Can Life develop in the expanded habitable zones around Red Giant Stars?

We present some new ideas about the possibility of life developing around sub-giant and red giant stars. Our study concerns the temporal evolution of the habitable zone. The distance between the star and the habitable zone, as well as its width, increases with time as a consequence of stellar evolution. The habitable zone moves outward after the star leaves the main sequence, sweeping a wider range of distances from the star until the star reaches the tip of the asymptotic giant branch. If life could form and evolve over time intervals from $5 \times 10^8$ to $10^9$ years, then there could be habitable planets with life around red giant stars. For a 1 M$_{\odot}$ star at the first stages of its post main-sequence evolution, the temporal transit of the habitable zone is estimated to be of several 10$^9$ years at 2 AU and around 10$^8$ years at 9 AU. Under these circumstances life could develop at distances in the range 2-9 AU in the environment of sub-giant or giant stars and in the far distant future in the environment of our own Solar System. After a star completes its first ascent along the Red Giant Branch and the He flash takes place, there is an additional stable period of quiescent He core burning during which there is another opportunity for life to develop. For a 1 M$_{\odot}$ star there is an additional $10^9$ years with a stable habitable zone in the region from 7 to 22 AU. Space astronomy missions, such as proposed for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and Darwin should also consider the environments of sub-giants and red giant stars as potentially interesting sites for understanding the development of life

All-organic and organic-silicon photonic ring micro-resonators

Organic electro-optic materials offer exceptional processability (both from solution and the gas phase) that permit fabrication of flexible and conformal device structures and the integration of organic materials with a wide range of disparate materials. In addition, organic electro-optical materials have fundamental response times that are in the terahertz region, and useable electro-optic coefficients that are approaching 300 pm/V (at telecommunication wavelengths). In addition to fabrication by traditional lithographic methods, multiple devices on a single wafer have been fabricated by soft and nano-imprint lithography. In this presentation, we review the fabrication and performance evaluation of a number of all-organic and organic-silicon photonic ring microresonator devices. Both electrical and thermal tuning of devices, including both single and multiple ring micro-resonators, are demonstrated

KAPAO First Light: the design, construction and operation of a low-cost natural guide star adaptive optics system

We present the instrument design and first light observations of KAPAO, a natural guide star adaptive optics (AO) system for the Pomona College Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) 1-meter telescope. The KAPAO system has dual science channels with visible and near-infrared cameras, a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, and a commercially available 140-actuator MEMS deformable mirror. The pupil relays are two pairs of custom off-axis parabolas and the control system is based on a version of the Robo-AO control software. The AO system and telescope are remotely operable, and KAPAO is designed to share the Cassegrain focus with the existing TMO polarimeter. We discuss the extensive integration of undergraduate students in the program including the multiple senior theses/capstones and summer assistantships amongst our partner institutions. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0960343

A Very Low-Carbohydrate Diet Improves Symptoms and Quality of Life in Diarrhea-Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Patients with diarrhea-predominant IBS (IBS-D) anecdotally report symptom improvement after initiating a very low-carbohydrate diet (VLCD). This is the first study to prospectively evaluate a VLCD in IBS-D

Substructure analysis of selected low-richness 2dFGRS clusters of galaxies

Complementary one-, two- and three-dimensional tests for detecting the presence of substructure in clusters of galaxies are applied to recently obtained data from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The sample of 25 clusters used in this study includes 16 clusters not previously investigated for substructure. Substructure is detected at or greater than the 99 per cent confidence level in at least one test for 21 of the 25 clusters studied here. From the results, it appears that low-richness clusters commonly contain subclusters participating in mergers. About half of the clusters have two or more components within 0.5 h−1 Mpc of the cluster centroid, and at least three clusters (Abell 1139, Abell 1663 and Abell S333) exhibit velocity-position characteristics consistent with the presence of possible cluster rotation, shear, or infall dynamics. The geometry of certain features is consistent with influence by the host supercluster environments. In general, our results support the hypothesis that low-richness clusters relax to structureless equilibrium states on very long dynamical time-scales (if at all

All-organic and organic-silicon photonic ring micro-resonators

Organic electro-optic materials offer exceptional processability (both from solution and the gas phase) that permit fabrication of flexible and conformal device structures and the integration of organic materials with a wide range of disparate materials. In addition, organic electro-optical materials have fundamental response times that are in the terahertz region, and useable electro-optic coefficients that are approaching 300 pm/V (at telecommunication wavelengths). In addition to fabrication by traditional lithographic methods, multiple devices on a single wafer have been fabricated by soft and nano-imprint lithography. In this presentation, we review the fabrication and performance evaluation of a number of all-organic and organic-silicon photonic ring microresonator devices. Both electrical and thermal tuning of devices, including both single and multiple ring micro-resonators, are demonstrated

Evaluation Research and Institutional Pressures: Challenges in Public-Nonprofit Contracting

This article examines the connection between program evaluation research and decision-making by public managers. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, a framework is presented for diagnosing the pressures and conditions that lead alternatively toward or away the rational use of evaluation research. Three cases of public-nonprofit contracting for the delivery of major programs are presented to clarify the way coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures interfere with a sound connection being made between research and implementation. The article concludes by considering how public managers can respond to the isomorphic pressures in their environment that make it hard to act on data relating to program performance.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 23. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers