Observing Visibility and Sky Color

The purpose of this activity is to observe, document, and classify changes in visibility and sky color over time and to understand the relationship between sky color, visibility, and aerosols in the atmosphere. The intended outcome is that students become aware of the changes in visibility and sky color due to particles suspended in the air. Educational levels: Primary elementary, Intermediate elementary, Middle school, High school

Four pieces of music with critical commentary

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The commentaries contained in this volume supplement the four pieces of chamber music I composed in my research toward the Master of Philosophy degree. Those pieces, in chronological order of completion, are It Plays You for saxophone quartet, I Am the Rose of Sharon for six voices and string trio, The Opposite of the World for eleven instruments, and Trying to get the feeling back that I had in 1972 for solo viola. The commentaries aim to establish the cultural suppositions on whose basis these pieces were conceived, the technical and aesthetic considerations that informed their composition, and the strategies by which they advance the author's critical project

Estimating spectral irradiance from measurements in seven spectral bands

Accurate measurement and characterisation of fluctuations in the irradiance environment is important for many areas of optical remote sensing. This paper reports a method of estimating spectral irradiance over the VNIR region (400 - 1100nm) from the radiance of a calibrated reference panel, measured in seven narrow (10nm) spectral bands. Earlier work established the potential for estimating spectral irradiance from multi-band data using a neural network technique (Milton et al., 2000). The approach described here uses linear regression analysis to regenerate the irradiance spectrum from data in seven reference wavelengths. The method was tested using data from a specially designed multiband radiometer – the INdependent SPectral IRradiance Estimator (INSPIRE). The irradiance spectrum was partitioned into a number of distinct regions within each of which the spectral irradiance was estimated from irradiance measured at one of the reference wavelengths. The precision of the method was found to be better than ±5% over most wavelengths from 400nm to 1100nm. Furthermore, the slope coefficients of the individual regression models were found to be sensitive to the sky radiance conditions, especially over the region 600-760nm, and improvement in the precision of the predicted spectrum (to within ±3%) was obtained by taking the diffuse-to-global (D:G) irradiance ratio at the time of measurement into account

Look Into My Eyes

Freddie Yauner, a lecturer in Design for Industry, believes that design can engage, inform and make complex concepts accessible. Through thought provoking projects and installations which have exhibited in New York, Paris and London, Freddie uses critical design to challenge convention and encourage debate. Utilising this approach, Freddie, teamed up with typographer and graphic designer Paul Robson, also from our school and Cathy John, a freelance writer to create their unique publication - Look into my Eyes. Through combined expertise Look into my Eyes was created, a book that explores the labyrinth of decisions facing MS patients from day one of their diagnosis and examines the impact each of these decisions could have on their day to day lives. Look into my Eyes was created as part of a wider programme of initiatives that use real life experiences and interaction design to place audiences firmly in the shoes of an MSer, with the aim of increasing understanding and acceptance of MS for patients, carers and health professionals alike

Multi-Channel Kondo Necklace

A multi--channel generalization of Doniach's Kondo necklace model is formulated, and its phase diagram studied in the mean--field approximation. Our intention is to introduce the possible simplest model which displays some of the features expected from the overscreened Kondo lattice. The $N$ conduction electron channels are represented by $N$ sets of pseudospins \vt_{j}, $j=1, ... , N$, which are all antiferromagnetically coupled to a periodic array of |\vs|=1/2 spins. Exploiting permutation symmetry in the channel index $j$ allows us to write down the self--consistency equation for general $N$. For $N>2$, we find that the critical temperature is rising with increasing Kondo interaction; we interpret this effect by pointing out that the Kondo coupling creates the composite pseudospin objects which undergo an ordering transition. The relevance of our findings to the underlying fermionic multi--channel problem is discussed.Comment: 29 pages (2 figures upon request from [email protected]), LATEX, submitted for publicatio

A Note on Ted Hughes and Jonathan Swift

Ted Hughes, three months before he died, when he had completed the huge project that became Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (1992) and the two long original essays in the collected prose of Winter Pollen (1994), complained that he had spent too much time writing prose. He even believed that this had somehow destroyed his immune system (Letters 719). He wrote that, avoiding the issue of engaging with the material in what became Birthday Letters, he ‘took refuge in prose’ (ibid). Certainly his major poetry collections were behind him (with River in 1983). He described his late absorption in prose with a reference to an image from an iconic, not to say mythologised, moment from his days as a Cambridge undergraduate: ‘5or 6 years nothing but prose – nothing but burning the foxes’ (ibid). In his famous record of a dream he was writing his weekly essay on the English course, this time on Samuel Jonson, and a fox had appeared with burnt paws which he planted on the page and said ‘You are destroying us’ (see Winter Pollen pp. 8-9). Hughes switched, as was actually not uncommon amongst English students, to Archaeology and Anthropology for his final year