64 research outputs found
Engaging Science Faculty in Program Assessment – Planting Seeds and Cultivating Growth
This poster describes strategies to build faculty capacity in curriculum design and alignment and ways to plant the seeds for faculty collaboration and engagement in program assessment within the newly formed Astronomy BA & Astrophysics BS program in an effort to address the challenge of the difficulty students face in engaging faculty in discussion and planning of teaching and learning due to the nature of the program schedule. This poster provides personal insights and observed impact from efforts to effect change. In addition to providing examples in skill mapping, writing rubrics, curriculum alignment, and course deisgn, effective ways to engage willing faculty in using course assignments to investigate progress towards key student learning objectivese are also outlined
870 micron Imaging of a Transitional Disk in Upper Scorpius: Holdover from the Era of Giant Planet Formation?
We present 880 micron images of the transition disk around the star [PZ99]
J160421.7-213028, a solar-mass star in the nearby Upper Scorpius association.
With a resolution down to 0.34 arcsec, we resolve the inner hole in this disk,
and via model fitting to the visibilities and spectral energy distribution we
determine both the structure of the outer region and the presence of sparse
dust within the cavity. The disk contains about 0.1 Jupiter masses of
mm-emitting grains, with an inner disk edge of about 70 AU. The inner cavity
contains a small amount of dust with a depleted surface density in a region
extending from about 20-70 AU. Taking into account prior observations
indicating little to no stellar accretion, the lack of a binary companion, and
the presence of dust near 0.1 AU, we determine that the most likely mechanism
for the formation of this inner hole is the presence of one or more giant
planets.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. To appear in the Astrophysical Journa
A Herschel PACS survey of the dust and gas in Upper Scorpius disks
We present results of far-infrared photometric observations with Herschel
PACS of a sample of Upper Scorpius stars, with a detection rate of previously
known disk-bearing K and M stars at 70, 100, and 160 micron of 71%, 56%, and
50%, respectively. We fit power-law disk models to the spectral energy
distributions of K & M stars with infrared excesses, and have found that while
many disks extend in to the sublimation radius, the dust has settled to lower
scale heights than in disks of the less evolved Taurus-Auriga population, and
have much reduced dust masses. We also conducted Herschel PACS observations for
far-infrared line emission and JCMT observations for millimeter CO lines. Among
B and A stars, 0 of 5 debris disk hosts exhibit gas line emission, and among K
and M stars, only 2 of 14 dusty disk hosts are detected. The OI 63 micron and
CII 157 micron lines are detected toward [PZ99] J160421.7-213028 and [PBB2002]
J161420.3-190648, which were found in millimeter photometry to host two of the
most massive dust disks remaining in the region. Comparison of the OI line
emission and 63 micron continuum to that of Taurus sources suggests the
emission in the former source is dominated by the disk, while in the other
there is a significant contribution from a jet. The low dust masses found by
disk modeling and low number of gas line detections suggest that few stars in
Upper Scorpius retain sufficient quantities of material for giant planet
formation. By the age of Upper Scorpius, giant planet formation is essentially
complete.Comment: 48 pages, 14 figures, accepted A&
The Masses of Transition Circumstellar Disks: Observational Support for Photoevaporation Models
We report deep Sub-Millimeter Array observations of 26 pre-main-sequence
(PMS) stars with evolved inner disks. These observations measure the mass of
the outer disk (r ~20-100 AU) across every stage of the dissipation of the
inner disk (r < 10 AU) as determined by the IR spectral energy distributions
(SEDs). We find that only targets with high mid-IR excesses are detected and
have disk masses in the 1-5 M_Jup range, while most of our objects remain
undetected to sensitivity levels of M_DISK ~0.2-1.5 M_Jup. To put these results
in a more general context, we collected publicly available data to construct
the optical to millimeter wavelength SEDs of over 120 additional PMS stars. We
find that the near-IR and mid-IR emission remain optically thick in objects
whose disk masses span 2 orders of magnitude (~0.5-50 M_Jup). Taken together,
these results imply that, in general, inner disks start to dissipate only after
the outer disk has been significantly depleted of mass. This provides strong
support for photoevaporation being one of the dominant processes driving disk
evolution.Comment: Accepted for publication by ApJL, 4 pages and 3 figure
A Major Asymmetric Dust Trap in a Transition Disk
The statistics of discovered exoplanets suggest that planets form
efficiently. However, there are fundamental unsolved problems, such as
excessive inward drift of particles in protoplanetary disks during planet
formation. Recent theories invoke dust traps to overcome this problem. We
report the detection of a dust trap in the disk around the star Oph IRS 48
using observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA). The 0.44-millimeter-wavelength continuum map shows high-contrast
crescent-shaped emission on one side of the star originating from
millimeter-sized grains, whereas both the mid-infrared image (micrometer-sized
dust) and the gas traced by the carbon monoxide 6-5 rotational line suggest
rings centered on the star. The difference in distribution of big grains versus
small grains/gas can be modeled with a vortex-shaped dust trap triggered by a
companion.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures (accepted version prior to language editing
Submillimeter Array Observations of the RX J1633.9-2442 Transition Disk: Evidence for Multiple Planets in the Making
We present continuum high resolution Submillimeter Array (SMA) observations
of the transition disk object RX J1633.9-2442, which is located in the
Ophiuchus molecular cloud and has recently been identified as a likely site of
ongoing giant planet formation. The observations were taken at 340 GHz (880
micron) with the SMA in its most extended configuration, resulting in an
angular resolution of 0.3" (35 AU at the distance of the target). We find that
the disk is highly inclined (i ~50 deg) and has an inner cavity ~25 AU in
radius, which is clearly resolved by our observations. We simultaneously model
the entire optical to millimeter wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED)
and SMA visibilities of RX J1633.9-2442 in order to constrain the structure of
its disk. We find that an empty cavity ~25 AU in radius is inconsistent with
the excess emission observed at 12, 22, and 24 micron. Instead, the mid-IR
excess can be modeled by either a narrow, optically thick ring at ~10 AU or an
optically thin region extending from ~7 AU to ~25 AU. The inner disk (r < 5 AU)
is mostly depleted of small dust grains as attested by the lack of detectable
near-IR excess. We also present deep Keck aperture masking observations in the
near-IR, which rule out the presence of a companion up to 500 times fainter
than the primary star (in K-band) for projected separations in the 5-20 AU
range. We argue that the complex structure of the RX J1633.9-2442 disk is best
explained by multiple planets embedded within the disk. We also suggest that
the properties and incidence of objects such as RX J1633.9-2442, T Cha, and
LkCa 15 (and those of the companions recently identified to these two latter
objects) are most consistent with the runaway gas accretion phase of the core
accretion model, when giant planets gain their envelopes and suddenly become
massive enough to open wide gaps in the disk.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
The Late Stages of Protoplanetary Disk Evolution: A Millimeter Survey of Upper Scorpius
We present deep 1.2 millimeter photometry of 37 stars in the young (5 Myr)
Upper Scorpius OB association, sensitive to ~4 x 10^-3 Mjup of cool millimeter
dust. Disks around four low- and solar-mass stars are detected, as well as one
debris disk around an intermediate mass star, with dust masses ranging from 3.6
x 10^-3 -- 1.0 x 10^-1 Mjup. The source with the most massive disk exhibits a
transition-disk spectral energy distribution. Combining our results with
previous studies, we find the millimeter-detection fraction of Class II sources
has significantly decreased from younger ages, and comparison with
near-infrared and Halpha measurements indicates the present disks have
undergone significant evolution in composition or structure at all radii. The
disks of Upper Scorpius represent the tail-end of the depletion of primordial
disks; while a few near-solar mass stars may still sustain giant planet
formation, this process has finished around higher mass starsComment: Accepted by ApJ. 8 pages, 5 figures, 4 table
The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
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