An evening recital with Jay Bitner : an honors project

The concept of my senior recital as a honors project began in the fall of 1993. It was at that time my voice teacher, Mary Hagopian, and I began choosing the repertoire that I would sing on April 29th. After much discussion regarding having a balanced and complete program, we settled on two arias from Bach cantatas, Schumann's Dichterliebe, Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring, and Prince Gremin's aria from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin as a suitable program. In the ensuing months of work, it became evident that singing the Russian would prove too difficult a challenge at this point. Due to the deletion of this selection and in the maintenance of balance another aria needed to be inserted. We decided that Ah! un loco insolito would be a good solid aria to close the program with, also adding a different emotion compared with the serious and somber nature of the program's previous material. Now with the absence of the Russian language, we felt we needed to add some French songs to round out the recital. We came across some pieces by Saint-Saens and decided upon Danse Macabre and LAttente. Now we thought we were set. We had a run through of the program in February and it ran about 7 minutes too long. So we decided to cut one of the Bach arias. This was to be the final program.My practice routine also increased. I had two voice lessons a week the entire semester. In addition I spent from five to eight hours a week in the practice rooms working on my material. In April, following the opera production of Menthe's The Consul, I began to increase the intensity of my rehearsal time. I lived and breathed my recital. Recordings of the works by other artists, and recordings of my voice lessons were the only music I listened to for the rest of the month. I watched no television, read no books for pleasure, and devoted almost every waking hour to my recital. In the end the result convinced me I should have begun this routine earlier, but I was impaired by my role in the opera. This is a lesson that I will apply to future recitals.It was in February as well that I decided upon what to do regarding the publicity of my recital. I spoke briefly on the phone with my sister, Carol-Margaret, an artist, and asked if she would be interested in designing my posters for me. She graciously agreed. Over spring break I decided that in addition to the posters I would run off, I could have T-shirts made out of the poster design. This would allow me yet another avenue of getting the word out. Also over the break I designed some invitations with my mothers, which were sent out in early April to selected faculty and friends. By the time April rolled around, I had the T-shirts and matching posters on order, to be delivered on April 15th, a full two weeks prior to the performance. It was the following week when I realized that fifty posters were not going to be enough to gain the desired audience size of 100+. So with the help of my friend Steve Lidy, a graphics arts design major, I designed a new poster from the original concept. We decided to incorporate a black and white photograph of myself into the design. This decision was made because we both thought it was I who would draw people to the performance. After we finished I enlarged it to 11 "X14" and ran off two hundred fifty posters at a village copy outlet. That evening of the 23rd I personally went to every residence hall on campus dropping of 8-12 posters at each hall or complex to be distributed throughout the building. The following day I posted the remaining posters throughout the campus in every academic building. This method of publicity had the desired effect, as there was a head count of 193 people at my recital. Also I sold approximately two dozen T-shirts to friends and another two dozen to family members.Honors CollegeThesis (B.A.

On the probability of occurrence of rogue waves

A number of extreme and rogue wave studies have been conducted theoretically, numerically, experimentally and based on field data in the last years, which have significantly advanced our knowledge of ocean waves. So far, however, consensus on the probability of occurrence of rogue waves has not been achieved. The present investigation is addressing this topic from the perspective of design needs. Probability of occurrence of extreme and rogue wave crests in deep water is here discussed based on higher order time simulations, experiments and hindcast data. Focus is given to occurrence of rogue waves in high sea states

TEXES Observations of Pure Rotational H_2 Emission from AB Aurigae

We present observations of pure rotational molecular hydrogen emission from the Herbig Ae star, AB Aur. Our observations were made using the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Observatory. We searched for H_2 emission in the S(1), S(2), and S(4) lines at high spectral resolution and detected all three. By fitting a simple model for the emission in the three transitions, we derive T = 670 ± 40 K and M = 0.52 ± 0.15 M_⊙ for the emitting gas. On the basis of the 8.5 km s^(-1) FWHM of the S(2) line, assuming the emission comes from the circumstellar disk, and with an inclination estimate of the AB Aur system taken from the literature, we place the location for the emission near 18 AU. Comparison of our derived temperature to a disk structure model suggests that UV and X-ray heating are important in heating the disk atmosphere

Optical and Infrared Light Curves of the Eclipsing X-ray Binary V395 Car = 2S 0921-630

We present results of optical and infrared photometric monitoring of the eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary V395 Car (2S 0921-630). Our observations reveal a clear, repeating orbital modulation with an amplitude of about one magnitude in B, and V and a little less in J. Combining our data with archival observations spanning about 20 years, we derive an updated ephemeris with orbital period 9.0026+/-0.0001d. We attribute the modulation to a combination of the changing aspect of the irradiated face of the companion star and eclipses of the accretion disk around the neutron star. Both appear to be necessary as a secondary eclipse of the companion star is clearly seen. We model the B, V, and J lightcurves using a simple model of an accretion disk and companion star and find a good fit is possible for binary inclinations of 82.2+/-1.0 degrees. We estimate the irradiating luminosity to be about 8x10^35 erg/s, in good agreement with X-ray constraints.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA

HD 101088, An Accreting 14 AU Binary in Lower Centaurus Crux With Very Little Circumstellar Dust

We present high resolution (R=55,000) optical spectra obtained with MIKE on the 6.5 m Magellan Clay Telescope as well as Spitzer MIPS photometry and IRS low resolution (R~60) spectroscopy of the close (14 AU separation) binary, HD 101088, a member of the ~12 Myr old southern region of the Lower Centaurus Crux (LCC) subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association. We find that the primary and/or secondary is accreting from a tenuous circumprimary and/or circumsecondary disk despite the apparent lack of a massive circumbinary disk. We estimate a lower limit to the accretion rate of > 1x10^-9 solar masses per year, which our multiple observation epochs show varies over a timescale of months. The upper limit on the 70 micron flux allows us to place an upper limit on the mass of dust grains smaller than several microns present in a circumbinary disk of 0.16 moon masses. We conclude that the classification of disks into either protoplanetary or debris disks based on fractional infrared luminosity alone may be misleading.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, ApJ accepte

Hyperglycemia Induces Oxidative Stress and Impairs Axonal Transport Rates in Mice

studies to determine the effect of hyperglycemia on the neurons in the central nervous system (CNS). While olfactory dysfunction is indicated in diabetes, the effect of hyperglycemia on olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) remains unknown. In this study, we utilized manganese enhanced MRI (MEMRI) to assess the impact of hyperglycemia on axonal transport rates in ORNs. We hypothesize that (i) hyperglycemia induces oxidative stress and is associated with reduced axonal transport rates in the ORNs and (ii) hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress activates the p38 MAPK pathway in association with phosphorylation of tau protein leading to the axonal transport deficits.-weighted MEMRI imaging was used to determine axonal transport rates post-streptozotocin injection in wildtype (WT) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) overexpressing C57Bl/6 mice. SOD2 overexpression reduces mitochondrial superoxide load. Dihydroethidium staining was used to quantify the reactive oxygen species (ROS), specifically, superoxide (SO). Protein and gene expression levels were determined using western blotting and Q-PCR analysis, respectively.STZ-treated WT mice exhibited significantly reduced axonal transport rates and significantly higher levels of ROS, phosphorylated p38 MAPK and tau protein as compared to the WT vehicle treated controls and STZ-treated SOD2 mice. The gene expression levels of p38 MAPK and tau remained unchanged.Increased oxidative stress in STZ-treated WT hyperglycemic mice activates the p38 MAPK pathway in association with phosphorylation of tau and attenuates axonal transport rates in the olfactory system. In STZ-treated SOD-overexpressing hyperglycemic mice in which superoxide levels are reduced, these deficits are reversed

Brachiopod-based oxygen-isotope thermometer: Update and review

In the early 1950\u2019s, McCrea and Epstein and co-workers laid the foundation for the oxygen isotope-based thermometers. Many variations of the thermometer have been since formulated based on synthetic and biogenic carbonates. Overall, the use and application of oxygen isotope thermometers must consider and be specific as to the mineralogy, and whether it is synthetic, abiogenic or biogenic carbonate. Here, we propose an updated and refined oxygen-isotope thermometer based on a large database of articulated brachiopods from high to low latitudes, cold to warm and shallow to deep-water regimes. In general, brachiopod-based oxygen isotopes are offset from abiogenic calcite precipitated in thermodynamic equilibrium by about -1 . They maintain this offset and that allows for the determination of robust ambient water temperatures over the full marine spectrum. Thus, the specific brachiopod-based oxygen-isotope thermometer applies, with few exceptions, to most modern articulated brachiopods, and potentially their ancient counterparts, and it is as follows: T\ub0C =17.3750 \u2013 4.2535 (\u3b4c-\u3b4w) + 0.1473 (\u3b4c-\u3b4w)2 (N=578, r2 = 0.980) Furthermore, it is imperative that mineralogy and taxa be considered for their appropriateness in the application of oxygen isotope thermometers on synthetic, abiogenic and biogenic marine carbonates. Articulated brachiopods are ideal recorders of oceanographic parameters due to their sessile nature, widespread distribution, high abundance in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, high resilience to most environmental stresses (e.g., climate change - global warming, ocean acidification), and the resistance of the calcite shell \u2013 the archive \u2013 to post-depositional diagenetic alteration