149 research outputs found
Interview with Stanley E. Whitcomb on LIGO
No full textInterview in two sessions in March 1997 with Stanley Whitcomb, then deputy director of LIGO. Whitcomb talks about his upbringing and education in Denver, Colorado, his undergraduate studies in physics at Caltech, and his PhD work at the University of Chicago. He recalls being recruited onto the LIGO project as its first dedicated faculty member by his undergraduate advisor R. Vogt in 1980. He describes the politics and personnel, and technical and administrative challenges of LIGO’s start-up phase in the early 1980s, including the involvement of K. Thorne, the recruitment of R. Drever from Glasgow, and competing gravitational-wave initiatives headed by R. Weiss at MIT, and at Max Planck in Garching, Germany. He discusses the factors that prompted him to leave the project for private industry in 1985, his return as LIGO’s deputy director in 1991, and the NSF’s role in brokering an initially fraught LIGO partnership between Caltech and MIT under Vogt’s leadership. There is extensive discussion of Caltech and MIT’s divergent R&D approaches to gravitational-wave instrumentation and engineering in the 1980s and early ’90s, their respective merits and drawbacks, the challenges faced in resolving these differences, the technical advances of the 1990s, and prospects for future success
Interview with Stanley E. Whitcomb
No full textInterview in five sessions, April–June 2017, with Stanley Whitcomb, chief scientist with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and one of the longest-serving principals on the project, having been at various times deputy director, R&D director, detector group leader, and acting director. These interviews, a follow-up to a 1997 interview [http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S], were conducted about 18 months after LIGO made its landmark detection in September 2015 of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, confirming a key prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The first session deals with Whitcomb’s account of the discovery and its aftermath, with sessions 2 through 5 focusing on his involvement with LIGO from the 1990s to the present day. He describes LIGO’s evolution from a modest scientific undertaking to a Caltech-MIT-NSF mega-collaboration with hundreds of personnel at multiple institutions, and recalls the organizational, administrative, and technical changes that accompanied this transition. There is extensive discussion of the roles played by B. Barish, R. Drever, J. Marx, D. Reitze, K. Thorne, R. Vogt, and R. Weiss, and numerous others who made essential contributions to LIGO’s success. He recalls the doubts and controversies that swirled around the project, especially in its earlier phases, and offers his thoughts on the factors that kept it viable and moving forward despite these challenges. He talks about his multifaceted administrative responsibilities, including his work with LIGO’s Livingston and Hanford observatories, particularly the latter, and his tenure as head of the detector group charged with developing and installing LIGO’s unprecedented optics and other innovative technologies. He charts LIGO’s progress from Initial to Advanced LIGO, the establishment of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and international outreach efforts, including overtures to Australia and the creation of LIGO–India. His personal reflections on LIGO’s scientific and historic significance also form part of this oral history
Author
No full textPhotograph taken for a story in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Caption: "Betty S. Fix (right) author and authority on children and their problems autographs books for Mrs. May Whitcomb and Mrs. Arlo Scoggins (left) and Mrs. R. L. Whitcomb (center) at Pilgrim Congregational church where she appeared this week as guest lecturer.
Newspaper clipping, poem, Away, by James Whitcomb Riley, circa 1915
No full textThis is an item from the William Crawford Gorgas Papers. This collection includes material created by and written about Gorgas, as well as material created by Gorgas' family members. His diaries and journals illuminate his life and work for the U.S. Army as a surgeon and span the years he worked in Cuba and Panama. The collection includes official reports and other documents Gorgas wrote and collected, as well as articles and other publications written about Gorgas and his work in sanitation and disease prevention, particularly yellow fever. Correspondence, articles, and other items document the numerous awards and tributes Gorgas received during his life and memorials after his death in 1920. In addition to William Crawford Gorgas material, the collection includes other material belonging to Gorgas family members including Marie Gorgas and their daughter, Aileen Gorgas Wrightson. In 1924, his widow Marie Gorgas published William Crawford Gorgas: His Life and Work. This collection includes manuscripts, galley proofs, and published versions of her work
FLAME IN A JAR
No full textContaining poems in Spanish and English, Flame in a Jar is part of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, Cuba, in conjunction with the 2018 International Biennial of Poetry of Havana, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, and the Office of the Historian of the City. Katharine Whitcomb is the author of five books, the most recent being a collection of poetry, The Daughter\u27s Almanac. She is a Distinguished Professor of English at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Washington, USA. Her website is katharinewhitcomb.com.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/hmvla_jampa/1012/thumbnail.jp
National Poetry Month Readings: Local Poets (Audio)
No full textDuring April 2015, in celebration of National Poetry Month, the James E. Brooks Library hosted a series of poetry readings featuring local poets. The readings were held in the library’s first floor Academic & Research Commons. The series was arranged and the readings were introduced by Gerard Hogan, Instruction Librarian at the Brooks Library.
On Wednesday, April 15th, Xavier Cavazos and Katharine Whitcomb were the featured poets. Streaming audio of the program is available through Soundcloud here, or by clicking the link above.
Xavier Cavazos is the author of Barbarian at the Gate, selected and introduced by Thomas Sayers Ellis as part of the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets Chapbook Series and Diamond Grove Slave Tree, which was awarded the inaugural Prairie Seed Poetry Prize from Ice Cube Press. Cavazos teaches in the Central Washington Writing Project, Africana and Black Studies, and the Professional and Creative Writing Programs at Central Washington University.
Katharine Whitcomb has degrees from Macalester College and Vermont College of Norwich University. She is the author of Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems, winner of the 2000 Bluestem Award, and two poetry chapbooks: Hosannas (Parallel Press, 1999) and Lamp of Letters (Floating Bridge Press, 2009). Winner of numerous awards and fellowships, she is Coordinator of the Writing Specialization English Major at Central Washington University
Afterwhiles.
No full textProvenance: J. L. and E. B. Ketterlinus; E. H. Mills (bookplates).This copy lacks blank leaf preceding p. [1], described in Russo.In the original quarter brown cloth and tan paper boards.Inscribed from the author to W. H. Cathcart, Feb. 22, 1897."Like a fragrant incense rising, curled the smoke of my cigar": p. 13. "[The fairy] laid/His cigarette down on a clean grass-blade": p. 19.For variations see: Russo: James Whitcomb Riley, p. 14 (state 1 of sheets) //Mode of access: Internet
Optical dilution and feedback cooling of a gram-scale oscillator to 6.9 mK
No full textWe report on the use of a radiation pressure induced restoring force, the optical spring effect, to optically dilute the mechanical damping of a 1 g suspended mirror, which is then cooled by active feedback (cold damping). Optical dilution relaxes the limit on cooling imposed by mechanical losses, allowing the oscillator mode to reach a minimum temperature of 6.9 mK, a factor of ~40 000 below the environmental temperature. A further advantage of the optical spring effect is that it can increase the number of oscillations before decoherence by several orders of magnitude. In the present experiment we infer an increase in the dynamical lifetime of the state by a factor of ~200.Thomas Corbitt, Christopher Wipf, Timothy Bodiya, David Ottaway, Daniel Sigg, Nicolas Smith, Stanley Whitcomb, and Nergis Mavalval
[Photograph 2012.201.B1363.0917]
No full textPhotograph used for a story in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Caption: "Mrs. E. Stanley Berger, left, and Mrs. Walter Whitcomb are among the volunteers working on the show.
An epistemic value theory
No full textFor any normative domain, we can theorize about what is good in that domain. Such theories include utilitarianism, a view about what is good morally. But there are many domains other than the moral; these include the prudential, the aesthetic, and the intellectual or epistemic. In this last domain, it is (for instance) good to be knowledgeable and bad to ignore evidence, quite apart from the morality, prudence, and aesthetics of these things. This dissertation builds a theory that stands to the epistemic domain as utilitarianism stands to the moral domain. It builds an epistemic value theory.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-251)
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