Sensing Refractive Turbulence Profiles Using Wave Front Slope Measurements from Two Reference Sources

This thesis examines a remote sensing technique for measuring the atmospheric structure constant as a function of altitude by performing spatial correlation or wavefront sensor measurements. Two point sources are used to irradiate two wavefront sensors in the aperture plane of an optical system. The geometric relationship between the sources and the sensors gives rise to crossed optical paths. At the point where the paths cross, the correlation value of the turbulence contributions will be at a peak. The correlation is shown to be mathematically related to the structure constant in terms of an integral of the structure constant multiplied by a path weighting function. It is shown that the path weighting function can be made to have the characteristics of a sampling function and the value of the structure constant can be directly inferred from the correlation measurement. The vertical resolution and signal-to-noise ratio are calculated for a sample case of two-layer turbulence

Gluttons and Gourmands: British Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Gastronomy

In this dissertation, I argue that the shifting cultural signification of food in early-nineteenth-century England generates literary responses which frame crucial debates of Romanticism. As the emphasis of eating moves from a dietetic to an aesthetic one, the discourses surrounding food form a constitutive part of class identity, which in turn relies on definitions of aesthetic value. Gastronomy redraws the lines of middle-class identity in relation to bodily pleasure, and these lines correspond to literary engagements with materiality. The intersection of literary and gastronomic aesthetics shows how the logic of materiality always informs Romantic aspirations for aesthetic transcendence. Thus the attempt to separate transcendence from material aesthetics falters when broaching the topic through the terms established by food discourse. Lord Byron’s wariness of aesthetic transcendence, posed frequently in his poetry, receives an analog in his obsession with his weight and his resulting idiosyncratic eating habits. John Keats, who frequently offers sensual images of food in his poetry, engages with the discourse of gastronomy in order to interrogate the fundamental dilemma of Romanticism—that aesthetic transcendence must be achieved through materiality. In the realm of political economy, Thomas Mathus’s assertion that eating functions only biologically ignores the social implications of eating raised by gourmands, and taken up by Thomas De Quincey in his writings on bodily aesthetic experience. Ultimately, in this dissertation I trace how the formation of literary taste in the Romantic period emerges out of gastronomic discourse, and how the principles of gourmandism impinge on the assumptions of Romantic ideology. And yet, like Romanticism with its multivalent associations, gastronomy too signifies multiply. Instead of one monolithic discourse of food, many exist simultaneously and symbiotically, and this wide range of significations makes Romantic authors’ engagements with food equally diverse

Keats\u27s Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives

In late December 1817, when attempting to name what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature, John Keats coined the term negative capability, which he glossed as being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats\u27s work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. From Amazon.comhttps://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/bookshelf/1106/thumbnail.jp