Golden Field Research Articles

Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860

In Carolina's Golden Fields, Hayden Smith delivers a long overdue assessment of inland rice culture's importance to the South Carolina Lowcountry. Due to a dearth of primary sources and the fact that most inland rice fields have been lost to reforestation and development, historians have overlooked inland rice cultivation or have viewed it as a primitive stage of rice cultivation when compared to tidal cultivation. Rather, as Smith's work demonstrates, inland rice cultivation required planters and enslaved laborers to exercise precise knowledge of topography and hydrology to render their harvests profitable. The utilization of this knowledge began when free and enslaved Carolinians experimented with rice alongside other grains as a subsistence crop, first relying on the “providence” method and then realizing the advantages of impervious soils and water management. Using Pooshee, Newington, and Charleywood plantations as examples in chapter 2, Smith demonstrates how rice planters and enslaved laborers adapted to and manipulated varied microenvironments to make cultivation successful and ultimately create a foundation for South Carolina's colonial economy and the expansion of slavery. With the foundation set in the first decades of the eighteenth century, land acquisition and a stable market prompted rice planters to engage in ever more elaborate schemes for irrigation and drainage that mirrored new strategies being used for tidal cultivation. As Smith discusses in chapter 3, this intensive stage of development resulted in higher profits, increased demand for labor, and susceptibility to malaria, freshets, and declining soil fertility. Consequently, planters increasingly perceived the environment as unhealthy and downright hostile.Nevertheless, inland rice cultivation persisted throughout the antebellum period and contributed to the evolution of the Lowcountry's agricultural regime. Focusing on four Wando River plantations in chapter 4, Smith notes how rice planters expanded their landholdings in the post–Revolutionary War era in order to access water and have enslaved laborers construct reservoirs and canals. Smith's microanalysis of each plantation illuminates his earlier theme that this work required knowledge of topography and hydrology to make rice cultivation profitable. It also involved constant experimentation with planting strategies to maintain crop yields. For some planters, successful inland rice cultivation also provided a potential avenue into the Lowcountry aristocracy. Locked out of the more expensive tidal plantation market, social aspirants like Mathurin Gibbs and John Irving saw inland rice as a means to establish their status as planters. As chapter 5 makes clear, despite ambition and the knowledge of experienced overseers, their efforts were frustrated by environmental limitations and small labor forces. Indeed, Gibbs succumbed to malaria in 1849. Yet agricultural reformers espoused inland rice as a way to diversify their planting portfolio when the fertility of their cotton lands declined in the two decades preceding the Civil War. In chapter 6, Smith focuses on Middle Saint John's Berkeley Parish where the Black Oak Agricultural Society promoted scientific experimentation and planters had access to the numerous inland swamps and freshwater springs in Biggin Basin. These reform efforts never amounted to much, but the attempt to revive inland rice testified to its persistence as a symbol of economic salvation.With emancipation, large-scale rice cultivation collapsed and former inland rice lands returned to forest. Purchased by timber companies or converted to subdivisions in the twentieth century, little remains of the inland rice infrastructure that Smith describes throughout the book. However, drawing from plantation ledgers, manuscripts, agricultural journals, deeds and plats, geological and archaeological reports, and myriad other primary and secondary sources, Smith rescues inland rice cultivation from obscurity and gives it a central place in South Carolina's environmental history. Moreover, Hayden Smith has walked the land he describes, and Carolina's Golden Fields exemplifies his intimate knowledge of the Lowcountry, past and present, as well as his skill as a historian. His astute attention to the terrain of forest and history make this a readable, informed, and important contribution to the historiography of rice, slavery, and the environment.

Generation of Synthetic Density Log Data Using Deep Learning Algorithm at the Golden Field in Alberta, Canada

This study proposes a deep neural network- (DNN-) based prediction model for creating synthetic log. Unlike previous studies, it focuses on building a reliable prediction model based on two criteria: fit-for-purpose of a target field (the Golden field in Alberta) and compliance with domain knowledge. First, in the target field, the density log has advantages over the sonic log for porosity analysis because of the carbonate depositional environment. Considering the correlation between the density and sonic logs, we determine the sonic log as input and the density log as output for the DNN. Although only five wells have a pair of training data in the field (i.e., sonic and density logs), we obtain, based on geological knowledge, 29 additional wells sharing the same depositional setting in the Slave Point Formation. After securing the data, 5 wells among the 29 wells are excluded from dataset during preprocessing procedures (elimination of abnormal data and min–max normalisation) to improve the prediction model. Two cases are designed according to usage of the well information at the target field. Case 1 uses only 23 of the surrounding wells to train the prediction model, and another surrounding well is used for model testing. In Case 1, the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm shows a fast and reliable performance and the numbers of neurons in the two hidden layers are of 45 and 14, respectively. In Case 2, the 24 surrounding wells and four wells from the target field are used to train the DNN with the optimised parameters from Case 1. The synthetic density logs from Case 2 mitigate an underestimation problem in Case 1 and follow the overall trend of the true density logs. The developed prediction model utilises the sonic log for generating the synthetic density log, and a reliable porosity model will be created by combining the given and the synthetic density logs.

Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860 by Hayden R. Smith

Reviewed by: Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860by Hayden R. Smith Philip Mills Herrington Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860. By Hayden R. Smith. Cambridge Studies on the American South. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xviii, 245. $49.99, ISBN 978-1-108-42340-3.) Anyone who has seen aerial imagery of former rice plantations in South Carolina is impressed by the enduring geometry of the slave-built canals and dykes that captured freshwater tidal flow for the irrigation of thousands of acres of rice fields. Far less visible are the remnants of inland rice cultivation, the subject of this meticulously researched first monograph by Hayden R. Smith. Whereas the gridlike tidal fields "sprawled across the riverbanks," inland fields were "contained within the topography of the wetlands," relying on reservoirs, springs, and subtle shifts in soil type and elevation for irrigation (p. 40). Inland fields are difficult to recognize today, often hidden or disfigured by natural overgrowth and human development. Introduced to these obscure landscapes through archaeological fieldwork at South Carolina plantation sites, Smith soon realized that their history is little known and often misunderstood. A dearth of primary records and a scholarly focus on tidal cultivation have tended to reduce inland cultivation to simply a less sophisticated precursor to its more famous tidal counterpart. Smith affirms that inland cultivation matters as an origin story: "Reservoir-irrigated rice cultivation was the first successful type of plantation agriculture developed in South Carolina and it served as the foundation for the South Carolina colonial economy" (p. 3). Yet, as the author lays out over seven chapters, the significance of inland rice cultivation did not end with the early colonial period in South Carolina. Rather, inland cultivation played an important and evolving role in South Carolina, even as it was outpaced by more efficient tidal production. The [End Page 907]extension of the history of inland rice cultivation to 1860 makes Carolina's Golden Fieldsan especially valuable addition to the historiography of slave-based southern agriculture. Smith divides the story of inland cultivation in South Carolina into three temporal periods, which he covers in chapters 2–4. Together these chapters argue that inland cultivation was a long-lived and increasingly sophisticated form of agriculture, one that occupied specific environmental and social niches within the Lowcountry. Chapter 3, which covers 1730–1789, is particularly instructive as it was in this period that the story of inland rice cultivation took an unexpected turn. Rather than doom inland cultivation, the introduction of tidal culture helped bring about a transformation in the earlier system. Tidal cultivation depended on agricultural expertise and a slave labor task system developed through early inland rice planting, while inland rice planters modeled the advances in land and water management made on tidal rice plantations to greatly expand their own operations. As Smith summarizes, "In their most mature form, inland rice plantations resembled their tidal counterparts in terms of extensive irrigation networks, labor control, and agricultural schedules. What separated the two systems was how they handled the natural resource of water" (p. 127). In chapter 4, Smith provides a microanalysis of four Wando River inland plantations to demonstrate how planters adopted a variety of strategies to better control small-stream floodplains and inland basins. Inland cultivation was generally not as lucrative as tidal production, but Smith demonstrates in chapter 5 how aspiring planters in the late antebellum period purchased these less expensive properties as a means of social mobility. This chapter and the next, which covers the place of inland rice in antebellum agricultural reform, enrich the narrative by demonstrating how inland rice maintained cultural relevance, although its economic importance declined. While the focus of this work is narrow, it is an admirable model for how "attention to the environment leads to . . . historical analysis" (p. 4). In his striking consideration of topographical and geological detail, Smith expertly leads the reader to a better understanding of how early Americans perceived and exploited the natural world. Philip Mills Herrington James Madison University Copyright © 2020 Southern Historical Association

The screening and genetic analysis of primary carnitine deficiency in the minority municipalities in Hainan Province

Objective To investigate the incidence of neonatal carnitine deficiency (PCD) in eight minority autonomous cities and counties in Hainan Province (Changjiang, Ledong, Dongfang, Baoting, Baisha, Qiongzhong, Wuzhishan and Lingshui). Methods A total of 18,701 cases of newborn filter paper dried blood samples were collected from August 1, 2017 to July 31, 2018 in eight minority autonomous cities and counties in Hainan Province, including 10 051 male infants and 8 650 female infants. Tandem mass spectrometry and the non-derivatized multi-amino acid, carnitine and succinylacetone assay kits produced by PE were used to detect free carnitine (C0) and acylcarnitine (C2, C3, C16, C18, etc.).The carnitine spectrum was reexamined with the recall of mothers and infants whose C0 was less than 10 μmol/L. Blood samples from those who were still low were sent to the Beijing McKinnon gene for genetic diagnosis, and the urine samples were sent to the Guangzhou Golden Field for urine gas chromatography. Results Among the 18 701 newborns, 5 cases were diagnosed with PCD. The incidence of neonatal PCD was 2.67/10 000 (5/18 701). Two cases of Li mutation c.388GA, two cases of Han mutation P.R254X and one case of Miao mutation P. Y84N were confirmed by gene detection. The confirmed children were treated with L-carnitine to avoid metabolic disorders or myocardial and skeletal muscle damage. Conclusions The incidence of neonatal PCD is high in eight cities and counties in Hainan Province. The mutation sites of neonatal PCD are different in Li and Han. The tandem mass spectrometry screening of PCD can guarantee the quality of the birth population. Key words: Carnitine; Muscular diseases; Cardiomyopathies; Hyperammonemia; Neonatal screening; Tandem mass spectrometry

«Про що не мовчать дитячі голоси?»: проблематика «небезпечного» в українській еміграційній літературі для дітей та юнацтва

The article deals with works for / about children written by Ukrainian emigres writers in the 20th century. Through comprehension of the issues of “dangerous” in the collection of stories by V. Vynnychenko “Necklace”, the story by B.-B. Fedchuk “Gania”, Olga Mak’s “Stones under the curve” and L. Brizgun-Shanti’s “Black clouds over the golden field”, etc., two types of children’s voices are analyzed. Voice as expressing passive contemplation, as presented, e.g. in the stories of the cycle “The Necklace” by V. Vynnychenko. Here, children rebel against social reality with its poverty, exploitation of child labor, social inequality and child abuse, which occurred in Ukrainian life, in the time of being a colony of the Russian Empire. Vynnychenko gives voice to his small child heroes both to identify the child’s individuality, and to draw attention to the necessary changes needed in the society at that time. This idea makes the cycle close to writings by Ch. Dickens, and A. Lindgren. Voice as a resistance against a silent majority, is related to the “terrible” themes devoted to the tragic pages of the world and national history suppressed in the Soviet Union, and still largely unknown to the world community. In particular, this refers to the occupation of Ukraine in the Second World War and the genocide of Ukrainians by the Stalin’s regime (named “Holodomor-33”). The children’s narratives in the literature of Ukrainian Diaspora (Olha Mak, L. Bryzghun-Shanta, B.-B. Fedchuk, O. Tsehelska, etc.) had become the opposition to the silent majority. The authors promote ideas of the responsibility in “the face of the other” (E.Levinas) and of tolerance to the culture of the other. Similar senses are actualized by the modern writers like J. Boyne, J. Elvgren, etc.

The Tyranny of the Dying Gaul: Confronting an Ethnic Stereotype in Ancient Art

Rarely has a postcard so clearly revealed an art historical blindspot (Fig. 1). Amid a green and golden field, a sculpted figure expires on an oval base. The natural setting invites the viewer to s...

On the Road to Nerja

In between sunshine and showers on the road from Cordoba to Nerja, Spain. A spectacular but fleeting rainbow appeared moments later. This, with the golden fields and dark grey sky, produced a very surreal colour palette to a usually dull and arid landscape.

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (review)

Reviewed by: The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse Jeannette Hulick Aesop . The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse; ad. and illus. by Helen Ward. Templar/Candlewick, 2012. [48p]. ISBN 978-0-7636-6098-7 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5-8 yrs. Sonorous descriptive language ("He knew the insect-filled fields of summer and the ripe, rich orchards of autumn") provides plenty of appeal in this elegant retelling of Aesop's classic fable in which a country mouse decides that the rich city ways come at too high a cost. The watercolor art is sumptuously idyllic, with both rural and urban locales looking pretty darn lovely, from the verdant meadows and freshly harvested golden fields of the country to the bright lights, finely ornamented architecture, and well-heeled residents of the city. The bright-eyed, naturalistic mice are beautifully rendered, and their sleek coats (red-brown for the country mouse and chocolate for the town mouse) practically invite petting. Although the focus here is clearly on the mice, there's a pleasantly nostalgic, early-twentieth-century look to the clothing, vehicles, and décor of the human world as well. A few illustrations provide enjoyable moments of sly humor or anticipation, such as when the town mouse declares that the city is free of "dangerous wild animals" as the two mice are shown passing a sleeping fawn in the country, and when the mice, gorging on the mouthwatering offerings of the dessert table in the town mouse's home, are spotted by a disapproving, party-hat-wearing pet pug. While some kids may think the country mouse is missing the boat (that dessert table is awfully tempting), nature-loving youngsters will especially appreciate his choice. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Construction of a sort of multiple pseudoframes for subspaces with filter banks

During the last 20 years the theory of frames has been growing rapidly, since several new applications have been developed. In this paper, the notion of subspace multiple pseudoframes of translation of space L 2 ( R ) is introduced. A method for constructing one generalized multiresolution structure of Paley–Wiener subspaces of L 2 ( R ) is provided based on the theory of filter banks. The sufficient condition for the existence of a class of multiple pseudoframes with filter banks is obtained by virtue of the generalized multiresolution structure. Lastly, a frame-like decomposition of space L 2 ( R ) is given based on the multiple pseudoframes for subspaces. Relation to some physical theories such as the quantum golden field theory is also discussed.

Confinement and asymptotic freedom seen with a golden eye

The present short note is an attempt to reconcile the current conventional understanding of quarks confinement and asymptotic freedom with the results found by El Naschie using the exact renormalization equation of his quantum golden field theory.

Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar: The Memoirs of William Henry Corbusier, 1844-1930 (review)

212Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober vincing Southerners that any evils remaining in the system stemmed from the activities of a small group of itinerant traders rather than respectable dealers. "A class of evil slave traders," Gudmestad concludes, "could be publicly and ritually condemned for wreaking havoc in the lives of slaves so that ordinary slaveholders would feel no remorse for engaging in essentially the same activities" (p. 205). Even this transformation, however, could not totally eradicate the taint attached to slave traders, regardless of the scale of their business. When Isaac Franklin died in 1846 as one of the wealthiest men in the South, not a single newspaper account of his life and death mentioned his profession. Readers of die Southwestern Historical Quarterly may be disappointed to find that this study has little or nothing on slave traders in Texas, especially since dealers operated in Galveston and Houston throughout the late antebellum years. However, since most Texans of that day were Southerners who grew up in the culture of the older slave states, it may be assumed that they shared the prevalent attitudes toward men who profited from the sale of bondsmen. Overall, A Troublesome Commerce does not fundamentally change the well-known story of how slave traders served as scapegoats, but it adds depth to our understanding of one important way Southerners coped with the moral burdens of slavery. University ofNorth TexasRandolph B. Campbell Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar: The Memoirs of William Henry Corbusier, 1844—1930. Edited by Robert Wooster. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. xx+234. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8061-3459-2. $29.95, cloth.) The generation of individuals who saw both the Civil War and the Second Industrial Revolution may have witnessed more change than any other in human history. Robert Wooster's edited, annotated Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar: The Memoirs of William Henry Corbusier, 1844-1930 presents an eyewitness account of America's sometimes painful emergence from a devastating Civil War to become a colonial world power. Corbusier's stream-of-consciousness writing takes the reader with him on his travels around the United States during his service in the United States Army. Corbusier's writing style reveals a man of few words. He writes almost wistfully about his youth and treats the reader to many details about everyday life growing up in New York City, on a farm in Nyack, New York, and in the golden fields of California. His Civil War experiences introduced him to the army that became his life. It is interesting to observe the parallel evolutions of Corbusier and the nation. During the Civil War, when Corbusier began his army service, the germ theory of disease had not yet been developed. By the time he left the service thirty -nine years later, not only were the causes of diseases much better understood, but many new techniques for treating illnesses had been put into practice. Corbusier held many of the beliefs and prejudices common among mainstream whites during this period and believed that his purpose was to uplift the Indians 2??8Book Reviews213 and Filipinos he encountered in the course of his travels. While his knowledge of medicine and the world around him grew, so did the United States. When he entered the U.S. Army the frontier was still a very real part of American life; by the time Corbusier retired, the United States had become an urban, industrialized , world power. Wooster's editing and annotation are thorough and informative. One minor criticism is the lack of maps. There are only two maps in Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar, and at times it is difficult to follow Corbusier's many moves around the country. Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar should be read and compared to its companion volume by Fanny Dunbar Corbusier, William Henry Corbusier's wife of forty-eight years (see Fanny Dunbar Corbusier: Recollections ofHerArmy Life, 1869—1908, ed. by Patricia Y. Stallard, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). Both works are valuable contributions to American, and especially Western, history of the second half of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The combination of excellent scholarship , editing, and annotation makes these primary documents readily available to both scholars and the general public...

Dark on the Inside

110 Dark on the Inside Jessica Bane Robert October again. The days go down heavily and soon. The morning comes later, cold and dark. Geese mark the gray sky. As much as I try, I will never like the fall. When I was a child living in the woods with my parents, October meant darkness. October meant time inside. October signaled the coming of the spiders. I remember the linked geese passing overhead full of direction. I remember the melancholy hoots of distant trains in the morning as I waited for the school bus on Grover Hill. I studied my vaporous breath and made it mirror the trains’ exhalations. When one puff had fully disappeared, I blew out another impish breath to keep me company. The trains’ voices trailed south. October. Everything seemed to say, so long. Death hung in the air. I heard the crackle of dry umber leaves underfoot and of gunshot echoes over the mountain. The frost-soft apples fell under bare trees, waited for deer. Mornings smelled cold and sterile, like certain snow. October was a reaper stealing sunlight and abundance, leaving me to worry. I worried about the woodland animals. I worried about my family. Would we have enough wood, enough food? Would we all survive another long winter, each of us folded into our corners, dreaming? Living off the land in the woods of Maine, my family spent many summer days intently thinking of winter—cutting wood, replacing chinking between logs, tending the garden, and canning its crop. However, nothing solidified winter’s certain arrival like the first frost. Stepping out of bed onto pine floors in the melon hues of dawn, my bones felt like icicles inside my skin. Outside, the field was an old giant’s beard, white and wiry. There was no more bounding out the front door in my nightshirt before my parents rose. No more barefoot, dew-soaked visits to the bullfrogs in the pond before breakfast. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. First thoughts questioned how to make it through the day. First thoughts were thoughts of night coming again so soon. 111 Jessica Bane Robert Even the golden fields ablaze with morning sun couldn’t dispel images of the darkness to come inside our cabin. The dimensions of the original log cabin were twenty-four by twenty-four. The downstairs wrapped like a letter U around the wood cook stove, water heater, and Jøtul stove abutting the central staircase that led up to two long, narrow bedrooms. The bedrooms, like wings, attached to my parents’ rectangular closet where the central chimney rose. Each bedroom had steeply sloping ceilings that converged with large eaves that provided storage. Our long, dirt driveway climbed a small knoll, then graded down to the back of our house where it met the back door and kitchen with my bedroom above. On the sunnier side of the U was the living area, beneath my parents’ room. A small bathroom, containingtoilet,sink,andshowerstall,seemedtocoweratthebottomof the stairs. With only two bedrooms and the open floor plan downstairs, the cabin left little room in which to hide. The eaves, where the spiders came in at night, provided the only shelter from harsh words inside. On overcast fall days the cabin was dreary. The twelve logs that rested on one another to constitute the height of the first story were dark brown, the color of well-done (not burnt) wheat toast. They were no longer the sweet, slippery, and pale logs the color of my wrists that I remember peeling at age six when we built the cabin. Chinking—dark, scratchy, and furry—slumbered between the logs. Any other furniture or cabinetry was stained mahogany or painted barn red. The cook stove in the kitchen was black; the squat Jøtul was gray with a stone hearth beneath. A shiny copper hot water heater that looked like a rocket ready for launch stood between the two stoves against the cinderblock chimney and provided a shimmer of color. I liked to imagine myself inside the empty vessel shooting up along the chimney and bursting through the roof like Charlie in Willy Wonka’s glass elevator. I...

Removing spurious non-linearity in the structure of micro-spacetime and quantum field renormalization

In quantum golden field theory the standard renormalization equation can be made exact and much simpler within the framework of E-Infinity theory. In the present paper we trace back the origin of this remarkable fact. It is found that modeling quantum spacetime in the conventional continuous manner introduces spurious non-linear terms. These spurious terms vanish in E-Infinity formulation leading to simple and exact renormalization equations.

An outline for a quantum golden field theory

Conventional quantum field theory may be advantageously reformulated in terms of a golden mean based number system. The present short paper is devoted to outlining such a quantum golden field theory.

Quantum golden field theory – Ten theorems and various conjectures

Ten theorems and few conjectures related to quantum field theory as applied to high energy physics are presented. The work connects classical quantum field theory with the golden mean renormalization groups of non-linear dynamics and E-Infinity theory.

On Truthiness, Wiki-Ality, and Driving on a Treadmill

THE DRIVE between Lame Deer and Havre is a long one. Montana is a big state. Lame Deer is the largest city on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and home to its government. I'd come to the reservation for a couple of meetings that morning and had to be in Havre, more than 400 miles north, later the same day. What's more, I'd just flown from Kentucky to Montana the day before and was suffering a serious case of jet lag. Pulling away from Chief Dull Knife College, I knew it was going to be a long, hard day. trick would be to keep my mind busy, I thought. At first, that was easy. drive west from Lame Deer toward the Little Big Horn Battlefield and the Crow Reservation is a beautiful one. As I drove through the green rolling hills, I imagined Custer and his men riding foolishly into the history books, Sitting Bull and his men shaking their heads in disbelief at the great military genius, and the Crow scouts begging Custer to rethink his plan of action. Yet onward he went, too few men in an ill-advised action against an underestimated enemy. It felt eerily familiar. After about 45 miles, a sign welcomed me to the Crow Reservation. Soon after, I drove past the entrance to the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Park. Stopping to fill my car with gas before I began the hard drive north, I noted that people were still winding down from Crow Fair, which had ended the day before. This annual event brings more than 80,000 folks to the Crow Agency for five days of celebration, camping in tipis, parades, rodeo, and powwow. With a super-gigantic black coffee and a 16-ounce can of Wired nestled snugly into the cup holder at my side and a fresh bottle of NoDoz on the dashboard, I headed north. Interrupted only briefly by Billings and a left turn in Round Up, the road seldom seems to veer more than a couple of feet to the right or left. While it is beautiful country, you've pretty much seen all there is to see within the first dozen miles north of the Billings city limits. road just goes on and on, with the only break in the monotony in the form of an occasional car speeding past. There is just so much my mind can do to create interesting thoughts about wheat fields and cows, and the coffee, Wired, and NoDoz weren't doing the trick. I decided to give the radio a try. Out there in the middle of nowhere, it picked up only one station, and, just my luck, it couldn't be NPR, an oldies station, rap, country, or even a greatest-hits-of-polka station. No. It was talk radio. And not just any talk radio. It was Rush Limbaugh. Soon Rush began to explain that minimum-wage workers are just uninspired and lazy--or they are high school students trying to earn a little spending money. Hey, even in the throes of boredom, I have standards, I thought, as I turned the radio off. As I drove on, I began to wonder whether the car was really moving. speedometer read 75 mph. I was pretty sure the wheels were turning, and I could see that the gas gauge was slowly moving downward, so I seemed to be using fuel. But in front of me, behind me, and as far as I could see out both side windows, nothing changed--just endless golden fields of wheat. Maybe it was a hallucination from an overdose of caffeine, but I began to wonder if I was driving on a treadmill. Although I was distracted by that thought for a few minutes, I soon decided to relax my high radio-listening standards and tuned back in. Soon Rush turned the microphone over to Sean Hannity, who announced that his special guest for the day would be Ann Coulter. A few days earlier I'd heard Coulter explain that Bill Clinton was gay--a fact he certainly went to great lengths to hide. She had also posited that the Jersey Girls (widows of the 9/11 attack) would probably have ended up divorced if their husbands had lived. She had no facts to support her statements, of course, but in her world, none are needed. Holy yikes, my mind screamed as the theme song from The Twilight Zone played in my head. …

Stability of GMR heads biased utilizing patterned exchange tabs

We have demonstrated the fabrication of a spin-valve head with a CoFe∕PtMn antiferromagnetic (AFM) exchange-biasing layer for longitudinal stabilization. The application of Golden field annealing means the two AFM layers can be made of the same material with the same TB. The AFM layers may then be chosen to optimize pinning strength, corrosion resistance, etc. The transfer curve based on a pattered head structure with PtMn AFM stabilized free layer is smooth and free of any hysteresis. The head also has good linearity and bias point, and the performance is comparable with the standard abutted permanent magnet junction stabilization. Further optimization is expected to improve the performance, enabling an areal density of >120Gb∕in.2

On the mass spectrum of the elementary particles of the standard model using El Naschie’s golden field theory

In this note we will give an expression of masses of the elementary particles of the standard model in terms of the golden mean. This is the value φ=( 5 −1)/2 , which corresponds to the Hausdorff dimension of a single random Cantor set. El Naschie’s transfinite field theory which we will call the golden field theory is based on this fact and is the basis of the present paper.

A note on Fibonacci matrices of even degree

This paper presents a construction of m‐by‐m irreducible Fibonacci matrices for any even m. The proposed technique relies on matrix representations of algebraic number fields which are an extension of the golden section field. The explicit construction of some 6‐by‐6 and 8‐by‐8 irreducible Fibonacci matrices is given.

Caveat Emptor

FICTION CAVEAT EMPTOR / Barry Targati JOEY ROGOVIN SWUNG in and out of the way of the hard platoon marching like hammers on the Boardwalk. Like one more in the vast undulant sheet of searching pigeons, he would move aside for the rectangle of men and then fold back in the wake behind them. And like the pigeons, he was a gleaner too. At fifteen, unsure of the shape of irony, yet he responded to the fact of it: heavy armies might trample down the golden fields and destroy Empire, but along the way they also smashed it into the little pieces manageable by small scavengers. What Joey Rogovin in his own lifetime could never have hoped to share in now fell easily to his hand and wit, and he battened upon his luck and opportunity, for this was war. Not that the Boardwalk was a golden grain field, not that Atlantic City was that sort of Empire. Rather, it had suddenly become the largest military training camp in the world. By the potent magic of Supreme decree, it had been changed in a few months from the Queen of Resorts to the King of Armories. From December 1941 to the following April 1942, the grand hotels—the Haddon Hall, the Traymore, the Dennis, the Marlborough-Blenheim, the Shelborne, the Breakers, and all the rest—as well as every modest sidestreet inn and even some of the larger rooming houses—were converted to barracks. Nothing else in America was so ready-made, so in place, so quickly adaptable in 1941 to such a purpose as was Atlantic City. Partitions divided space to multiply it. The magnificent suites such as that on the fifteenth floor of the Ritz-Carlton high over the grey-green Atlantic of the south Jersey shore, that which even through the recent summer past had sheltered variously the Ludens of the Luden cough drop fortune; the Clothiers from Ardmore, Pennsylvania; the entourage of the mobster Louis "Thumbs" Mangore—that suite now housed forty common men. And now with no splendid view. All the windows facing the sea were blacked out, darkened against the lurking eye of the maurauding enemy U-boats, steel sharks waiting out in the ship channel not more than a dozen miles off shore. Partitions were erected or walls were ripped out, toilet facilities were expanded, shifted, or built. Stairwells and fire escapes repaired, evacuation plans made, elevator cables restrung—there were details. But in the main nothing could have been easier than this transfiguration . The large kitchens were ready, the crystal chandeliered dining rooms were turned into mess halls, the parquet ballrooms cleared for calisthenics when it rained. And of course there was the perfect drill field—the wide, substantial, flat, clean, resilient, and nearly endless The Missouri Review · 85 Boardwalk. AU day from reveille to retreat the khaki men would drill, marching north in the inland lane, south on the seaside. Between each element sufficient space was left, a hundred yards or sometimes two hundred, for the troops to be wheeled about and wheeled again, to be moved from ranks into files and back, to be dressed right, to parade rest. Order, containment—the discipline upon which unquestioned response in battle depended—was established here. "Companeeeeeee. . .halt!" the sergeant would call. "Take ten. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Don't leave no butts." Then it was time for Joey Rogovin. The men on their ten minute break could move about but only within the loose shape of the unit. No one could walk back a half a block to a Boardwalk store to buy a coke or a hot dog or gum or cigarettes. Even if they were on the beach side of the Boardwalk and the company had chanced to halt across from a store, they could not cross to the opposite side. And along much of the Boardwalk where the men drilled, that part of the Boardwalk which before December had been an elegant promenade of elegant shops (Wing Fat's oriental knick knacks in jade) and auction galleries (Lloyd's for the finest lace, Boughton's for Wedgewood and Louis Quatorze chairs), along this stretch there were no hot...