Very Large Array Interferometer

The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, some 50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro, New Mexico. It comprises 27 25-meter radio telescopes in a Y-shaped array and all the equipment, instrumentation, and computing power to function as an interferometer. Each of the massive telescopes is mounted on double parallel railroad tracks, so the radius and density of the array can be transformed to focus on particular bands of wavelength. Astronomers using the VLA have made key observations of black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way's center, probed the Universe's cosmological parameters, and provided new knowledge about the physical mechanisms that produce radio emission.

The VLA stands at an elevation of 6970 ft (2124 m) above sea level. It is a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Characteristics

The radio telescope comprises 27 independent antennae, each of which has a dish diameter of 25 meters (82 feet) and weighs 209 metric tons (230 Short tons). The antennae are distributed along the three arms of a track, shaped in a wye (or Y) -configuration, (each of which measures 21 km/13 miles long). Using the rail tracks that follow each of these arms—and that, at one point, intersect with U.S. Route 60 at a level crossing—and a specially designed lifting locomotive ("Hein's Trein"), the antennas can be physically relocated to a number of prepared positions, allowing aperture synthesis interferometry with up to 351 independent baselines: in essence, the array acts as a single antenna with a variable diameter. The angular resolution that can be reached is between 0.2 and 0.004 arcseconds.

There are four commonly used configurations, designated A (the largest) through D (the tightest, when all the dishes are within 600 m of the center point). The observatory normally cycles through all the various possible configurations (including several hybrids) every 16 months; the antennas are moved every three to four months. Moves to smaller configurations are done in two stages, first shortening the east and west arms and later shortening the north arm. This allows for a short period of improved imaging of extremely northerly or southerly sources.

The frequency coverage is 74 MHz to 50 GHz (400 to 0.7 cm).

The Array Operations Center (AOC) for the VLA is located on the campus of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico. The AOC also currently serves as the control center for the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a VLBI array of ten 25-meter dishes located from Hawaii in the west to the U.S. Virgin Islands in the east that constitutes the world's largest dedicated, full-time astronomical instrument.

Key Science

The VLA is a multi-purpose instrument designed to allow investigations of many astronomical objects, including radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, radio-emitting stars, the sun and planets, astrophysical masers, black holes, and the hydrogen gas that constitutes a large portion of the Milky Way galaxy as well as external galaxies. In 1989 the VLA was used to receive radio communications from the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew by Neptune. It is not, despite depictions in popular culture such as the movie Contact, used to assist in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

It has been used to carry out several large surveys of radio sources, including the NRAO VLA Sky Survey and Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_G._Jansky_Very_Large_Array

Today's Federal Reserve Statement

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s Opening Statement
to the Senate Finance Committee February 14, 2017

Chairman Crapo, Ranking Member Brown, and other members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve’s semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. In my remarks today I will briefly discuss the current economic situation and outlook before turning to monetary policy.

Current Economic Situation and Outlook

Since my appearance before this Committee last June, the economy has continued to make progress toward our dual-mandate objectives of maximum employment and price stability. In the labor market, job gains averaged 190,000 per month over the second half of 2016, and the number of jobs rose an additional 227,000 in January. Those gains bring the total increase in employment since its trough in early 2010 to nearly 16 million. In addition, the unemployment rate, which stood at 4.8 percent in January, is more than 5 percentage points lower than where it stood at its peak in 2010 and is now in line with the median of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants’ estimates of its longer-run normal level. A broader measure of labor underutilization, which includes those marginally attached to the labor force and people who are working part time but would like a full-time job, has also continued to improve over the past year. In addition, the pace of wage growth has picked up relative to its pace of a few years ago, a further indication that the job market is tightening. Importantly, improvements in the labor market in recent years have been widespread, with large declines in the unemployment rates for all major demographic groups, including African Americans and Hispanics. Even so, it is discouraging that jobless rates for those minorities remain significantly higher than the rate for the nation overall.

Ongoing gains in the labor market have been accompanied by a further moderate expansion in economic activity. U.S. real gross domestic product is estimated to have risen 1.9 percent last year, the same as in 2015. Consumer spending has continued to rise at a healthy pace, supported by steady income gains, increases in the value of households’ financial assets and homes, favorable levels of consumer sentiment, and low interest rates. Last year’s sales of automobiles and light trucks were the highest annual total on record. In contrast, business investment was relatively soft for much of last year, though it posted some larger gains toward the end of the year in part reflecting an apparent end to the sharp declines in spending on drilling and mining structures; moreover, business sentiment has noticeably improved in the past few months. In addition, weak foreign growth and the appreciation of the dollar over the past two years have restrained manufacturing output. Meanwhile, housing construction has continued to trend up at only a modest pace in recent quarters. And, while the lean stock of homes for sale and ongoing labor market gains should provide some support to housing construction going forward, the recent increases in mortgage rates may impart some restraint.

Inflation moved up over the past year, mainly because of the diminishing effects of the earlier declines in energy prices and import prices. Total consumer prices as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index rose 1.6 percent in the 12 months ending in December, still below the FOMC’s 2 percent objective but up 1 percentage point from its pace in 2015. Core PCE inflation, which excludes the volatile energy and food prices, moved up to about 1-3/4 percent.

My colleagues on the FOMC and I expect the economy to continue to expand at a moderate pace, with the job market strengthening somewhat further and inflation gradually rising to 2 percent. This judgment reflects our view that U.S. monetary policy remains accommodative, and that the pace of global economic activity should pick up over time, supported by accommodative monetary policies abroad. Of course, our inflation outlook also depends importantly on our assessment that longer-run inflation expectations will remain reasonably well anchored. It is reassuring that while market-based measures of inflation compensation remain low, they have risen from the very low levels they reached during the latter part of 2015 and first half of 2016. Meanwhile, most survey measures of longer-term inflation expectations have changed little, on balance, in recent months.

As always, considerable uncertainty attends the economic outlook. Among the sources of uncertainty are possible changes in U.S. fiscal and other policies, the future path of productivity growth, and developments abroad.

Monetary Policy
Turning to monetary policy, the FOMC is committed to promoting maximum employment and price stability, as mandated by the Congress. Against the backdrop of headwinds weighing on the economy over the past year, including financial market stresses that emanated from developments abroad, the Committee maintained an unchanged target range for the federal funds rate for most of the year in order to support improvement in the labor market and an increase in inflation toward 2 percent. At its December meeting, the Committee raised the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point, to 1/2 to 3/4 percent. In doing so, the Committee recognized the considerable progress the economy had made toward the FOMC’s dual objectives. The Committee judged that even after this increase in the federal funds rate target, monetary policy remains accommodative, thereby supporting some further strengthening in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation.

At its meeting that concluded early this month, the Committee left the target range for the federal funds rate unchanged but reiterated that it expects the evolution of the economy to warrant further gradual increases in the federal funds rate to achieve and maintain its employment and inflation objectives. As I noted on previous occasions, waiting too long to remove accommodation would be unwise, potentially requiring the FOMC to eventually raise rates rapidly, which could risk disrupting financial markets and pushing the economy into recession. Incoming data suggest that labor market conditions continue to strengthen and inflation is moving up to 2 percent, consistent with the Committee’s expectations. At our upcoming meetings, the Committee will evaluate whether employment and inflation are continuing to evolve in line with these expectations, in which case a further adjustment of the federal funds rate would likely be appropriate.

The Committee’s view that gradual increases in the federal funds rate will likely be appropriate reflects the expectation that the neutral federal funds rate–that is, the interest rate that is neither expansionary nor contractionary and that keeps the economy operating on an even keel–will rise somewhat over time. Current estimates of the neutral rate are well below pre-crisis levels–a phenomenon that may reflect slow productivity growth, subdued economic growth abroad, strong demand for safe longer-term assets, and other factors. The Committee anticipates that the depressing effect of these factors will diminish somewhat over time, raising the neutral funds rate, albeit to levels that are still low by historical standards.

That said, the economic outlook is uncertain, and monetary policy is not on a preset course. FOMC participants will adjust their assessments of the appropriate path for the federal funds rate in response to changes to the economic outlook and associated risks as informed by incoming data. Also, changes in fiscal policy or other economic policies could potentially affect the economic outlook. Of course, it is too early to know what policy changes will be put in place or how their economic effects will unfold. While it is not my intention to opine on specific tax or spending proposals, I would point to the importance of improving the pace of longer-run economic growth and raising American living standards with policies aimed at improving productivity. I would also hope that fiscal policy changes will be consistent with putting U.S. fiscal accounts on a sustainable trajectory. In any event, it is important to remember that fiscal policy is only one of the many factors that can influence the economic outlook and the appropriate course of monetary policy. Overall, the FOMC’s monetary policy decisions will be directed to the attainment of its congressionally mandated objectives of maximum employment and price stability.

Finally, the Committee has continued its policy of reinvesting proceeds from maturing Treasury securities and principal payments from agency debt and mortgage-backed securities. This policy, by keeping the Committee’s holdings of longer-term securities at sizable levels, has helped maintain accommodative financial conditions.

Thank you. I would be pleased to take your questions.

Saudade: Profound Melancholy

Saudade  is a deep emotional state of nostalgia or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. A stronger form of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died. Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings altogether, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling. Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician (from which it entered Spanish) that claims no direct translation in English. In Portuguese, "Tenho saudades tuas" (European Portuguese) or "Tenho saudades de você" (Brazilian Portuguese), translates as "I have (feel) saudade of you" meaning "I miss you", but carries a much stronger tone. In fact, one can have saudade of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future. For example, one can have "saudade" towards part of the relationship or emotions once experienced for/with someone, though the person in question still is part of one's life, as in "Tenho saudade do que fomos" (I feel "saudade" of the way we were). Another example can illustrate this use of the word saudade: "Que saudade!" indicating a general feeling of longing, whereby the object of longing can be a general and undefined entity/occasion/person/group/period etc. This feeling of longing can be accompanied or better described by an abstract will to be where the object of longing is. Despite being hard to translate, saudade has equivalent words in other cultures, and is often related to music styles expressing this feeling such as the blues for African-Americans, dor in Romania, Tizita in Ethiopia, or Assouf for the Tuareg people. In Slovak, the word is clivota or cnenie, in Czech, the word is stesk and Sehnsucht in German. Nascimento and Meandro (2005) cite Duarte Nunes Leão's definition of saudade: "Memory of something with a desire for it." In Brazil, the day of Saudade is officially celebrated on 30 January. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade

Saudade  is a deep emotional state of nostalgia or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. A stronger form of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died.

Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings altogether, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.

                                                                   Saudade (1899) by

                                                                      Almeida Junior

Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician (from which it entered Spanish) that claims no direct translation in English. In Portuguese, "Tenho saudades tuas" (European Portuguese) or "Tenho saudades de você" (Brazilian Portuguese), translates as "I have (feel) saudade of you" meaning "I miss you", but carries a much stronger tone. In fact, one can have saudade of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future. For example, one can have "saudade" towards part of the relationship or emotions once experienced for/with someone, though the person in question still is part of one's life, as in "Tenho saudade do que fomos" (I feel "saudade" of the way we were). Another example can illustrate this use of the word saudade: "Que saudade!" indicating a general feeling of longing, whereby the object of longing can be a general and undefined entity/occasion/person/group/period etc. This feeling of longing can be accompanied or better described by an abstract will to be where the object of longing is.

Despite being hard to translate, saudade has equivalent words in other cultures, and is often related to music styles expressing this feeling such as the blues for African-Americans, dor in Romania, Tizita in Ethiopia, or Assouf for the Tuareg people. In Slovak, the word is clivota or cnenie, in Czech, the word is stesk and Sehnsucht in German.

Nascimento and Meandro (2005) cite Duarte Nunes Leão's definition of saudade: "Memory of something with a desire for it."

In Brazil, the day of Saudade is officially celebrated on 30 January.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade

Saudade  is a deep emotional state of nostalgia or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. A stronger form of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died. Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings altogether, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling. Saudade is a word in Portuguese and Galician (from which it entered Spanish) that claims no direct translation in English. In Portuguese, "Tenho saudades tuas" (European Portuguese) or "Tenho saudades de você" (Brazilian Portuguese), translates as "I have (feel) saudade of you" meaning "I miss you", but carries a much stronger tone. In fact, one can have saudade of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future. For example, one can have "saudade" towards part of the relationship or emotions once experienced for/with someone, though the person in question still is part of one's life, as in "Tenho saudade do que fomos" (I feel "saudade" of the way we were). Another example can illustrate this use of the word saudade: "Que saudade!" indicating a general feeling of longing, whereby the object of longing can be a general and undefined entity/occasion/person/group/period etc. This feeling of longing can be accompanied or better described by an abstract will to be where the object of longing is. Despite being hard to translate, saudade has equivalent words in other cultures, and is often related to music styles expressing this feeling such as the blues for African-Americans, dor in Romania, Tizita in Ethiopia, or Assouf for the Tuareg people. In Slovak, the word is clivota or cnenie, in Czech, the word is stesk and Sehnsucht in German. Nascimento and Meandro (2005) cite Duarte Nunes Leão's definition of saudade: "Memory of something with a desire for it." In Brazil, the day of Saudade is officially celebrated on 30 January. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade

Gregg's Ingenious Shorthand Method

Gregg shorthand is a form of stenography [light-line semi-script alphabetic stenography] that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States; its Spanish adaptation is fairly popular in Latin America. With the invention of dictation machines, shorthand machines, and the practice of executives writing their own letters on their personal computers, the use of shorthand has gradually declined in the business and reporting world. However, Gregg shorthand is still in use today.

There is a reasonable possibility that John Robert Gregg structured his shorthand on the Mnemonic major system based on the previous work of Pierre Hérigone and others following the publication of The Anti-Absurd or Phrenotypic English Pronouncing and Orthographical Dictionary by Major Beniowski in 1845.

Several versions of this system were published. Pre-Anniversary includes the first five editions, the first one published in two small paper-covered pamphlets in 1888, the second published in 1893, the third in book form in 1897, the fourth in 1902, and the fifth in 1916. Anniversary, a revised and simplified form published in 1929, was so called because it was to be published on the fortieth anniversary of the system (1928), but there was some delay in publication. In 1949, Simplified was created, in which many of the principles and memorized forms were removed or simplified due to findings of studies by the publishers and suggestions of many shorthand teachers. Diamond Jubilee was published in 1963, which simplified the Simplified version. Series 90 was published in 1978, which simplified it further. The last version was Centennial, published in 1988, with several similarities to the Diamond Jubilee system earlier. Besides these main editions, which were designed for the dictation speeds expected of any shorthand system of the time, a number of simpler, personal-use editions were published from 1924 to 1968. These included "Greghand" in 1935, and "Notehand" in 1960 and 1968.

Gregg is often contrasted to Pitman shorthand, as the two share huge predominance over other English shorthand systems. Pitman uses line thickness and position to discriminate between two similar sounds, but Gregg shorthand uses the same thickness throughout and discriminates between similar sounds by the length of the stroke. John Robert Gregg was originally a teacher of a Duployan shorthand adaptation to English (Duployan shorthand was the dominant system in France, and also featured uniform thickness and attached vowels). However, he found the angular outlines of Duployan-based systems to be detrimental to speed. Gregg shorthand features cursive strokes which can be naturally blended without obtuse angles. In addition, because the symbols of Gregg shorthand are developed especially for English rather than adapted from a French system, they are a better fit for the language (for example, Gregg has a symbol for th /θ/ whereas the Duployan systems would use a dotted t, which takes longer to write).

Versions

Throughout its history, different forms of Gregg shorthand have been published. All the versions use the same alphabet and basic principles, but they differ in degrees of abbreviation and, as a result, speed. The 1916 version is generally the fastest and most abbreviated version. Series 90 Gregg has the smallest degree of abbreviation, but it is also generally the slowest version of Gregg. Though each version differs in its level of abbreviation, most versions have expert and reporting versions for writers who desire more shortcuts.

Adaptions

Gregg shorthand has been adapted to several languages, including Afrikaans, Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Thai and Tagalog. With a few customizations, it can be adapted to nearly any language. The Spanish version, designed by Eduardo Vega, is the most popular adaptation.

The Mandarin Chinese version slightly modified the original system, under the name 'Beifang Suji (Northern Shorthand)'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_shorthand

Fashion from Christian Dior

Christian Dior SE, commonly known as Dior, is a French luxury goods company controlled and chaired by French businessman Bernard Arnault, who also heads LVMH – the world's largest luxury group. Dior itself holds 42.36% shares of and 59.01% voting rights within LVMH.

Founded in 1946 by the eponymous designer Christian Dior, today the company designs and retails ready-to-wear, leather goods, fashion accessories, footwear, jewelry, timepieces, fragrance, make-up, and skincare products while also maintaining its tradition as a creator of recognized haute-couture (under the Christian Dior Couture division). While the Christian Dior label remains largely for women's offerings, the company also operates the Dior Homme division for men and the baby Dior label for children's wear. Products are sold throughout its portfolio of retail stores worldwide, as well as through its online store.

Founding

The House of Dior was established on 16 December 1946, in "a private house" at 30 Avenue Montaigne Paris B. However, the current Dior corporation celebrates "1947" as the opening year. Dior was financially backed by wealthy businessman Marcel Boussac. Boussac had originally invited Dior to design for Philippe et Gaston, but Dior refused, wishing to make a fresh start under his own name rather than reviving an old brand. The new couture house became a part of "a vertically integrated textile business" already operated by Boussac. Its capital was at FFr 6 million and workforce at 80 employees. The company was really a vanity project for Boussac and was a "majorly owned affiliate of Boussac Saint-Freres S.A. Nevertheless, Monsieur Dior was allowed a then-unusual great part in his namesake label (legal leadership, a non-controlling stake in the firm, and one-third of pretax profits) despite Boussac's reputation as a "control freak". Monsieur Dior's creativity also negotiated him a pleasant salary.

The New Look

On 12 February 1947, Dior launched his first fashion collection for Spring–Summer 1947. The show of "90 models of his first collection on six mannequins" was presented in the salons of the company's headquarters at 30 Avenue Montaigne. Originally, the two lines were named "Corolle" and "Huit". However, the new collection went down in fashion history as the "New Look" after the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar Carmel Snow exclaimed, "It's such a New Look!" The silhouette was characterised by a small, nipped-in waist and a full skirt falling below mid-calf length, which emphasised the bust and hips, as epitomized by the 'Bar' suit from the first collection. At a time of post-war fabric restrictions, Dior used up to twenty yards of extravagant fabrics for his creations, favoring the luxury textiles of Robert Perrier. The New Look became extremely popular, its full-skirted silhouette influencing other fashion designers well into the 1950s, and Dior gained a number of prominent clients from Hollywood, the United States, and the European aristocracy. As a result, Paris, which had fallen from its position as the capital of the fashion world after WWII, regained its preeminence. The New Look was welcomed in western Europe as a refreshing antidote to the austerity of wartime and de-feminizing uniforms, and was embraced by stylish women such as Princess Margaret in the UK. According to Harold Koda, The Costume Institute curator in charge, Christian Dior credited Charles James with inspiring The New Look.

                                                                Christian Dior Bar suit

Not everyone was pleased with the New Look, however. Some considered the amount of material to be wasteful, especially after years of cloth rationing. Feminists in particular were outraged, feeling that the new designs with its return to corsets were restrictive and regressive, and that Dior's designs took away women's independence. Fellow designer Coco Chanel remarked, “Only a man who never was intimate with a woman could design something that uncomfortable.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Dior_SE

Sir Peter Mansfield Dies

Sir Peter Mansfield FRS, (9 October 1933 – 8 February 2017) was an English physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Paul Lauterbur, for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Mansfield was a professor at the University of Nottingham.

Early Life

Mansfield was born in Lambeth, London on 9 October 1933, to Sidney George (a gas fitter) and Rose Lillian Mansfield. Mansfield is the youngest of three brothers.



Mansfield grew up in Camberwell. During World War II he was evacuated from London, initially to Sevenoaks and then twice to Torquay, Devon, where he was able to stay with the same family on both occasions. On returning to London after the war he was told by a school master to take the 11+ exam. Having never heard of the exam before, and having no time to prepare, Mansfield failed to gain a place at the local Grammar school. His mark was, however, high enough for him to go to a Central School in Peckham. At the age of 15 he was told by a careers teacher that science wasn't for him. He left school shortly afterwards to work as a printer's assistant.



At the age of 18, having developed an interest in rocketry, Mansfield took up a job with the Rocket Propulsion Department of the Ministry of Supply in Westcott, Buckinghamshire. Eighteen months later he was called up for National Service.

Education

After serving in the army for two years, Mansfield returned to Westcott and started studying for A-levels at night school. Two years later he gained entrance to study physics at Queen Mary College, London.



Mansfield graduated with a BSc from Queen Mary's in 1959. His final-year project, supervised by Dr. Jack Powles, was to construct a portable, transistor-based spectrometer to measure the Earth's magnetic field. Towards the end of this project Powles offered Mansfield a position in his NMR research group. Powles' interest was in studying molecular motion, mainly liquids. Mansfield's project was to build a pulsed NMR spectrometer to study solid polymer systems. He received his PhD in 1962; his thesis was titled Proton magnetic resonance relaxation in solids by transient methods.

Career

Following his PhD, Mansfield was invited to postdoctoral research with Charlie Slichter at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he carried out an NMR study of doped metals.

In 1964 he returned to England to take up a place as a Lecturer at Nottingham University where he could continue his studies in multiple-pulse NMR. He was successively appointed Senior Lecturer in 1968 and Reader in 1970. During this period his team developed the MRI equipment with the help of grants from the Medical Research Council. It was not until the 1970s with Paul Lauterbur's and Mansfield's developments that NMR could be used to produce images of the body. In 1990 Mansfield was appointed Professor of the Department of Physics until his retirement in 1994.



Mansfield is credited with showing how the radio signals from MRI can be mathematically analysed, making interpretation of the signals into a useful image a possibility. He is also credited with discovering how fast imaging could be possible by developing the MRI protocol called echo-planar imaging. Echo-planar imaging allows T2* weighted images to be collected many times faster than previously possible. It also has made functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) feasible.

Awards and Honors

• 1983 Gold Medal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
• 1984 Joint award of the Royal Society Welcome Foundation Gold Medal and Prize.
• 1986 Elected Fellow of Queen Mary College (now Queen Mary University of London)
• 1987 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
• 1987 Elected President of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
• 1988 Awarded Duddell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics
• 1988 Awarded Silvanus Thompson Medal by the British Institute of Radiology
• 1989 Antoine Béclère Medal from the International Society of Radiology and the Antoine Béclère Institute in Paris
• 1990 Royal Society Mullard Award (joint with John Mallard & Jim Hutchinson)
• 1992 International Society of Magnetic Resonance (ISMAR) prize (joint with P. Lauterbur)
• 1993 Knighted
• 1993 Silver Plaque of the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology
• 1993 Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Radiology and Honorary Member of the British Institute of Radiology
• 1994 Elected Honorary Member of the Society of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Fellow of the Society of Magnetic Resonance
• 1995 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Prize for MRI
• 1995 Gold Medal of the European Congress of Radiology and the European Association of Radiology
• 1997 Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics
• 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Medicine with Paul Lauterbur
• 2009 was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ceremony broadcast on ITV's Pride of Britain Awards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mansfield

The Templeton Prize

The Templeton Prize is an annual award presented by the Templeton Foundation. Established in 1972, it is awarded to a living person who, in the estimation of the judges, "has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works". The prize is named after Sir John Templeton (1912–2008), an American-born British entrepreneur and businessman, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his philanthropic efforts. Until 2001, the name of the prize was "Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion", and from 2002 to 2008 it was called the "Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities". It has typically been presented by Prince Philip in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

The monetary value of the prize is adjusted so that it exceeds that of the Nobel Prizes, as Templeton felt "spirituality was ignored" in the Nobel Prizes. At £1,200,000, as of 2015, it is the second largest single annual financial prize award (behind the Fundamental Physics Prize) given to an individual by a philanthropic organization. The prize is awarded "based on the decision of a panel of distinguished judges from various academic disciplines and religious traditions". Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and atheists have been on the panel of judges and have been recipients of the prize.

The prize has been criticized: British biologist Richard Dawkins said in his book The God Delusion that the prize was given "usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion". Sean M. Carroll, a research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, criticized his colleagues for taking Templeton research grants when they did not support Templeton's beliefs. Martinus J. G. Veltman, the 1999 Nobel laureate in physics, suggested the prize "bridg[ed] the gap between sense and nonsense".

The inaugural winner of the prize, in 1973, was Mother Teresa, six years before she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She was cited by the Templeton Foundation "for her extraordinary efforts to help the homeless and neglected children of Calcutta," work which "inspired millions of others around the world".

Templeton Prize Winners

1973    Mother Teresa

1974    Frere Roger

1975    Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

1976    Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens

1977    Chiara Lubich

1978    The Very Rev. Thomas Torrance

1979    Nikkyō Niwano

1980    Ralph Wendell Burhoe

1981    Dame Cicely Saunders

1982    The Rev. Billy Graham

1983    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

1984    The Rev. Michael Bourdeaux

1985    Sir Alister Hardy

1986    The Rev. James I. McCord

1987    The Rev. Stanley Jaki

1988    Inamullah Khan

1989    Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker

1989    The Very Rev. and Rt. Hon. The Lord MacLeod of Fuinary

1990    Baba Amte

1990    Charles Birch

1991    Rabbi The Rt. Hon. The Lord Jakobovits

1992    The Rev. Kyung-Chik Han

1993    Charles Colson

1994    Michael Novak

1995    Paul Davies

1996    Bill Bright

1997    Rev. Pandurang Shastri Athavale

1998    Sir Sigmund Sternberg

1999    Ian Barbour

2000    Freeman Dyson

2001    The Rev. Canon Arthur Peacocke

2002    The Rev. John Polkinghorne

2003    The Rev. Holmes Rolston III

2004    George F. R. Ellis

2005    Charles Hard Townes

2006    John D. Barrow

2007    Charles Margrave Taylor

2008    The Rev. Michał Heller

2009    Bernard d'Espagnat

2010    Francisco J. Ayala

2011    The Rt. Hon. The Lord Rees of Ludlow

2012    His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

2013    The Most Rev. Desmond Tutu

2014    Tomáš Halík

2015    Jean Vanier

2016    Jonathan Sacks

                     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize