Report on internship with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra

This thesis describes a graduate student\u27s internship an analysis of the offices of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. The internship took place during the University of New Orleans\u27 1994 fall semester. The Louisiana Philhannonic is a pioneering arts organization that is owned and operated by its own orchestra players. The organization\u27s primary goal is to introduce the highest possible quality music to the Gulf Coast region. The information in this document primarily discusses the Departments of Marketing and Audience Development and Advertising. The information in this document is based on personal experiences during the time of the internship

The indirect effects of climate variability on the reproductive dynamics and productivity of an avian predator in the arid southwest

The deserts of the Southwestern United States are experiencing rapid warming and climate models predict declining winter precipitation. The combined effects of higher air temperatures and drought are a reduction in productivity, which may importantly impact reproduction in consumers. Here, we investigate the effects of warming and drought on the reproductive timing and output in loggerhead shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus) in central New Mexico from 2007 to 2012. We found increases in air temperature of 3°C during the breeding season (March—July) and highly variable winter and annual precipitation. With increasing spring temperatures, shrikes advanced nesting phenology by 20 days over 6 years, a much higher rate than is reported for any other bird species. During this period, the number of breeding pairs also increased from 25 to 37, and clutch size and the number offspring produced per successful nest did not vary. Nest success, however, was often very low and ranged from 11% to 44%. Although our models indicated that low nest success was driven by precipitation and temperature, it was mediated indirectly through increased predation rates during the hot and dry periods

Isolation of Pyrenochaeta terrestris from Onion Roots

A comparison was made of various techniques for isolating Pyrenochaeta terrestris (Hansen) Gorenz et al. from growing onion roots. Water agar was as suitable as potato dextrose agar (0.5% dextrose) and is recommended to avoid contamination. Texas L 303, Iowa Yellow Globe 51, and Trapp\u27s Downing Yellow Globe used as trap crops were equally efficient. Maximum infection of the early planting occurred earlier than a later planting

Stochastic Spacetime and Brownian Motion of Test Particles

The operational meaning of spacetime fluctuations is discussed. Classical spacetime geometry can be viewed as encoding the relations between the motions of test particles in the geometry. By analogy, quantum fluctuations of spacetime geometry can be interpreted in terms of the fluctuations of these motions. Thus one can give meaning to spacetime fluctuations in terms of observables which describe the Brownian motion of test particles. We will first discuss some electromagnetic analogies, where quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field induce Brownian motion of test particles. We next discuss several explicit examples of Brownian motion caused by a fluctuating gravitational field. These examples include lightcone fluctuations, variations in the flight times of photons through the fluctuating geometry, and fluctuations in the expansion parameter given by a Langevin version of the Raychaudhuri equation. The fluctuations in this parameter lead to variations in the luminosity of sources. Other phenomena which can be linked to spacetime fluctuations are spectral line broadening and angular blurring of distant sources.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the 9th Peyresq workshop, June 200

The rotating molecular core and precessing outflow of the young stellar object Barnard 1c

We investigate the structure of the core surrounding the recently identified deeply embedded young stellar object Barnard 1c which has an unusual polarization pattern as traced in submillimeter dust emission. Barnard 1c lies within the Perseus molecular cloud at a distance of 250 pc. It is a deeply embedded core of 2.4 solar masses (Kirk et al.) and a luminosity of 4 +/- 2 solar luminosities. Observations of CO, 13CO, C18O, HCO+ and N2H+ were obtained with the BIMA array, together with the continuum at 3.3 mm and 2.7 mm. Single-dish measurements of N2H+ and HCO+ with FCRAO reveal the larger scale emission in these lines, The CO and HCO+ emission traces the outflow, which coincides in detail with the S-shaped jet recently found in Spitzer IRAC imaging. The N2H+ emission, which anticorrelates spatially with the C18O emission, originates from a rotating envelope with effective radius ~ 2400 AU and mass 2.1 - 2.9 solar masses. N2H+ emission is absent from a 600 AU diameter region around the young star. The remaining N2H+ emission may lie in a coherent torus of dense material. With its outflow and rotating envelope, B1c closely resembles the previously studied object L483-mm, and we conclude that it is a protostar in an early stage of evolution. We hypothesize that heating by the outflow and star has desorbed CO from grains which has destroyed N2H+ in the inner region and surmise that the presence of grains without ice mantles in this warm inner region can explain the unusual polarization signature from B1c.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures (9 colour). Accepted to The Astrophysical Journal. For higher resolution images, see http://astrowww.phys.uvic.ca/~brenda/preprints.htm

Spatially Explicit Data: Stewardship and Ethical Challenges in Science

Scholarly communication is at an unprecedented turning point created in part by the increasing saliency of data stewardship and data sharing. Formal data management plans represent a new emphasis in research, enabling access to data at higher volumes and more quickly, and the potential for replication and augmentation of existing research. Data sharing has recently transformed the practice, scope, content, and applicability of research in several disciplines, in particular in relation to spatially specific data. This lends exciting potentiality, but the most effective ways in which to implement such changes, particularly for disciplines involving human subjects and other sensitive information, demand consideration. Data management plans, stewardship, and sharing, impart distinctive technical, sociological, and ethical challenges that remain to be adequately identified and remedied. Here, we consider these and propose potential solutions for their amelioration

Stress Tensor Correlators in the Schwinger-Keldysh Formalism

We express stress tensor correlators using the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. The absence of off-diagonal counterterms in this formalism ensures that the +- and -+ correlators are free of primitive divergences. We use dimensional regularization in position space to explicitly check this at one loop order for a massless scalar on a flat space background. We use the same procedure to show that the ++ correlator contains the divergences first computed by `t Hooft and Veltman for the scalar contribution to the graviton self-energy.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX 2epsilon, no figures, revised for publicatio

Data journeys: Capturing the socio-material constitution of data objects and flows

In this paper, we discuss the development and piloting of a new methodology for illuminating the socio-material con- stitution of data objects and flows as data move between different sites of practice. The data journeys approach contributes to the development of critical, qualitative methodologies that can address the geographic and temporal scale of emerging knowledge infrastructures, and capture the ‘life of data’ from their initial generation through to re-use in different contexts. We discuss the theoretical development of the data journeys methodology and the application of the approach on a project examining meteorological data on their journey from initial production through to being re- used in climate science and financial markets. We then discuss three key conceptual findings from this project about: (1) the socio-material constitution of digital data objects, (2) ‘friction’ in the movement of data through space and time and (3) the mutability of digital data as a material property that contributes to driving the movement of data between different sites of practice

Moving Archival Practices Upstream: An Exploration of the Life Cycle of Ecological Sensing Data in Collaborative Field Research

The success of eScience research depends not only upon effective collaboration between scientists and technologists but also upon the active involvement of data archivists. Archivists rarely receive scientific data until findings are published, by which time important information about their origins, context, and provenance may be lost. Research reported here addresses the life cycle of data from collaborative ecological research with embedded networked sensing technologies. A better understanding of these processes will enable archivists to participate in earlier stages of the life cycle and to improve curation of these types of scientific data. Evidence from our interview study and field research yields a nine-stage life cycle. Among the findings are the cumulative effect of decisions made at each stage of the life cycle; the balance of decision-making between scientific and technology research partners; and the loss of certain types of data that may be essential to later interpretation

Digital technology and governance in transition: The case of the British Library

Comment on the organizational consequences of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) is pervaded by a powerful imagery of disaggregation and a tendency for ?virtual? forms of production to be seen as synonymous with the ?end? of bureaucracy. This paper questions the underlying assumptions of the ?virtual organization?, highlighting the historically enduring, diversified character of the bureaucratic form. The paper then presents case study findings on the web-based access to information resources now being provided by the British Library (BL). The case study evidence produces two main findings. First, radically decentralised virtual forms of service delivery are heavily dependent on new forms of capacity-building and information aggregation. Second, digital technology is embedded in an inherently contested and contradictory context of institutional change. Current developments in the management and control of digital rights are consistent with the commodification of the public sphere. However, the evidence also suggests that scholarly access to information resources is being significantly influenced by the ?information society? objectives of the BL and other institutional players within the network of UK research libraries