Mass Loss in Evolved Stars

Intense mass loss through cool, low-velocity winds is a defining characteristic of low-to-intermediate mass stars during the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) evolutionary stage. Such winds return up ~80% of the initial stellar mass to the interstellar medium and play a major role in enriching it with dust and heavy elements. A challenge to understanding the physics underlying AGB mass loss is its dependence on an interplay between complex and highly dynamic processes, including pulsations, convective flows, shocks, magnetic fields, and opacity changes resulting from dust and molecule formation. I highlight some examples of recent advances in our understanding of late-stage stellar mass loss that are emerging from radio and (sub)millimeter observations, with a particular focus on those that resolve the surfaces and extended atmospheres of evolved stars in space, time, and frequency.Comment: 16 pages, invited review to appear in Cosmic Masers: Proper Motion toward the Next-Generation Large Projects, IAU Symposium No. 380, T. Hirota, H. Imai, K. Menten, & Y. Pihlstrom, ed

Average Beverage Intake and Average BMI in 2-5 Year Old WIC Children

Average Body Mass Index (BMI) and beverage intake were examined to determine if children who drank excessive amounts of beverages had a higher BMI than children who drank average amounts of beverages. Ninety-six WIC charts were reviewed. Average total fluid intake was 32.5 oz/day. For juice and total milk, the average intakes were 11.9 oz/day and 15.6 oz/day, respectively. The average intake of other drinks was 2.4 oz/day. Average BMI of children who drank excessive amounts and average amounts of total fluids was 16.143+1.60 and 16.457+1.90, respectively. No statistically significant differences were found between BMI and the consumption of total fluids, juice, milk, or other drinks. This study indicates excessive beverage intake is not related to obesity in children. WIC nutritionists and dietitians should continue encouraging juice and milk intake into a child\u27s daily food plan, by using The Food Guide Pyramid for Young Children Ages 2-6 Years Old

Faulkner, Truth, and the Artist\u27s Directive: A Reading of A Fable .

The old general in A Fable embodies the resolution of questions about the relation of art and life that Faulkner evoked in his invention of Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury and pursued in a series of subsequent characterizations. This artist-figure motif discloses Faulkner\u27s implication of the relation in the modern crisis of faith. Faulkner images in narrative fiction what Nietzsche asserts in discourse, namely, the need for a reversal of the Platonic valuation of eternal truth (ideality) over art. The characterization of Quentin shows the potentially terrible consequences of man\u27s propensity for mythopoeic invention, as Quentin\u27s unconscious remythologizing of Christian mythos results in the nihilism it seeks to overcome. In A Fable, several characters repeat the paradigm of artist-figures who attempt through mythopoeia to override ontological conditions and establish ideal projections. The old general, by contrast, recognizes the open-- aestheticist --condition of existence, predicated on man\u27s physiology, which entails the universality of perspectivism and makes valuation essential to the well-being of man\u27s existence. Aware of both the mythic proportions of his public image and the need of his culture for a sustaining grand illusion, the old general consciously develops a legend of himself that satisfies this need through a reaccentuation of Christian mythos. In this action he suggests Heidegger\u27s reinterpretation of Nietzsche\u27s reversal, a reading that postulates the strife between closure and disclosure as the inherent existential operation whereby art allows truth to happen. The dissertation includes four chapters: (1) The Textual Case for Faulkner\u27s Aestheticism ; (2) Remythology and Spoilation: The Mythopoeic Utterances of Faulkner\u27s Failed Artist-Figures ; (3) Strife, Structure, the Dissemination of Voices and the Destruction of Truth in A Fable ; (4) The Artist\u27s Directive: Remythologizing the Kerygma in A Fable.