MECHANICS OF REAR LEG MOTION IN CRICKET FAST BOWLING

The purpose of this study was to calculate the kinematics and kinetics of the rear leg drive in fast bowling, and then investigate whether any of these variables are associated ball release speed. Eighteen young fast bowlers (17.2 ±1.7 years) were recruited from the Cricket NSW development squad, and their bowling actions captured by a Cortex 2.0 motion analysis system. The data shows that rear leg drive primarily consisted of hip and knee motions in the flexion-extension plane, subject to a complex control strategy involving time-varying torques. The most prominent kinematic feature was rear knee extension velocity (r=0.55, p=0.019), which was moderately correlated with ball speed. However, more research is needed to evaluate the control of this variable, since none of the rear leg joint torques was correlated with rear knee extension velocity

A Survey of Social Media: Perceived Effectiveness in Marketing among Individual NASCAR Tracks

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of and attitudes toward social networking as a tool for use by NASCAR speedways and to gauge track perceptions on the effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool. Individual NASCAR tracks were surveyed (n=22, 84.6% response) to explore current track social media practices and the potential impact of social networking sites on NASCAR marketing and consumer relations. Results found that individual tracks as well as the two major ownership groups highly agreed about issues concerning the use of social media to increase sales and to develop fan bases. However, they also agree there are other marketing tactics that are still more effective than social media at this time

Street Fights: Corporate Social Responsibility and a Dragway\u27s Attempt to Reduce Illegal Street Racing

This study sought to explore a professional sport venue’s use of Corporate social responsibility (CSR) to promote positive social change, by addressing illegal street racing, through events designed for community participation. This study specifically looked at public dragracing events, titled “Street Fights,” held at a professional dragway. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine drivers’ awareness of the event’s social responsibility initiatives with Street Fight events and 2) determine if these initiatives are promoting behavioral changes in drivers. Drivers at Street Fight events were surveyed (n=77, 60% response rate) on their levels of awareness of the venue’s social responsibility initiatives, as well as, the event and venue’s overall influence on positive social change within the community. Results showed that Street Fight racers seem to be aware that the events were created to offer a safe, legal, and affordable place to dragrace. Street Fight racers also indicated they were less likely to engage in excessive speeding on open roadways due to their participation in Street Fight events

Modeling the SED of the AGN inside NGC 4395

We study the broad-band spectral energy distribution (SED) of the prototypical low-mass active galactic nucleus (AGN) in NGC 4395. We jointly model the optical through mid-infrared SED with a combination of galaxy and AGN light, and find that on arcsecond scales, the AGN dominates at most wavelengths. However, there is still some ambiguity about emission from the galaxy, owing partially to the strong short-term variability of the black hole. We investigate the use of smooth and clumpy-torus models in order to disentangle the nuclear infrared emission, as well as exploring the use of poloidal wind emission to account for the blue spectral slope observed in the near-IR. Even when simultaneously fitting the full optical-IR spectral range, we find that degeneracies still remain in the best-fit models. We conclude that high spatial resolution and wider wavelength coverage with the James Webb Space Telescope is needed to understand the mid-infrared emission in this complex highly-variable object, which is the best nearby example to provide a blueprint to finding other low-mass AGN via their mid-infrared emission in the future.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies as Extreme Star-forming Environments I: Mapping Star Formation in HI-Rich UDGs

Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies are both extreme products of galaxy evolution and extreme environments in which to test our understanding of star formation. In this work, we contrast the spatially resolved star formation activity of a sample of 22 HI-selected UDGs and 35 low-mass galaxies from the NASA Sloan Atlas (NSA) within 120 Mpc. We employ a new joint SED fitting method to compute star formation rate and stellar mass surface density maps that leverage the high spatial resolution optical imaging data of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) and the UV coverage of GALEX, along with HI radial profiles estimated from a subset of galaxies that have spatially resolved HI maps. We find that the UDGs have low star formation efficiencies as a function of their atomic gas down to scales of 500 pc. We additionally find that the stellar mass-weighted sizes of our UDG sample are unremarkable when considered as a function of their HI mass -- their stellar sizes are comparable to the NSA dwarfs at fixed HI mass. This is a natural result in the picture where UDGs are forming stars normally, but at low efficiencies. We compare our results to predictions from contemporary models of galaxy formation, and find in particular that our observations are difficult to reproduce in models where UDGs undergo stellar expansion due to vigorous star formation feedback should bursty star formation be required down to $z=0$.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 27 pages, 18 figure

Variable Hard X-ray Emission from the Candidate Accreting Black Hole in Dwarf Galaxy Henize 2-10

We present an analysis of the X-ray spectrum and long-term variability of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10. Recent observations suggest that this galaxy hosts an actively accreting black hole with mass ~10^6 M_sun. The presence of an AGN in a low-mass starburst galaxy marks a new environment for active galactic nuclei (AGNs), with implications for the processes by which "seed" black holes may form in the early Universe. In this paper, we analyze four epochs of X-ray observations of Henize 2-10, to characterize the long-term behavior of its hard nuclear emission. We analyze observations with Chandra from 2001 and XMM-Newton from 2004 and 2011, as well as an earlier, less sensitive observation with ASCA from 1997. Based on detailed analysis of the source and background, we find that the hard (2-10 keV) flux of the putative AGN has decreased by approximately an order of magnitude between the 2001 Chandra observation and exposures with XMM-Newton in 2004 and 2011. The observed variability confirms that the emission is due to a single source. It is unlikely that the variable flux is due to a supernova or ultraluminous X-ray source, based on the observed long-term behavior of the X-ray and radio emission, while the observed X-ray variability is consistent with the behavior of well-studied AGNs.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in Ap

The MASSIVE Survey - X. Misalignment between Kinematic and Photometric Axes and Intrinsic Shapes of Massive Early-Type Galaxies

We use spatially resolved two-dimensional stellar velocity maps over a $107"\times 107"$ field of view to investigate the kinematic features of 90 early-type galaxies above stellar mass $10^{11.5}M_\odot$ in the MASSIVE survey. We measure the misalignment angle $\Psi$ between the kinematic and photometric axes and identify local features such as velocity twists and kinematically distinct components. We find 46% of the sample to be well aligned ($\Psi < 15^{\circ}$), 33% misaligned, and 21% without detectable rotation (non-rotators). Only 24% of the sample are fast rotators, the majority of which (91%) are aligned, whereas 57% of the slow rotators are misaligned with a nearly flat distribution of $\Psi$ from $15^{\circ}$ to $90^{\circ}$. 11 galaxies have $\Psi \gtrsim 60^{\circ}$ and thus exhibit minor-axis ("prolate") rotation in which the rotation is preferentially around the photometric major axis. Kinematic misalignments occur more frequently for lower galaxy spin or denser galaxy environments. Using the observed misalignment and ellipticity distributions, we infer the intrinsic shape distribution of our sample and find that MASSIVE slow rotators are consistent with being mildly triaxial, with mean axis ratios of $b/a=0.88$ and $c/a=0.65$. In terms of local kinematic features, 51% of the sample exhibit kinematic twists of larger than $20^{\circ}$, and 2 galaxies have kinematically distinct components. The frequency of misalignment and the broad distribution of $\Psi$ reported here suggest that the most massive early-type galaxies are mildly triaxial, and that formation processes resulting in kinematically misaligned slow rotators such as gas-poor mergers occur frequently in this mass range.Comment: Accepted to MNRA

Spectropolarimetric measurements of hidden broad lines in nearby megamaser galaxies: a lack of clear evidence for a correlation between black hole masses and virial products

High-accuracy black hole (BH) masses require excellent spatial resolution that is only achievable for galaxies within ~100 Mpc using present-day technology. At larger distances, BH masses are often estimated with single-epoch scaling relations for active galactic nuclei. This method requires only luminosity and the velocity dispersion of the broad line region (BLR) to calculate a virial product, and an additional virial factor, $f$, to determine BH mass. The accuracy of these single-epoch masses, however, is unknown, and there are few empirical constraints on the variance of $f$ between objects. We attempt to calibrate single-epoch BH masses using spectropolarimetric measurements of nine megamaser galaxies from which we measure the velocity distribution of the BLR. We do not find strong evidence for a correlation between the virial products used for single-epoch masses and dynamical mass, both for the megamaser sample alone and when combined with dynamical masses from reverberation mapping modeling. Furthermore, we find evidence that the virial parameter $f$ varies between objects, but we do not find strong evidence for a correlation with other observable parameters such as luminosity or broad line width. Although we cannot definitively rule out the existence of any correlation between dynamical mass and virial product, we find tension between allowed $f$ values for masers and those widely used in the literature. We conclude that the single-epoch method requires further investigation if it is to be used successfully to infer BH masses.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures, resubmitted to ApJ after incorporating reviewer's comments. Corrected Figure 8, main results do not chang