Near-pristine gas at high redshifts: a window on early nucleosynthesis

It has now become recognised that damped Lyman alpha systems play an important role in helping us unravel the origin of chemical elements. In this presentation, we describe the main results of a recently completed survey of the most metal-poor DLAs, aimed at complementing and extending studies of the oldest stars in the Galaxy. The survey has clarified a number of lingering issues concerning the abundances of C, N, O in the low metallicity regime, has revealed the existence of DLA analogues to Carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars, and is providing some of the most precise measures of the primordial abundance of Deuterium.Comment: 11 pages, 7 Figures. Invited presentation at the XII International Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos, Cairns, Australia, 5-10 August 2012. To appear in Proceedings of Scienc

Intrinsic and emergent anomalies at deconfined critical points

It is well known that theorems of Lieb-Schultz-Mattis type prohibit the existence of a trivial symmetric gapped ground state in certain systems possessing a combination of internal and lattice symmetries. In the continuum description of such systems the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem is manifested in the form of a quantum anomaly afflicting the symmetry. We demonstrate this phenomenon in the context of the deconfined critical point between a Neel state and a valence bond solid in an $S =1/2$ square lattice antiferromagnet, and compare it to the case of $S=1/2$ honeycomb lattice where no anomaly is present. We also point out that new anomalies, unrelated to the microscopic Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem, can emerge prohibiting the existence of a trivial gapped state in the immediate vicinity of critical points or phases. For instance, no translationally invariant weak perturbation of the $S = 1/2$ gapless spin chain can open up a trivial gap even if the spin-rotation symmetry is explicitly broken. The same result holds for the $S =1/2$ deconfined critical point on a square lattice.Comment: 25 pages + Appendice

Incremental Learning of Nonparametric Bayesian Mixture Models

Clustering is a fundamental task in many vision applications. To date, most clustering algorithms work in a batch setting and training examples must be gathered in a large group before learning can begin. Here we explore incremental clustering, in which data can arrive continuously. We present a novel incremental model-based clustering algorithm based on nonparametric Bayesian methods, which we call Memory Bounded Variational Dirichlet Process (MB-VDP). The number of clusters are determined flexibly by the data and the approach can be used to automatically discover object categories. The computational requirements required to produce model updates are bounded and do not grow with the amount of data processed. The technique is well suited to very large datasets, and we show that our approach outperforms existing online alternatives for learning nonparametric Bayesian mixture models

Implications of Spatially Variable Costs and Habitat Conversion Risk in Landscape-Scale Conservation Planning

‘‘Strategic habitat conservation’’ refers to a process used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop cost-efficient strategies for conserving wildlife populations and their habitats. Strategic habitat conservation focuses on resolving uncertainties surrounding habitat conservation to meet specific wildlife population objectives (i.e., targets) and developing tools to guide where conservation actions should be focused on the landscape. Although there are examples of using optimization models to highlight where conservation should be delivered, such methods often do not explicitly account for spatial variation in the costs of conservation actions. Furthermore, many planning approaches assume that habitat protection is a preferred option, but they do not assess its value relative to other actions, such as restoration. We developed a case study to assess the implications of accounting for and ignoring spatial variation in conservation costs in optimizing conservation targets. We included assumptions about habitat loss to determine the extent to which protection or restoration would be necessary to meet an established population target. Our case study focused on optimal placement of grassland protection or restoration actions to influence bobolink Dolichonyx oryzivorus populations in the tallgrass prairie ecoregion of the north central United States. Our results show that not accounting for spatially variable costs doubled or tripled the cost of meeting the population target. Furthermore, our results suggest that one should not assume that protecting existing habitat is always a preferred option. Rather, our results show that the balance between protection and restoration can be influenced by a combination of desired targets, assumptions about habitat loss, and the relative cost of the two actions. Our analysis also points out how difficult it may be to reach targets, given the expense to meet them. We suggest that a full accounting of expected costs and benefits will help to guide development of viable management actions and meaningful conservation plans

Wind Power Study in Colorado

Renewable energy may seem like a simple source of energy, but there is a variety of detailed research required for sustainable development. We aim to find the most suitable location in Colorado for a wind farm. Using ArcGIS we preformed many experience to find the best location, resubmitting in Limon, Colorado. This research helps display the importance of renewable energy standards and development

Molecular Shattering

Recent observations suggest galaxies may ubiquitously host a molecular component to their multiphase circumgalactic medium (CGM). However, the structure and kinematics of the molecular CGM remains understudied theoretically and largely unconstrained observationally. Recent work suggests molecular gas clouds with efficient cooling survive acceleration in hot winds similar to atomic clouds. Yet the pressure-driven fragmentation of molecular clouds when subjected to external shocks or undergoing cooling remains unstudied. We perform radiative, inviscid hydrodynamics simulations of clouds perturbed out of pressure equilibrium to explore the process of hydrodynamic fragmentation to molecular temperatures. We find molecular clouds larger than a critical size can shatter into a mist of tiny droplets, with the critical size deviating significantly from the atomic case. We find that cold clouds shatter only if the sound crossing time exceeds the local maximum of the cooling time ~8000 K. Moreover, we find evidence for a universal mechanism to 'shatter' cold clouds into a 'mist' of tiny droplets as a result of rotational fragmentation -- a process we dub 'splintering.' Our results have implications for resolving the molecular phase of the CGM in observations and cosmological simulations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Junior Recital

List of performers and performances