COLLECTIONS & ANTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS LITERARY FORMS. Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) the immensely talented writer, artist, poet and playwright,is best-known for his gothic masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy, and his stunning illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. He was a prolific and astonishingly original writer, who touched at one time or another on almost every literary form. Peake's Progress is a selection, compiled by his widow, Maeve Gilmore, from every period of his work as writer and draughtsman. It contains a remarkable work from childhood, 'The White Chief of the Umzimbooboo Kaffirs', the early 'Mr. Slaughterboard', which foreshadows the 'Titus' books, two plays, 'The Wit to Woo' and 'Noah's Ark', a broadcast version of 'Mr Pye', and a generous selection from Peake's short stories, poems and nonsense verses as well as from his drawings.

For well over half a century, since the first credible warnings of petroleum depletion were raised in the 1950s, contemporary industrial civilization has been caught in a remarkable paradox: a culture more focused on problem solving than any other has repeatedly failed to deal with, or even consider, the problem most likely to bring its own history to a full stop. The coming of peak oil-the peaking and irreversible decline of world petroleum production-poses an existential threat to societies in which every sector of the economy depends on petroleum-based transport, and no known energy source can scale up extensively or quickly enough to replace dwindling oil supplies. Not The Future We Ordered is the first study of the psychological dimensions of that decision and its consequences, as a case study in the social psychology of collective failure, and as an issue with which psychologists and therapists will be confronted repeatedly in the years ahead.

This work aims at designing and characterizing diode laser based master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) systems, which are targeted to be implemented into micro light detection and ranging (LIDAR) or differential absorption LIDAR (DIAL) systems for water vapor and aerosol detections. These light sources operate in the ns-pulse regime at a repetition rate of 25 kHz, leading to a resolution in the meter range in an altitude of 6 km. The monolithic MOPA, where Master Oscillator (MO) and Power Amplifier (PA) are integrated on one single chip, operates at 1064 nm wavelength. A peak power of 16.3 W with a pulse width of 3 ns was obtained. A spectral linewidth of about 150 pm and a side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) of 30 dB was observed. A ratio of 9% between the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and the laser was estimated. These spectral properties fulfill the requirements for aerosol detection. The hybrid MOPA systems have separate chips for MO and PA. Different hybrid MOPA systems provide a stabilized wavelength at 1064 nm, a tunable wavelength around 975 nm and a dual wavelength around 964 nm. They therefore enable to detect a well-defined absorption line, scan over absorption line and switch between on/off line in DIAL applications, respectively. Their spectral linewidth is below 10 pm, limited by the resolution of the spectrum analyzer. An SMSR of more than 50 dB for the MO and of more than 37 dB for the whole MOPA was reached. A ratio between ASE and laser below 1% was estimated. These spectral properties meet the requirements for water vapor absorption lines detection at atmospheric condition. Diode laser based MOPA systems were therefore proven to be potential light sources for micro-pulse-LIDAR systems – the basis for a new generation of ultra-compact, low-cost systems.