Jefferson Alumni Bulletin – Volume 59, Number 3, Summer 2010

Jefferson Alumni Bulletin – Volume 59, Number 3, Summer 2010 Dean\u27s Message, page 2 Findings: Researchers Find Breast Tumor Suppressor, page 4 Computational Biology: Turning Data into Knowledge, page 6 Entire Back File of Jefferson Alumni Bulletins Available Online, page 10 Healthcare Reform: What Does it Mean for Physicians and Medical Students?, page 12 Faculty Profile: Janet Larson: Pioneering Fetal Gene Technologies, page 18 On Campus, page 20 Class Notes, page 26 In Memoriam, page 30 By the Numbers, page 3

Drivers’ Response to In-Vehicle Route Guidance Information Systems: An Experiemnt with a Mock-Up Guidance System.

The paper reports an exploratory study, using an unusual technique to investigate drivers' response to in-vehicle route guidance information systems. Eighteen drivers were recruited, and asked to make a series of three trips in an unfamiliar area. Each driver was given turning advice, via a speech synthesiser, on one of these trips. This advice was based on average traffic conditions for the time of day. Unbeknown to the drivers, the advice was in fact triggered by the experimenter, who was riding as a back-seat passenger. Details were kept of times and routes taken with and without guidance, and with different levels of network familiarity. Records were also kept (using questionnaires and video and audio recording) of planning and route-following strategies. As expected, both receipt of guidance and even very rudimentary network familiarity resulted in reduced journey times, and routes closer to the guidance recommendations. The study indicated that factors including the directness of possible routes, their perceived complexity, and familiarity all affect route choice, but to different extents for different individuals and under different circumstances. Error was shown to be important in determining the route actually followed when guidance was withheld. The study showed that giving in-vehicle guidance using the mock-up technique described is practicable, and does influence drivers' route-choice and route-following behaviour. A possible future study is outlined, aimed at identifying the determinants of the drivers' level of compliance with advice when they believe that advice is based on real-time traffic information

Essay VIII: a key work in the piano output of Christopher Bochmann

Christopher Bochmann's pianistic language is based on a fairly conventional instrumental technique, inherited from the 19th century pianistic tradition, yet encompassing characteristic features developed by authors associated with the 2nd Viennese School and post-serialism, as well as significant experiences in the fields of free forms and aleatoric music. The permeability to a neoclassical sensibility, probably stimulated by contact with Nadia Boulanger in the formative years, has remained over time and manifests itself from time to time, both in the use of techniques, genres and forms of the past, but also, more comprehensively, in a constant search for balance and proportionality, across all of Bochmann’s works. From 1991, the year he composed Essay VIII, for solo piano, Bochmann inaugurated his maturity phase, based on what he calls a “unified technique”. The significant consistency of his instrumental language from then on results, to a large extent, from the synthesis of previously explored elements that Essay VIII operates, as I intend to demonstrate throughout this essay. Furthermore, we shall see how specific traits, not always particularly idiomatic, of Bochmann’s pianistic idiom enhance the aural understanding of the compositional principles that structure the work in analysis, and how a successful performance of the work depends largely on the understanding and highlighting, through specific performance practices, of the composer’s choices

Tidal inertial waves in the differentially rotating convective envelopes of low-mass stars - I. Free oscillation modes

Star-planet tidal interactions may result in the excitation of inertial waves in the convective region of stars. In low-mass stars, their dissipation plays a prominent role in the long-term orbital evolution of short-period planets. Turbulent convection can sustain differential rotation in their envelope, with an equatorial acceleration (as in the Sun) or deceleration, which can modify the waves' propagation properties. We explore in this first paper the general propagation properties of free linear inertial waves in a differentially rotating homogeneous fluid inside a spherical shell. We assume that the angular velocity background flow depends on the latitudinal coordinate only, close to what is expected in the external convective envelope of low-mass stars. We use i) an analytical approach in the inviscid case to get the dispersion relation, from which we compute the characteristic trajectories along which energy propagates. This allows us to study the existence of attractor cycles and infer the different families of inertial modes; ii) high-resolution numerical calculations based on a spectral method for the viscous problem. We find that modes that propagate in the whole shell (D modes) behave the same way as with solid-body rotation. However, another family of inertial modes exists (DT modes), which can propagate only in a restricted part of the convective zone. Our study shows that they are less common than D modes and that the characteristic rays and shear layers often focus towards a wedge - or point-like attractor. More importantly, we find that for non-axisymmetric oscillation modes, shear layers may cross a corotation resonance with a local accumulation of kinetic energy. Their damping rate scales very differently from what we obtain for standard D modes and we show an example where it is independent of viscosity (Ekman number) in the astrophysical regime in which it is small.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in A&