Jesus, I Trust in You: St. Thomas Aquinas\u27 Jubilee

The concept of “Life Reporting” is a completely new idea, at least in terms of how I have experienced it. In today’s world of blogs and social networking, it is essential for broadcast journalists to embrace their own lives in the same world of professional and ethical reporting. As I describe my experience of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Jubilee, I have no choice but to provide the context and build-up of this intense passion toward my overarching point. Working through all the communities of which I have been a part, from attending St. Luke Catholic Church all the way to the revolutionary approach toward LOVE from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Catholic Campus Center, I seek to prove one powerful and simple point: as technology shifts and develops, we have been given a unique opportunity to share the love and life we experience in this world with all those we encounter. The tools of the broadcast journalist are in everyone’s hands, but the know-how still gives broadcasters the responsibility and advantage to share the most compelling, most accurate, most diverse, and most ethically sound material that can be produced. In this way, the truth can still emerge as they present their “Life Report” to the world

The Characteristics and Value-Added Contributions of Private Investors to Entrepreneurial Software Ventures

The nature and role of early stage equity financing in the development of emerging entrepreneurial ventures in the software industry is examined. To provide an understanding of the relationship between the suppliers of capital and the ventures they bankroll, issues concerning equity positions and holding periods are addressed. Given the unique position of private investors in the early stage equity market, particular attention is given to the characteristics of these investors and the investor characteristics germane to the software industry. Results for the software sector are compared with technology-based companies in an attempt to uncover any discernable differences between the two groups. The research hypothesizes that there are differences in the informal venture capital market among broadly defined sectors in terms of the sectors\u27 technology and competitive conditions and their impact on: first, the need for, and timing of, external equity capital; and secondly, the characteristics and value-added contributions of the private investors attracted to the sector

No change detected on Earth’s mid-latitude atmospheric ozone by the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

Six high altitude balloon flights were completed during the summer of 2017 to measure the effect of the total solar eclipse on Earth’s ozone over the eastern Snake River Plain in Idaho. The stratospheric ozone layer undergoes a noisy diurnal pattern driven, primarily by photochemistry above 30km and by atmospheric dynamics for altitudes below 30km. The flights for this project rarely exceeded that boundary and were an attempt to detect photochemistry effects in the lower stratosphere. The first five flights determined a baseline for the distribution of ozone from ground level to the mid-stratosphere. The sixth flight was done during the total solar eclipse and was compared to the baseline. These data were also compared to multiple years’ data taken in the Uintah Basin in northeast Utah. All measurements were consistent with each other and show spatial and temporal variations in the ozone column that are expected. The balloon’s instrumentation payload was at the tropopause during eclipse totality and no change in either temperature or ozone was detected that was above the normal noise level in the previous data sets. The conclusion is that no photochemical processes are strong enough to clearly modify Earth’s ozone in the lower stratosphere on timescales shorter than three hours. This is consistent with previously reported satellite data of total column ozone

A Miniaturized Multi Sensor Array for Balloon-Borne Air Measurements, Phase I

Weber State University’s High-Altitude Ballooning team, HARBOR, has seen an opportunity for cooperative research among the many individual balloon teams based in North America. The Great American Solar Eclipse brought these teams into the spotlight as dozens of ballooning groups worked together to image the eclipse. Leveraging this collection of balloon teams to create a large-scale data set could make some valuable discoveries and give us a better understanding of the atmospheric dynamics that take place in the stratosphere. Our team has decided to facilitate the creation of such a data set by designing an atmospheric data collection tool, the mini-Multi Sensor Array, that can be flown by teams all over the nation, and potentially the world. Our goal is to create an inexpensive, lightweight, easy to assemble device which will measure gas concentrations, particulate matter, atmospheric turbulence, and meteorological parameters such as temperature, pressure, and humidity. We will also add features such as long distance telemetry, which will facilitate recovery of these payloads. Having a redundant, lightweight tracking device will increase the number of flight teams that are making a regular effort to fly our mini-MSA with their payload

A Miniaturized Multi Sensor Array for Balloon-Borne Air Measurements, Phase II

Weber State University’s High-Altitude Ballooning team, HARBOR, is developing a lightweight, flexible, expandable sensor array for both high-altitude balloon flight and low-altitude drone flight. The system will have the following capabilities: 1.Gas sensor and air quality board/chamber: a. Gases: CO, CO2, NO2, NH3, SO2, O3, VOCs b. Particulates: PM1, PM2.5, PM10. 2. Metrological data measurement suite: a.Temperature, pressure (with two sensors), %RH. b. Wind by proxy for balloon flights via the GPS. 3. Flight dynamics and geolocation suite: a. High altitude GPS b. 9-axis inertial measurement: acceleration, gyroscope, and magnetometer. 4. Onboard data logging to a microSD card. 5. Live data downlink via 900 MHz XBee to two matching ground stations (one fixed, one mobile). 6. Onboard user interface with removable OLED display. The goal is to create a uniform data set that can be used by balloon and air measurement teams that will save the data in a basic csv format. A separate program will add metadata related to the fight conditions and save the complete dataset in the NASA standard ICARTT file format. Once we have the system optimized, we’ll share it with other balloon teams nationally and internationally. The goal is to create a standard data set that will make college and high school high altitude balloon flights more consistent and thus more useful for atmospheric research