Science and Science Fiction in an Interdisciplinary First-Year Experience Honors Course

Engineering and pop-culturist instructors team-teach a first-year experience course exploring science through the lenses of history, literature, film, television, and sequential art. Authors present science fiction discourses as unique for synthesizing fields in the humanities and STEM, and they present curricular and co-curricular design strategies for harnessing its potential in the honors classroom. Course objectives and outcomes are presented, with authors noting specific challenges in implementation and emendation. Adaptability and compatibility figure prominently in the successful delivery of the course. A review of literature relating to interdisciplinary education and team-teaching in honors is included

Vowel Recognition from Articulatory Position Time-Series Data

A new approach of recognizing vowels from articulatory position time-series data was proposed and tested in this paper. This approach directly mapped articulatory position time-series data to vowels without extracting articulatory features such as mouth opening. The input time-series data were time-normalized and sampled to fixed-width vectors of articulatory positions. Three commonly used classifiers, Neural Network, Support Vector Machine and Decision Tree were used and their performances were compared on the vectors. A single speaker dataset of eight major English vowels acquired using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA) AG500 was used. Recognition rate using cross validation ranged from 76.07% to 91.32% for the three classifiers. In addition, the trained decision trees were consistent with articulatory features commonly used to descriptively distinguish vowels in classical phonetics. The findings are intended to improve the accuracy and response time of a real-time articulatory-to-acoustics synthesizer

Numerical Simulation of a possible origin of the positive radial metallicity gradient of the thick disk

We analyze the radial and vertical metallicity and [alpha/Fe] gradients of the disk stars of a disk galaxy simulated in a fully cosmological setting with the chemodynamical galaxy evolution code, GCD+. We study how the radial abundance gradients vary as a function of height above the plane and find that the metallicity ([alpha/Fe]) gradient becomes more positive (negative) with increasing height, changing sign around 1.5 kpc above the plane. At the largest vertical height (2 2 kpc at the outer region, because of the lower gravitational restoring force of the disk, i.e. flaring. As a result, the fraction of younger stars with higher metallicity due to the age-metallicity relation becomes higher at the outer radii, which makes the median metallicity higher at the outer radii. Combining this result with the recently observed age-metallicity and age-velocity dispersion relation for the Milky Way thick disk stars suggested by Haywood et al. (2013), we argue that the observed (small) positive radial metallicity gradient at large heights of the Milky Way disk stars can be explained by the flaring of the younger thick and/or thin disk stars

SNAP I POWER CONVERSION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT. Period covered: February 1, 1957 to June 30, 1959

Development of the SNAP I power conversion system is described. The system is designed to convert the thermal energy produced by the decay of radioisotopes into 500 watts of electrical energy by means of a mercury Funkine cycle. A list of specific accomplishments of the program is included. (J.R.D.

GALEX J201337.6+092801: The lowest gravity subdwarf B pulsator

We present the recent discovery of a new subdwarf B variable (sdBV), with an exceptionally low surface gravity. Our spectroscopy of J20136+0928 places it at Teff = 32100 +/- 500, log(g) = 5.15 +/- 0.10, and log(He/H) = -2.8 +/- 0.1. With a magnitude of B = 12.0, it is the second brightest V361 Hya star ever found. Photometry from three different observatories reveals a temporal spectrum with eleven clearly detected periods in the range 376 to 566 s, and at least five more close to our detection limit. These periods are unusually long for the V361 Hya class of short-period sdBV pulsators, but not unreasonable for p- and g-modes close to the radial fundamental, given its low surface gravity. Of the ~50 short period sdB pulsators known to date, only a single one has been found to have comparable spectroscopic parameters to J20136+0928. This is the enigmatic high-amplitude pulsator V338 Ser, and we conclude that J20136+0928 is the second example of this rare subclass of sdB pulsators located well above the canonical extreme horizontal branch in the HR diagram.Comment: 5 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

The nil Hecke ring and singularity of Schubert varieties

We give a criterion for smoothness of a point in any Schubert variety in any G/B in terms of the nil Hecke ring.Comment: AMSTE

Is 8:30 a.m. Still Too Early to Start School? A 10:00 a.m. School Start Time Improves Health and Performance of Students Aged 13-16.

While many studies have shown the benefits of later school starts, including better student attendance, higher test scores, and improved sleep duration, few have used starting times later than 9:00 a.m. Here we report on the implementation and impact of a 10 a.m. school start time for 13 to 16-year-old students. A 4-year observational study using a before-after-before (A-B-A) design was carried out in an English state-funded high school. School start times were changed from 8:50 a.m. in study year 0, to 10 a.m. in years 1-2, and then back to 8:50 a.m. in year 3. Measures of student health (absence due to illness) and academic performance (national examination results) were used for all students. Implementing a 10 a.m. start saw a decrease in student illness after 2 years of over 50% (p < 0.0005 and effect size: Cohen's d = 1.07), and reverting to an 8:50 a.m. start reversed this improvement, leading to an increase of 30% in student illness (p < 0.0005 and Cohen's d = 0.47). The 10:00 a.m. start was associated with a 12% increase in the value-added number of students making good academic progress (in standard national examinations) that was significant (<0.0005) and equivalent to 20% of the national benchmark. These results show that changing to a 10:00 a.m. high school start time can greatly reduce illness and improve academic performance. Implementing school start times later than 8:30 a.m., which may address the circadian delay in adolescents' sleep rhythms more effectively for evening chronotypes, appears to have few costs and substantial benefits