ style.While we have several fine readings of individual songs, the distinctive ‘triptych’ form of the Debussyan ‘song cycle’ has received little focused analytical attention. One reason might be glimpsed in Susan Youens’s assertion that these little cycles are not as ‘musically unified as [those] of Schubert, Schumann or Mahler’. Indeed the few existing studies of these tripartite sets generally emphasize textual links over musical ones, often in service of a narrowly ‘narrative’ sense of unity.In this paper, I take a fresh look at the various kinds of textual and musical unity on view in this distinctly Debussyan genre. I begin with a contextual glance into visual culture of the time, which saw a striking revival of interest in painted or printed triptychs. Then, in testing how such ‘painterly’ orientation can qualify our sense of multi-part literary and musical form,I outline an allegorical reading of Debussy’s successive triptychs as an evolving response to the pressures of modernist music historiography

Debussy's string quartet in the Brussels salon of "La Libre Esthetique"

The second performance of Debussy's String Quartet, given by the Ysaye Quartet on an all-Debussy program during the 1894 salon of "La Libre Esthétique" in Brussels, offers an ideal context for a critical reexamination of his musical and aesthetic affinities at this pivotal moment. In the first place, a view to the salon's other three concerts, which honored Beethoven alongside recent works by Societe Nationale composers, encourages reconsideration of Debussy's own response to the "great tradition" in the work he ironically designated "Opus 10." But at the same time, due regard to his other contemporaneous compositional obsessions, as exemplified in the works programmed alongside the Quartet, raises the question as to how such self-conscious dialogue with Classical models related to more pressing, post-Wagnerian musical negotiations. Pursuit of this question through analysis of the first movement's reconfigured sonata form ultimately suggests ways to distinguish, from amid the myriad post-Impressionist artists on view in the "Free Aesthetic" salon itself, those painters whose visual explorations most tellingly paralleled Debussy's own "games" with musical syntax and expression in the early 1890s

Rare Lexical Speech Automatisms in a Case of Progressive Nonfluent Aphasia

The production of aphasic lexical speech automatisms (yes and right) produced by C.S., a man with progressive speech impairment and primary progressive nonfluent aphasia, were analysed across a range of takes varying in complexity. More automatisms were produced during single word and nonword reading and repetition and picture description than during connected reading and counting, suggesting that internally generated (picture description) and externally triggered (single word and nonword reading and repetition) were equally affected. In addition, a complex speech task (connected reading) produced then fewest automatisms than easier ones (single words). However, tasks where there were increased opportunities for disinhibition produced more automatisms. Results do not suggest that the intrinsic or extrinsic motor speech systems are separately damaged, but do suggest that increased opportunities for disinhibition may produce more automatisms

Jackson's Parrot: Samuel Beckett, Aphasic Speech Automatisms, and Psychosomatic Language

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s10912-015-9375-zThis article explores the relationship between automatic and involuntary language in the work of Samuel Beckett and late nineteenth-century neurological conceptions of language that emerged from aphasiology. Using the work of John Hughlings Jackson alongside contemporary neuroscientific research, we explore the significance of the lexical and affective symmetries between Beckett’s compulsive and profoundly embodied language and aphasic speech automatisms. The interdisciplinary work in this article explores the paradox of how and why Beckett was able to search out a longed-for language of feeling that might disarticulate the classical bond between the language, intention, rationality and the human, in forms of expression that seem automatic and 'readymade'

Measurement of Synchrotron x-ray energies and line shapes using diffraction markers

Standard reference markers for accurate, reproducible synchrotron x-ray energies are obtained using a three Si crystal spectrometer. The first two crystals are in the monochromator and the third is used to obtain diffraction markers which monitor the energy. Then for any value of the glancing angle on the reference Si crystal the energy for the (333) diffraction must occur at 3/4 that of the (444) and 3/5 of that for the (555). This establishes for the first time an absolute synchrotron energy scale. Higher-order diffractions are used to determine excitation line profiles. We conclude that the use of reference diffractions is necessary to measure reproducible x-ray energies and to analyze the incident photons\u27 line profile. The detection of diffractions near the edge of measurement and near the Cu edge will provide a fast secondary standard which will allow comparison of edge data between different laboratories. The diffraction profiles will allow the proper analysis of spectral line widths