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This article investigates the volatile Hollywood B-film market of the 1930s and 1940s, focusing specifically on the manner in which Monogram Pictures Corporation crafted sales, marketing, and production policies that responded to the challenges facing B-film producers and exhibitors during the period. Monogram distinguished itself from its competitors by stressing its corporate stability and the consistent supply of films it could provide to exhibitors for their double feature programs, company traits that were reinforced through its emphasis on series filmmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the discourse that developed around the biographical legend of Edgar Allan Poe between his death and the early 1930s, when Universal Pictures produced a series of horror films adapted from Poe's literary works. Using The Raven (1935) as a case study, the author demonstrates the manner by which Universal assimilated this ‘Poe discourse’ into prevailing horror genre conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We measure the effective optical depth in the Lyα forest using 40,035 quasar spectra from the Twelfth Data Release (DR12) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV. A rigorous selection based on spectral index and the equivalent width of the C iv emission line is applied to choose seven uniform samples with minimal intrinsic variations across redshifts. Modeling the redshift evolution of the effective optical depth with a power law, produces and . The 2.2% precision estimate on γ is dominated by systematic errors, likely arising from the bias and uncertainties in spectral index estimates. Even after incorporating the systematic errors, this work provides the most precise estimates of optical depth parameters to date. Finally, using the reconstructed Lyα forest continuum to directly measure the transmitted flux ratio as a function of redshift, we find deviations of less than 2.5% from the predictions from the global model and no convincing evidence for signal associated with He ii reionization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first scientific results from the luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) combined with the high-redshift galaxies of the previous BOSS sample. We measure the small- and intermediate-scale clustering from a sample of more than 97,000 galaxies in the redshift range . We interpret these measurements in the framework of the Halo Occupation Distribution. The bias of this sample of LRGs is 2.30 ± 0.03, with a satellite fraction of 13% ± 3% and a mean halo mass of . These results are consistent with expectations, demonstrating that these LRGs will be reliable tracers of large-scale structure at . The galaxy bias implies a scatter of luminosity at fixed halo mass, , of 0.19 dex. Using the clustering of massive galaxies from BOSS CMASS, BOSS LOWZ, and SDSS, we find that is consistent with observations over the full redshift range that these samples cover. The addition of eBOSS to previous surveys allows the investigation of the evolution of massive galaxies over the past ∼7 Gyr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model for spectrophotometric calibration errors in observations of quasars from the third generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and describe the correction procedure we have developed and applied to this sample. Calibration errors are primarily due to atmospheric differential refraction and guiding offsets during each exposure. The corrections potentially reduce the systematics for any studies of BOSS quasars, including the measurement of baryon acoustic oscillations using the Lyα forest. Our model suggests that, on average, the observed quasar flux in BOSS is overestimated by ∼19% at 3600 Å and underestimated by ∼24% at 10,000 Å. Our corrections for the entire BOSS quasar sample are publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the variability of quasars in the Mg ii and broad emission lines and ultraviolet/optical continuum emission using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project (SDSS-RM). This is the largest spectroscopic study of quasar variability to date: our study includes 29 spectroscopic epochs from SDSS-RM over 6 months, containing 357 quasars with Mg ii and 41 quasars with . On longer timescales, the study is also supplemented with two-epoch data from SDSS-I/II. The SDSS-I/II data include an additional 2854 quasars with Mg ii and 572 quasars with . The Mg ii emission line is significantly variable ( on ∼100-day timescales), a necessary prerequisite for its use for reverberation mapping studies. The data also confirm that continuum variability increases with timescale and decreases with luminosity, and the continuum light curves are consistent with a damped random-walk model on rest-frame timescales of days. We compare the emission-line and continuum variability to investigate the structure of the broad-line region. Broad-line variability shows a shallower increase with timescale compared to the continuum emission, demonstrating that the broad-line transfer function is not a δ-function. is more variable than Mg ii (roughly by a factor of ∼1.5), suggesting different excitation mechanisms, optical depths and/or geometrical configuration for each emission line. The ensemble spectroscopic variability measurements enabled by the SDSS-RM project have important consequences for future studies of reverberation mapping and black hole mass estimation of quasars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]