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Transient star-like objects of unknown origin have been identified in the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) conducted prior to the first artificial satellite. We tested speculative hypotheses that some transients are related to nuclear weapons testing or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) reports. A dataset comprising daily data (11/19/49—4/28/57) regarding identified transients, nuclear testing, and UAP reports was created (n = 2,718 days). Results revealed significant ( p  = .008) associations between nuclear testing and observed transients, with transients 45% more likely on dates within + /- 1 day of nuclear testing. For days on which at least one transient was identified, significant associations were noted between total number of transients and total number of independent UAP reports per date ( p  = 0.015). For every additional UAP reported on a given date, there was an 8.5% increase in number of transients identified. Small but significant ( p  = .008) associations between nuclear testing and number of UAP reports were also noted. Findings suggest associations beyond chance between occurrence of transients and both nuclear testing and UAP reports. These findings may help elucidate the nature of POSS-I transients and strengthen empirical support for the UAP phenomenon.

Mathematics is as much a part of our humanity as music and art. And it is our mathematics that might be understandable, even familiar, to a distant race and might provide the basis for mutual communication. This book discusses, in a conversational way, the role of mathematics in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The author explores the science behind that search, its history, and the many questions associated with it, including those regarding the nature of language and the philosophical/psychological motivation behind this search.

Astrobiologists are moving purposefully towards the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) through the radio and optical methods of SETI. Meanwhile, members of the public have formed their own opinions, only partially informed by science. In the United States, two thirds of all adults believe there is intelligent life beyond Earth, and a substantial minority believe we have already made contact. Opinions about the existence and nature of aliens are part of a complex landscape of beliefs that includes pseudoscience and superstition and extends to conspiracy theories. The widespread belief that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) represent visits by ETI is at the center of this landscape. Beliefs about ETI are also shaped by films, TV shows, and popular culture. This chapter summarizes what the public believes about ETI and presents possible explanations for these beliefs. Some international comparisons are presented. The author has surveyed the opinions and beliefs of tens of thousands of students on topics relating to life beyond Earth and the data gives insights into the modes of thinking of the college-age population. People are not “blank canvasses” when it comes to their beliefs and expectations about ETI, and this should be considered by the scientists who are preparing for eventual, actual contact.

This article outlines the general history of American Evangelical Christianity’s textual response to the UFO phenomenon, framed by the literary genre of the jeremiad and as part of the apocalyptic turn of the twentieth century. Beginning with its early entanglement in the 1940s and moving to the present, it highlights the shifts in the narrative from angelic harbingers to demonic co-conspirators. The article pays particular attention to a new Evangelical approach to the phenomenon through novelization that at once mirrors contemporary politicization and utilizes the literary form to initiate adherents. While “new” in some regards, the extended discussion and examination of Michael Heiser’s novel The Façade reveals a continuity with earlier forms of occult literatures birthed in the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, the metaphysical and mystical nature of UFOs together with the similar qualities of the novel have been and are being appropriated by American Evangelicals in a hyperreal mode to extend their cultural influence.

Written for Dorothy Pawluch’s festschrift for The American Sociologist, this paper seeks to advance constructionist conceptualization and theorizing of time. Our goal is to contribute to expanding the social constructionist toolkit by considering the role of temporality in social problems claims-making, i.e., temporal hermeneutics or time as a vernacular resource. We background this focus with a brief overview of sociological examinations of time, with a particular focus on the writings of George Herbert Mead, who developed key concepts that point to an underdeveloped sociology of time. We argue that ‘hewing’ to members own projections and invocations of time helps analysts to remain agnostic regarding the examination of definitional processes. Two case studies indicate potential directions forward. First is the case of the ‘tank man’image/meme, originating from news coverage of the June 4, 1989 Chinese government crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square. Second, we explore the case of ‘missing time’ experienced by those claiming to have encountered aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs). These very different cases suggest the wide range of applications a hermeneutics of temporality may offer to constructionist scholarship.

Few works addressed contributions of ontologies to Computation Independent Modeling (CIM) of Internet of Things’ (IoT) applications. This work targets CIM artefacts developed using a combination of a goal-oriented requirements (KAOS) and a service-oriented (SoAML) modeling frameworks. This paper proposes an ontological-based framework intended to help CIM modelers in their preliminary analysis of IoT applications. We adopt the ontology reuse approach, an approach often used by the ontology engineering community, where specific ontology fragments are selected, adapted and/or refined, and merged. We use OntoUML to describe our fragments. The OpenPonk tool is used to edit and verify the syntax andthe semantics of these fragments’ models. The results of our contribution are summarized as follows. Improving the semantics carried by the metamodels of KAOS and SoaML modeling languages, through our proposed conceptualization grounded by the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), a sound ontological framework; setting a link between our proposed KAOS and SoaML ontology fragments; designing a (partial) IoT domain ontology to be integrated into our proposed CIM. An illustrative example, showing how to instantiate selected ontology fragments, demonstrates the applicability of our results to IoT applications.

The Commando procedure is challenging, and aims to replace the mitral valve, the aortic valve and the aortic mitral curtain, when the latter is severely affected by pathological processes (such as infective endocarditis or massive calcification). Given the high complexity, it is seldomly performed. We aim to review the literature on early (hospitalization and up to 30 days) and long-term (at least 3 years of follow-up) results. Bibliographical research was performed on PubMed and Cochrane with a dedicated string. Papers regarding double valve replacement or repair in the context of aortic mitral curtain disease were included. The metaprop function was used to assess early survival and complications (pacemaker implantation, stroke and bleeding). Nine papers (540 patients, median follow-up 41 (IQR 24.5–51.5) months) were included in the study. Pooled proportion of early mortality, stroke, pacemaker implant and REDO for bleeding were, respectively 16.2%, 7.8%, 25.1% and 13.1%. The long-term survival rate ranged from 50% to 92.2%. Freedom from re-intervention was as high as 90.9% when the endocarditis was not the first etiology and 78.6% in case of valvular infection (one author had 100%). Freedom from IE recurrences reached 85% at 10 years. Despite the high mortality, the rates of re-intervention and infective endocarditis recurrences following the Commando procedure are satisfactory and confirm the need for an aggressive strategy to improve long-term outcomes.

A lightly damped system experiences undesirable residual vibration (RDV) at the end of the point-to-point motion. This paper proposes a novel numerical optimization algorithm for tuning the polynomial-function-based unitized fourth-order S-curve (UFOS-curve) motion profile to minimize the RDV of a lightly damped system. The proposed method describes a tuning rule for optimizing a UFOS-curve motion profile to achieve minimum RDV response for a given moving distance, motion completion time (MCT), and actuator capacities without addressing the system’s dynamics. The method is analytically formulated using the concept of unitization and the well-known weighted sum method. The formulation of the UFOS-curve motion profile is explained in both the general polynomial equation and the time-Laplace domain approach. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by applying the designed motion profiles to an experimental setup based on a flexible rotating link. The simulated results based on the mathematical modeling are provided to validate the experimental results. The feasibility and practicality of the presented optimum UFOS-curve trajectory is experimentally demonstrated in comparison with other benchmark trajectories.

In this essay, I discuss the reports and results of recent official studies of UFOs, and argue they may pose a challenge to contemporary science, religion, and secularity. While the question of UFOs has been well addressed with respect to religion, this essay, which is also a report on current research, highlights the challenge to secularity and some of its constitutive practices. It aims to show how current knowledge on UFOs renders both science and religion uncanny, placing them in a domain where they become irreducibly strange while unshakably familiar, pushing us to (re)consider some of the secular premises of the social sciences (e.g., anthropology) and the humanities (e.g., religious studies), and the possible need for new analytics.