William P. Bidelman

William Pendry Bidelman ( ; September 25, 1918 – May 3, 2011) whose friends called him "Billy", was an American astronomer.
Born in Los Angeles, and raised in North Dakota, he was noted for classifying the spectra of stars, and considered a pioneer in recognizing and classifying sub-groups of the peculiar stars.
Bidelman's undergraduate degree was from Harvard College, and his Ph.D. in astronomy was from the University of Chicago under advisor William Wilson Morgan. He was a physicist in the Army during World War II. A professional astronomer for over 50 years, Bidelman taught for ~41 years at The University of Chicago, The University of California,
He co-discovered the class of barium stars with Philip Keenan, the phosphorus and the mercury stars, and was the first to describe the hydrogen-deficient carbon stars.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Bidelman was raised in North Dakota, where he met his future wife of 69 years. He was a father of four and a grandfather. As an Emeritus Professor William P. Bidelman continued working in astronomy after he retired from teaching, and was 92 when he died in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Education.
As an undergraduate at Harvard College, Bidelman received an Honorary Harvard College Scholarship for academic excellence in 1939. He graduated in 1940. Bidelman entered the graduate program at the University of Chicago affiliated with Yerkes Observatory. His doctoral advisor was William W.Morgan, who discovered the first definite evidence that our Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, and, with Philip Keenan, the Morgan-Keener (MK) system of stellar classification. As a graduate student, Bidelman assisted Morgan and Keenan by taking some of the spectrograms for their book, "An Atlas of Stellar Spectra".
For his 1943 dissertation, Bidelman reported the Double Cluster in the I Persei association is physically associated with neighborhood supergiant stars, and is part of an association of O- and B-type stars, and designated 47 stars as its members. Bidelman received his Ph.D. in 1943. The Yerkes astronomy graduate program directed by Otto Struve began issuing degrees in 1940, and he was among their first ten graduates.
Career.
Bidelman served in the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground for over 2 years during World War II. He attended the 1942 American Astronomical Society's annual meeting despite a small assembly due to gasoline rationing during World War II.
University of Chicago, Yerkes Observatory.
In 1945, when Bidelman left Aberdeen he was hired at Yerkes as an Instructor. Under Otto Struve Yerkes became the leading astrophysics center, when he directed it. In addition to Bidelman, by 1946 the Yerkes astronomy staff included Paul Ledoux, Arne Slettebak, Armin Deutsch, Marshall Wrubel, Arthur D. Code, Carlos Cesco, Víctor M. Blanco, W. W. Morgan, Otto Struve, Jesse L. Greenstein, Gerard P. Kuiper, George Van Biesbroeck, Louis G. Henyey Anne B. Underhill, Guido Münch, Nancy G. Roman, and the two future Nobel Prize winners, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Gerhard Herzberg. Other astronomers at Yerkes when Bidelman was there were Kaj Strand, W. Albert Hiltner, Aden B. Meinel, and visiting professors Bengt Strömgren from Denmark, and Jan Oort, Hendrik C. van de Hulst and Adriaan Blaauw from the Netherlands. George Herbig, also there, remembered it as an "exciting, stimulating place to work" and a "powerhouse in astronomy" while under Struve's direction.
Bidelman spent long hours observing in remote west Texas at McDonald Observatory because he, like other Yerkes faculty, was also an astronomer at the University of Texas (UT). At the suggestion of Struve, the two universities had cooperated to create McDonald Observatory when the UT system had no astronomy department but W. J. McDonald gave them money in 1926 for an observatory, while in Wisconsin, the Yerkes astronomers needed a larger telescope but lacked the funds to obtain one.
Otto Struve, who directed both Yerkes and McDonald, has been described as dedicated yet demanding. His managerial style included daily inspections of the faculty to see if they were working. Despite reports of tensions there was also "close knit camaraderie" and "boisterous parties" evidenced by Yerkes "spontaneous party songs" including "The Billy Bidelman Song". Sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", it consisted of repeating three times the line: "Struve, Kuiper, Hiltner, Morgan, Chandrasekhar too," followed by: "And Billy Bidelman".
In 1946, W. W. Morgan and William P. Bidelman published a paper on interstellar reddening using the MK system of spectral classifications and photoelectric photometry. Morgan later said this paper with Bidelman on interstellar reddening was "the principal paper along the way" to the UBV system, which he devised with Harold Johnson.
In 1947, Bidelman became first to note the concentration of type M supergiant stars around "χ" Per, suggesting they were young Population I objects.
This group, along with the Double Cluster, was later named the Perseus OB1 Association. Based on its radial velocity, Bidelman also became first to see that S Persei is part of the Per OB1 association, which was later confirmed. Among the first stars that were studied at far-infrared wavelengths, M-type supergiants may be used to find the spiral arms of our galaxy. Bidelman found four red supergiant stars in 1947, bringing the total then known to 13. How red supergiant stars evolved was considered an "astronomical puzzle", so the Double Cluster was used to test ideas about the evolution of red supergiant stars during the 1960s. The M-type supergiants of "h" and "χ" Per became the prototypes of this class of stars, and the major source of data for their properties.
Unlike most the usual relatively young star clusters including few supergiant stars, 18 were found in the Double Cluster of Perseus by 2007, which Robert F. Wing noted as the 60th anniversary of Bidelman's "important paper", saying Bidelman's 1947 two-dimensional classifications of the then-known supergiants in "h" and "χ" Per had "served as the benchmark" for later studies of the red supergiant stars.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, so stars displaying very little hydrogen in their atmospheres are chemically peculiar stars. There are many kinds of hydrogen-deficient stars. Upsilon Sagittarii is a hydrogen-deficient star. It is a very luminous, variable, and unusual eclipsing binary with a spectrum quite difficult to classify. In 1949, Bidelman was possibly the first to suggest that Upsilon (υ) Sagittarii's violet-shifted absorption lines, which apparently takes place during some conjunctions of this binary pair when star 2 advances in front of star 1, could be caused by gas streaming from the primary star. Bidelman suggested when the displaced H-alpha(Hα) absorption line was present, it happened at regular intervals when the primary star was furthest away from Earth.
Upsilon Sag was the only example of a star of its type until Bidelman discovered another star similar to it, HD 30353. This star became known as "Bidelman's star".
Bidelman and Keenan were the first to regard the barium star red giants as different from other red giants and to describe them as a spectroscopic class. Barium is a heavy metal element made by certain advanced stars with a helium-burning shell surrounding a spent carbon core In addition to the λ4554 barium line, some other characteristics of the group were two enhanced strontium (SR II) lines, at λ4077 and another at λ4215 blended with the head of the CN band, and also an enhanced G band due to CH and possibly CN. There are some supergiant stars with these BA II, strontium lines and CN band, but the G and K-type stars Bidelman and Keenan described did not appear to be supergiants.
G, K, and M-type giants, the most complex area of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (HR) diagram, have spectra so complicated "many astronomers have shied away from studying them".
Eventually, Robert McClure discovered that essentially all barium stars began with a companion star that made the s-process elements, and when the companion star aged into a white dwarf, a stellar wind moved what was made by one star to the other star, a shifting of mass from an Asymptotic giant branch(AGB) star that turned into a white dwarf, to its companion star.
Bidelman was the first to find three unusual A- and F-type high-latitude bright stars, HR 6144, 89 Herculis, and HD 161796 in the high galactic plane, an unexpected place for supergiant stars to be found.
Astronomers expect to find massive young stars that are five to twenty times the mass of the Sun, on the galactic plane, a place where stars form, but it is rare to find stars like Her 89, with a spectrum that appears to be a young supergiant so far from the Galactic plane. Regarding these stars with characteristics of Population I supergiants, yet found at high galactic latitude, another astronomer wrote, "If I were a theoretician, I would simply say, 'They can't be, therefore they aren't'".
Bidelman's 1951 study also isolated the G- and K-type giant stars with weak G-bands as a class of peculiar giants.
University of California, Lick Observatory (1953–1963).
In October 1953, Bidelman was hired as an assistant astronomer at Lick Observatory. This observatory of the University of California is located on Mount Hamilton (California). The Bidelman family lived on Mount Hamilton and the children attended a one-room school where it was an hour's drive to the nearest grocery store. According to Stanislaus Vasilevskis, due to the lack of a high school for children and other features, Bidelman moved from Mount Hamilton to San Jose, and commuted to work.
Otto Struve had left the Chicago for The University of California in 1950. Bidelman lectured for Struve's Graduate Seminar on Astrophysics at Berkeley in 1955. He and George Herbig also gave ten lectures together on stellar spectroscopy at Berkeley during the 1954–55 academic year. Bidelman served on the program committee for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting in 1955.
In 1953, Bidelman was the first to describe the hydrogen–deficient carbon star group, although Hans Ludendorff had found the appearance of weak hydrogen in R CrB in 1906.
In 1951, Bidelman informed other astronomers of his intentions to publish a catalogue with data for all known emission-line stars and requested they contribute data to be incorporated into it. He researched emission-line stars for his catalogue and bibliography at Yerkes Observatory (Wisconsin) and McDonald Observatory (Texas), and spent six weeks during the summer at the Mt. Wilson and Palomar observatories (California), funded by the Department of Naval Research. While at Yerkes, Morgan, Strömgren, and Chandrasekhar had encouraged Bidelman to prepare such a catalogue, and his catalogue and bibliography of 1,640 middle and late-type emission-line stars was among the ten most-cited papers in astronomy in 1954. Bidelman's catalogue included many stars with Ca II H and K emission. In 1996, Helmut Abt researched which papers published in 1954 were cited most frequently from 1955 to 1995, and Bidelman's Catalog and Bibliography ranked among the top four.
Bidelman served on the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Nominating Committee and Publications Committees in 1955. When Seth B. Nicholson, Chairman of the Publications Committee for thirteen years retired, he nominated Bidelman as the next chairman. Bidelman resigned from the Nominating Committee, and became the Editor of the "Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific". the scientific journal of the ASP, which gives the gives the Bruce Gold Medal.
In 1957, the Directors discussed but did not act on making the Editor a salaried position. In 1958, the Publications Committee published over 100 papers, over 20 book reviews, and two symposia. Re-elected to the Board of Directors, Bidelman was authorized to spend up to $1,000 for editorial assistance in 1959, and they published over 90 papers from ~38 institutions, 15 book reviews and a symposium. His report noted it was a time-consuming task, made more difficult because he had been out of the country for two months that year. in 1960, they published six issues including 100 papers from ten countries, other articles and book reviews, and fulfilled reprint orders.
He was Third Vice President of ASP in 1961, and they published six issues totaling 543 pages, including 100 articles from the United States and nine other countries, and other papers. Bidelman's annual report said being "largely responsible for the welfare" of the journal for approximately five years had been a considerable burden and having found it impossible to find a sufficiently competent technical assistant on Mount Hamilton and not being able to fulfill his obligations to both the University and to ASP, he requested to resign effective July 1, 1961, He was re-elected to the Board of Directors. his resignation became effective in mid-August and an assistant editor was added to the staff in September. Bidelman summarized his experiences in a 1989 talk entitled "A funny thing happened on the way to the Stanford Press - reminiscences of Five Years with the "PASP"".
In 1962, Bidelman helped Soviet astronomers edit a manuscript for English readers, He continued on the ASP Publications Committee, no longer as chair, in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970. When Helmut Abt explored the number of reference errors in astronomy journal articles in 1992, he said the only astronomical editor he was aware of who checked every reference in his journal and found many errors "to which he called the author's attention—was William P. Bidelman when he edited these "Publications"".
While he was editor, Bidelman was the general supervisor of the students at Lick Observatory. According to Hyron Spinrad, Bidelman encouraged astronomy students at the Berkeley campus to make observations at Lick Observatory. Spinrad recalled: "I don't know how he was regarded on Mt. Hamilton, but at Berkeley he was regarded as sort of a good will emissary from the mountain".
In March 1962, Bidelman used three peculiar stars, 3 Centauri, κ Cancri and 112 Herculis, to make the first certain identification of the rare element gallium II (Ga II) in stellar spectra, with lab work assistance by Charles H. Corliss at the National Bureau of Standards, which they reported in May 1962.
T Tauri, the prototype of the T-Tauri stars, is a young star found in the constellation Taurus. In November 1962, Bidelman found ~100 times more gallium I in the spectrum of T Tauri than is found in the spectrum of the sun. Bidelman noted that it was at present "impossible to explain these abundance anomalies in terms of known nucleogenesis patterns".
University of Michigan (1963–1969).
Bidelman became a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan in Fall 1963.
At the University of Michigan, Freeman D. Miller and Bidelman began to direct the complete reactivation of the Curtis Schmidt telescope, to search for stars with spectra that showed unusual chemical compositions. After the University of Michigan agreed in 1966 to transfer the telescope to South America, the telescope was moved to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, for astronomical viewing in the Southern Hemisphere which was completed in 1967. Under a National Science Foundation grant to Bidelman, Darrell Jack MacConnell moved the telescope, and the two later conducted research using objective-prism plates taken with by the Curtis Schmidt.
In the early 1960s Bidelman gave a colloquium at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where Bidelman suggested it would be feasible to reclassify all stars listed in the Henry Draper Catalogue on the MK system. Graduate student, Nancy Houk heard Bidelman's colloquium and became interested in classifying. Only about 23,000 of the HD stars had Morgan-Keenan classifications, and those had been classified by different people using different standards and sometimes chosen out of interest, creating an biased sample.
Reclassifying all HD stars the same way would create a vast data set that could be used as a teaching data set for a computer to encourage automated classifications which would be as better telescopes looked at for fainter stars. Houk eventually led the Michigan Survey and because it was anticipated that the work which she began in 1970 would not be completed until 2004, Bidelman used the same Curtis Schmidt objective-prism lens plates to begin an "early results" program. Bidelman recalled:
By 1964, Bidelman reported finding ~150 peculiar stars, about 80% were believed to be new discoveries. In 1966, Bidelman reported finding Praseodymium III in χ Lupi and with the Curtis Schmidt telescope, Bidelman and Robert Victor made provisional identifications of 23 peculiar stars including 3 new metallic line stars. By 1969, Bidelman and his assistants discovered ~90 new, mainly F- and G-type supergiant stars, 33 new B-type emission (Be) stars, ~75 new metallic-line stars, over 150 new peculiar A-type stars, and other astronomical objects of interest.
With the help of MacConnell and research assistants Bond, Frye and Humphreys, Bidelman discovered 53 new Barium (Ba II) stars, 26 new late-type giants which had strong Ca II emission lines, new supergiants of various spectral classes and G- and K-type stars with very weak CH absorption in their spectra.
The first worldwide milestone in creating one or more astronomical data centers was the first discussion in 1966 at a National Science Foundation event in Maryland. The second was when Bidelman was president of the International Astronomical Union's Commission 45 and they discussed the issue at the 1967 IAU meeting in Prague Czechoslovakia. At this meeting in Prague: "W.P. Bidelman spoke of the need for a general reference catalogue giving full bibliographic data for individual stars". Bidelman said it would include about a million stars and require the resources of an organization like NASA, and some members of the Commission supported the proposal.
The University of Texas at Austin (1969–1970).
In 1969, Bidelman was a Professor in the astronomy department at Austin. By the end of the 1960s, astronomers had begun to discuss the possibility of creating astronomical data centers. In a letter in 1969, Luboš Perek wrote that an astronomer who wanted a star's MK classification might search through 5 to 100 papers "according to his temperament" then give up, or take a plate to determine the type, or choose another star. Astronomers might observe the same star under different names. Catalogs, though useful, were often created as personal endeavors by astronomers near retirement and usually published only once, and while astronomical data increased rapidly, there were few making catalogs. In 1969, Bidelman became one of the six astronomers funded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific to study the feasibility of a computerized data center.
In 1970, the first official IAU debate on astronomical data centers took place. After a temporary IAU working group held meetings, and representatives from 16 countries showed interest, the IAU established the first permanent Working Group on Numerical Data, and Bidelman became one of its "main data center leaders" to plan centers to make data more reliable and accessible. Their first goal was to distribute information on existing Data Centers as well as lists of data errors. The Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center, NASA Astrophysics Data System, and data centers in Japan and by the Astronomical Council of the USSR Academy of Science were among the first centers developed, and said many goals in creating data centers were eventually met and, as A. Heck noted, "sometimes largely facilitated by not-so-quickly-expected technologies such as the electronic networking of the planet".
While at Austin in 1970, Bidelman, MacConnell and Frye published findings on six new stars showing strong neutral helium lines whose spectra appeared different from other "hydrogen deficient" stars, on objective prism plates from Cerro Tololo, Chile.
By the end of the school year, Bidelman resigned to accept the position of Director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory and Chairman of Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Ohio.
Case Western Reserve University (1970–2011).
Bidelman directed the Warner and Swasey Observatory from 1970 to 1975, and was a Professor of astronomy from 1970 to 1986. In June 1970, Bidelman began as Chairman and Director. Bidelman's office was at the old Taylor Road Observatory, given to the University by the Warner & Swasey Company in 1920. Due to light pollution from the city of Cleveland, by the 1950s viewing was difficult and the Burrell Schmidt telescope was relocated ~30 miles away to Geauga County.
In 1973, Bidelman and MacConnell provided data on a variety of B-emission (Be) and shell stars, peculiar stars, weak-metal stars and other bright stars of the southern hemisphere, covering ~81% of the southern sky. They said when completed, Houk's more comprehensive study would "provide spectral date of inestimable value to stellar astronomers" and should supersede their report, but they did it as an "early result" study. Using CTIO objective –prism plates they found nearly 800 previously unknown A-type peculiar stars. They also found 34 weak G-band giants stars in the southern hemisphere. Their study was called a "major contribution" in providing data to help identify the relatively rare Population II stars. It created an unbiased sample, and doubled the number of known peculiar A-type (Ap) stars. After nineteen years of study by various investigators, in 2014, Beers et al. studied 302 of the Bidelman-MacConnell possible weak-metal stars and concluded that a metal-weak thick disk (MWTD) is present in the Milky Way galaxy, and noted its importance in understanding the development of our galaxy.
In 1962 and 1966, Bidelman had reported that the wavelength of "λ" 3984 varied somewhat from star to star, and stated differences in the ratios of mercury isotopes could be the reason. Bidelman was the first to note this, and in 1974, Michaud, Reeves and Charland, considering the isotopic abundances to be real, and that Hg was in fact overabundant and not an artifact of blending, suggested the mercury overabundances were due to radiation pressure that caused the element to pile up until radiation and gravitational forces almost cancelled each other, then its isotopes would separate, sorting themselves. Michaud suggested that element segregation would proceed naturally due to gravitational settling and radiation pressure if the stellar atmosphere was steady.
In 1975, Bidelman and San-Gak Lee reported spectral classifications for 601 proper-motion stars that had been listed in both a Lowell Observatory survey under Henry L. Giclas, and the "Luyten" "Two-Tenths Catalogue" and supplement, and their report included data from Gerard Kuiper. Kuiper and Bidelman had been at Yerkes Observatory at the same time.
 For six years Kuiper had worked to classify ~3,200 high proper motion stars using ~9,000 spectra taken at Yerkes and McDonald, and with an added 300 spectra from Luyten, Kuiper had planned to publish the data with Luyten. Bidelman called it "very important spectroscopic work and a "large-scale assault" on the problem of unclassified proper motion stars.
When Kuiper ran out of stars of large proper motion and parallax in a region of sky, he observed the planets and their moons "nicely lined up" in that region. When Kuiper found evidence of an atmosphere on Saturn's moon, Titan, his research changed focus and much of his data on proper motion stars remained unpublished. Kuiper died in 1973.
Following his paper with Lee, Bidelman had "renewed interest" in proper motion stars and asked whether Kuiper's unpublished proper motion material could be found. With help from the Kuiper Memorial Committee at the University of Arizona, Ewen A. Whitaker, Elizabeth Roemer, and Helmut Abt, Bidelman obtained copies of five of Kuiper's notebooks which had stars noted by name and right ascension without declination, and many with multiple spectra and more than one classification. Bidelman established a card file for every star or binary pair, and sought to find the exact star Kuiper observed. His goal was not to create definitive spectral types or change Kuiper's classifications, but to set out clearly "the enormous amount of useful spectral data relating to these objects gathered by an energetic and most talented astronomer to whom many, including the writer, owe much. This work represents a partial repayment of that debt". He estimated there could be ~1,000 stars with better spectral types than otherwise known. Bidelman worked on Kuiper's data. and published it in 1985.
In 1975, Peter Pesch replaced Bidelman as Director of the Observatory and Chairman of the Astronomy department. While Bidelman had been the observatory director, three of Bidelman's graduate students, Craig Chester, Cynthia Irvine, and William Smethells, were part of a group from CWRU who wanted to begin their own observatory. The outlook for employment in research astronomy was bleak, so the group began a mail-order business and took part-time jobs to solve their "food on the table problem" while seeking to build an observatory in California, and Bidelman gave them their first cash donation. Other donations followed, and the Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy opened in 1984.
In 1976, Bidelman headed an IAU working group on the proper designation for astronomical objects. At a 1978 symposium discussion following a paper Bidelman stated he wanted to make a slightly off-topic point about nomenclature, and asked whether the star under discussion, VI Cyg #5 is the same star as BD+40° 4220. Informed it is and another one of its names is V729 Cyg, Bidelman responded, "Well, I'd like to say, as a member of an IAU Commission concerned with such things, that one should adopt a consistent labeling for a star". After being seconded by Underhill, he added: "We don't all have encyclopedic memories".
The Warner and Swasey Observatory in Cleveland, Ohio, suffered from light pollution, and was moved first to a better viewing site in Ohio, then later to Kitt Peak, Arizona, in 1979. By 1979, Houk had classified 69,000 southern stars. As she finished the southern classifications, Bidelman became responsible to oversee taking the northern plates at CWRU's new Kitt Peak observation site in Arizona. The Curtis Schmidt telescope that was used for the southern all-sky survey was a twin to the Burrell Schmidt used in the northern survey.
When the telescope at Kitt Peak became operational in 1981, Bidelman continued his "early-results" research involving "systematic, but nonetheless somewhat cursory inspection" to classify stars for the northern hemisphere that had been given HD numbers, and published the spectral data in 1983. Bidelman identified 175 peculiar or otherwise interesting stars, most thought to be new discoveries.
Bidelman was the first to identify the peculiar F str λ4077 dwarfs. As part of the "early results" program, in 1981, 1983 and 1985 Bidelman found 21 stars he identified as "F str λ 4077". Almost nothing was known about these stars other than Bidelman's spectral classification. Later researchers found evidence that about half are main-sequence counterparts of Barium stars.
Bidelman retired from teaching at Case Western in 1986. He became a Professor Emeritus, and in 1990 and 1991 continued to do research and remained active in the astronomy department. As a Professor Emeritus, Bidelman continued with the Henry Draper Reclassification project with Houk and the Michigan Spectral Survey and compiled identification of stars in the "IRAS" Low-Resolution Spectral Catalogue.
Bidelman became interested in the Star of Bethlehem and argued it was involved planetary conjunctions. In 1991, Bidelman used astronomical tables by Bryant Tuckerman and Jean Meeus to investigate Roger Sinnott's suggestion that two close conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter on the morning of August 12, 3 BC, and the evening of June 17, 2 BC, could explain the Star of Bethlehem. He found that for these two planets, an easily observable morning conjunction is "invariably followed" by an evening conjunction approximately ten months later whenever the morning conjunction has an elongation of at least 19°. Bidelman found 28 such pairs of Venus-Jupiter conjunctions in the ~100 years before the birth of Christ, although the 3 and 2 BC conjunctions appeared closer together. Bidelman noted that John Mosley has shown the August 3 BC morning conjunction was ~4.3 arcminutes, and the June 2 BC evening conjunction was an "extremely close" 0.5 arcminutes, and Bidelman considered some historical events to determine the date of Christ's birth, and noted these conjunctions took place in Leo, a constellation associated with Judaism and the Tribe of Judah. Bidelman suggested the conjunctions in 3 and 2 BC are a plausible explanation for the Star of Bethlehem.
In a brief 1991 Newsweek on Air interview about the Star of Bethlehem, when asked when and why he became interested in the topic, Bidelman said he had always been an astronomer, and it is of astronomical interest. When asked whether he thought his theory demystified Christmas, Bidelman replied:
In 1992, almost 50 years after his thesis paper, Bidelman stated "On revient toujours à ses premières amours" ("One always returns to his first loves") when he returned to the topic of his dissertation in 1992 and he considered it "perhaps worth mentioning" that two stars seen then had completely changed their spectral appearance.
In 1993, Bidelman provided data on 177 known and possible asymptotic giant branch stars, saying he was confident many would "prove to be interesting and important. Unfortunately, I don't know which ones!" Bidelman's list of high Strömgren c1 index high galactic latitude stars included promising post-AGB candidates to lead to finds of similar objects to better understand the post-AGB sub-groups of stars.
Invited to speak at the 1996 IAU Symposium on carbon stars Bidelman declined on advice from his doctor, but sent introductory comments in which he said:
Pointing out that observers sometimes "note things that don't seem to make much sense, but which later are realized to have been very significant indeed", he traced a brief history of "this stellar oddball" and concluded:
In May 1998, the Case astronomy students and graduates held a 2-day "Kth" reunion to honor Bidelman and new retiree Peter Pesch.
Bidelman (1969) once said that the problem of the Ap stars (1969) is that "stars of unusual spectrum are doing unusual things". In 2002, Bidelman suggested the peculiar magnetic A stars may have once been close binaries that "merged and are now in the process of learning to live as single objects", and suggested in 2005 that Przybylski's Star may be one such object.
In Case Western University's 2008 astronomy department newsletter, Chair Heather Morrison wrote they were sorry to say goodbye to Professor Bidelman, who had turned 90 "and has decided to finish his distinguished career in Astronomy by retiring for a second time".
Honors.
Bidelman was elected to the American Astronomical Society in 1944. and was a member for over 65 years. He was president of the Cleveland Astronomical Society from 1973 to 1976. Bidelman was elected to the international science honor society Sigma Xi by Case Western Reserve University. The minor planet 9398 Bidelman (1994 SH3), discovered by the Arizona group Spacewatch at Kitt Peak on September 28, 1994 was named in his honor. It is an outer main belt asteroid. The peculiar supergiant star HD 30353 is named "Bidelman's star".
Personal life.
William Pendry Bidelman was born on September 25, in 1918 in Los Angeles, California. Bidelman's father, the son of Howard Bidelman and Julia Pendry, had the same name but Bidelman did not use the designation "Jr.," after college. When the family experienced financial difficulties, Bidelman moved with his mother to Grand Forks, North Dakota where his grandparents raised him. As a boy, Bidelman wrote to Alfred H. Joy at Mount Wilson, to ask how to become an astronomer. They later served together on the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Publications Committee in 1955 and 1956. He met his future wife, Verna Shirk, in grade school and became "smitten" with her at age 10.
In a Grand Forks Central High School competition, Bidelman's tribute to North Dakota was judged best, and was read on October 20, 1935 at the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, an annual event for essays by high school students about their states. In his essay, Bidelman praised North Dakota for its plains "covered with an ocean of wheat, rolling gently in the soft summer breezes", its rolling prairies, mighty rivers; International Peace Garden "in the heart of this continent", its industry, agriculture, and its "scores of untold secrets which have not been discovered to this day". He finished by quoting state poet James W. Foley, by writing: "North Dakota, hail to you!"
At a 1977 IAU Symposium honoring the memory of [[Henry Norris Russell]], Bidelman recalled reading during his high school years the "fascinating and inspiring" monthly articles Russell wrote for "Scientific American". Saying it was "an important part of my early scientific education", Bidelman suggested they might be worth reprinting.
Asked to make some remarks at that symposium, Bidelman said he had little personal knowledge of Russell, but could believe the comments he had heard that Russell was both a great scientist and a great human being, because he had found it to be true of most other influential astronomers. In addition to Alfred Joy, Bidelman recalled "with great pleasure" [[Bart Bok]], [[Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin]] and [[Martin Schwarzschild]] from Harvard, and "the whole motley Yerkes crew: Struve, Greenstein, Henyey, Chandrasekhar, Kuiper and all the rest", and stated he marveled at his youthful contacts with them and their passionate devotion to science and to life. He ended his speech by saying:
Among Bidelman's many interests were [[baseball]], [[philately]], music, and [[Square dance|square dancing]]. His wife, Verna Pearl Shirk was born in 1918 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. She graduated from the [[University of North Dakota]], and was a teacher and a poet who used her time for family, friends, and church work. The Bidelman's had four children, and also grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One daughter died in 2000, and Verna Bidelman died in 2009. They were married 69 years. Bidelman died at 92 on May 3, 2011 in Tennessee.
Select bibliography.
These journal articles are William P. Bidelman's five most-cited works on the NASA [[Astrophysics Data System]] as of July 2017.
External links.
[[Category:1918 births]]
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[[Category:People from Grand Forks, North Dakota]]
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Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers

The Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers (LPAT ; ) is an assessment examination for the language proficiency of teachers in Hong Kong. According to regulations, any teachers teaching English language or Putonghua (a.k.a. Mandarin Chinese) in Hong Kong, where Cantonese Chinese is mostly spoken, must have passed the LPAT, i.e. achieved a grade of not lower than Level 3 in each part of the assessment.
Introduction.
The LPAT examination is jointly held by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) and the Education Bureau (EDB) of the Hong Kong Government. There are two assessment examinations held annually in March and September, candidates are required to apply for the examination in beginning of October(?-no later than one month-?) before the examination commence and application is open to public. However, after 2006, the examination will be held once only in March. Since the Academic Year of 2004, all new language teachers are required to have the minimum requirement of LPAT met before they can start teaching full-time.
HKEAA administer the oral and written portion of the examination, while the classroom language assessment is administered by the EDB.
English Language.
The English language examination consists of five papers:
Putonghua.
The Putonghua examination consists of four papers:


6592 Goya


Asymmetric cointegration

In economics, testing for an asymmetric cointegration relationship among variables implies distinguishing the positive and the negative effects of the error obtained from the cointegration regression. In order to do that, economists usually use the asymmetric cointegration framework proposed by Enders and Siklos in 2001. Asymmetric cointegration comes from the analysis of multivariate combinations arising from the decomposition of the series into positive and negative values of its cumulative sums; see Lardic and Mignon (2008, p. 484).
According to Cook (2006), testing for a potential asymmetric cointegration extends the analysis in further directions to allow for a possibility that other standard cointegration tests may fail to detect an underlying cointegration relationship and therefore, the threshold autoregressive and momentum-threshold cointegration tests are applied to investigate the hypothesis that the cointegration relationship between banking sector development indicators and remittances is of an asymmetric form which splits the speed of adjustments into two parts based on the direction of the equilibrium error.


Dot plot (statistics)

A dot chart or dot plot is a statistical chart consisting of data points plotted on a fairly simple scale, typically using filled in circles. There are two common, yet very different, versions of the dot chart. The first has been used in hand-drawn (pre-computer era) graphs to depict distributions going back to 1884. The other version is described by William S. Cleveland as an alternative to the bar chart, in which dots are used to depict the quantitative values (e.g. counts) associated with categorical variables.
Dot plots.
The dot plot as a representation of a distribution consists of group of data points plotted on a simple scale. Dot plots are used for continuous, quantitative, univariate data. Data points may be labelled if there are few of them.
Dot plots are one of the simplest statistical plots, and are suitable for small to moderate sized data sets. They are useful for highlighting clusters and gaps, as well as outliers. Their other advantage is the conservation of numerical information. When dealing with larger data sets (around 20–30 or more data points) the related stemplot, box plot or histogram may be more efficient, as dot plots may become too cluttered after this point. Dot plots may be distinguished from histograms in that dots are not spaced uniformly along the horizontal axis.
Although the plot appears to be simple, its computation and the statistical theory underlying it are not simple. The algorithm for computing a dot plot is closely related to kernel density estimation. The size chosen for the dots affects the appearance of the plot. Choice of dot size is equivalent to choosing the bandwidth for a kernel density estimate.
In the "R" programming language this type of plot is also referred to as a stripchart
or stripplot.
Cleveland dot plots.
Dot plot may also refer to plots of points that each belong to one of several categories. They are an alternative to bar charts or pie charts, and look somewhat like a horizontal bar chart where the bars are replaced by a dots at the values associated with each category. Compared to (vertical) bar charts and pie charts, Cleveland argues that dot plots allow more accurate interpretation of the graph by readers by making the labels easier to read, reducing non-data ink (or graph clutter) and supporting table look-up.


Bond tester

A bond tester is a scientific instrument used to measure the mechanical strength of bonds, evaluate bond strength distributions or determine compliance with specified bond strength requirements of the applicable acquisition document. Typically a load is applied to a bond by a hook or shear tool, whereafter a force measurement is taken and the failure mode of the tested sample is recorded. More often than not bond tests are destructive and samples are scrapped after testing. In aerospace and medical applications, non destructive testing is common, whereby the bond is loaded up to a point to reveal nonacceptable bonds while avoiding damage to acceptable bonds.
Electrical and thermal bonds are such an integral part of electronic and semiconductor construction that they may often be taken for granted. Modern electronic assembly methods employ a myriad of bonding processes, each one a vital step in the manufacture of the final product. A typical consumer product such as a laptop computer may contain hundreds of thousands of bonds yet if one fails it will probably result in a system breakdown.
For an automatic test PC controlled moving table allows any number of bonds to be tested automatically from a stored program.
Results can be analysed and output immediately or exported in a number of data base formats for subsequent analysis as desired.
Powerful extended capabilities enable measurements such as force/time or force/distance curves to be made and deliver more data about the quality of the bond tested.
The most common test types performed on a bond tester are the wire pull test, which generally puts an upward force on a gold/aluminum/silver/copper wire, and the die shear test, which generally comprises loading a die from the side. When equipped with tweezers, bond testers may also perform cold bump pull tests. During such a test, a solder ball down to 50 µm in diameter is reform it to the shape something like a mushroom and then pulled off the surface. Modern bond testers can perform a wide variety of tests with high precision, because automation eliminates human influence on the measurement.
Two industry leaders are Nordson DAGE and XYZTec.
Standards.
MIL-STD-883, JEDEC and other standards are commonly followed in the industry.


List of spacecraft with electric propulsion

In chronological order, spacecraft are listed equipped with electric space propulsion. This includes both cruise engines and/or thrusters for attitude and orbit control. It is not specified whether the given engine is the sole means of propulsion or whether other types of engine are also used on a spacecraft. The list does not claim to be comprehensive.
References.


2872 Gentelec


ICTUS Records

ICTUS Records is an avant-garde jazz record label founded in 1976 by Andrea Centazzo and Carla Lugli.
History.
ICTUS in Bologna, Italy
ICTUS in Long Beach, California


GenreBlast Film Festival

The GenreBlast Film Festival is an annual event held in the Winchester, Virginia area that specializes in Genre film. GenreBlast is the largest genre film festival in the Washington, D.C. region, spotlighting short and feature films that are typically independently produced and would not otherwise receive theatrical release.
History.
Started in 2016, by Nathan Ludwig, Chad Farmer, and Charles Hill, the first annual GenreBlast Film Festival took place in August 2016 in Culpeper, Virginia at the now defunct State Theatre. Programmers officially described the fest as playing, "horror, action/adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, martial arts, exploitation, grindhouse, international, experimental and more!"
After the first year, the festival relocated to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia, where it has been located since. Hill departed from the team after the second year of the fest and Raygan Ketterer, previously the fest designer, replaced Hill as programmer.
GenreBlast is attended by filmmakers and writers whose work is recognized by the fest, with about 50% of films represented in the first year and a much higher percentage in subsequent years. It has also been judged to be a top genre fest.
Awards.
GenreBlast gives out rocket trophies in a number of categories for short films, feature films, and unproduced screenplays. The festival also gives out a special wrestling belt to recognize an outstanding woman in genre film each year. The Les Femmes Du Genre Award was given to Tristan Risk in 2016, Samantha Kolesnik in 2017, and Sophia Cacciola in 2018.


Trinity Hoard

Trinity Hoard is a collection of Bronze Age items, including 23 bronze axeheads, found in Jersey in 2012.
Find and study.
The hoard of late Bronze Age (around 1,000 BCE) items was found inside a pottery container, about 30 cm underground, in October 2012, by metal detectorist Ken Rive, in the Parish of Trinity in the north of Jersey. A conservator from Jersey Heritage was able to attend at the find before digging began. The container was around 30 cm across. It had been damaged, probably by a plough, which had freed the two axeheads. There was other material at the site, including pieces of broken pottery not from the primary find.
Initially, only two socketed axeheads were identified, but after scanning by an X-ray scanner at Jersey Airport, a further 21 axeheads, at least, were seen to be present in the pot. The first two axeheads were subjected to an X-ray fluorescence scan at Cranfield University, which showed that the bronze alloy has a very high lead content (nearly 55%). Such a high lead content level would have made the axes too soft for practical use, suggesting that they were prestige objects that were accumulated as a sign of wealth. The pottery container was opened by conservators, and a total of 25 axeheads were recovered, in the care of Jersey Heritage, and treated with advice from the British Museum. A display from the hoard was established in the Jersey Museum in December 2012.
The find came months after another significant find in Jersey, the Grouville Hoard, which included about 70,000 pieces of Celtic coin, and gold and silver jewellery.


Near-infrared spectroscopy

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a spectroscopic method that uses the near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum (from 780 nm to 2500 nm). Typical applications include medical and physiological diagnostics and research including blood sugar, pulse oximetry, functional neuroimaging, sports medicine, elite sports training, ergonomics, rehabilitation, neonatal research, brain computer interface, urology (bladder contraction), and neurology (neurovascular coupling). There are also applications in other areas as well such as pharmaceutical, food and agrochemical quality control, atmospheric chemistry, combustion research and astronomy.
Theory.
Near-infrared spectroscopy is based on molecular overtone and combination vibrations. Such transitions are forbidden by the selection rules of quantum mechanics. As a result, the molar absorptivity in the near-IR region is typically quite small. One advantage is that NIR can typically penetrate much further into a sample than mid infrared radiation. Near-infrared spectroscopy is, therefore, not a particularly sensitive technique, but it can be very useful in probing bulk material with little or no sample preparation.
The molecular overtone and combination bands seen in the near-IR are typically very broad, leading to complex spectra; it can be difficult to assign specific features to specific chemical components. Multivariate (multiple variables) calibration techniques (e.g., principal components analysis, partial least squares, or artificial neural networks) are often employed to extract the desired chemical information. Careful development of a set of calibration samples and application of multivariate calibration techniques is essential for near-infrared analytical methods.
History.
The discovery of near-infrared energy is ascribed to William Herschel in the 19th century, but the first industrial application began in the 1950s. In the first applications, NIRS was used only as an add-on unit to other optical devices that used other wavelengths such as ultraviolet (UV), visible (Vis), or mid-infrared (MIR) spectrometers. In the 1980s, a single-unit, stand-alone NIRS system was made available, but the application of NIRS was focused more on chemical analysis. With the introduction of light-fiber optics in the mid-1980s and the monochromator-detector developments in the early 1990s, NIRS became a more powerful tool for scientific research.
This optical method can be used in a number of fields of science including physics, physiology, or medicine. It is only in the last few decades that NIRS began to be used as a medical tool for monitoring patients, with the first clinical application of so-called fNIRS in 1994.
Instrumentation.
Instrumentation for near-IR (NIR) spectroscopy is similar to instruments for the UV-visible and mid-IR ranges. There is a source, a detector, and a dispersive element (such as a prism, or, more commonly, a diffraction grating) to allow the intensity at different wavelengths to be recorded. Fourier transform NIR instruments using an interferometer are also common, especially for wavelengths above ~1000 nm. Depending on the sample, the spectrum can be measured in either reflection or transmission.
Common incandescent or quartz halogen light bulbs are most often used as broadband sources of near-infrared radiation for analytical applications. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can also be used. For high precision spectroscopy, wavelength-scanned lasers and frequency combs have recently become powerful sources, albeit with sometimes longer acquisition timescales. When lasers are used, a single detector without any dispersive elements might be sufficient.
The type of detector used depends primarily on the range of wavelengths to be measured. Silicon-based CCDs are suitable for the shorter end of the NIR range, but are not sufficiently sensitive over most of the range (over 1000 nm). InGaAs and PbS devices are more suitable though less sensitive than CCDs. It is possible to combine silicon-based and InGaAs detectors in the same instrument. Such instruments can record both UV-visible and NIR spectra 'simultaneously'.
Instruments intended for chemical imaging in the NIR may use a 2D array detector with an acousto-optic tunable filter. Multiple images may be recorded sequentially at different narrow wavelength bands.
Many commercial instruments for UV/vis spectroscopy are capable of recording spectra in the NIR range (to perhaps ~900 nm). In the same way, the range of some mid-IR instruments may extend into the NIR. In these instruments, the detector used for the NIR wavelengths is often the same detector used for the instrument's "main" range of interest.
Applications.
Typical applications of NIR spectroscopy include the analysis of food products, pharmaceuticals, combustion products, and a major branch of astronomical spectroscopy.
Astronomical spectroscopy.
Near-infrared spectroscopy is used in astronomy for studying the atmospheres of cool stars where molecules can form. The vibrational and rotational signatures of molecules such as titanium oxide, cyanide, and carbon monoxide can be seen in this wavelength range and can give a clue towards the star's spectral type. It is also used for studying molecules in other astronomical contexts, such as in molecular clouds where new stars are formed. The astronomical phenomenon known as reddening means that near-infrared wavelengths are less affected by dust in the interstellar medium, such that regions inaccessible by optical spectroscopy can be studied in the near-infrared. Since dust and gas are strongly associated, these dusty regions are exactly those where infrared spectroscopy is most useful. The near-infrared spectra of very young stars provide important information about their ages and masses, which is important for understanding star formation in general. Astronomical spectrographs have also been developed for the detection of exoplanets using the Doppler shift of the parent star due to the radial velocity of the planet around the star.
Agriculture.
Near-infrared spectroscopy is widely applied in agriculture for determining the quality of forages, grains, and grain products, oilseeds, coffee, tea, spices, fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, beverages, fats, and oils, dairy products, eggs, meat, and other agricultural products. It is widely used to quantify the composition of agricultural products because it meets the criteria of being accurate, reliable, rapid, non-destructive, and inexpensive.
Remote monitoring.
Techniques have been developed for NIR spectroscopic imaging. Hyperspectral imaging has been applied for a wide range of uses, including the remote investigation of plants and soils. Data can be collected from instruments on airplanes or satellites to assess ground cover and soil chemistry.
Remote monitoring or remote sensing from the NIR spectroscopic region can also be used to study the atmosphere. For example, measurements of atmospheric gases are made from NIR spectra measured by the OCO-2, GOSAT, and the TCCON.
Materials Science.
Techniques have been developed for NIR spectroscopy of microscopic sample areas for film thickness measurements, research into the optical characteristics of nanoparticles and optical coatings for the telecommunications industry.
Medical uses.
The application of NIRS in Medicine centres on its ability to provide information about the oxygen saturation of haemoglobin within the microcirculation. Broadly speaking, it can be used to assess oxygenation and microvascular function in the brain (cerebral NIRS) or in the peripheral tissues (Peripheral NIRS).
"Cerebral NIRS"
When a specific area of the brain is activated, the localized blood volume in that area changes quickly. Optical imaging can measure the location and activity of specific regions of the brain by continuously monitoring blood hemoglobin levels through the determination of optical absorption coefficients.
NIRS can be used as a quick screening tool for possible intracranial bleeding cases by placing the scanner on four locations on the head. In non-injured patients the brain absorbs the NIR light evenly. When there is an internal bleeding from an injury, the blood may be concentrated in one location causing the NIR light to be absorbed more than other locations, which the scanner detects.
So-called functional NIRS can be used for non-invasive assessment of brain function through the intact skull in human subjects by detecting changes in blood hemoglobin concentrations associated with neural activity, e.g., in branches of cognitive psychology as a partial replacement for fMRI techniques. NIRS can be used on infants, and NIRS is much more portable than fMRI machines, even wireless instrumentation is available, which enables investigations in freely moving subjects. However, NIRS cannot fully replace fMRI because it can only be used to scan cortical tissue, whereas fMRI can be used to measure activation throughout the brain. Special public domain statistical toolboxes for analysis of stand alone and combined NIRS/MRI measurement have been developed (NIRS-SPM).
The application in functional mapping of the human cortex is called functional NIRS (fNIRS) or Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT). The term diffuse optical tomography is used for three-dimensional NIRS. The terms NIRS, NIRI, and DOT are often used interchangeably, but they have some distinctions. The most important difference between NIRS and DOT/NIRI is that DOT/NIRI is used mainly to detect changes in optical properties of tissue simultaneously from multiple measurement points and display the results in the form of a map or image over a specific area, whereas NIRS provides quantitative data in absolute terms on up to a few specific points. The latter is also used to investigate other tissues such as, e.g., muscle, breast and tumors. NIRS can be used to quantify blood flow, blood volume, oxygen consumption, reoxygenation rates and muscle recovery time in muscle.
By employing several wavelengths and time resolved (frequency or time domain) and/or spatially resolved methods blood flow, volume and absolute tissue saturation (formula_1 or Tissue Saturation Index (TSI)) can be quantified. Applications of oximetry by NIRS methods include neuroscience, ergonomics, rehabilitation, brain-computer interface, urology, the detection of illnesses that affect the blood circulation (e.g., peripheral vascular disease), the detection and assessment of breast tumors, and the optimization of training in sports medicine.
The use of NIRS in conjunction with a bolus injection of indocyanine green (ICG) has been used to measure cerebral blood flow and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO2).
It has also been shown that CMRO2 can be calculated with combined NIRS/MRI measurements. Additionally metabolism can be interrogated by resolving an additional mitochondrial chromophore, cytochrome-c-oxidase, using broadband NIRS.
NIRS is starting to be used in pediatric critical care, to help manage patients following cardiac surgery. Indeed, NIRS is able to measure venous oxygen saturation (SVO2), which is determined by the cardiac output, as well as other parameters (FiO2, hemoglobin, oxygen uptake). Therefore, examining the NIRS provides critical care physicians with an estimate of the cardiac output. NIRS is favoured by patients, because it is non-invasive, painless, and does not require ionizing radiation.
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is another NIR medical imaging technique capable of 3D imaging with high resolution on par with low-power microscopy. Using optical coherence to measure photon pathlength allows OCT to build images of live tissue and clear examinations of tissue morphology. Due to technique differences OCT is limited to imaging 1–2 mm below tissue surfaces, but despite this limitation OCT has become an established medical imaging technique especially for imaging of the retina and anterior segments of the eye, as well as coronaries.
A type of neurofeedback, hemoencephalography or HEG, uses NIR technology to measure brain activation, primarily of the frontal lobes, for the purpose of training cerebral activation of that region.
The instrumental development of NIRS/NIRI/DOT/OCT has proceeded tremendously during the last years and, in particular, in terms of quantification, imaging and miniaturization.
"Peripheral NIRS"
Peripheral microvascular function can be assessed using NIRS. The oxygen saturation of haemoglobin in the tissue (StO2) can provide information about tissue perfusion. A vascular occlusion test (VOT) can be employed to assess microvascular function. Common sites for peripheral NIRS monitoring include the thenar eminence, forearm and calf muscles.
Particle measurement.
NIR is often used in particle sizing in a range of different fields, including studying pharmaceutical and agricultural powders.
Industrial uses.
As opposed to NIRS used in optical topography, general NIRS used in chemical assays does not provide imaging by mapping. For example, a clinical carbon dioxide analyzer requires reference techniques and calibration routines to be able to get accurate CO2 content change. In this case, calibration is performed by adjusting the zero control of the sample being tested after purposefully supplying 0% CO2 or another known amount of CO2 in the sample. Normal compressed gas from distributors contains about 95% O2 and 5% CO2, which can also be used to adjust %CO2 meter reading to be exactly 5% at initial calibration.


Audium (theater)

Audium is a sound art event that has been presented weekly in San Francisco since 1967. Audium is a creation of composer Stan Shaff that is performed on original equipment designed by Doug McEachern. It is played in a completely dark theater designed to heighten the spatial effects of sound and for "choreographing sound in space." Compositions are developed from acoustic and electronic instruments and from sounds of the natural world used as metaphors. Works are "sculpted" in space through 176 speakers.
Early development.
The concepts gradually refined in Audium began with Shaff and McEachern's experimental electronic music performances in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1959, Stan Shaff met fellow musician and teacher Douglas McEachern, whose background in electronics enabled him to develop original equipment systems for live, spatial performances. Prior to Audium, Shaff and McEachern worked with Anna Halprin's Dancer's Workshop and Shaff worked with Seymour Locks, an artist and the originator of the overhead projected light show later used widely at rock concerts in the 1960s. Shaff was also associated with the Tape Music Center in San Francisco. Early presentations were done at University of California Extension (1960), San Francisco State College (1962) and San Francisco Museum of Art (1963, 1964). These early performances were done with "portable systems" that had about 8 to 16 speakers.
The first theater.
To proceed with experimenting and with exploring these ideas, McEachern and Shaff, in 1965, leased a hall at 309 4th Avenue in San Francisco and began adapting it to become the first Audium theater. It initially was outfitted with 44 speakers, and on May 26, 1967, the first public performance was held. By 1968 the number of speakers had increased to 61. Weekly performances were presented until October 1970. The theater had to close when the lease ended and the building was sold.
The second theater.
In 1972 Shaff received a grant from National Endowment for the Arts. A storefront, formerly a bakery, in downtown San Francisco was purchased and subsequently converted to a theater. The first public presentation was October 31, 1975, and weekend shows have continued since then. Beginning with 136 speakers, the phenomenon has gradually and unrelentingly grown and evolved. It now has over 176 speakers, and Stan Shaff presents his 11th opus with his son, David Shaff, every weekend, opening at 8 PM.
Attendance & acclaim.
The performances have been described as "surreal" and one piece as a "musique concrete of beach sounds, faintly overheard conversations and outdated Moog synthesizer whirls and chortles." Another author said that Audium harnesses "the primal essence of sound" and that after a performance "you'll emerge uncertain, excitable, outside of yourself." According to Shaff, Audium is periodically visited by members of Walt Disney Imagineering, the R&D arm of the Walt Disney Company, engineers from Dolby Laboratories, sound engineers from the film industry, the Audio Engineering Society, and composers from international universities. Shaff has done very little advertising, but after ongoing programs since 1967, Audium now attracts weekly listeners from around the world.


All Souls College, Oxford

All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e. full members of the college's governing body). It has no undergraduate members, but each year recent graduate and postgraduate students at Oxford are eligible to apply for a small number of examination fellowships through a competitive examination (once described as "the hardest exam in the world") and, for those shortlisted after the examinations, an interview.
The college entrance is on the north side of the High Street whilst it has a long frontage onto Radcliffe Square. To its east is The Queen's College whilst Hertford College is to the north of All Souls.
The current warden (head of the college) is Sir John Vickers, a graduate of Oriel College, Oxford.
History.
The college was founded by Henry VI of England and Henry Chichele (fellow of New College and Archbishop of Canterbury), in 1438, to commemorate the victims of the Hundred Years' War. The Statutes provided for a warden and forty fellows; all to take Holy Orders: 24 to study arts, philosophy and theology; and 16 to study civil or canon law.
Today the college is primarily a graduate research institution, with no undergraduate members. All Souls did formerly have undergraduates: Robert Hovenden (Warden of the college from 1571 to 1614) introduced undergraduates to provide the fellows with "servientes" (household servants), but this was abandoned by the end of the Commonwealth. Four Bible Clerks remained on the foundation until 1924.
For over five hundred years All Souls College admitted only men; women were first allowed to join the college as fellows in 1979, the same year as many other previously all-male colleges in the university.
Buildings and architecture.
Codrington Library.
The All Souls Library (formally known as the Codrington Library) was founded through a 1710 bequest from Christopher Codrington (1668–1710), a fellow of the college and a wealthy slave and sugar plantation owner. Codrington was an undergraduate at Oxford and later became colonial governor of the Leeward Islands. Christopher Codrington was born in Barbados, and amassed a fortune from his sugar plantation in the West Indies.
Under the terms of his will Codrington bequeathed books worth £6,000 to the college in addition to £10,000 in currency for the library to be rebuilt and endowed. The new library was completed in 1751 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor and has been in continuous use since then. Today the library comprises some 185,000 items, about a third of which were published before 1800. The collections are particularly strong in law and history (especially military history).
Sir Christopher Wren was a fellow from 1653, and in 1658 produced a sundial for the college. This was originally placed on the south wall of the Chapel, but in 1877 was moved to the quadrangle (above the central entrance to the Codrington Library).
Chapel.
Built between 1438 and 1442, the college chapel remained largely unchanged until the Commonwealth. Oxford, having been a largely Royalist stronghold, suffered under the Puritans' wrath. The 42 misericords date from the Chapel's building, and show a resemblance to the misericords at Higham Ferrers. Both may have been carved by Richard Tyllock. During the 1660s a screen was installed in the Chapel, which was based on a design by Wren. However, this screen needed to be rebuilt by 1713. By the mid-19th century the Chapel was in great need of renovation, and so the current structure is heavily influenced by Victorian design ideals.
All services at the chapel are according to the "Book of Common Prayer"; the "King James Bible" is also used rather than more modern translations.
Wealth.
All Souls is one of the wealthiest colleges in Oxford, with a financial endowment of £420.2 million (2018). However, since the college's principal source of revenue is its endowment and it does not earn income from tuition fees, it only ranked 19th (in 2007) among Oxford colleges in total income. All Souls is a registered charity under English law.
Fellowships.
Examination fellowships.
In the three years following the award of their bachelor's degrees, students graduating from Oxford and current Oxford postgraduate students having graduated elsewhere are eligible to apply for examination fellowships (sometimes informally referred to as "prize fellowships") of seven years each. While tutors may advise their students to sit for the All Souls examination fellowship, the examination is open to anybody who fulfils the eligibility criteria and the college does not issue invitations to candidates to sit. Every year in early March, the college hosts an open evening for women, offering women interested in the examination fellowship an opportunity to find out more about the exam process and to meet members of the college.
Each year several dozen candidates typically sit the examination. Two examination fellows are usually elected each year, although the college has awarded a single place or three places in some years, and on rare occasions made no award.
The competition, offered since 1878 and open to women since 1979, is held over two days in late September, with two papers of three hours each per day. It has been described in the past as "the hardest exam in the world".
Two papers (the 'specialist papers') are on a single subject of the candidate's choice; the options are classics, English literature, economics, history, law, philosophy, and politics. Candidates may sit their two specialist papers in different specialist subjects, provided each paper is in one subject only (for example, a candidate might sit one paper in History and one paper in Politics). Candidates who choose Classics have an additional translation examination on a third day.
Two papers (the 'general papers') are on general subjects. For each general examination, candidates choose three questions from a list. Past questions have included:
Before 2010 candidates also faced another examination, a free-form "Essay" on a single, pre-selected word.
Four to six finalists are invited to a viva voce or oral examination. Previously, these candidates were then invited to dinner with about 75 members of the college. The dinner did not form part of the assessment, but was intended as a reward for those candidates who had reached the latter stages of the selection process. However, the dinner has been discontinued as the college felt candidates worried too often that it was part of the assessment process.
About a dozen examination fellows are at the college at any one time. There are no compulsory teaching or requirements, although examination fellows must pursue a course of study or research at some point within their first two years of fellowship. They can study anything for free at Oxford with room and board. As "Londoners" they can pursue approved non-academic careers if desired, with a reduced stipend, as long as they pursue academia on a part-time basis and attend weekend dinners at the college during their first academic year. each examination fellow receives a stipend of £14,842 annually for the first two years; the stipend then varies depending on whether the fellow pursues an academic career.
Notable candidates.
Until 1979, women were not permitted to put themselves forward for fellowships at All Souls.
Other fellowships.
Other categories of fellowship include:
There are also a number of professorial fellows who hold their fellowships by virtue of their University post.
Chichele professorships.
Fellows of the college include the Chichele professors, who hold statutory professorships at the University of Oxford named in honour of Henry Chichele, a founder of the college. Fellowship of the college has accompanied the award of a Chichele chair since 1870.
Following the work of the 1850 Commission to examine the organisation of the university, the college suppressed ten of its fellowships to create the funds to establish the first two Chichele professorships: The Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, established in 1859 and first held by Mountague Bernard, and the Chichele Professor of Modern History, first held by Montagu Burrows.
There are currently Chichele Professorships in five different subjects:
Probably the best known former Chichele Professor is Sir Isaiah Berlin. Perhaps the best known former Professor of the History of War was Cyril Falls.
Chichele Lectures.
The Chichele Lectures are a prestigious series of lectures formally established in 1912 and sponsored by All Souls College. The lectures were initially restricted to foreign history, but have since been expanded to include law, political theory, economic theory, as well as foreign and British history. Traditionally the lectures were delivered by a single speaker, but it is now common for several speakers to deliver lectures on a common theme.
Customs.
Every hundred years, and generally on 14 January, there is a commemorative feast after which the fellows parade around the college with flaming torches, singing the "Mallard Song" and led by a "Lord Mallard" who is carried in a chair, in search of a legendary mallard that supposedly flew out of the foundations of the college when it was being built. During the hunt the Lord Mallard is preceded by a man bearing a pole to which a mallard is tied – originally a live bird, latterly either dead (1901) or carved from wood (2001). The last mallard ceremony was in 2001 and the next is due in 2101. The precise origin of the custom is not known, but it dates from at least 1632. A benign parody of this custom has been portrayed as the Unseen University's "Megapode chase" in Sir Terry Pratchett's 2009 novel "Unseen Academicals".
People associated with All Souls.
Fellows.
Past and current fellows of the college have included:


Committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE)


3684 Berry


880 Herba

880 Herba is a minor planet orbiting the Sun that was discovered by German astronomer Max Wolf on 22 July 1917 in Heidelberg.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Organ Mesa Observatory in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 2011 gave a light curve with a period of 12.266 ± 0.001 hours and a brightness variation of 0.13 ± 0.02 in magnitude. The curve is asymmetrical with one maxima and one minima.
880 Herba is named after Herba, the Greek god of misery and poverty.


Second (angle)


824 Anastasia

824 Anastasia is a main belt asteroid orbiting the Sun. It is approximately 34.14 km in diameter. It was discovered on March 25, 1916, by Grigory Neujmin at Simeiz Observatory in Russian Empire. It is named in memory of Anastasia Semenoff, an acquaintance of the discoverer.
Occultation.
On April 6, 2010, 824 Anastasia had the distinction of causing the brightest asteroid occultation ever predicted for North America for an asteroid of its size. The asteroid occulted the naked-eye star ζ Ophiuchi over a path stretching from the Los Angeles area to Edmonton, Alberta.


Quiet Design

Quiet Design is an independent music and sound art label based in Austin,TX and founded in 2007. Owned and curated by composers Mike Vernusky and Cory Allen, Quiet Design has released work by over 30 artists from 10 countries. It has been said of Quiet Design that their "intriguing and often brilliant recordings will open your eyes, your ears, and very likely your mind."
The label's focus is releasing electronic music and sound art that is described as minimal, avant-garde and experimental. The packaging for each release is custom tailored to the sound of each piece in the catalog.
Artists on Quiet Design.
Tetuzi Akiyama, Cory Allen, Jim Altieri, Christopher Ariza, Alfredo Barros, Daniel Blinkhorn, Mark Cetilia, Thomas Dempster, exclusiveOr, Fires Were Shot, Guy Gelem, Glen Hall, Glen Charles Halls, Erdem Helvacioglu, Nick Hennies, Jandek, Kioku, Clara Latham, Alvin Lucier, Yoshio Machida, Paula Matthusen, Alex Mincek, Kim Myhr, Alex Ness, Damian O'Riain, Duane Pitre, Sam Pluta, Sebastien Roux, Keith Rowe, Josh Russell, Paul Russell, Jeff Snyder, Kate Soper, Steinbruchel, Peter Swendsen, and Mike Vernusky


Shit Year

Shit Year is a 2010 American experimental drama film written and directed by Cam Archer and starring Ellen Barkin. The film was screened at the Directors' Fortnight event of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot.
After a successful career, actress Colleen West (Ellen Barkin) decides to retire and return to a life without so much adventure in a peaceful place. It is when a large building is installed in the vicinity and breaks the calm of the place. Mrs. West, then, realizes that the serenity of before all that would not return and that her life, in reality, was an entire stage, where everything and everyone were full interpretations. Seized by dissatisfaction, Colleen begins to feel as if she has lived her life through her characters staged on stages and on screens.
Production.
According to Archer, the film was shot in Los Angeles, with additional reshoots in Santa Cruz, California.
Reception.
The film has a 33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Glenn Heath Jr. of "Slant Magazine" awarded the film three stars out of four.
Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film a mixed review but praised Barkin's performance. Jay Weissberg of "Variety" gave a positive review and wrote that the film "stays engrossing thanks not only to Barkin’s strengths but also Archer’s compositional eye."


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Umu Response

The umu test, first developed and published by Oda et al., is based on the ability of DNA-damaging agents to induce the expression of the umu operon. In connection with the damage inducible genes (din genes) recA, lexA and umuD, the umuC gene is essentially involved in bacterial mutagenesis through the SOS response.
Overview.
LexA protein is the repressor of all cellular din genes. Lesions such as single-stranded DNA, depurinic and depytimidinic sites or even free deoxynucletoides seem to activate RecA to LexA processing form that facilitates cleavage of LexA repressor, thus leading to derepression of all din genes. RecA protein appears to have further roles in the mutagenic process: first it facilitates cleavage of UmuD protein, thereby generating a mutagenically active form (UmuD’).
Due to the participation of the umuC in the mutagenic process leading to both point- and frameshift-mutations, only one single bacterial strain is necessary to detect different types of mutagens. Nevertheless, additional strains have been developed in order to increase sensitivity for the detection of genotoxins, belonging to certain classes, such as nitroarenes.
All umu strains carry the plasmid pSK1002 which bears an umuD gene and an umuC gene fused with lacZ, the structural gene for beta-galactosidase. The induction of mutator gene umuC by DNA-damaging agents is detected by measuring intracellular beta-galactosidase levels. Like other tests, the strains have been genetically modified further. A reduction of the lipopolysaccharide structure of the cell wall (rfa) facilitates an increased permeability, especially for hydrophobic chemicals such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons. A further sensitivity enhancing alteration compared with wild type strains is the deficiency in a general pathway for the excision of damaged bases from the DNA: the nucleotide-excision repair. Incision near conformational distortions of the DNA, caused by a variety of bulky adducts, occurs via the formation of multiprotein complex, consisting of three proteins, collectively called UvrABC excinuclease. The deletion of this region results in a loss of repair efficiency.
Genotoxicity Testing.
The umu operon is useful as it is likely to be more involved in mutagenesis than the other known SOS genes (Kato and Shinoura, 1977), and can be taken advantage of in the same way as the SOS Chromotest. Taking advantage of the operon fusion placing the lac operon (responsible for producing beta-galactosidase, a protein which degrades lactose) under the control of an SOS-related protein, a simple colorimetric assay for genotoxicity is possible. If a genotoxin is present, the resulting DNA damage will result in the production of beta-galactosidase instead of DNA repair as a result of the gene fusion. A lactose analog is added to the media which is degraded by the beta-galactosidase, producing a colored compound which can be measured quantitatively through spectrophotometry. The degree of color development is a direct measure of the amount of beta-galactosidase produce, which itself is directly related to the extent of DNA damage.


Joint Matriculation Board

The Joint Matriculation Board of the Universities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham (JMB), sometimes referred to as the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board, was an examination board, operating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1903 and 1992. It became part of NEAB, which itself is now part of AQA.
Beginnings.
The Joint Matriculation Board was founded by the Victoria University of Manchester, the University of Liverpool and the University of Leeds. The universities had been part of the same institution (the Victoria University), but were in the process of de-merging. The universities set up the board to maintain a common entrance exam. The board allowed its exams to be taken by local schools, which was to become its main business.
The University of Sheffield joined the board in 1905. The University of Birmingham followed in 1916, spreading the board's activities to the Midlands.
Status.
When the first national qualifications, the School Certificate (SC) and Higher School Certificate (HSC) were introduced, the JMB offered the exams and rose to be the most popular exam board for the qualifications. When the SC and HSC were replaced by the GCE Ordinary Level and GCE Advanced Level respectively, JMB took on the new qualifications and continued to be a leading provider.
The government introduced the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) in 1965 for the majority of students working below O Level standard, but the JMB – like all the other GCE exam boards – was not asked to administer the new qualification. Instead, new regional exam boards were created for this purpose, to operate in parallel with the GCE boards.
Despite the GCE boards also being regional, schools were free to choose which one they entered their students for exams with. The JMB began to exploit this when they eventually began to market themselves outside their northern and Midlands heartland from 1978.
Beginning of rationalisation.
In 1988, the GCE O Level and CSE were merged to form a new qualification: the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). This posed a problem, as, in England, the O Level and CSE had completely separate exam boards. To solve this, four English examining groups were created. Each group was made up of at least one GCE board and two or more CSE boards. The JMB became part of the Northern Examining Association (NEA), along with four CSE boards: the Associated Lancashire Schools Examining Board, the Northern Regional Examinations Board, the North West Regional Examinations Board and the Yorkshire Regional Examinations Board. The JMB continued to offer A Level exams independently.
Merger.
As CSEs were now extinct, the old CSE boards effectively ceased to exist outside their GCSE examining groups. The NEA took this opportunity to rationalise and the JMB merged with the four other NEA members to form the Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) in 1992. It was at this point that the universities behind the JMB took a more backseat role, with the NEAB becoming a charity and the universities remaining only as board members.
NEAB then merged with AEB/SEG to form the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) in 2000. AQA's board is not required to include representatives of any of the JMB universities, though it does have representatives from Universities UK.
For replacement certificates, verification of results services or confirmation of results to third parties, former JMB students have to contact AQA.


Sonic Youth Recordings

Sonic Youth Recordings (sometimes referred to as SYR) is a record label established by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth in 1996. SYR was set up to allow the band to release records by themselves and their friends without the commercial pressures of a major label. As a result, the work on this label tends towards free improvisation and experimental music.
The records that Sonic Youth themselves released on this label follow a tradition where each album is released in a different language. ' has song titles and album sleeve artwork in French; ' is in Dutch, ' is in Esperanto, ' is in English, "SYR5" is in Japanese, ' is in Lithuanian, ' is in Arpitan, "" is in Danish, "SYR9" is in French, and "AUG5" is in English.


Uniformly most powerful test

In statistical hypothesis testing, a uniformly most powerful (UMP) test is a hypothesis test which has the greatest power formula_1 among all possible tests of a given size "α". For example, according to the Neyman–Pearson lemma, the likelihood-ratio test is UMP for testing simple (point) hypotheses.
Setting.
Let formula_2 denote a random vector (corresponding to the measurements), taken from a parametrized family of probability density functions or probability mass functions formula_3, which depends on the unknown deterministic parameter formula_4. The parameter space formula_5 is partitioned into two disjoint sets formula_6 and formula_7. Let formula_8 denote the hypothesis that formula_9, and let formula_10 denote the hypothesis that formula_11.
The binary test of hypotheses is performed using a test function formula_12.
meaning that formula_10 is in force if the measurement formula_15 and that formula_8 is in force if the measurement formula_17.
Note that formula_18 is a disjoint covering of the measurement space.
Formal definition.
A test function formula_12 is UMP of size formula_20 if for any other test function formula_21 satisfying
we have
The Karlin–Rubin theorem.
The Karlin–Rubin theorem can be regarded as an extension of the Neyman–Pearson lemma for composite hypotheses. Consider a scalar measurement having a probability density function parameterized by a scalar parameter "θ", and define the likelihood ratio formula_24.
If formula_25 is monotone non-decreasing, in formula_26, for any pair formula_27 (meaning that the greater formula_26 is, the more likely formula_10 is), then the threshold test:
is the UMP test of size "α" for testing formula_33
Note that exactly the same test is also UMP for testing formula_34
Important case: exponential family.
Although the Karlin-Rubin theorem may seem weak because of its restriction to scalar parameter and scalar measurement, it turns out that there exist a host of problems for which the theorem holds. In particular, the one-dimensional exponential family of probability density functions or probability mass functions with
has a monotone non-decreasing likelihood ratio in the sufficient statistic formula_36, provided that formula_37 is non-decreasing.
Example.
Let formula_38 denote i.i.d. normally distributed formula_39-dimensional random vectors with mean formula_40 and covariance matrix formula_41. We then have
which is exactly in the form of the exponential family shown in the previous section, with the sufficient statistic being
Thus, we conclude that the test
is the UMP test of size formula_20 for testing formula_46 vs. formula_47
Further discussion.
Finally, we note that in general, UMP tests do not exist for vector parameters or for two-sided tests (a test in which one hypothesis lies on both sides of the alternative). The reason is that in these situations, the most powerful test of a given size for one possible value of the parameter (e.g. for formula_48 where formula_49) is different from the most powerful test of the same size for a different value of the parameter (e.g. for formula_50 where formula_51). As a result, no test is uniformly most powerful in these situations.


65 nm process

The 65 nm process is advanced lithographic node used in volume CMOS (MOSFET) semiconductor fabrication. Printed linewidths (i.e. transistor gate lengths) can reach as low as 25 nm on a nominally 65 nm process, while the pitch between two lines may be greater than 130 nm. For comparison, cellular ribosomes are about 20 nm end-to-end. A crystal of bulk silicon has a lattice constant of 0.543 nm, so such transistors are on the order of 100 atoms across. Toshiba and Sony announced the 65nm process in 2002, before Fujitsu and Toshiba began production in 2004, and then TSMC began production in 2005. By September 2007, Intel, AMD, IBM, UMC and Chartered were also producing 65 nm chips.
While feature sizes may be drawn as 65 nm or less, the wavelengths of light used for lithography are 193 nm and 248 nm. Fabrication of sub-wavelength features requires special imaging technologies, such as optical proximity correction and phase-shifting masks. The cost of these techniques adds substantially to the cost of manufacturing sub-wavelength semiconductor products, with the cost increasing exponentially with each advancing technology node. Furthermore, these costs are multiplied by an increasing number of mask layers that must be printed at the minimum pitch, and the reduction in yield from printing so many layers at the cutting edge of the technology. For new integrated-circuit designs, this factors into the costs of prototyping and production.
Gate thickness, another important dimension, is reduced to as little as 1.2 nm (Intel). Only a few atoms insulate the "switch" part of the transistor, causing charge to flow through it. This undesired effect, "leakage", is caused by quantum tunneling. The new chemistry of high-κ gate dielectrics must be combined with existing techniques, including substrate bias and multiple threshold voltages, to prevent leakage from prohibitively consuming power.
IEDM papers from Intel in 2002, 2004, and 2005 illustrate the industry trend that the transistor sizes can no longer scale along with the rest of the feature dimensions (gate width only changed from 220 nm to 210 nm going from 90 nm to 65 nm technologies). However, the interconnects (metal and poly pitch) continue to shrink, thus reducing chip area and chip cost, as well as shortening the distance between transistors, leading to higher-performance devices of greater complexity when compared with earlier nodes.
Example: Fujitsu 65 nm process.
There are actually two versions of the process: CS200, focusing on high performance, and CS200A, focusing on low power.


CASPer

CASPer (Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics), is an admissions test developed by Harold Reiter and Kelly Dore at McMaster University's Program for Educational Research and Development (PERD) and used by the McMaster University Medical School since 2010. The test was developed to assess an academic applicant's personal and professional (also known as non-cognitive or non-academic) attributes in an online format in the pre-screening stage of the application process.
While descriptions of the test have been described in peer-reviewed journals, it has also been criticized.
Format.
The test, which is a form of situational judgement test, has 12 sections that either consist of video-based scenarios or word-based scenarios, based on real-life situations. Video-based scenarios consist of a short video followed by a series of three open-ended follow-up questions. Word-based scenarios consist of a paragraph describing a scenario followed by a series of three open-ended follow-up questions. Candidates have five minutes to answer these three questions. In video-based scenarios, the video cannot be replayed.
Although fees vary by program and country, the CASPer cost consists of a base fee ($10–40), plus a distribution fee for each school that results are sent to ($10). Results are valid for one application cycle only.
Scientific validity.
Two primary peer-reviewed papers are published covering the structure and efficacy of CASPer. The original paper, published in Academic Medicine, references the original name of CASPer as "CMSENS". The second primary peer-reviewed paper is published in Advances in Health Science Education, and covers the structure, reliability and predictive validity found for the test.
Braden MacBeth criticised CASPer on Science-Based Medicine for lack of transparency, flawed studies and a conflict of interest. MacBeth concludes "CASPer should not be incorporated into the medical school admissions process".
History.
CASPer was piloted by Northern Ontario School of Medicine in the 2014 application cycle. In 2015 the test was adopted by three medical schools: the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and New York Medical College. In 2015, the test was also adopted by the nursing schools at McMaster University, York University, Mohawk College and Conestoga College. In 2016, it was also adopted by Tulane University School of Medicine, East Tennessee State University and Central Michigan University's Schools of Medicine.


Glossary of industrial scales and weighing

While almost every weighing scale uses the same basic principle (the gravitational force exerted by an object divided by the area the force is applied on), industrial weighing scales are designed to do a lot more. They handle heavier loads, often in different conditions, both environmental and physical.
The terminology applied to different industrial weighing systems is widely ranged, with some terms adapted specifically for them, which are included in this glossary. Modern scales are electronic, and often computer-networked; consequently, the field has imported a fair amount of terminology from electrical engineering and computerized data transfer.


List of longest naval ships

This is a list of longest naval ships.


856 Backlunda

856 Backlunda ("prov. designation": "or" ) is a dark background asteroid from the inner region of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 3 April 1916, by Russian astronomer Sergey Belyavsky at the Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula. The carbonaceous C-type asteroid has a rotation period of 12.1 hours and measures approximately in diameter. It was named after Swedish-Russian astronomer Oskar Backlund (1846–1916).
Orbit and classification.
"Backlunda" is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements. It orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.1–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 10 months (1,388 days; semi-major axis of 2.43 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.12 and an inclination of 14° with respect to the ecliptic. The asteroid was first observed as at Taunton Observatory in February 1908. The body's observation arc begins at Algiers Observatory in North Africa on 28 February 1931, almost 15 years after to its official discovery observation at Simeiz.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Swedish-born Russian astronomer Oskar Backlund (1846–1916), who is known for studying the orbit of comets, in particular that of Comet Encke. The was mentioned in "The Names of the Minor Planets" by Paul Herget in 1955 (). The astronomer is also honored by the 75-kilometer lunar crater "Backlund".
Physical characteristics.
In the Bus–Binzel SMASS classification, "Backlunda" is a common carbonaceous C-type asteroid. It is also a C-type in the MOVIS catalog of the VISTA Hemisphere Survey conducted with the VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Rotation period and poles.
In February 1984, a rotational lightcurve of "Backlunda" was obtained from photometric observations by Richard Binzel. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of magnitude ().
In May 2019, an alternative period determination of hours with an amplitude of magnitude was made by Tom Polakis at the Command Module Observatory in Arizona (). Additional, tentative lightcurves gave a period of () by French amateur astronomer Laurent Bernasconi in July 2004, () by Jean-Gabriel Bosch and Axel Martin in March 2007, and () by Bruno Christmann, David Augustin and Raoul Behrend in July 2019 ().
In 2016, a modeled lightcurve gave a concurring sidereal period of hours using data from a large collaboration of individual observers (such as above). The study also determined two spin axes of (42.0°, 44.0°) and (226.0°, 73.0°) in ecliptic coordinates (λ,β).
Diameter and albedo.
According to the surveys carried out by the Japanese Akari satellite and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, "Backlunda" measures () and () kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of () and (), respectively. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes a standard albedo for carbonaceous asteroids of 0.057 and derives a diameter of 40.51 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 10.69. Alternative mean-diameter measurements published by the WISE team include (), (), (), () and () with corresponding albedos of (), (), (), () and (). Between 2003 and 2009, several asteroid occultations of "Backlunda" were observed. The best-rated observations from March 2003, October 2005 and August 2008, gave a best-fit ellipse dimension of (), () and (), respectively. These timed observations are taken when the asteroid passes in front of a distant star.


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