A History and Informal Assessment of the Slacker Astronomy Podcast

Slacker Astronomy is a weekly podcast that covers a recent astronomical news event or discovery. The show has a unique style consisting of irreverent, over-the-top humor combined with a healthy dose of hard science. According to our demographic analysis, the combination of this style and the unique podcasting distribution mechanism allows the show to reach audiences younger and busier than those reached via traditional channels. We report on the successes and challenges of the first year of the show, and provide an informal assessment of its role as a source for astronomical news and concepts for its approximately 15,500 weekly listeners.Comment: 14 page

Rousseau and the Lyric Natural: The Self as Representation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau\u27s work for the lyric stage comprises several opera libretti (Les Muses galantes and La Decouverte du nouveau monde), an intermede ( Le Devin du village), a scene lyrique ( Pygmalion) and an unfinished opera (Daphnis et Chloce ). These works use as a motif the figure of nature while continually defining and redefining, in a sort of spiral development, the self. Nature represents for Rousseau and others of his century a paradigm allowing for small segments of history to be presented as an evenly construed narrative. For Rousseau, the construction of a narrative in Le Second Discours marks the passage from the primitive natural state to a cultural one through a series of beginnings. These beginnings appear logical if not always chronological. The same trajectory from savage state to social state is used as a paradigm to define the evolution of self using an ever-evolving tapestry of emblems. Through emblems of the natural appearing in lyric works, the self is defined and redefined as each emblem appears and then transcends its appearance in the framework of the lyric. For Rousseau, the lyric work suggests a readability through which the transparency of nature can be perceived as being one with the self. Defining emblem as a complex of symbols representing this transparency, we can then construe its appearance in lyric works in musical score, mise-en-scene, and libretti as an unseen language analogous to self-definition. In this dissertation, the lyric works Le Devin du village (1752) and Pygmalion (1770) will be the focus of our study because they reveal multiple means by which Rousseau uses the lyric to manifest the ideal of self. Whereas in Le Devin du village this is done emblematically via the treatment of recitatif, in Pygmalion it occurs via the attempt to embody, through the merger of music and language, the emblem of the self as one idealized unity

Satisfaction With Health Care: A Predictor of Hemodialysis Patient Compliance.

Several studies in general medical populations have demonstrated the positive relation between satisfaction with health care and compliance with treatment recommendations. Overall, the compliance literature suggests that the behavior of the health care provider can influence patient compliance and the resulting health outcome. However, the relation between patient satisfaction and compliance with the hemodialysis regimen has not been examined. Because of this populations\u27 frequent and extensive interaction with the dialysis staff, exploration of the effects of satisfaction with these relationships and the care provided on patient compliance appears to be an important health care issue. This study evaluated the ability of a micro (MHPSS) and macro (SCQ) measure of satisfaction to predict subsequent compliance in 209 hemodialysis patients. It was hypothesized that patient satisfaction would be predictive of subsequent compliance with the hemodialysis regimen. It was also hypothesized that a micro measure of hemodialysis patient satisfaction (MHPSS) which addresses satisfaction with specific aspects of patient care would be a better predictor of compliance than a macro measure which addresses overall satisfaction with patient care. The third hypothesis was that satisfaction with those disciplines most active in each area of compliance would be predictive of that area of compliance. Significant results between satisfaction and compliance were found primarily for fluid gain and attendance. Satisfaction with the disciplines most active in assessing or modifying these behaviors was related to compliance. Contrary to prediction, subjects who were more satisfied had higher fluid gains between sessions. The results suggest that the micro and macro satisfaction measure total scores are essentially equivalent in predicting compliance. However, the individual subscale scores of the MHPSS (i.e., dietician) accounted for the most variance in fluid gain

The Sudden Death of the Nearest Quasar

Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in `Hanny's Voorwerp', but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least 2 and more likely by over 4 orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insights into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes, and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

Image Detective 2.0: Engaging Citizen Scientists with NASA Astronaut Photography

Image Detective 2.0 engages citizen scientists with NASA astronaut photography of the Earth obtained by crew members on the International Space Station (ISS). Engaged citizen scientists are helping to build a more comprehensive and searchable database by geolocating this imagery and contributing to new imagery collections. Image Detective 2.0 is the newest addition to the suite of citizen scientist projects available through CosmoQuest, an effort led by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) and supported through a NASA Science Mission Directorate Cooperative Agreement Notice award. CosmoQuest hosts a number of citizen science projects enabling individuals from around the world to engage in authentic NASA science. Image Detective 2.0, an effort that focuses on imagery acquired by astronauts on the International Space Station, builds on work initiated in 2012 by scientists and education specialists at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Through the many lessons learned, Image Detective 2.0 enhances the original project by offering new and improved options for participation. Existing users, as well as new Image Detective participants joining through the CosmoQuest platform, gain first-hand experience working with astronaut photography and become more engaged with this valuable data being obtained from the International Space Station. Citizens around the world are captivated by astronauts living and working in space. As crew members have a unique vantage point from which to view our Earth, the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) online database, referred to as the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/), provides a means for crew members to share their unique views of our home planet from the ISS with the scientific community and the public. Astronaut photography supports multiple uses including scientific investigations, visualizations, education, and outreach. These astronaut images record how the planet is changing over time, from human-made changes like urban growth and agriculture, to natural features and landforms such as tropical cyclones, aurora, coastlines, volcanoes and more. This imagery provides researchers on Earth with data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS, and is a useful complement to other remotely sensed datasets collected from robotic satellite platforms

Detection of a CMB decrement towards a cluster of mJy radiosources

We present the results of radio, optical and near-infrared observations of the field of TOC J0233.3+3021, a cluster of milliJansky radiosources from the TexOx Cluster survey. In an observation of this field with the Ryle Telescope (RT) at 15 GHz, we measure a decrement in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) of $-675 \pm 95 \mu$Jy on the RT's $\approx$ 0.65 k$\lambda$ baseline. Using optical and infrared imaging with the McDonald 2.7-m Smith Reflector, Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope and UKIRT, we identify the host galaxies of five of the radiosources and measure magnitudes of $R \approx 24$, $J \approx 20$, $K \approx 18$. The CMB decrement is consistent with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect of a massive cluster of galaxies, which if modelled as a spherical King profile of core radius $\theta_C = 20^{\prime\prime}$ has a central temperature decrement of $900 \mu$K. The magnitudes and colours of the galaxies are consistent with those of old ellipticals at $z \sim 1$. We therefore conclude that TOC J0233.3+3021 is a massive, high redshift cluster. These observations add to the growing evidence for a significant population of massive clusters at high redshift, and demonstrate the effectiveness of combining searches for AGN `signposts' to clusters with the redshift-independence of the SZ effect.Comment: Six pages; accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with full-resolution UV plot available from http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~garret/MB185.p

Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists

Citizen science, in which volunteers work with professional scientists to conduct research, is expanding due to large online datasets. To plan projects, it is important to understand volunteers' motivations for participating. This paper analyzes results from an online survey of nearly 11,000 volunteers in Galaxy Zoo, an astronomy citizen science project. Results show that volunteers' primary motivation is a desire to contribute to scientific research. We encourage other citizen science projects to study the motivations of their volunteers, to see whether and how these results may be generalized to inform the field of citizen science.Comment: 41 pages, including 6 figures and one appendix. In press at Astronomy Education Revie

Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers

The Galaxy Zoo citizen science website invites anyone with an Internet connection to participate in research by classifying galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made more than 100 million galaxy classifications. In this paper, we present results of a pilot study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo volunteers, and define a technique to determine motivations from free responses that can be used in larger multiple-choice surveys with similar populations. Our categories form the basis for a future survey, with the goal of determining the prevalence of each motivation.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure