scholarly journals Observing and Thinking about the Atmosphere

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Goody
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
National Research Council ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Atmospheric Radiation ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
The University

[Figure: see text] ▪ Abstract  FAUST: Ich fühl's, vergebens hab' ich alle Schätze Des Menschengeists auf mich herbeigerafft, Und wenn ich mich am Ende niedersetze, Quilt innerlich doch keine neue Kraft; Ich bin nicht um ein Haar breit höher, Bin dem Unendlichen nicht näher. Goethe's Faust, Part I, lines 1810–15. 1 A dedication to research in the physical sciences together with the circumstances of World War II, led me into theoretical and observational studies of the global physical climate. For all practical purposes, I was on my own when working in Cambridge and London, England, and I went whereever my interests led me. I organized three atmospheric observatories (two in England). I have also worked at many astronomical observatories. As time progressed, I became increasingly involved in studies of atmospheric radiation as a controlling factor for the Earth's climate. I am often taken to be a specialist in atmospheric radiation, but I have never regarded it as more than an important element in climate studies. But radiative transfer and global questions did not become important for climate science until later, and in the 1950s and 1960s I found myself drawn to studies of planetary atmospheres as an arena in which my skills were of central importance. Mars and Venus were the focus of my work for many years, and I was partly responsible for launching the Pioneer Venus mission, which placed probes into the Venus atmosphere in 1978. Much later, the experience I gained in space instrumentation and in the structure of atmospheres led me back to climate science, where I started. Then my interest was in observing the climate and testing the credibility of climate predictions. I still maintain some activity in this field. Outside these research activities, I created a Center for Earth and Planetary Physics at Harvard University to take over the activities of the Blue Hill Observatory, when that Observatory ceased to be a viable facility. The purpose of the Center was to teach earth science in the context of the discipline of physical science. The Center had some notable achievements but eventually had to give way to requirements for environmental sciences in the University, a change that I regret. During my active life in the United States, I invested a great deal of effort in support of the work of the National Research Council (NRC), including many years spent on report review. I am increasingly troubled by the postmodern view of science that appears to dominate these activities. But that may be no more than a biased rosy view of the past with its exciting early experiences and hopes.

How Ecology Has Changed

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene P. Odum
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
University Of Georgia ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Past Half

During the past half century, ecology has emerged from its roots in biology to become a stand-alone discipline that interfaces organisms, the physical environment and human affairs. This is in line with the root meaning of the word ecology which is ‘the study of the household’ or the total environment in which we live. When I first came to the University of Georgia in 1940 as an instructor in the Department of Zoology, ecology was considered a rather unimportant sub-division of biology. At the end of World War II, we had a staff meeting to discuss ‘core curriculum’, or what courses every biology major should be required to take. My suggestion that ecology should be part of this core was rejected by all other members of the staff; they said ecology was just descriptive natural history with no basic principles. It was this ‘put down’, as it were, that started me thinking about a textbook that would emphasize basic principles, which eventually became the first edition of my Fundamentals of Ecology, published in 1953. In those early days ‘ecology’ was often defined as the ‘study of organisms in relation to environment’. The environment was considered a sort of inert stage in which the actors, that is the organisms, played the game of natural selection. Now we recognize that the ‘stage’ and the ‘actors’ interact with each other constantly so that not only do organisms relate to the physical environment, but they also change the environment. Thus, when the first green microbes, the cynobacteria, began putting oxygen into the atmosphere, the environment was greatly changed, making way for a whole new set of aerobic organisms. Also, when one goes from the study of structure to the study of function, then the physical sciences (including energetics, biogeochemical cycling and earth sciences in general) have to be included. And, of course, now more than ever, we have to consider humans and the social sciences as part of the environment. So we now have essentially a new discipline of ‘ecology’ that is a three-way interface.

scholarly journals Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) for Analysis and Comparison of Reanalyses and Other Datasets

2014 ◽  
Vol 95 (11) ◽  
pp. 1671-1678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Smith ◽  
Gilbert P. Compo ◽  
Don K. Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Cross Sections ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Web Based ◽  
University Of Colorado ◽  
Standard Pressure ◽  
Climate Analysis ◽  
The University ◽  
Reanalysis Intercomparison

While atmospheric reanalysis datasets are widely used in climate science, many technical issues hinder comparing them to each other and to observations. The reanalysis fields are stored in diverse file architectures, data formats, and resolutions. Their metadata, such as variable name and units, can also differ. Individual users have to download the fields, convert them to a common format, store them locally, change variable names, regrid if needed, and convert units. Even if a dataset can be read via the Open-Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (commonly known as OPeNDAP) or a similar protocol, most of this work is still needed. All of these tasks take time, effort, and money. Our group at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado and affiliated colleagues at the NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory Physical Sciences Division have expertise both in making reanalysis datasets available and in creating web-based climate analysis tools that have been widely used throughout the meteorological community. To overcome some of the obstacles in reanalysis intercomparison, we have created a set of web-based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) at www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/writ/. WRIT allows users to easily plot and compare reanalysis datasets, and to test hypotheses. For standard pressure-level and surface variables there are tools to plot trajectories, monthly mean maps and vertical cross sections, and monthly mean time series. Some observational datasets are also included. Users can refine date, statistics, and plotting options. WRIT also facilitates the mission of the Reanalyses.org website as a convenient toolkit for studying the reanalysis datasets.

The Linguistic Society of America and North American Linguistics, 1950–1968

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archibald A. Hill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The University ◽  
Annual Summer

Summary The author, Secretary-Treasurer of the Linguistic Society of America during the crucial phase of the post-World War II growth of linguistics as an autonomous academic speciality, 1950–1968, reports on the events that shaped the LSA and the discipline in North America in general. Whereas the Society counted only 829 members, individual and institutional, in 1950, the total number had risen to 4,375 by 1968. The author narrates, in a year-by-year manner, the acitivities that held the Society together during this period and furthered the exchange of ideas among the different generations of linguists, namely, (1) the annual meetings, traditionally held at the end of December, at which both established scholars and fledgling researchers presented papers and had them discussed; (2) the annual summer institutes, first held for a number of years in a row at the University of Michigan and subsequently at several other campuses in the United States, and (3) the publication of Language, the Society’s organ, ably edited by Bernard Bloch from 1941 until his death in 1965.

A tribute to Peter E. Dresel, Ph.D.: (February 27, 1925 – November 15, 1987)

1989 ◽  
Vol 67 (7) ◽  
pp. 691-691
Author(s):  
R. Y. K. Man ◽  
D. Bose
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Cardiovascular Pharmacology ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
Associate Editor ◽  
Scientific Review ◽  
Editorial Boards ◽  
University Of Manitoba ◽  
The University

Dr. Peter E. Dresel was a highly respected pharmacologist who played a significant role in the development of this discipline in Canada. Peter immigrated to the United States of America from Germany at a very young age. After graduating from high school and serving meritoriously in the U.S. Army during World War II, he obtained his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Rochester in 1952. After serving in several positions in the university and in the pharmaceutical industry, Peter was recruited in 1956 by Mark Nickerson to join the fledgling Department of Pharmacology at the University of Manitoba. Nickerson's wish to develop Peter into a neuropharmacologist was never fulfilled. Instead, Peter went on to become an outstanding cardiac pharmacologist who trained a number of students, many of whom hold prestigious positions in their field of research. Having helped shape the "Nickerson Era" in Manitoba and having established a name in the cardiovascular pharmacology scene in North America, Peter became the Head of the Department of Pharmacology at Dalhousie University in Halifax in 1976. For the next 12 years Peter showed his superb academic and administrative abilities in shaping a vigorous and productive department.Peter served The Pharmacological Society of Canada in many capacities. He was a Councillor (1966–1969), Secretary (1969–1972), Vice President (1974–1975), and ultimately President (1975–1977). In addition to serving on the editorial boards of several international journals and scientific review committees, Peter was very active in university affairs, serving in the Senate at both the University of Manitoba and Dalhousie. He was also elected President of the Associate of Academic Staff at the University of Manitoba.Peter will be remembered for his unique flair. Despite his flamboyance, he had the unique ability to make his students feel at ease. His wealth of life experiences enabled him to teach his students and colleagues more than just science. He was eclectic and provocative, loyal and compassionate. Peter was never afraid of facing a challenge, nor was he too big to admit mistakes. Above all, he was extraordinarily generous in speaking of the accomplishments of his students and colleagues. Peter Dresel lived his life to the fullest, and helped those who crossed his path to do the same. His attributes will be judged not only through his contributions to science, but also by the enrichment of all who were touched by his influence.It is only befitting to honor Peter Dresel with a Memorial Issue in this Journal, which he served so well as an Associate Editor. The response of former students and colleagues has been overwhelming, and we wish to thank them all for their contributions.

scholarly journals The Optimism of Absence: An Archaeology of Displacement, Effacement, and Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Mullins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Projects ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
American Cities

In the 1960s Edward J. Zebrowski turned the razing of Indianapolis, Indiana into a compelling show of forward-looking community optimism illuminating the power of displacement. When Zebrowski’s company toppled the Knights of Pythias Hall in 1967, for instance, he installed bleachers and hired an organist to play from the back of a truck as the twelve-storey Romanesque Revival structure was reduced to rubble. Two years later, the ‘Big Z’ hosted a party in the Claypool Hotel and ushered guests outside at midnight to watch as the floodlit building met its end at the wrecking ball (Figure 12.1). Zebrowski’s theatricality perhaps distinguished him from the scores of wrecking balls dismantling American cities, but his celebration of the city’s material transformation mirrored the sentiments of many urbanites in the wake of World War II. The post-war period was punctuated by a flurry of destruction and idealistic redevelopment in American cities like Indianapolis just as the international landscape was being rebuilt from the ruins of the war. In 1959 the New York Times’ Austin Wehrwein (1959: 61) assessed the University of Chicago’s massive displacement in Hyde Park and drew a prescient parallel to post-war Europe when he indicated that ‘wrecking crews have cleared large tracts, so that areas near the university resemble German cities just after World War II’. Indeed, much of Europe was distinguished less by ruins and redevelopment than demolition and emptied landscapes removing the traces of warfare that states wished to reclaim or efface; in the United States, urban renewal likewise took aim on impractical, unappealing, or otherwise unpleasant urban fabric and the people who called such places home (see also Ernsten, Chapter 10, for this process associated with the policies of apartheid in Cape Town). These global projects removed wartime debris and razed deteriorating prewar landscapes, extending interwar urban renewal projects that embraced the fantasy of a ‘blank slate’ as they built various unevenly executed imaginations of modernity. However, many optimistic development plans in Europe and the United States alike were abandoned or disintegrated into ruins themselves, simply leaving blank spaces on the landscape. Consequently, the legacy of urban renewal and post-war reconstruction is not simply modernist architecture; instead, post-war landscape transformation is signalled by distinctive absences dispersed amidst post-war architectural space and traces of earlier built environments.

scholarly journals Introduction—Atomic and Electron Fluids

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mukunda P Das ◽  
David Neilson
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
South Wales ◽  
National University ◽  
The University

This volume contains the lectures given at the fourth international Gordon Godfrey workshop held at the University of New South Wales in Sydney from 26 to 28 September 1994. This time our lecturers came from Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Vietnam, as well as of course from Australia. There was a total of seventeen lectures. The workshops are jointly organised by the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales and the Department of Theoretical Physics, Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian National University and are held annually at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Each workshop concentrates on a different and novel research area of current interest in condensed matter physics. The late Gordon Godfrey was an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales who bequeathed his estate for the promotion and the teaching of theoretical physics within the university.

Science in the Age of Invincible Surmise

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-208
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Martin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Nuclear Research ◽  
Government Support ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Research Initiative ◽  
Government Secrecy ◽  
The University

The Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan was an unusual specimen of the post–World War II nuclear research initiative. Its origins were modest; it sprang from a student-led effort to construct a living war memorial—a mission it maintained even as it grew into a peaceful-atom program. Rather than taking advantage of the copious government support for scientific research available after World War II, it drew funds from Michigan alumni and from industry, based on the conviction that these routes offered greater possibility of academic freedom. And its architects conceived of nuclear research unusually broadly, including not just the physical sciences and engineering, but also the biological, social, and human sciences, law, education, medicine, and other areas. These ways in which the Phoenix Project was exceptional nevertheless tell us much about how it was exemplary. The optimism that animated the project contrasts with widespread and well-documented currents of nuclear fear, but indicates a stable vein of nuclear optimism in the early post–World War II era. The suspicion of government secrecy regimes harbored by its founders led them to pursue unorthodox patronage relationships for a nuclear research initiative, which nevertheless reveals the flexibility of the contemporary funding context. And the project’s unusually broad notion of nuclear research indicates the local flexibility of nuclearity in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This paper is part of a special issue entitled “Revealing the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project.”

Family Trees and Timber Rights: Albert E. Jenks, Americanization, and the Rise of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Soderstrom
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The University ◽  
Family Trees

Hindsight allows present-day scholars to view the development of academic disciplines in a light that contemporaries would never have seen. Hence, from our perspective, Mary Furner's assertion that anthropology developed as a profession reacting against biology and the physical sciences makes sense, for we tend to celebrate the triumph of cultural anthropology as the coming of age of the discipline. However, this trajectory of professional development was not a necessary or predestined development. Rather, the eventual (if occasionally still embattled) predominance of culture over the categories of race, nation, and biology was only one of many possible outcomes. This paper investigates a different trajectory, one that most current scholars would hope has been relegated to the dustbin of history. It is still a cautionary tale, though, in that while the racial anthropology followed in this narrative did not survive World War II, its practitioners did enjoy a degree of prominence and influence that was much greater and longer than has been generally acknowledged by current accounts.

scholarly journals Reviving a Dormant Collection: Updating the Invertebrate Zoology Collection at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute for Future Use and Accessibility

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e26716
Author(s):  
Vanessa Delnavaz ◽  
Kirsten Jensen ◽  
Kaylee Herzog
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
University Of Kansas ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Label Data ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The University ◽  
Biodiversity Information ◽  
Invertebrate Zoology

The Invertebrate Zoology Collection at the University of Kansas (KU) Biodiversity Institute is one of KU’s smaller collections, with just over 2,000 lots. Its taxonomic strength are hexacorallians (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) from across the globe. Holdings also include earthworms primarily from Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, as well as crayfish and molluscs from the United States, notably from Kansas. The collection has seen little loan activity over the past decade, in part due to the fact that collection records are not digitally available. Moreover, the collection has been virtually untouched for several years as research activities on hexacorallians has ceased following curator retirement. In an initial inventory, physical holdings were checked against original catalog data, while simultaneously re-curating to ensure proper storage containers and maximal levels of either ethanol or formalin. Preliminary comparison of the catalogued data with original and secondary label data housed with the specimens suggest that across these sources, the captured and entered data is somewhat inconsistent and incomplete. In an attempt to remedy such issues, the next phase of the project will involve digitally capturing label data to verify collection information. Once the data has been validated, the working data in spreadsheet format will be imported into Specify, and published to a list of aggregators including Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON), and Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), for visibility and use outside of KU. The hope through such efforts is an accessible and easily searchable collection that is properly preserved for future research.

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