Status and Prospects of Planetary Transit Searches: Hot Jupiters Galore

The first transiting extrasolar planet, orbiting HD209458, was a Doppler wobble planet before its transits were discovered with a 10 cm CCD camera. Wide-angle CCD cameras, by monitoring in parallel the light curves of tens of thousands of stars, should find hot Jupiter transits much faster than the Doppler wobble method. The discovery rate could easily rise by a factor 10. The sky holds perhaps 1000 hot Jupiters transiting stars brighter than V=13. These are bright enough for follow-up radial velocity studies to measure planet masses to go along with the radii from the transit light curves. I derive scaling laws for the discovery potential of ground-based transit searches, and use these to assess over two dozen planetary transit surveys currently underway. The main challenge lies in calibrating small systematic errors that limit the accuracy of CCD photometry at milli-magnitude levels. Promising transit candidates have been reported by several groups, and many more are sure to follow.Comment: To appear in: Scientific Frontiers in Research on Extrasolar Planets, 18-21 Jun 2002, Washington D.C., ASP Conference Series Vol ???, 2003, D.Deming and S.Seager, eds v2: update notes ogle-tr-56b discover

The role of performance analysis in elite netball competition structures.

Coaches at both the International and top domestic levels in Netball have turned to performance analysis to assist in their decision making and provide reliable and accurate information to inform their coaching process (Jenkins et al, 2007). The role of the performance analyst in this elite environment is to provide key objective information on performances which can be transformed into relevant feedback to facilitate learning and effect improvement. However, the coaching process and use of performance analysis to support the specific process, is affected by the characteristics of the competition. Thus it is important to highlight the differences and constraints which occur as a result of the competition structure and identify how the challenges created impact the performance analyst and coaching process

A Model for Collaboration and Results: How Cross-agency Collaboration Helped Hampton, Va., Build a Broad Array of Child and Family Services

This report highlights the highly successful experiences of child-serving agencies that are collaborating in Hampton, Virginia, to achieve better outcomes for children and Families. Hampton exemplifies how child-serving agencies can cooperate to sreve children in their communities. By emphasizing prevention and building a smart array of services and supports, more of Hampton's children live with their families, safe and thriving, reducing the need for child welfare or juvenile justice group placements

Philosophical foundations of the Death and Anti-Death discussion

Perhaps there has been no greater opportunity than in this “VOLUME FIFTEEN of our Death And Anti-Death set of anthologies” to write about how might think about life and how to avoid death. There are two reasons to discuss “life”, the first being enhancing our understanding of who we are and why we may be here in the Universe. The second is more practical: how humans meet the physical challenges brought about by the way they have interacted with their environment. Many persons discussing “life” beg the question about what “life” is. Surely, when one discusses how to overcome its opposite, death, they are not referring to another “living” thing such as a plant. There seems to be a commonality, though, and it is this commonality is one needing elaboration. It ostensibly seems to be the boundary condition separating what is completely passive (inert) from what attempts to maintain its integrity, as well as fulfilling other conditions we think “life” has. In our present discussion, there will be a reminder that it by no means has been unequivocally established what life really is by placing quotes around the word, namely, “life”. Consider it a tag representing a bundle of philosophical ideas that will be unpacked in this paper

The Sea Among Us: The Amazing Strait of Georgia by Richard Beamish and Gordon McFarlane

Review of The Sea Among Us: The Amazing Strait of Georgia by Richard Beamish and Gordon McFarlane

Introduction to Library Trends 03 (1) Summer 1954: Current Trends in Personnel Administration

published or submitted for publicatio

Parallel line raster eliminates ambiguities in reading timing of pulses less than 500 microseconds apart

Parallel horizontal line raster is used for precision timing of events occurring less than 500 microseconds apart for observation of hypervelocity phenomena. The raster uses a staircase vertical deflection and eliminates ambiguities in reading timing of pulses close to the end of each line

Assessing the sociology of sport: On sports mega-events and capitalist modernity

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the leading international scholars on sport and consumer culture, John Horne, considers the trajectory and challenges of research on sports mega-events and their place in capitalist modernity. In anchoring work on this topic in Roche’s definition of mega-events, Horne notes that sports mega-events are important symbolic, economic, and political elements in the orientation of nations to stake their place in global society. Fundamental issues about the concept of ‘mega-event’ pose challenges for scholars as questions remain over what qualifies as a sports mega-event and how ‘lived experience’ with such events transacts with media spectacularization and characterization. The essay closes by posing broader questions for further investigation about the economic, political, and social risks and benefits of sports mega-events and how these events may portend and relate to changing relations of economic and political power on a global scale