Faculty Recital: Twentieth-Century Songs of the British Isles

The talented members of the KSU voice faculty present an evening of 20th-century art songs of the British Isles featuring works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Cooke, and Cecil Armstrong Gibbs. This performance includes soprano Jana Young, tenors Todd Wedge and Nathan Munson, clarinetist John Warren, pianist Eric Jenkins, and commentary by Dr. Edward Eanes, KSU professor of music history.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/2165/thumbnail.jp

Long-lived space observatories for astronomy and astrophysics

NASA's plan to build and launch a fleet of long-lived space observatories that include the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), the Advanced X Ray Astrophysics Observatory (AXAF), and the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) are discussed. These facilities are expected to have a profound impact on the sciences of astronomy and astrophysics. The long-lived observatories will provide new insights about astronomical and astrophysical problems that range from the presence of planets orbiting nearby stars to the large-scale distribution and evolution of matter in the universe. An important concern to NASA and the scientific community is the operation and maintenance cost of the four observatories described above. The HST cost about $1.3 billion (1984 dollars) to build and is estimated to require$160 million (1986 dollars) a year to operate and maintain. If HST is operated for 20 years, the accumulated costs will be considerably more than those required for its construction. Therefore, it is essential to plan carefully for observatory operations and maintenance before a long-lived facility is constructed. The primary goal of this report is to help NASA develop guidelines for the operations and management of these future observatories so as to achieve the best possible scientific results for the resources available. Eight recommendations are given

Meeting report : Ocean ‘omics science, technology and cyberinfrastructure : current challenges and future requirements (August 20-23, 2013)

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Standards in Genomic Sciences 9 (2014): 1251-1258, doi:10.4056/sigs.5749944.The National Science Foundation’s EarthCube End User Workshop was held at USC’s Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island, California in August 2013. The workshop was designed to explore and characterise the needs and tools available to the community focusing on microbial and physical oceanography research with a particular focus on ‘omic research. The assembled researchers outlined the existing concerns regarding the vast data resources that are being generated, and how we will deal with these resources as their volume and diversity increases. Particular attention was focused on the tools for handling and analysing the existing data, and on the need for the construction and curation of diverse federated databases, as well as development of shared interoperable, “big-data capable” analytical tools. The key outputs from this workshop include (i) critical scientific challenges and cyberinfrastructure constraints, (ii) the current and future ocean ‘omics science grand challenges and questions, and (iii) data management, analytical and associated and cyber-infrastructure capabilities required to meet critical current and future scientific challenges. The main thrust of the meeting and the outcome of this report is a definition of the ‘omics tools, technologies and infrastructures that facilitate continued advance in ocean science biology, marine biogeochemistry, and biological oceanography.We gratefully acknowledge support for the Ocean ‘Omics EarthCube end-user workshop by the Geo-sciences Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation

The COS Absorption Survey of Baryon Harbors (CASBaH): Warm-hot Circumgalactic Gas Reservoirs Traced by Ne VIII Absorption

We survey the highly ionized circumgalactic media (CGM) of 29 blindly selected galaxies at 0.49 < z_(gal) < 1.44 based on high-S/N ultraviolet spectra of z > 1 QSOs and the galaxy database from the COS Absorption Survey of Baryon Harbors (CASBaH). We detect the Ne VIII doublet in nine of the galaxies, and for gas with N(Ne VIII) > 10^13.3 cm^-2 (> 10^13.5 cm^-2), we derive a Ne VIII covering fraction f_c = 75 +15/-25% (44 +22/-20%) within impact parameter (rho) < 200 kpc of M_* = 10^(9.5-11.5) Msol galaxies and f_c = 70 +16/-22% (f_c = 42 +20/-17%) within rho < 1.5 virial radii. We estimate the mass in Ne VIII-traced gas to be M_gas(Ne VIII) > 10^9.5 Msol (Z/Zsol)^-1, or 6-20% of the expected baryonic mass if the Ne VIII absorbers have solar metallicity. Ionizing Ne VII to Ne VIII requires 207 eV, and photons with this energy are scarce in the CGM. However, for the median halo mass and redshift of our sample, the virial temperature is close to the peak temperature for the Ne VIII ion, and the Ne VIII-bearing gas is plausibly collisionally ionized near this temperature. Moreover, we find that photoionized Ne VIII requires cool and low-density clouds that would be highly underpressured (by approximately two orders of magnitude) relative to the putative, ambient virialized medium, complicating scenarios where such clouds could survive. Thus, more complex (e.g., non-equilibrium) models may be required; this first statistical sample of Ne VIII absorber/galaxy systems will provide stringent constraints for future CGM studies.Comment: Published in ApJL, Volume 877, Issue 2, Article L2

Intermediate- and High-Velocity Ionized Gas toward zeta Orionis

We combine UV spectra obtained with the HST/GHRS echelle, IMAPS, and Copernicus to study the abundances and physical conditions in the predominantly ionized gas seen at high (-105 to -65 km/s) and intermediate velocities (-60 to -10 km/s) toward zeta Ori. We have high resolution (FWHM ~ 3.3-4.5 km/s) and/or high S/N spectra for at least two significant ions of C, N, Al, Si, S, and Fe -- enabling accurate estimates for both the total N(H II) and the elemental depletions. C, N, and S have essentially solar relative abundances; Al, Si, and Fe appear to be depleted by about 0.8, 0.3-0.4, and 0.95 dex, respectively. While various ion ratios would be consistent with collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE) for T ~ 25,000-80,000 K, the widths of individual high-velocity absorption components indicate that T ~ 9000 K -- so the gas is not in CIE. Analysis of the C II fine-structure excitation equilibrium yields estimated densities (n_e ~ n_H ~ 0.1-0.2 cm^{-3}), thermal pressures (2 n_H T ~ 2000-4000 cm^{-3}K), and thicknesses (0.5-2.7 pc) for the individual clouds. We compare the abundances and physical properties derived for these clouds with those found for gas at similar velocities toward 23 Ori and tau CMa, and also with several models for shocked gas. While the shock models can reproduce some features of the observed line profiles and some of the observed ion ratios, there are also significant differences. The measured depletions suggest that \~10% of the Al, Si, and Fe originally locked in dust in the pre-shock medium may have been returned to the gas phase, consistent with predictions for the destruction of silicate dust in a 100 km/s shock. The near-solar gas phase abundance of carbon, however, seems inconsistent with the predicted longer time scales for the destruction of graphite grains.Comment: 50 pages, 9 figures; aastex; accepted by Ap

Discovery of the Transiting Planet Kepler-5B

We present 44 days of high duty cycle, ultra precise photometry of the 13th magnitude star Kepler-5 (KIC 8191672, T(eff) = 6300 K, log g = 4.1), which exhibits periodic transits with a depth of 0.7%. Detailed modeling of the transit is consistent with a planetary companion with an orbital period of 3.548460 +/- 0.000032 days and a radius of 1.431(-0.052)(+0.041) R(J). Follow-up radial velocity measurements with the Keck HIRES spectrograph on nine separate nights demonstrate that the planet is more than twice as massive as Jupiter with a mass of 2.114(-0.059)(+0.056) M(J) and a mean density of 0.894 +/- 0.079 g cm(-3).NASA's Science Mission DirectorateAstronom

Kepler-4B: A Hot Neptune-Like Planet of A G0 Star Near Main-Sequence Turnoff

Early time-series photometry from NASA's Kepler spacecraft has revealed a planet transiting the star we term Kepler-4, at R.A. = 19(h)02(m)27.(s)68, delta = +50 degrees 08'08 '' 7. The planet has an orbital period of 3.213 days and shows transits with a relative depth of 0.87 x 10(-3) and a duration of about 3.95 hr. Radial velocity (RV) measurements from the Keck High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer show a reflex Doppler signal of 9.3(-1.9)(+1.1) m s(-1), consistent with a low-eccentricity orbit with the phase expected from the transits. Various tests show no evidence for any companion star near enough to affect the light curve or the RVs for this system. From a transit-based estimate of the host star's mean density, combined with analysis of high-resolution spectra, we infer that the host star is near turnoff from the main sequence, with estimated mass and radius of 1.223(-0.091)(+0.053) M(circle dot) and 1.487(-0.084)(+0.071) R(circle dot).We estimate the planet mass and radius to be {M(P), R(P)} = {24.5 +/- 3.8 M(circle plus), 3.99 +/- 0.21 R(circle plus)}. The planet's density is near 1.9 g cm(-3); it is thus slightly denser and more massive than Neptune, but about the same size.W. M. Keck FoundationNASA's Science Mission DirectorateAstronom