Digitised historical newspapers: chronicling America

Historical newspapers, often referred to as “the first draft of history”, are among the richest primary sources available for research into virtually aspect of the life of a nation, whether in the cultural, social, and political or economic sphere. They offer not only information about events in the past, but give us a window into how these were reported and packaged as news. Up till recently, to access these materials, a researcher had to be determined enough to make his way through either aged, often fragile, originals, or reels of microfilm, often difficult to locate and without the benefit of any index. This has now changed fundamentally with the advent of digitization, which has made newspapers both readily available and searchable. The digitization of American newspapers has been undertaken over the last 15 or 20 so years both by commercial companies, where access is charged for, and by various bodies and institutions making their material freely available. Within the first category, there are now a number of companies offering access to a vast range of titles, with sophisticated searching and viewing tools, but these come at a price: resources like ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Gale 19th Century US Newspapers; America’s Historical Newspapers from Readex (a division of Newsbank) are normally only available via a select number of institutions such as academic libraries that are able to afford the subscriptions. The alternative option of taking out a personal subscription to the back files of titles such as New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times is unlikely to appeal to any but the best-heeled researcher

Reading the "Negro Bible": online access to Jet and Ebony

This article gives a very brief account of the rise to prominence of the black owned and run Johnson Publishing Company, with particular emphasis on its earlier years and specifically on the role played by its two most important publications, Ebony and Jet. The late Redd Foxx called Jet "The Negro Bible," and a character in one of poet/playwright Maya Angelou's plays said that "if it wasn't in Jet, it didn't happen.". It then describes how runs of these 2 titles, and others from the same publishing house, are now available online from Google Book Search, before looking at some potential uses of these resources as primary source material for research

Techniques for building highly available distributed file systems

This paper analyzes recent research in the field of distributed file systems, with a particular emphasis on the problem of high availability. Several of the techniques involved in building such a system are discussed individually: naming, replication, multiple versions, caching, stashing, and logging. These techniques range from extensions of ideas used in centralized file systems, through new notions already in use, to radical ideas that have not yet been implemented. A number of working and proposed systems are described in conjunction with the analysis of each technique. The paper concludes that a low degree of replication, a liberal use of client and server caching, and optimistic behavior in the face of network partition are all necessary to ensure high availability

A high energy electron-photon detector employing flash tube arrays

The development of a high energy electromagnetic shower detector for use in high energy electron or photon detection, particularly in machine experiments, is described. The detector is a modified version of a prototype chamber, which was successfully tested, and which is described briefly in this thesis. The detector gives fully digitised information from which incident particle energies and trajectories can be estimated. The detector consists of twelve flash tube arrays sandwiched between lead target. A total of 768 tubes are employed. They have an internal diameter of 0.8 cm a wall thickness of 0.03 cm. and are filled with a gas mixture of Ne (70%) –He (30%) 2% CH (_4) at 2.3 atmospheres pressure. The operation of these tubes under various working conditions has been extensively studied and the results are presented in the thesis. The detector has been tested in the positron beam at the Daresbury Laboratory, where digitised information was obtained using a computerised data acquisition system. The energies of the positrons used ranged from 0.1 to 3.5 GeV. Analysis of the data showed that the chamber operated satisfactorily in high backgrounds of radiation and was very capable in the detection of electromagnetic showers, giving energy and spatial resolutions comparable to those obtained by the conventional, more complex and more expensive detecting systems. However, the use of the detector was restricted to working at several events per minute, due to the build up of large induced clearing fields inside the flash tubes

Away from home: A qualitative exploration of health experiences of Nigerian students in a U.K. university

© Journal of International Students. This study explored the factors that contribute to the health experience of Nigerian students in the United Kingdom. Challenges faced by international students include dietary issues, isolation, stress, depression and others. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted combination of purposive sampling and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit participants for the study. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic content analysis and Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to interpret themes. Two major themes from our findings were discussed under broad headings: Transitional changes and financial capability. These findings have practical implications for Nigerian students’ well being in a U.K. university. Cultural dimension is needed to reduce culture shock experience among international students during sojourning

Beef Cattle Breeding Project Progress Report: Body Composition EPD Determined from Ultrasound Measures

The Iowa State University beef cattle breeding project was initiated in 1996 and is being conducted at the Rhodes and McNay research and demonstration farms. The project uses the field data of the American Angus Association (AAA) along with the research resource cattle of the farms to study questions that will enhance the genetic investigations using the field data