Troposcatter Research Articles

A Survey and analysis on a troposcatter propagation model based on ITU-R recommendations

Signal scattering in the troposphere is a phenomenon referred to as “troposcatter”, and it is promising method for wireless communication beyond the line of sight (b-LOS). For a troposcatter communication system, it is important to develop a channel model for the tropospheric scatter. Recently, b-LOS communication using troposcatter received much attention for its application to military communication. Thus, a comprehensive review and analysis of conventional ITU-R troposcatter propagation models and recent results would be a timely study. Accordingly, in this study, we analyze and simulate the tropospheric scatter propagation model proposed by the ITU-R. Troposcatter propagation models in ITU-R recommendations consist of three parts: basic transmission loss, gaseous absorption, and a precipitation fading model. The ITU-R P.2001 simulation model shows basic transmission losses of 210 dB and 240 dB at 0.2 GHz and 2 GHz in 300 km distances, respectively. The ITU-R P.452 model results in 20 dB less loss, but this is dependent on measurement conditions. Gaseous absorption and precipitation fading have less than 1 dB loss for frequencies less than 2 GHz, but can increase to be over 10 dB in loss for frequencies of 2 GHz and above. We also review recent studies on tropospheric scatter channel models and communication systems. In addition to these reviews, we examine recent studies on ray tracing methods for tropospheric scatter channel models.

The Lice, and: Scythe, and: Double Occupancy, and: Devotional

The Lice, and: Scythe, and: Double Occupancy, and: Devotional Marlo Starr (bio) The Lice The first event is known to have been an expulsion, and the last is hoped to be a reconciliation and return. —Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping Our story begins with an expulsion. Mom swivelsto count and recount the milling brood. Us,sticky and slick with shampoo. See, I'm just below,on the back porch, crouched between her knees,my bright scalp bared for the biteof the comb. The boys launch cicadas onto the roof,the girls mock-scold, their heads lacquered whiteto drown the new colonies. Except for J who propsthe Children's Bible against the freezer boxto study its pictures: a sword bars the gardenwith orange flames, fig-leafed Adam and Eveclutch each other at the gates. J drops the tomeon the cement slab where cloudy drops pool.I try to make out the teeming multitude.Mom holds the comb for me to see:"You needed proof?" [End Page 13] Scythe There is a diagram imprinted in me,a first-tooth memory, my early phantomroot. I'd like to hold myself againstits hard edge, to arrange the giveand sag of me into its stony relief,but the order of the world is lesstaut, a false equation of hieroglyphand brassy machine. Herethe remains of a marbling tulipinfection. All those clawed headsmake a garish heap on the floor.In the clean language of want,a fixed lexicon for love:even the epitaph lies. The silenceis not still. They are mowingand mowing your grave [End Page 14] Double Occupancy My father purchases the burial plots years before she dies. A doubleoccupancy cement bunker, the bottom for my mother. She sits sunk in the reclining chair with her eyes closed, listening or not. Sometimes she slathers Vaseline on her cracked heels and covers them with socks. I move houses and give away the round table, the plants. I move houses again and give away the bed I shared for a time with someone and then with someone else. A month before her funeral, she asks my father to spend the extra money for a plot where they will lie side by side. I sit outside in the cold sun with my sister, the baby crying. "Mom" in the call record makes me think I've missed her again. There are still dishes in the sink when I leave for the airport. Someone in the flat dark is waiting for me to return across the distance. I press my temple to the glass. [End Page 15] Devotional I read words but don't hear God in them. —Susan Howe Friends send words on grieving. Instead, I cometo rely on the mystery of facts—the composition of tears, more mineral than fluid, a different saltarchitecture for relief or prayer. The book of photos magnifies their scale: landscapes repeatin miniature, binding crystal, the substance of stars or stone. On the bus, the crumbling paperwhitesgather in my lap, fallen from the nest of pages, the dusting of petals and pollen—how didn't I notice? Lost in the private room of a sentence. Under the microscope, spires of elationburst in fireworks of glass, while onion tears bloom in the dense symmetry of fern. [End Page 16] The bus rumbles across the city's grid.Through the windows, the stream of red brick material as myth, continuous as a voicemoving over the face of the waters. [End Page 17] Marlo Starr marlo starr is a writer and assistant professor of English at Wittenberg University. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Ghost City Review, Napkin Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2023 Marlo Starr

Eudora Welty Foundation 2022 News

Eudora Welty Foundation 2022 News Jeanne Luckett The Eudora Welty Foundation, often working in collaboration with the Eudora Welty House & Garden, helped promote and produce an increased number of in-person activities in 2022 as the Coronavirus (COVID–19) abated to a degree. Although some virtual programming continued, many events were held outside on the lawn of the Welty House and in the Welty Garden. Some programs that had been postponed were finally held. A most significant occurrence for the Foundation in 2022 was its receipt of a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission to assist with the construction of an Education Center on the property immediately behind the Visitor Center which is next door to the Welty House. Mississippi Arts Commission Grant Facilitates Education Center Construction Plans for an Education Center to host larger audiences than the Welty Visitor Center can seat were greatly enhanced when the Eudora Welty Foundation received a $225,000 Building Fund for the Arts (BFA) grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC). MAC is a state agency that receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mississippi Legislature, and other resources. Of forty-six applicants, the Foundation was one of sixteen to receive a BFA grant. The Foundation had already begun fundraising and is continuing to raise the grant match and the balance needed. Maggie Bjorgum of Belinda Stewart Architects, PA, of Eupora, MS, has developed architectural plans, and site work is already underway. The Visitor Center garage where garden supplies and tools have been stored will be torn down. The Welty House garage has been repurposed as a garden shed, thanks to a grant from the Garden Club of Jackson and help from the Foundation. The Education Center will be completed within two years and will accommodate a variety of activities and events. The new building [End Page 181] will have, among other amenities, a large meeting room, a kitchen, and a covered back porch and will be donated by the Foundation to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History when completed. Welty At Home Virtual Book Club Held via Zoom Continues To Thrive Begun in 2020, the virtual Welty at Home Book Club was a success throughout 2022. With participation growing, Zoom capacity was increased to permit more than 100 participants. The Welty House staff manages the technical operations, and Welty Foundation scholar-in-residence Suzanne Marrs leads most discussions, with readers actively engaged in comments. Programs from January through March focused on William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury with guest lecturer Jay Watson, Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi. Welty's The Wide Net and Other Stories was read and discussed May–July. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was the subject September–November. To sign up for the Book Club and receive the Zoom link, call 601–353–7762 or email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com. For a participant's view of Welty at Home, see University of Mississippi Jacob Agner's story about the Book Club in the Eudora Welty Review, Volume 14, 2022. Author Ron Rash Delivers Bettye Jolly Lecture at Welty Garden Acclaimed author Ron Rash presented the Bettye Jolly Lecture in the Welty Garden on September 22 to a large and enthusiastic audience. The lecture was delayed two years because of Covid. Rash discussed his appreciation of Welty's work and noted that he teaches "A Worn Path" in his classes at Western Carolina University. He read from "The Belt," a story from In the Valley. He also read one of his poems "3 a.m.: The Stars Were Out" and noted that he had become a better poet by writing fiction. The lecture may be viewed on the Welty Foundation website: eudorawelty.org. Search: Ron Rash Lecture. Rash is the author of seven novels, seven collections of short stories, six poetry collections, and a children's book. An endowed program of the Welty Foundation, the lecture honors the late Bettye Jolly, a volunteer and supporter of the Welty House & Garden. [End...

Back Porch

Back Porch Marcie Cohen Ferris "I am perfectly able to care for myself," my ninety-seven-year-old mother, Huddy, says to me with a deep sigh. I hear the frustration and anger in her voice. This daily encounter occurs when I cross her threshold of intervention, having suggested a nice walk one too many times, or reminded her to eat or drink something more substantial. My endless suggestions, constant reminding, tidying, and scheduling feel like a thousand cuts to her ability and agency. "Stop snooping in my refrigerator," she says. "Why don't you go home to your dog and husband?" Before I leave, I note a visit from an occupational therapist who will assess the safety and accessibility of her apartment. "I don't like people poking around my home," she responds. Keri Watson's discussion of Eudora Welty's ca. 1940 photographic portraits of Charlie Paul, the "village pet," reminds me how much my mother—regardless of her good health, clear mind, and independence—desires the freedom, autonomy, and mobility Paul had his entire life, despite his cognitive disability. Rather than an institution for the "feebleminded," Paul's "community of care" was the small town of Rodney, Mississippi, where he was born and raised, and genially led tourists through its cemetery and church. In 2023, my mother lives not far from my husband and me in a planned community for older adults. We're grateful for the support and care it provides, but a century ago, my mother would have lived with us as she neared her one hundredth year. In her senior community I witness the "absent presence" of disability that Watson describes, "something that is both apparent and ignored," evident in the many walkers, canes, hearing aids, caregivers, silences, missing partners, and repetitive stories that fill the hallways and dining room. In Robert Newsome's beautiful remembrance of artist Patrick Dean, he shares the exuberant figural line drawings Dean created after his ALS diagnosis. The drawings vividly express the power and complexity of motion and movement—a common exercise that becomes miraculous in its ghostlike absence. I see that same recognition in my mother's longing for past decades marked by her nonstop pace, confident stride, and everyday moments spent with her husband, my beloved father, Jerry.1 This issue's essays opened my eyes to the politics, economics, rhetorics, and systemic racism that has long controlled, irreparably maimed, and, in many experiences, destroyed the lives of disabled southerners. In state-run carceral medical institutions like the Virginia State Penitentiary and Central State Hospital, Shelby Pumphrey reveals how sterilization and other [End Page 100] forms of medical "care" were used to discipline African American male patients and prisoners, guided by the "racial improvement" theory of early twentieth-century eugenics and white supremacy. These narratives were embedded in the region's complex and evolving geographies and histories of the early twentieth century, from families like R. Larkin Taylor-Parker's, who kept disabled relatives secret, fearing their "bloodlines" would be seen as tainted, to the disabled white and Black southern roots musicians of the post-Reconstruction South that Simon Buck examines. Buck explores how these artists' identities were defined by their experience of limb loss and the spectacle and performance of that physical absence. Adria L. Imada uncovers the disability narratives of activism, joy, and resistance at Carville, Louisiana's carceral facility for the treatment of Hansen's disease, where residents—many from Hawai'i's Kalaupapa detention hospital—were controlled by quarantine laws until the 1940s. Today, the contemporary Krip-Hop movement founded by Leroy F. Moore Jr., here in conversation with our talented guest editor Charles L. Hughes, celebrates the music of disabled hip-hop artists to increase awareness in the industry and across national music and arts platforms. These voices each speak of shared disability-informed silences, waiting, grief, acceptance, and the possibility of cure, yet also the daily rituals that remain—"the pot of greens," as described by poet Camisha L. Jones, and "the push on in spite of." These works led me to an inevitable inventory of my own ableness. There is the disability landscape of my family history—the narratives...

Semantic of Space In Acehnese : Conceptual Metaphor Semantic Cognitive

<em>The purpose of this research is to describe the spatial aspects of the spatial conceptualization generated by the dominant metaphors found in Acehnese society both related to Acehnese culture and nature. The author uses Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) cognitive semantic conceptual study which is clarified by Cruse & Croft (2004) and Saeed (2009) in describing and analyzing the data. The concept of space is generated which refers to the container (container) and place (space). Container space includes: (1) inside-out concept, (2) full-empty concept, and (3) content concept. Space includes: (1) up-down concept, (2) center-periphery concept, and left-right image concept. the spatial conceptualization generated by the dominant metaphor found in Acehnese society is divided into three main spaces; seuramoe keue (front porch), rumoh inoeng (tungai porch), and seuramoe likoet (back porch) space related to the container (container) is categorized as the concept of container space in Acehnese houses, while the conceptualization of space related to place is categorized as the concept of space in aceh nature. The metaphor of open space in this element includes the entire open space of open nature in all activities. while the conceptualization of space related to place is categorized as the concept of space in Aceh's realm. The metaphor of open space in this element includes the entire open space of open nature in all activities. while the conceptualization of space related to place is categorized as the concept of space in Aceh's realm. The metaphor of open space in this element includes the entire open space of open nature in all activities.</em>

Hunger

Hunger Robynne Graffam (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Jules Morgan [End Page 108] She did not want to eat him. Not really. It was expected; she knew that, had always known it. But it surprised her to discover she’d rather not. A dilemma. Caught in that ineffable struggle, she avoided the issue as best she could, but the effort was draining, [End Page 109] and occasionally she found herself pulling a blade of grass from the lawn and biting down on it, just to taste the bitter spike of chlorophyll on her tongue. She liked him. This was the trouble. She hadn’t intended to, but there it was. She’d chosen him for his blandness, which she’d assumed would make things easier. He was stolid, unremarkable, dull even. Hair of indeterminate brown, eyes smallish and watery with allergies. An accountant, obviously. They went on tepid dates—the movies or dinners of pasta and dusty chianti. At the end of the evening, he held her hand in damp fingers and she let him kiss her good night, kissing back just enough to hint at what might be possible behind closed doors, a warm pink moment of affection that went no further yet planted the seed of desire firmly enough in the arid soil of his imagination. But he surprised her. Once they were engaged, he brought her small presents, delightful and unexpected. A bunch of poppies, persimmon- orange, black rings winking in the sunlight like naughty children. A scarf of tissue-thin silk, painted with delicate vines of morning glory. A swallowtail butterfly, golden-winged, that he’d caught himself in a net and released in her kitchen to flutter dazedly in search of a window. (She watched it with pleasure, snatching it up and eating it discreetly while he went to the bathroom.) And he discovered how to touch her, lightly at the waist, occasionally eliciting an almost girlish laugh she hardly recognized as her own. She hadn’t expected to enjoy him touching her and knew it would only complicate matters later. Still, she could not help smiling at his breathy kisses on her neck, his fingers resting gently on the small of her back. She did her best not to think about what they would taste like. Their wedding was a small affair. He had parents, white-haired and frail, just shy of elderly. Two unremarkable siblings, a friend from high school who stood with him as best man. She had only her mother. Slender and stern, dressed in a pearlescent gray sheath with a pillbox hat, she watched from the edge of the room, her dark, unblinking eyes betraying no emotion whatsoever. The bride did not have anyone to “give her away” (loathsome expression) and so walked down the aisle alone, which suited her. She’d never known her father, of course, and therefore did not miss him. She had wondered about him occasionally, if he was kind or strong or intelligent. Once, on an evening when she and her mother sat on the back porch watching the dusk swallow the trees like a rolling blanket of fog, she’d asked about him, about what he was like. Her mother paused a moment and said simply, “Tough.” [End Page 110] On their wedding night, she stacked extra towels by the bed, slipped the small knife into her pillowcase as her mother had instructed. She assumed this was not the marriage-bed conversation most girls had with their mothers, but that was no concern of hers. Every relationship, she reminded herself, was unique. But again, he surprised her. Emerging from the bathroom in a wine-colored satin robe, he gave a rakish grin that stirred a quick and visceral curiosity which left her involuntarily flexing her fingers. He slipped his hand behind her, pulling her to him, a vitality in his eye she was sure she’d never seen before. He kissed her with an eagerness that was equally pleasant and troubling, but she allowed herself to be led to the bed and sank down into the pillows, almost blushing as his hand found its way to the cleft...

Back Porch

Back Porch Tom Rankin Click for larger view View full resolution Lumberton, NC, 2016. Photos courtesy of the author. In october 2016, my wife, Jill McCorkle, and I drove our Tacoma pickup filled with cases of bottled water and other essentials to her hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina. Hurricane Matthew had made landfall at McClellanville, South Carolina, just north of Charleston, and then drifted northeasterly into North Carolina. An eight-mile stretch of I-95 went completely underwater, and by October 10, just two days after the hurricane came ashore in South Carolina, the Lumber River rose to over twenty-two feet in Lumberton. Roads, yards, and first floors of many houses were underwater. As Lumberton resident James Robinson told the Raleigh News and Observer, “All that water got to go somewhere.” Where it went was into the homes and businesses throughout Lumberton, over-taking [End Page 142] the city water treatment plant, leaving most residents with either no running water or water too contaminated to drink or use at home. The rains of Hurricane Matthew drenched a Robeson County that is perpetually one of North Carolina’s poorest, with over one-third of the population living in poverty in 2016.1 Click for larger view View full resolution Lumberton, NC, 2016 The irony of driving a truckload of water into a flood zone is all too obvious. We picked our way from Hillsborough in the Piedmont through the Sandhills to avoid flooded roads, arriving in a Lumberton community that held far too much water and yet no potable water, awaiting deliveries such as ours. Excess and scarcity in the same place and time, profound and dire forces perpetrated upon those with the least resources, those living in public housing and on the lowest land most vulnerable to flooding. Throughout covid we saw vividly the realities and challenges of the digital divide as so much school and work moved to virtual platforms. A similar divide, along familiarly recognizable maps, is evident during floods and the all-too-common water crises. We might call it the water divide, a cousin of the digital divide, where drainage can be destiny and neglected infrastructure leads to [End Page 143] unhealthy and undrinkable water. Class and racial divides are visible, too, around impacts from climate change, floods, and lack of clean water. One need look no further than the case of water infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi. In August 2022, relentless rains caused the Pearl River, which flows through Jackson, to flood. The Pearl River has flooded Jackson before, most notably in 1979, when a historic flood brought massive destruction. The recent 2022 flood damaged a water treatment plant which, combined with a malfunction of pumps at the treatment plant, led to no water in Jackson. Prior to that, there was a boil water requirement for the city. “Unfortunately, what is central to the endgame of the Jackson water crisis is power,” wrote Ralph Eubanks in an eloquent piece for cnn. “Power lies at the core of the politics of identity being played by Mississippi’s Republican politicians. What all the parties involved in getting clean water to Jackson’s citizens should be seeking is knowledge and truth, rooted in a shared meaning of Mississippi’s past, even the ugly parts of it that make us all uncomfortable when we look at them through a deep, dark, truthful mirror. Until Mississippi begins to see the connection between the Jim Crow past in its present—and see it clearly—the Jackson water crisis will never be resolved.”2 Click for larger view View full resolution Estill, MS, 2021 ________ FLOOD STORIES ARE VERY OFTEN TOLD with an emphasis on an aftermath of rebuilding and rebirth, the proverbial theme of newness that runs through so much mythology and folk narrative after the high waters recede. Traditional full-immersion baptism draws much meaning from the symbolism of being buried and reborn, going under water, then rising from a watery grave. In my documentary fieldwork through the years, I have often heard sermons, delivered on the bank of a lake, that beautifully articulate the meaning of baptism as death, burial, and resurrection, the long-held ritual signaling a...

The Great Zucchini War

The Great Zucchini War

Hold Hope.

Heavy-hearted, I awake before dawn and sit in the silence on the back porch. The low clouds roll quickly by, veiling and revealing the stars. Far off, bright burning beacons of light and joy and hope blazing in the firmament.So clear one moment…obscured the next...The moon’s shining silver sliver paints the world in dim shades of blue-grey. Colors muted. Forms indistinct. Textures vague. Only the faint scent of spring’s first blooming buds whisper the end of a long winter.And a long winter we have endured. Full of fear, frustration, famine, pestilence, war. The world feels drab and colorless. Faceless masked forms pass expressionless in the streets. Another variant. Another tragedy.Will this ever end?Yet, as I sit in silence, a lonely bird voices a cry of joy in the darkness. Suddenly, the sky seems less dark. The stars fade. A change is coming! A second bird enters the aria. An enchanting duet of mirrored melodies fills the heavens. Hope builds in my heart with the coming dawn. So slowly, so very slowly, and almost imperceivable the sky lightens. More and more singers fill the trees with numerous instruments, a great triumphant symphony erupts in the stillness. The coming light exposes a world of shape and form, color and hue, texture and depth.This long winter will not endure forever.Take courage, my heart, and wait and see the coming of the dawn of spring.Hold hope and wait and sing.

My Education, and: Simile, and: Villanelle

My Education, and: Simile, and: Villanelle Diane Seuss (bio) Keywords Diane Seuss, poetry, poverty, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Conrad, death, villanelle, simile, education My Education Not just what I feel but what I knowand how I know it, my unscholarliness,my rawness, all rise out of the cobbledlandscape I was born to. Those of youraised similarly, I want to say: this is nota detriment and it is not a benefit. It only is,it is, like a cobbled house is, fieldstonesand mortar, slipshod, spare parts weldedcrookedly, crudely but cleverly, skinnyiron winding staircase leading to the atticbolted on both ends, and up there, a gapin the window where the snow comes inand architects a little drift on the bed.And meals were cobbled. Kernels on the cobhaphazardly arranged, not lined up in militaryrows, and sometimes a row was not filled inat all, and your teeth, when biting down,met an emptiness. And shotgun pelletsin the rabbit meat. Stray hobnail dishes, studded,rescued from an abandoned house on fire,in an array of jewel tones, would appearwithout warning on the table. A blood-coloredbutter dish, yellow perch on a cobalt blue platterencircled in fried egg sacs. Or ducks or a pheasantthrown erratic on the back porch, paymentfor something given or not taken.When I’d been away and returned, I could see,freshly, the cobbled lushness of the trees,and the arbitrary drift of brown spotson the white cows in the meadows,and the wireworm-filled tunnels in the morelsat the base of dead cherry trees. The cemeteryis unsystematic, as is the library, graves scattered [End Page 273] like chicken feed, books strewn on old tablesfrom canceled Sunday school classrooms. I lovedbooks but learned very little in school. I could read,so the reading instruction drove me nearly mad,and I plugged my ears, first with my handsuntil I was caught, then with something I could doinside my head that muffled the teacher’s voicelike she was speaking into a canning jar.What I know of literature, of history, is spotty.I was a poor student, disengaged from the thingsI didn’t need, and I knew what I needed,and that the time to get it was now.When I needed Keats, I got him. I read enoughto get the point, then tuned in to his ghost.I read most of Joseph Conrad, having figured outthat I could find some things repulsive and stillrequire them for my project. My projectwas my life. There was no vision or overarchingplan. There was only foraging for supplies,many of which were full of worms or coveredin dust, like apples on the orchard floor,and furniture junked on the side of the road.Have you ever seen a pie cooling on the silland found yourself hungry enough to steal it?Or does that only happen in picture books?If you are like me, to learn of the gods you mustbeg, borrow, or steal. Eavesdrop, as gossipis sagacity, a word I learned from EmilyDickinson. Don’t underestimate directexperience. Ants know earth. Dragonfliesknow air. A cobbled mind is not fatal.You have to be willing to self-educateat a moment’s notice, and to be caughtin your ignorance by people who willuse it against you. You will mispronouncewords in front of a crowd. It cannot beavoided. But your poems, with all of theirdeficiencies, products of lifelong observationand asymmetric knowledge, will be your own. [End Page 274] Built on the edge of tradition, they willrarely be anthologized. I have campedat this outpost my whole life, as did my mother,who slept on sugar sacks in the basementor on the front porch, in early spring,when snow still clumped around fugitivecrocuses, just to keep herself forsaken. [End Page 275] Simile You can’t be simile.Deep down evenmud is notcomparable. I had a friendwhose smile was a frown.My last paramour, my verylast, wore...

Tenderness

Tenderness Mary Milstead (bio) I return to the image of her bare feet—they are small and white, and I am drawn to her softness, which is familiar to me. Telling my mother's story requires this sort of time travel. I know her well, from her silver-white hair down to her painted toenails, but I didn't know her when it happened. It would be another four years before I was born. On a recent summer visit to my home in Portland, my very Texan mother and I sat on my back porch in the afternoon sun. I offered her a foot rub and she accepted, sliding off her flip-flops. She loves the heat, and is always cold when she visits, but we were lucky enough that August visit to be bathed in sunshine—finally, it was warm enough. It was our last afternoon before she flew back home, so we were savoring our time together. She reached down and showed me with her fingers where the pressure point was for her lungs, just below the bone at the ball of her foot. ________ That night, before anything happened, she had been sitting on a low wall looking out at the city lights. Legs crossed, flip-flops dangling from her toes. Her hair was long and black, wavy and parted in the middle. It was mid-January, but a warm night. 1972. She was a nineteen-year-old out on a date with her boyfriend, and she doesn't remember what they were talking about. They hadn't been there long, and it was nice out. [End Page 59] Earlier they'd been at a potluck with a group of friends, and when they'd left, Michael suggested they stop for a while at Mt. Bonnell, a popular overlook with a view of Lake Austin and the city lights in the distance. They'd never been there together before. My mother told me that when he first suggested it, she felt nervous. She was clear that it wasn't any kind of premonition—she never sensed the impending tragedy until it was upon them—just a general sense that it was getting dark. And of course good girls avoided places that might be dangerous at night. But she was with Michael, and he was a great guy: she was safe. She thought, really, that just being with a man meant being safe. It usually did. She and Michael were newly dating, but they'd known each other for a while. He worked as a manager at a natural health food store and was part of her tight circle of friends—mostly young, mostly college students, people interested in spiritual growth and love and peace. She and Michael had talked about marriage, and she thought she might spend the rest of her life with him. So she had a momentary twinge of fear, but it didn't last, and by the time she was walking up the stone steps toward the top of Mt. Bonnell, she was mostly calm and happy, enjoying the night. They sat and talked on a low stone wall with a perfect view. It was just the two of them up there that night, at least as far as they could tell. There was a parked VW Bug in the clearing, but no other people. And so, when one of her flip-flops fell into the dirt just below, she didn't reach down to get it. She heard it land with a soft thud and figured she'd just grab it when they left. Instead, they were soon interrupted by a voice in the dark behind them. "Turn around, and don't make any trouble." Two men, a gun. My mother was not the type of girl to make trouble. And she knew instantly that this was not a joke, not some kind of prank or mistake, no matter how surreal it felt. She would do everything they told her to do. Within a few minutes, one of the men was holding her off to the side of the clearing by her long black hair. The other man was standing by the parked...

Good Friday Remembered

Good Friday Remembered Peter Venable (bio) Morning. Third hour.I stroll in the woods. Dogwoods bloomlike cauliflower chunks in leafy salad.I inhale damp earth with every step.A brook rafts pine-pollen downstream.A catbird pricks her nest with pine needles.You are skewered on a stinking cross. Noon. Sixth hour.Storms sweep across the continentand deluge North Carolina. Back porch screensare fluid and filmy. Sirens dopplerfrom Silas Creek Parkway. Steady raincould have drenched Your misery—black clouds only shrouded sun's heat,not bloodsucking flies or jeering gawkers. Afternoon. Ninth hour.Storms pass.Plants on porch sills perch as birdschorus from verdant boughs.Evergreens sag from water weight.Carpenter bees peek from holes under eaves.A Yucca's leaf tips pierce like a Roman spear. [End Page 132] Peter Venable Peter Venable has written free and metric, sacred and secular, serious and whimsical verse for many decades. He has been published in Ancient Paths, The Merton Seasonal, Prairie Messenger, Time of Singing, American Vendantist, The Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century and The Penwood Review. He is a member of the Winston Salem Writers. petervenable.com. Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press

Adaptive Digital Modem for Tropospheric Scatter Link with Two Different Communication Stations

Adaptive Digital Modem for Tropospheric Scatter Link with Two Different Communication Stations

Old Tip vs. The Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation

Sophisticated political history is comprised of three overlapping but conceptually distinct elements—the unique, giving to the story its special flavor and identifying detail; the systematic, offering generalized context and causal explanation; and the original, indicating breaks in the time series and a precedent for future developments. Ellis’ account of the 1840 U.S. presidential election masterfully combines all three elements. The resulting volume is well-written and documented, articulate in presentation, rigorous in evidence, and plausible in argumentation.The 1840 presidential election is most often remembered for huge, raucous, popular demonstrations and distorted campaign appeals. The Whig Party portrayed its nominee, William Henry Harrison, as a great war hero from humble, log-cabin origins and denounced the Democratic incumbent, President Martin Van Buren, as pompous and out of touch. In the conventional version of the story, Van Buren’s defeat, ending twelve years of Democratic dominance, demonstrates the political potency of distracting hoopla and partisan vitriol.Ellis does not neglect the dynamics of 1840 presidential campaigning. In enormous detail, supported by more than 100 pages of endnotes, he traces the personal motivations and strategic calculations of the candidates and their supporters, from the struggle for nomination to the party conventions and ultimately to the presidential contest with its propaganda barrage by “cartoonists and wordsmiths” and a “veritable army of political speakers” (213). Nevertheless, Ellis’ explanatory emphasis lies elsewhere, in systematic rather than transitory factors. “All the songs and speeches, merriment and mud-slinging, mattered little,” he writes; by the time the American people became attentive, “the election, for all intents and purposes, had already been decided” (233). As shown in much social-science research, subjective party identification tends to be the most important determinant of voting preference. Few voters know, or even care, about the specifics of public policies. The causal arrow generally goes from party allegiance to policy stance and from party allegiance to symbolic assent, not the other way around (262).Significant deviation from partisan regularity is most often the consequence of economic expansion or contraction. Retrospective voting theory posits that elections are, to a large extent, referenda upon incumbents, attributing to them responsibility for national successes or failures. Unfortunately for Democratic Party prospects, the financial Panic of 1837 was especially painful. Ellis carefully correlates the downs and ups of economic depression, partial recovery, and renewed recession with the results garnered by the competing political parties at the polls, examined across the large number of state and district elections preceding the national contest. His first-rate analysis—a model of how to leverage the available historical data—concludes that the outcome in 1840 was rigorously predictable, depending less on deluded voters than on retrospectively calculating ones.Finally, the book highlights those political trends first appearing, or appearing to the perceptive observer, during the 1840 election. The study of interdisciplinary history has often focused upon situating events in time, investigating patterns, regularities, innovations, and breakpoints in a sequence. As featured in Ellis’ account, 1840 saw the first nominating conventions that did more than simply ratify the decisions by party leaders. For the first time, candidates abandoned the ostensible passivity of their back porch to pursue votes actively. Party organization strengthened, and populist appeals expanded. Slavery showed the first signs of disrupting intersectional party alliances. Voter turnout was much higher than ever before, for first time surpassing that of state and local elections. The 1840 election, beyond mere carnival-style entertainment, provided a distinct step in the development of a more presidentially centered U.S. politics.If the book is subject to any criticism, it would be that most of the formal social science is confined to the endnotes. This choice seems mistaken. Ellis may have felt that excursions into the language of contemporary social science might have disrupted the narrative flow. If so, he could have placed the formal analysis in boxed inserts or chapter appendixes. The study of interdisciplinary history entails the subtle merging of academically separate subfields. An adjustment to their balance in this book would have added yet another dimension to an otherwise excellent analysis.

Troposcatter transmission loss prediction based on particle swarm optimisation

Tropospheric scatter is a promising method for over-the-horizon propagation. Transmission loss caused by the three mainstream troposcatter mechanisms is analysed, namely turbulent incoherent scattering theory, coherent reflection by stable layers theory, and incoherent reflection by irregular layers theory. Then an experiment is conducted to explore the relationships among the three mechanisms. Based on this experiment, the troposcatter transmission loss prediction model is established in different climate zones by a particle swarm optimisation algorithm and experimental data from the global troposcatter databank. The simulation shows that this model is more effective than the existing International Telecommunication Union-Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) P.617, P.452, and P.2001. Furthermore, by analysing the training parameters' proportion of the new model in different climate zones, the specific composition of three troposcatter mechanisms can be obtained.

John Prine, 1946–2020

Twenty-odd years ago, after maybe two decades of not playing much in public other than picking up a guitar at the end of a party or leading back-porch sing-alongs, I ventured back out into the folk...

Surfacing

Surfacing Carrie R. Moore (bio) Memory settles over the house like salt blown in from the sea. Spanish moss wilts green over the drive. Windows arch like glass lungs, breathing in her husband’s reflection as he cuts across the yard and searches the perimeter. For weeks, she’s wanted to come home, and now she relaxes in the truck’s passenger seat. Absorbs the feel of the place mothering her. She may fail in so many ways, but her body can remember these pleasures. Already, the island brings relief. It couldn’t have come fast enough. She’s missed the house where Olivia raised her. Olivia making Gullah rice in the kitchen, a mess of sausage and chili powder staining the counter red. Olivia bringing home work from her shop, threading charms from the den’s coral couch. Olivia disappearing around a corner, the flutter of pastel caftans over her dark arms as she called back: “I chose you, yeah child? So if you’re crying about some dance lesson ya want to take, I guess I chose your whining too. You’ll have it if it’s important to ya.” Not that she’d known sadness then. After turning eighteen, [End Page 582] she’d watched Olivia sink into the silence of brain tumors. She’d inherited Olivia’s savings and the house, cut fresh with death. Then fled St. Simons for college in Orlando, where she danced and met Dev and buried her grief in a new life. They’d studied at the library and shared breakfast at his uncle’s construction site, swapping stories. The eighteen-wheeler that, after crossing the median, blasted his family from the earth. Her childhood with Olivia, so lovely she didn’t mind that she couldn’t remember her first foster homes. She and Dev had married after graduation. Two people riddled with loss. Dev approaches her window. Raps it with his knuckles. She rolls it down, letting in the June smell of the Georgia coast, stickier than Florida’s. “You’ll stay in while I walk around back?” he says, worry weighing down his face. He thinks so much can go wrong here — wandering men squatting on the back porch, wild animals lurking at the lawn’s edges — believing death is always coming for someone he loves. “I’m good,” she says. True for the first time in a while. She watches him turn away, his bunned afro and cargo shorts and work boots disappearing around the house’s blue side. After a few weeks here, she’ll make her body hers. In January, her hips went weak. Pain streaking from her raised thigh all the way down her legs. A fluke, she’d thought, until every movement became less precise, the pain rippling through her pelvis. Until the director’s eyes measured her. Dev’s too, as he watched rehearsal one evening, early to collect her from the theater. “What’s the point in pretending it doesn’t hurt?” he’d asked when they got home. “Sacrifice for what you love, I guess.” She shrugged off her coat. “Well, don’t.” When she froze, he added: “I mean, doctors helped the first time around, right?” [End Page 583] “I guess,” she said. But she crushed her coat against her belly. Went into the bedroom. “What?” he asked, following. “What?” The implication too much: Sex used to hurt you too. And you got treatment for that. Only she hadn’t. After the doctors failed to treat her during those college years, the pain striking her whenever Dev pushed in, she’d lied, loving him, and said sex felt good. Part of the way she’d clung to him then. And so did this mean this painful change in her dancing would persist too? “I’ve — never taken care of it,” she said. “It’s never really gone away.” “Never?” he’d asked. Then again. He let go of her wrists. “This whole time?” They’d both needed space. Him to deal with her lying. Her to heal herself — from dance and sex — without the pressure of his presence. Not that moving out helped. She’d traded their life for...

Omnipotence

Omnipotence Brandon Haffner (bio) It was late and Aaron was drinking too much wine, and he was trying to remember what it was Keith had said about goodness that hot day decades ago when they were kids, the same day their father threatened to smack them both. It was something simple, teetering on cliché. In the moment, Aaron probably spit into his brother's face. But silently, the way kids do, he vowed to remember what Keith said forever. The yard was slick with mud from the sprinkler they'd left running—they'd drowned the lawn that summer, and that day wasn't the first their father emerged red-faced onto the back porch, glass brimming with gin and melted ice. After their father finished flexing and went inside, Aaron joked, We'd better be good, and it was then that Keith said, Being good's not good enough for Dad. There it was—over the years, "for Dad" had fallen away, so the line became, Being good's not good enough, which meant that in the garden of Aaron's memory, his brother's words had taken root and grown twisted into something else, something like an excuse. Here's something else Aaron remembered: the next summer, [End Page 384] the hard, grassless yard cracking under the August sun, a game of baseball with neighbor kids. Keith was pitching, their sister Tara was catcher, and Aaron struck out. Keith grinned. That's all—a mocking grin. Eager, Aaron figured, to make his older brother feel small. Aaron had meant only to intimidate with a near-miss swing of the bat, but instead Keith wound up in the hospital for two days—serious bone and nerve damage, the doctor told them in the waiting room. And how the doctor shot her eyes at Aaron when she said the word damage. But now wasn't the time for those thoughts because Aaron and Keith and Keith's wife, Jeanie, were sitting around the dinner table. Keith was thirty-two now, with dark eyes and a patchy brown mustache, recently returned from the Peace Corps—a new adventure he'd called it, after his manuscript was never picked up and the college terminated his contract. They ate their salmon, and the orange sunset slipped through the blinds. As memories of childhood summers ran through Aaron on loop, he watched these two people he knew so well. No one made eye contact. "In the village," Keith said, squeezing a lemon wedge over his salmon and then, with his other hand, wafting the smell of the food into his nose, "we had no access to fish. I don't think I saw a single fish, dead or alive, in two years." "Aaron," Jeanie said. She glanced at the carrot-ginger soup at the end of the table, and Aaron passed her the bowl. "We ate what's called paloo," Keith continued. "Do you know what that is? Paloo?" "I don't know," Aaron said. "Raisins, garlic, hot peppers, rice. Throw it in a pot. Simmer for a few hours over a fire." Keith smiled dramatically, closed his eyes, nodded in approval at the imaginary flavors in his mouth, then sipped his chardonnay. "Really stellar. The Kyrgyz can cook." [End Page 385] "But do you like your fish?" Jeanie asked. "Of course," he said. "I'll be honest, I feel odd eating it. Like an asshole, you know? But I'm adjusting. It's like Christmas at our parents', when I came back last year. I told you about this feeling, Aar." The way he'd always abbreviated Aaron's name sounded like Air. "I forget why you couldn't make it up." "Holiday party in Los Angeles," Aaron said. "Some old musician friends." "I do, I feel like an asshole, stuffing my face with this—how much was this?" He pointed to the slab of fish decorated with spices, citrus wheels, and cilantro in the center of the table. "Fifty, sixty dollars?" Aaron pretended to cough. "We can't all live in poverty." "There's the cocky kid I know," Keith said. He raised his glass and smiled, mock-cheerful, and Aaron thought...

The Hawk Moth Story

The Hawk Moth Story Sharon Oard Warner (bio) I called ahead. "Caleb? I'm in the neighborhood. If you haven't had lunch, I can drop off a calzone from Fastino's." The offer of food was an excuse to check on him, something my son well knew, but he tolerated the ruse. After a brief silence, he said, "Sure, Ma. Thanks." He was hungry, a good sign. When I asked what he wanted, Caleb said to get whatever was spiciest. Since being fired from a downtown bar, Caleb had been making do with odd jobs. I had no idea where he slept at night or even if he slept—when he binged, he often stayed up for days. Between binges, he could often be found at José's house. José is a friend from high school, a good guy who pays Caleb to do odd jobs—paint, clean gutters, rake leaves. Because Palo Dura Street is only a few blocks north, I arrived at José's door within fifteen minutes of the call. The houses in this neighborhood were built in the fifties and sixties, dirt-colored boxes with gravel yards, most surrounded with a short chain-link fence, the utility of which I've never understood. The fence might keep a Chihuahua in, but it won't keep a thing in the world out. I am sixty and could climb over it without any trouble. At my knock, Caleb called out, "Come in!" He was slouched on an old leather couch in the living room, taking a break, he said, from the task of painting the back porch. He wore his current thrift store uniform: tight black jeans and a threadbare t-shirt. Once upon a time, the T-shirt must have been a bright orange but now had faded to a soft shade of peach. The word STURGIS stood out on his narrow chest. Caleb peered up at me from beneath the tipped brim of a dirty green ball cap and offered his usual update: "Ma, my throat is killing me." For weeks, he'd been complaining of a sore throat, but he wasn't interested in a trip to Urgent Care, the only solution I had to offer. The words just slipped out: "Snorting cocaine irritates the mucous membranes of the throat." "So, you're a doctor now, Ma?" he snapped back. I shook my head and dropped the Fastino's bag on the coffee table between us. "Just making a delivery, Son." "Not a doctor?" he continued irritably. "I didn't think so. Do me a favor: Don't lecture this kid about blow." "That wasn't a lecture, and you're not a kid," I replied. Then, sounding stupid even to myself, I added, "Actions have consequences." The bag was open, and he was unpacking the contents but stopped to peer up at me. "You're so naïve, Ma. Do you know that about yourself?" My naiveté is a family joke, something well established. So, I tried to change the subject: "Remember the hawk moths, Son?" [End Page 83] "Of course," he replied. "What of them?" "Did you know they live in New Mexico, too?" He and I had spotted our first hawk moth over twenty years earlier when Caleb was ten years old and his preferred outfit was khaki shorts and a striped t-shirt. "Some night we should go out and see them," I suggested. Caleb rolled his eyes. "You know better than that. I'm busy at night." ________ Awake in the wee hours, I worried over his childhood for maybe the hundredth time. When he was a kid, our family lived in a ranch-style house on the edge of Ames, Iowa. Summer evenings, Caleb and I crouched in the grass and watched these mysterious creatures dart from one petunia to the next. In the dusky light, we strained to make out their muted orange wings beating the air, the proboscis curling and uncurling like a wire. The size, the humming of the wings, the lengthy proboscis: all of these spelled hummingbird, but the cigar-shaped body, the shape and texture of those wings: these all said moth. In...

Про можливість оцінювання відстані до цілі методами пасивної радіолокації при далекому тропосферному поширенні радіохвиль

Subject and Purpose. The progress in the development of communication means requires a brand-new radar-component base and state-of-the-art technologies of signal processing. Last years, passive radar systems have become increasingly important. Yet such a shortcoming as poor estimation of the target distance takes place when the signal reception is only provided by a single station. The present work suggests a concept of the object distance determination by passive radar means under far-tropospheric radio wave propagation upon that the statistical parameters of amplitude fluctuations of the target reflection beyond the radiohorizon are distance dependent. Methods and Methodology. The basic mechanism of radio wave propagation beyond the radiohorizon is a phenomenon of tropospheric scatter on tropospheric heterogeneities in the upper tropospheric layers. These heterogeneities continuously change form and size and move through the space. The resulting electromagnetic field at the reception point represents additively combined radio wave powers scattered by all heterogeneities in the illuminated area that varies its height depending on the distance so that the statistical parameters of received signal fluctuations are distance dependent. After statistical processing of received signal fluctuations, the target distance can be determined. The present work examines radiowave propagation of the 3 cm and 50 cm waves over the Sea of Okhotsk with target distances up to 500 km. Results. For the target distance estimation by passive radar means, the standard deviation value, s, of the received signal amplitude can be employed. Conclusion. The distance dependence of the statistical parameters of amplitude fluctuations of the target signal allows the target distance to be estimated by a passive radar in the centimeter, decimeter and meter wave ranges.