Fearless Friday: Hannah Lebovitz

This week, we recognize the work of Hannah Labovitz ’21. Hannah is currently pursuing a history major, a Spanish and Public History double minor, and a teaching certification. She is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has been very involved in the Jewish community here at Gettysburg. She is the secretary and communications chair of Hillel, works as an assistant to Stephen Stern in the Judaic Studies Department, serves on the Judaic Studies committee, acts as co-President of Democracy Matters. She also participates in Alpha Phi Omega, College Democrats, and Dance Ensemble. [excerpt

Expansion and Acquisition: The Built Environment Under Gettysburg College President, Gordon Haaland, 1990 to 2004

Gordon Haaland presided over Gettysburg College from 1990 to 2004. His goals included improving the national status of the college by increasing the student body, developing the academic departments, and creating a dynamic campus community. This paper outlines Haaland\u27s attempts to fulfill these goals through a plethora of construction projects, ranging from building a state of the art science center and extensively renovating a historic theater, to updating dormitories and revitalizing the appearance of campus. Some of the construction included projects that were planned under the previous president and carried out by Haaland, as well as scandals that accompanied these efforts. In addition, the paper covers the fundraising and planning processes, as well as the campus and community reactions to the building projects. Ultimately, this paper weighs the successes and challenges of Haaland\u27s construction plans during his highly productive presidency

The influence of autocorrelation in signature extraction: An example from a geobotanical investigation of Cotter Basin, Montana

The presence of positive serial correlation (autocorrelation) in remotely sensed data results in an underestimate of the variance-covariance matrix when calculated using contiguous pixels. This underestimate produces an inflation in F statistics. For a set of Thematic Mapper Simulator data (TMS), used to test the ability to discriminate a known geobotanical anomaly from its background, the inflation in F statistics related to serial correlation is between 7 and 70 times. This means that significance tests of means of the spectral bands initially appear to suggest that the anomalous site is very different in spectral reflectance and emittance from its background sites. However, this difference often disappears and is always dramatically reduced when compared to frequency distributions of test statistics produced by the comparison of simulated training sets possessing equal means, but which are composed of autocorrelated observations

Changes in vegetation spectra with deterioration of leaves under two methods of preservation

An experiment to measure changes in leaf spectra under different methods of preservation over time was conducted. The spectral measurements were made by a three band hand held radiometer which simulated three Thematic Mapper (TM) bands: TM3, TM4, and TM5. Daily spectral measurements of white oak leaves under three preservation treatments were made. The spectral readings over three treatments (fresh, bottled, and bagged vegetation) were indistinguishable in bands TM3 and TM5 for up to 4 days after collection. After that time bagged and bottled samples showed significant increases in reflected energy caused by loss of chlorophyll from and dehydration of the vegetation. No significant variation in the reflectance values from TM4 over preservation type for the experimental period was observed

An evaluation of the NASA/GSFC Barnes field spectral reflecometer model 14-758, using signal/noise as a measure of utility

A Barnes field spectral reflectometer which collected information in 373 channels covering the region from 0.4 to 2.5 micrometers was assessed for signal utility. A band was judged unsatisfactory if the probability was 0.1 or greater than its signal to noise ratio was less than eight to one. For each of the bands the probability of a noisy observation was estimated under a binomial assumption from a set of field crop spectra covering an entire growing season. A 95% confidence interval was calculated about each estimate and bands whose lower confidence limits were greater than 0.1 were judged unacceptable. As a result, 283 channels were deemed statistically satisfactory. Excluded channels correspond to portions of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) where high atmospheric absorption and filter wheel overlap occur. In addition, the analyses uncovered intervals of unsatisfactory detection capability within the blue, red and far infrared regions of vegetation spectra. From the results of the analysis it was recommended that 90 channels monitored by the instrument under consideration be eliminated from future studies. These channels are tabulated and discussed

A physical basis for remote rock mapping of igneous rocks using spectral variations in thermal infrared emittance

Results of a theoretical investigation of the relation between spectral features in the 8-12 micrometer region and rock type are presented. Data on compositions of a suite of rocks and measurements of their spectral intensities in 8.2-10.9 and 9.4-12.1 micrometer bands published by Vincent (1973) were subjected to various quantitative procedures. There was no consistent direct relationship between rock group names and the relative spectral intensities. However, there is such a relationship between the Thornton-Tuttle (1960) Differentiation Index and the relative spectral intensities. This relationship is explicable on the basis of the change in average Si-O bond length which is a function of the degree of polymerization of the SiO4 tetrahedra of the silicate minerals in the igneous rocks

Redundancy and Robustness of the AS-level Internet topology and its models

A comparison between the topological properties of the measured Internet topology, at the autonomous system level (AS graph), and the equivalent graphs generated by two different power law topology generators is presented. Only one of the synthetic generators reproduces the tier connectivity of the AS graph

An inventory of undiscovered Canadian mineral resources

Unit regional value (URV) and unit regional weight are area standardized measures of the expected value and quantity, respectively, of the mineral resources of a region. Estimation and manipulation of the URV statistic is the basis of an approach to mineral resource evaluation. Estimates of the kind and value of exploitable mineral resources yet to be discovered in the provinces of Canada are used as an illustration of the procedure. The URV statistic is set within a previously developed model wherein geology, as measured by point counting geologic maps, is related to the historical record of mineral resource production of well-developed regions of the world, such as the 50 states of the U.S.A.; these may be considered the training set. The Canadian provinces are related to this training set using geological information obtained in the same way from geologic maps of the provinces. The desired predictions of yet to be discovered mineral resources in the Canadian provinces arise as a consequence. The implicit assumption is that regions of similar geology, if equally well developed, will produce similar weights and values of mineral resources

Preliminary evidence for the influence of physiography and scale upon the autocorrelation function of remotely sensed data

Previously established results demonstrate that LANDSAT data are autocorrelated and can be described by a univariate linear stochastic process known as auto-regressive-integrated-moving-average model of degree 1, 0, 1 or ARIMA (1, 0, 1). This model has two coefficients of interest for interpretation phi(1) and theta(1). In a comparison of LANDSAT thematic mapper simulator (TMS) data and LANDSAT MSS data several results were established: (1) The form of the relatedness as described by this model is not dependent upon system look angle or pixel size. (2) The phi(1) coefficient increases with decreasing pixel size and increasing topographic complexity. (3) Changes in topography have a greater influence upon phi(1) than changes in land cover class. (4) The theta(1) seems to vary with the amount of atmospheric haze. These patterns of variation in phi(1) and theta(1) are potentially exploitable by the remote sensing community to yield stochastically independent sets of observations, characterize topography, and reduce the number of bytes needed to store remotely sensed data