Enrico Fermi — The complete physicist

Enrico Fermi was a versatile physicist contributing in equal measure to theory and experiments. He is credited to be the ‘Father of the Atomic Age’ following his successful demonstration of sustained chain reaction in Chicago Pile-1. In this article, I have discussed his major experimental contributions that clearly demonstrate his simplicity of conception, meticulous attention to detail and directness of approach to the problem at hand.     

Environmental Knowledge and Attitudes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess perceived environmental education (EE) curriculum needs in the United States (K-16). The Environmental Education Curriculum Needs Assessment Questionnaire (EECNAQ) was developed, validated, and direct-mailed to 169 randomly selected professional environmental educators (58.6% return rate). The EECNAQ elicited perceptions about the desired status and the current state of EE curricula, the need for curriculum development, the anticipated use of curricula teachers, and the need for inservice teacher education. These five major questions were posed relative to fifteen goals which reflected the Tbilisi objectives and four levels of environmental literacy. The findings reveal a consensus among the professional participants that the EE goals are important ones, that they are not being met to a large extent in existing curricula, that extensive needs exist for both goal-oriented curricula and teacher education, and that the goaloriented curricula would be used by teachers.     

Worn Grooves

Drawing from visual, material and written archival sources, this article critically explores some of the functions, uses and perceived values of recorded sound during the First World War and in its aftermath. An instrument of communication as well as commemoration, the gramophone helped bridge geographical (and, in some cases, cultural) distances between the home front and the rear, providing civilians with the fleeting illusion of presence, proximity, or even sentimental communion with the front. The article analyses (a) the affective and connective, but also propagandist, values of commercial wartime recordings as they circulated between the home and the front, (b) the popular notion of gramophones as regulatory instruments of civilisation, (c) the commemorative exploitations of recorded sound in the interwar period. The article focuses on the British experience, contrasting it with examples drawn from French and German experiences.     

Spectral and graph-theoretic bounds on steady-state-probability estimation performance for an ergodic Markov chain

Motivated by the wide application of Markov-chain steady-state-probability estimation, we pursue a spectral and graph-theoretic performance analysis of a classical estimator for steady-state probabilities here. Specifically, we connect a performance measure to estimate the structure of the underlying graph defined on the Markov-chain's state transitions. To do so, (1) we present a series of upper bounds on the performance measure in terms of the subdominant eigenvalue of the state transition matrix, which is closely connected with the graph structure; (2) as an illustration of the graph-theoretic analysis, we then relate the subdominant eigenvalue to the connectivity of the graph, including for the strong-connectivity case and the weak-link case. We also apply the results to characterize estimation in Markov chains with rewards.     

Books for the hospital emergency service

This is a list of books that should be available in either the hospital emergency room or the medical library. The forty-nine books listed are divided into the following categories: General, Surgery and Trauma, Burns, Cardiology, Dentistry, Disaster Medicine, First Aid, Geriatrics, Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Toxicology, and Transportation. An asterisk has been placed before twelve books that are particularly recommended for the hospital emergency room as well as the medical library. The latest edition is given for each book, and, unless otherwise noted, each has been annotated by one of the authors.