Reply to the comment on 'Validity of certain soft photon amplitudes'

We respond to the accompanying Comment on our paper, 'Validity of certain soft photon amplitudes'. While we hope the discussion here clarifies the issues, we have found nothing which leads to a change in the original conclusions of our paper.Comment: 6 pages, Latex, uses ReVTeX, now publishe

Comment on ``Validity of certain soft-photon amplitudes''

The criteria suggested by Welsh and Fearing (nucl-th/9606040) to judge the validity of certain soft-photon amplitudes are examined. We comment on aspects of their analysis which lead to incorrect conclusions about published amplitudes and point out important criteria which were omitted from their analysis.Comment: 6 pages plus 1 postscript figure, Revte

Disrupting the Ideology of Settled Expectations: Forging New Social Movements to Dismantle the Educational Racial Contract

This paper draws on the concepts of settled expectations and the educational racial contract to provide an analysis of the current social movements calling for the improvement of teacher salaries and work conditions in K-12 schools. This paper argues that some teacher unions’ lack of centering race in their advocacy to ameliorate educational inequities will not radically transform how teachers are treated in the profession, unless there is an increase in motivation to fully recognize the humanity and educational needs of Students of Color in American society. The author calls for teacher activists to reject the false consciousness of their own settled expectations and work on equal footing with Communities of Color to co-author an emancipatory educational contract on the basis of relational equity, respect, and sympathetic touch

Orbital Debris-Debris Collision Avoidance

We focus on preventing collisions between debris and debris, for which there is no current, effective mitigation strategy. We investigate the feasibility of using a medium-powered (5 kW) ground-based laser combined with a ground-based telescope to prevent collisions between debris objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The scheme utilizes photon pressure alone as a means to perturb the orbit of a debris object. Applied over multiple engagements, this alters the debris orbit sufficiently to reduce the risk of an upcoming conjunction. We employ standard assumptions for atmospheric conditions and the resulting beam propagation. Using case studies designed to represent the properties (e.g. area and mass) of the current debris population, we show that one could significantly reduce the risk of nearly half of all catastrophic collisions involving debris using only one such laser/telescope facility. We speculate on whether this could mitigate the debris fragmentation rate such that it falls below the natural debris re-entry rate due to atmospheric drag, and thus whether continuous long-term operation could entirely mitigate the Kessler syndrome in LEO, without need for relatively expensive active debris removal.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Advances in Space Researc

Migration of Interplanetary Dust

We numerically investigate the migration of dust particles with initial orbits close to those of the numbered asteroids, observed trans-Neptunian objects, and Comet Encke. The fraction of silicate asteroidal particles that collided with the Earth during their lifetime varied from 1.1% for 100 micron particles to 0.008% for 1 micron particles. Almost all asteroidal particles with diameter d>4 microns collided with the Sun. The peaks in the migrating asteroidal dust particles' semi-major axis distribution at the n:(n+1) resonances with Earth and Venus and the gaps associated with the 1:1 resonances with these planets are more pronounced for larger particles. The probability of collisions of cometary particles with the Earth is smaller than for asteroidal particles, and this difference is greater for larger particles.Comment: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 15 pages, 8 Figures, submitte

Modeling of the Metal Powder Flow with Carrier Gas in Coaxial Nozzle for Direct Laser Deposition Process

In direct laser deposition process, metal powder is directly fed with carrier gas through the coaxial nozzle into the melt pool created by the laser to form the solid parts. Many operational parameters of the process depend on the characteristic of the powder stream structure below the exit of the coaxial nozzle. In this paper, a computational approach is developed for the simulation of the gas-particle flow in the coaxial nozzle. By taking into account the nozzle geometry and operating parameters, such as width and inclination angle of powder passage and carrier gas velocity, the developed computational code allows the simulation, optimization and control of the delivery of the metal powders.Mechanical Engineerin