Miles-long queue to view Pope John Paul one last time
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Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Tens of thousands of regular people walked through the domed St. Peter’s Basilica today, but the queue behind them never seemed to ebb, according to reporters in The Vatican.
Winding over two miles from the bier holding the Pontiff’s body all the way to the Tiber River, backpackers from all over the world, young and old, students and the disabled, waited and slowly shuffled toward their goal: one last look at the pope they had come to feel was like a father to them.
A French park ranger spoke of the physical pain the pope must have suffered while remaining so peaceful in spirit. Another visitor was hoping to kiss his hand or touch his robe. They were satisfied with merely a chance to view his crimson-robed body, as visible in death as he had been only weeks earlier, in life.
Nearly 2 million people will visit The Vatican for the funeral service on Friday, an unprecedented salute for a public figure who may have helped bring down the Iron Curtain.
Other voices were heard as well, but they were in dissent. Amidst Pope Paul’s uncompromising orthodoxy, they said, he had destroyed democracy in the Church and alienated many. And although most of the mourners were contrite and moved slowly through the long queue, there were the usual “line jumpers,” greeted by catcalls and impatient reactions from others.
“Filthy pigs! We’ll all be dead by the time we get in,” an elderly woman spat in Italian.
The city of Rome, which surrounds Vatican City, has set up campgrounds in stadiums and public places for open use during the events. One lady said she didn’t care where she slept or even if she would.
Sabina La Versa had taken the all-night train from Sicily to view the pontiff. She said “The pope’s love for us flowed like water from a jug. I’d wait here forever to say arrivederci,” Italian for “see you again.”
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By Frbiz Tian
Optical time division multiplexing (TDM) technology is a high-speed transmission technology (up to 100Gb / s), it uses very narrow pulses have a greater bandwidth, more efficient use of optical fiber spectrum. TDM will slip stream of light directly into the optical domain multiplexing, resulting in the synthesis of very high bit rate data stream. TDM allows multiple signals simultaneously access to the same fibers, but the realization method of TDM and WDM is entirely different.
TDM can be used to achieve a single light 40Gb / s over rate.
The light source (such as mode-locked laser) produces a series of very narrow optical pulses into N-zero data stream, N a data stream for each channel signal by XGb / s (such as STM-n) respectively, the slip signal modulation, delay one clock cycle, and then by multiplexing the data resulting from the total rate of (N X) Gb / s.
Present study shows that, TDM overall rate of up to 200Gb / s or higher. Are running at such high speed optical transmission system, the fiber dispersion is a very important issue, generally use two methods to resolve, one is to use dispersion management (through the use of dispersion compensation fiber), bringing the total of the dispersion Jie Jin to zero; Another way is to use soliton transmission. Soliton transmission technology must be carefully considered signal power and pulse shape, and compression using self-phase modulation of the dispersion effect to solve the problem. Therefore, TDM is to support long-distance, high-capacity transmission better technical solutions.
Since the 90s since the 20th century, the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries some of the research carried out on the TDM system, extensive research and have made great progress.
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Used in optical transmission network TDM, must consider the synchronization problem, not only have to consider synchronization in time domain, frequency domain synchronization.
That is, for TDM networks, through various channels to reach any node to synchronize the pulse sequences needed to ensure the accurate demultiplexing, while they have the same spectral characteristics needed to ensure that when the data is handed to the network of another node, with zero offset between them. TDM networks for large-scale major difficulty has been inserted into the data path and data path of the optical-line properties match, a possible solution is to use a single distribution in the network to send laser signals.
TDM high-speed optical communication system is composed of ultra-short pulse light source, optical time division multiplexing / de-multiplexing equipment, optical clock recovery and synchronization, optical receivers, and optical fiber components.
TDM system requirements to produce high repetition rate light source, small super narrow pulse duty ratio. The more narrow width of the large ones can be reused more bandwidth, the more wide. Sources to meet these requirements mainly locked ring laser, mode-locked semiconductor lasers.
TDM time-division multiplexing optical transmission system technology easier to achieve, and optical demultiplexing up difficult to achieve. Optical demultiplexing TDM requirements are: fast and stable work without error, control, low power, polarization independent, timing jitter is small. Currently the main use of optical fiber nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM – based on semiconductor laser amplifier loop mirrors) and FWM (four wave mixing) two demultiplexer demultiplexing.
Extracted from the TDM clock signal system is very important. At present, the main optical clock extraction circuit resonance, injection mode-locked semiconductor laser and phase-locked loop (PLL), etc. The more mature the PLL.
In order to achieve a drop multiplexing function of optical networks, in addition to the clock extraction, but also need to frame and channel calibration. In the optical transmission network, the environmental impact, will produce jitter and drift, so these systems will require precise alignment and channel phase control.
TDM is a realization of a powerful high-capacity high-speed transmission technology, it can effective use of optical wavelength, and can run at different distances and capacity of the network. TDM can also use non-linear soliton transmission, and a host of other technologies, high-speed transmission systems to eliminate the dispersion effects. With the large-scale integration technology, such as InP and silicon planar waveguide technology and semiconductor optical amplification technology, TDM technology will make significant progress and into the practical.
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Science curriculum director resigns from Texas Education Agency
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Friday, November 30, 2007
Christine Comer resigned this month as the director of the science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency‘s (TEA) director after more than nine years. Comer said her resignation was due to pressure from officials who claimed she had given the appearance of criticizing the teaching of intelligent design.
According to documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman, “Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation by Barbara Forrest, a critic of the intelligent design/creationist movement. Forrest served as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. At Dover, intelligent design was ruled “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.” There is widespread scientific support for evolution, while creationism has been described as pseudoscience by the scientific community.
Comer’s resignation comes shortly ahead of the TEA’s State Board of Education (SBOE) reviews of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), which determine what should be taught in the classrooms and what textbooks are bought.
The advocacy group Texas Citizens for Science have released a statement saying, in part, “The real reason [Comer] was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science standards—the science TEKS—were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year. Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to require instead that biology instructors ‘Teach the Controversy’ about the ‘weaknesses’ of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and -created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn’t exist within legitimate science.”
Professor PZ Myers, biology professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, wrote that Forrest is “exactly the kind of person boards of education ought to consult before going down the road of attempting to legislate religion into the public schools.”
In reaction to the news Forrest told National Center for Science Education, “In my talk, I simply told the truth — about the history of the ‘intelligent design’ movement, about the complete rejection of its claims by the scientific community, and about the Kitzmiller trial and my involvement in it. Maybe the TEA can’t afford to take a position on what constitutes good science education — maybe it must remain neutral on whether or not to lie to students about evolution — but if so, that’s just sad.”
Agency officials declined to comment, saying it was a personnel issue.
