44 research outputs found
Broadening The Learning Community Experience: An Outdoor Orientation Program\u27s Impact On Engagement, Persistence, And Retention
The Keystone Learning Community was implemented by the Department of Campus Recreation to address retention at the institution. This learning community for incoming freshmen consists of two phases. Phase I is as an outdoor orientation program that includes a three day, two night canoeing and camping experiencer lead by upperclassmen leaders. Faculty and staff from the institution complete every aspect of Phase I with the freshmen. Phase II is class time that concentrates on development of critical thinking and writing skills.
Through surveys and interviews, participants in the Keystone Learning Community reported strong peer, faculty, and upperclassmen engagement initiated by the completion of Phase I. Participants in the Keystone LC considered Phase I to a be a significant event in their transition to college. The engagement facilitated in Phase I created and strengthened the ability to persist in the participants. The strategies to persist the students gained through their engagement leads to retention of the participants. Both persistence and retention as facilitated through the Keystone Learning Community feed back into deeper engagement at the institution.A conceptual framework is introduced that purposes a non-linear alternative to the Tinto model of student departure. This new framework highlights the dynamic complexity and interactions between engagement, persistence, and retention
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Whole Genome Shotgun Sequencing Detects Greater Lichen Fungal Diversity Than Amplicon-Based Methods in Environmental Samples
In this study we demonstrate the utility of whole genome shotgun (WGS) metagenomics in study organisms with small genomes to improve upon amplicon-based estimates of biodiversity and microbial diversity in environmental samples for the purpose of understanding ecological and evolutionary processes. We generated a database of full-length and near-full-length ribosomal DNA sequence complexes from 273 lichenized fungal species and used this database to facilitate fungal species identification in the southern Appalachian Mountains using low coverage WGS at higher resolution and without the biases of amplicon-based approaches. Using this new database and methods herein developed, we detected between 2.8 and 11 times as many species from lichen fungal propagules by aligning reads from WGS-sequenced environmental samples compared to a traditional amplicon-based approach. We then conducted complete taxonomic diversity inventories of the lichens in each one-hectare plot to assess overlap between standing taxonomic diversity and diversity detected based on propagules present in environmental samples (i.e., the “potential” of diversity). From the environmental samples, we detected 94 species not observed in organism-level sampling in these ecosystems with high confidence using both WGS and amplicon-based methods. This study highlights the utility of WGS sequence-based approaches in detecting hidden species diversity and demonstrates that amplicon-based methods likely miss important components of fungal diversity. We suggest that the adoption of this method will not only improve understanding of biotic constraints on the distributions of biodiversity but will also help to inform important environmental policy.</p
Binary Asteroid Systems: Tidal End States and Estimates of Material Properties
The locations of the fully despun, double synchronous end states of tidal
evolution are derived for spherical components. With the exception of nearly
equal-mass binaries, binary asteroid systems are in the midst of lengthy tidal
evolutions, far from their fully synchronous tidal end states. Calculations of
material strength indicate that binaries in the main belt with 100-km-scale
primary components are consistent with being made of monolithic or fractured
rock as expected for binaries likely formed from sub-catastrophic impacts in
the early solar system. To tidally evolve in their dynamical lifetime,
near-Earth binaries with km-scale primaries or smaller must be much weaker
mechanically than their main-belt counterparts even if formed in the main belt
prior to injection into the near-Earth region. Small main-belt binaries with
primary components less than 10 km in diameter, depending on their ages, could
either be as strong as large main-belt binaries or as weak as near-Earth
binaries because the inherent uncertainty in the age of a binary system can
affect the calculation of material strength by orders of magnitude. Several
other issues are considered, though these typically affect the calculation of
material strength by no more than a factor of two. We also find indirect
evidence within all three groups of binary asteroids that the inter-component
separation may evolve via another mechanism(s) with the binary YORP effect
being a likely candidate.Comment: 39 pages, 3 tables, 6 figures, published in Icaru
The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of
the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most
of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in
regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for
357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over
250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A
coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main
survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2
in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data
releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000
galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes
improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all
been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog
(UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45
milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr
is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally,
we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including
better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end,
better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and
an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor
correction
The Host Galaxies of AGN
We examine the properties of the host galaxies of 22,623 narrow-line AGN with
0.02<z<0.3 selected from a complete sample of 122,808 galaxies from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey. We focus on the luminosity of the [OIII]5007
emission line as a tracer of the strength of activity in the nucleus. We study
how AGN host properties compare to those of normal galaxies and how they depend
on L[OIII]. We find that AGN of all luminosities reside almost exclusively in
massive galaxies and have distributions of sizes, stellar surface mass
densities and concentrations that are similar to those of ordinary early-type
galaxies in our sample. The host galaxies of low-luminosity AGN have stellar
populations similar to normal early-types. The hosts of high- luminosity AGN
have much younger mean stellar ages. The young stars are not preferentially
located near the nucleus of the galaxy, but are spread out over scales of at
least several kiloparsecs. A significant fraction of high- luminosity AGN have
strong H absorption-line equivalent widths, indicating that they
experienced a burst of star formation in the recent past. We have also examined
the stellar populations of the host galaxies of a sample of broad-line AGN. We
conclude that there is no significant difference in stellar content between
type 2 Seyfert hosts and QSOs with the same [OIII] luminosity and redshift.
This establishes that a young stellar population is a general property of AGN
with high [OIII] luminosities.Comment: submitted to MNRAS, 44 pages, version with full resolution figures
available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~gamk/agnpaper/agnpaper.p
The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has validated and made publicly available its Second Data Release. This data release consists of 3324 deg2 of five-band (ugriz) imaging data with photometry for over 88 million unique objects, 367,360 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars, and calibrating blank sky patches selected over 2627 deg2 of this area, and tables of measured parameters from these data. The imaging data reach a depth of r ≈ 22.2 (95% completeness limit for point sources) and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100 mas rms per coordinate, respectively. The imaging data have all been processed through a new version of the SDSS imaging pipeline, in which the most important improvement since the last data release is fixing an error in the model fits to each object. The result is that model magnitudes are now a good proxy for point-spread function magnitudes for point sources, and Petrosian magnitudes for extended sources. The spectroscopy extends from 3800 to 9200 Å at a resolution of 2000. The spectroscopic software now repairs a systematic error in the radial velocities of certain types of stars and has substantially improved spectrophotometry. All data included in the SDSS Early Data Release and First Data Release are reprocessed with the improved pipelines and included in the Second Data Release. Further characteristics of the data are described, as are the data products themselves and the tools for accessing them
The First Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has validated and made publicly available its
First Data Release. This consists of 2099 square degrees of five-band (u, g, r,
i, z) imaging data, 186,240 spectra of galaxies, quasars, stars and calibrating
blank sky patches selected over 1360 square degrees of this area, and tables of
measured parameters from these data. The imaging data go to a depth of r ~ 22.6
and are photometrically and astrometrically calibrated to 2% rms and 100
milli-arcsec rms per coordinate, respectively. The spectra cover the range
3800--9200 A, with a resolution of 1800--2100. Further characteristics of the
data are described, as are the data products themselves.Comment: Submitted to The Astronomical Journal. 16 pages. For associated
documentation, see http://www.sdss.org/dr
Sites of Benevolence
On the television show Backyard Blitz, Australians judged as deserving by their families and friends receive the gift of surprise makeovers to their gardens; in Australian public hospitals, trainee surgeons hone their skills on willing patients; in literary travel narratives, non-Indigenous Australian writers attempt to forge a relationship with the land and its traditional owners; and in inner-city Brisbane, the City Council builds lockers and sleeping areas for the park's homeless occupants. In Australian courts, legislators create copyright laws attempt to protect Indigenous ownership of traditional narratives; the South Australian Museum mounts a new Aboriginal Cultures Gallery; Indigenous actors face the challenges of racism as they practice their craft; and the Queensland government of the early twentieth century enacts policies of 'Aboriginal Protection'. At first, these instances seem to bear little meaningful relation to one another. However, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate, they all share a crucial common feature: all of these instances are moments or sites which are underpinned by benevolence. That is, each of these diverse instances is informed by one party's desire to 'do good' to another. Each involves the formation and negotiation of a specific kind of relationship between people or groups of people, a relationship driven by one party's desire to assist the other. This, then, is a special issue about good intentions, about gifts, and about the moral economies they articulate. As this issue reveals, benevolence is mobilised across a range of cultural sites and practices; the articles gathered in this issue explore the complexities of its diverse historical and contemporary manifestations