Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo
Corcovado

Belem
Brazil
Fathom

Crèche
Treasure Island

 

 Luke 2:14
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In his "Italian Journey" of 1787, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also described the placement of nativity scenes in Naples during the Christmas season. He noticed that the Neapolitans would set up large nativity scenes on the flat roofs of their houses so that the scenic views of the Gulf of Naples and Mount Vesuvius could be integrated into the background of the sacred events. This nativity scene replicates just such a presentation. In doing so, the observance of the perspective and the proportions are of particular importance. In order for the nativity scene to appear harmonious, a display case of more than 10 m in depth was installed in the museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "It was a fine, green, fat landscape"~~~R. L. Stevenson

 

 

 

Chess: "Sao Paulo" "Corcovado" "Belem" "Brazil" "Crèche"  "Fathom" "Treasure Island"

Red Car

 

The Marble Faun
Stephen Crane
Red Square
Redcar

Yellow Sky
Rodeo
Corcovado 

James 1:6
“But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”

 

 

 

 

Chess: "The Marble Faun" "Stephen Crane" "Red Square" "Redcar" "Rodeo" "Corcovado" 

"This romance was sketched out during a residence of considerable length in Italy, and has been rewritten and prepared for the press in England. The author proposed to himself merely to write a fanciful story, evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not propose attempting a portraiture of Italian manners and character. He has lived too long abroad not to be aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that knowledge of a country at once flexible and profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize its traits.
Italy, as the site of his romance, was chiefly valuable to him as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities would not be so terribly insisted upon as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need ruin to make them grow.
In re-writing these volumes, the author was somewhat surprised to see the extent to which he had introduced descriptions of various Italian objects, antique, pictorial, and statuesque. Yet these things fill the mind everywhere in Italy, and especially in Rome, and cannot easily be kept from flowing out upon the page when one writes freely, and with self-enjoyment. And, again, while reproducing the book, on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the northern blast always howling in my ears, the complete change of scene made these Italian reminiscences shine out so vividly that I could not find it in my heart to cancel them."~~~Nathaniel Hawthorne: THE MARBLE FAUN. Preface.

Red Square

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Península de Osa

Corcovado
Osa
Col 1:2 :
"To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ".

Yaquina Head, Oregon Coast

Chess: "Península de Osa" "Corcovado" "OSA"
Optical Society of America.

Diamonds are a Laser's Best Friend

First efficient diamond Raman laser paves the way to new defense technologies and improved laser surgery

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18—Tomorrow’s lasers may come with a bit of bling, thanks to a new technology that uses man-made diamonds to enhance the power and capabilities of lasers. Researchers in Australia have now demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials.

This “Raman” laser has applications that range from defense technologies and trace gas detectors to medical devices and satellite mapping of greenhouse gases. The special properties of diamonds offer a stepping stone to more powerful lasers that can be optimized to produce laser light colors currently unavailable to existing technologies.

Richard Mildren of Macqaurie University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and Alexander Sabella of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Edinburgh, South Australia developed the device, described in the current issue of the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters.

“Diamond is quite a bizarre material with unique and extreme properties,” says Mildren. “Single crystal diamond is very new on the scene as an optical and laser material.”

Existing Raman lasers typically use crystals of silicon, barium nitrate or metal tungstate to amplify light created by a pump laser. Compared to these materials, diamond has a higher optical gain (ability to amplify) as well as a greater thermal conductivity (ability to conduct heat), making it ideal for high-power applications. Diamond crystals also can be made to generate a wider variety of wavelengths of light, each of which have its own applications—from ultraviolet light at 225 nanometers to far-infrared light at 100 microns.

In 2008, Mildren built the first diamond Raman laser, reported in Optics Express, OSA's open-access journal. This proof-of-principle device was only 20 percent as efficient as the best barium nitrate lasers.

In the past year, the industrial process used to grow these artificial diamonds–chemical vapor deposition–has greatly improved, allowing the synthesis of crystals with a lower birefringence (less likely to split apart an incoming beam of light).

“The material is now good enough to start moving into applications that are of real practical interest,” says Mildren.

Now Mildren's current laser, which uses a 6.7 mm long diamond, achieves an efficiency of 63.5 percent, which is competitive with the 65 percent efficiency achieved by existing Raman lasers. The device is currently optimized to produce yellow laser light useful for medical applications such as eye surgery, and other applications should be possible with different optimization schemes.

Paper: “Highly efficient diamond Raman laser,” R.P. Mildren et al., Optics Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 18, pp. 2811-2813.

About OSA
Uniting more than 106,000 professionals from 134 countries, the Optical Society (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit www.osa.org.

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