SCALA is a physical calibration device for the SuperNova Integral Field Spectrograph (SNIFS), mounted to the University Hawaii 2.2m telescope on Mauna Kea. For type Ia supernova (SN Ia) cosmology programs, an improved fundamental calibration directly translates into improved cosmological constraints. The aim of SCALA is to perform a fundamental calibration of the CALSPEC (Bohlin 2014) standard stars, which are currently calibrated relative to white dwarf model atmospheres.

The Nearby Supernova Factory aims at discovering and stud- ying a large sample of nearby (0.03 < z < 0.08) thermonuclear supernovae. Potential targets are extracted from the unbiased Palomar-QUEST survey, and follow-up spectro-photometric observations are performed using the dedicated Supernovae Integral-Field Spectrograph. The current sample comprises more than 2700 flux-calibrated optical spectra (320-1000 nm) from 181 supernovæ followed over their full life-time. Specific operation and data-reduction issues are discussed, and first scientific results from this unprecedented dataset are presented.

We have used the Automated Plate Scanner (APS) at the University of Minnesota to digitize glass copies of the blue and red plates of the original Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS I) with |b| > 20°. The APS Image Database is a database of all digitized images larger than the photographic noise threshold. It includes all of the matched images in the object catalog, as well as those unmatched images above the noise threshold. The matched image data of the catalog has the advantage of confirming the reality of the image. This is especially important for small images near the plate limit. But these are not all of the detected real images; very blue or very red faint objects may be excluded by this matching requirement. The image database allows information on them to be retrieved, and is therefore a valuable complement to the object catalog. The operation of the APS and the scanning procedures are described in detail in Pennington et al. (1993). We are now processing plate data into the image database. A set of query forms, a tutorial and documentation can be found at http://isis.spa.umn.edu/IDB/homepage.idb.html.

The Afghan war blue books of 1839 have usually been regarded as classic examples of the way official documents can be mutilated by skilful and unscrupulous editing almost to the point of forgery. Sir William Kaye's monumental and authoritative history of the first Afghan war, published in 1851, contains this crushing indictment:

I cannot, indeed, suppress the utterance of my abhorrence of this system of grabling the official correspondece of public men-sending the letters of a statesman or diplomatist into the world mutilated, emasculated-the very pith and substance of them cut is palmed upon the world has not one redeeming feature.