The \u27X it up\u27 Verb Construction: A Syntactic and Sociolinguistic Approach

This thesis focuses on a unique and, as of yet, unstudied particle verb construction in English, referred to as the `X it up\u27 construction (e.g. I partied it up last night). Syntactic and sociolinguistic perspectives are taken to explore this phenomenon. In the area of syntax, it is proposed that the `it\u27 in the construction is non-referential and that `it\u27 is an (object) expletive. It is further proposed that the construction is unergative. These hypotheses are confirmed via syntactic tests, and a potential syntactic representation based on Basilico\u27s (2008) particle verb analysis is offered as a structure in which the expletive can occur. Additionally, the particle `up\u27 is proposed to be distinct from other `up\u27 particles in the English language, which serves as a possible explanation for the construction\u27s contrastive structure from other particle verb constructions. Shifting to the sociolinguistic dimension of the study, possible social factors that may influence the usage of the construction are investigated. Results indicate that this construction is influenced primarily by age and that younger age groups (18-35) might use the construction more frequently in casual conversation. Additional factors such as gender and social media usage are also considered; however, these are not shown to have any significance on the usage of the construction

Death of a Journalist

This thesis is an attempt to capture through a novel the contradictory feelings of loss and hope the Millienial generation is experiencing as once-great institutions in the U.S., such as print journalism, are overcome by the rapid expansion of an increasingly connected, digital society. My thesis is the first six chapters of my novel, Death of a Journalist, and lays the foundation for the conflict between the past and the present the protagonist endures throughout the rest of the work. By focusing on the protagonist\u27s inability to leave his own past and the dying newspaper at which he works, I hope to convey the sense of loss felt by a transitional generation whose job is to shed the weight of the past and usher in a new, modern era. My objective was not to speak for an entire generation, but to add to the discussion of the complex, symbiotic relationship our present and future moments have with our pasts

Wearable sensor use for assessing standing balance and walking stability in people with Parkinson’s Disease: A systematic review

Background Postural instability and gait disability threaten the independence and well-being of people with Parkinson’s disease and increase the risk of falls and fall-related injuries. Prospective research has shown that commonly-used clinical assessments of balance and walking lack the sensitivity to accurately and consistently identify those people with Parkinson’s disease who are at a higher risk of falling. Wearable sensors provide a portable and affordable alternative for researchers and clinicians who are seeking to objectively assess movements and falls risk in the clinical setting. However, no consensus currently exists on the optimal placements for sensors and the best outcome measures to use for assessing standing balance and walking stability in Parkinson’s disease patients. Hence, this systematic review aimed to examine the available literature to establish the best sensor types, locations and outcomes to assess standing balance and walking stability in this population. Methods Papers listed in three electronic databases were searched by title and abstract to identify articles measuring standing balance or walking stability with any kind of wearable sensor among adults diagnosed with PD. To be eligible for inclusion, papers were required to be full-text articles published in English between January 1994 and December 2014 that assessed measures of standing balance or walking stability with wearable sensors in people with PD. Articles were excluded if they; i) did not use any form of wearable sensor to measure variables associated with standing balance or walking stability; ii) did not include a control group or control condition; iii) were an abstract and/or included in the proceedings of a conference; or iv) were a review article or case study. The targeted search of the three electronic databases identified 340 articles that were potentially eligible for inclusion, but following title, abstract and full-text review only 26 articles were deemed to meet the inclusion criteria. Included articles were assessed for methodological quality and relevant data from the papers were extracted and synthesized. Results Quality assessment of these included articles indicated that 31% were of low methodological quality, while 58% were of moderate methodological quality and 11% were of high methodological quality. All studies adopted a cross-sectional design and used a variety of sensor types and outcome measures to assess standing balance or walking stability in people with Parkinson’s disease. Despite the typically low to moderate methodological quality, 81% of the studies reported differences in sensor-based measures of standing balance or walking stability between different groups of Parkinson’s disease patients and/or healthy controls. Conclusion These data support the use of wearable sensors for detecting differences in standing balance and walking stability between people with PD and controls. Further high-quality research is needed to better understand the utility of wearable sensors for the early identification of Parkinson’s disease symptoms and for assessing falls risk in this population

The Rotation of the halo of NGC 6822 from the radial velocities of carbon stars

© The Authors 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Using spectra taken with the AAOmega spectrograph, we measure the radial velocities of over 100 stars, many of which are intermediate age carbon stars, in the direction of the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. Kinematic analysis suggests that the carbon stars in the sample are associated with NGC 6822, and estimates of its radial velocity and galactic rotation are made from a star-by-star analysis of its carbon star population. We calculate a heliocentric radial velocity for NGC 6822 of −51±3 kms-1 and show that the population rotates with a mean rotation speed of 11.2±2.1 kms-1 at a mean distance of 1.1 kpc from the galactic centre, about a rotation axis with a position angle of 26 ∘ ±13 ∘ , as projected on the sky. This is close to the rotation axis of the HI gas disk and suggests that NGC 6822 is not a polar ring galaxy, but is dynamically closer to a late type galaxy. However, the rotation axis is not aligned with the minor axis of the AGB isodensity profiles and this remains a mystery.Peer reviewe

The Three Dimensional Structural Shape of the Gravitational Potential in the Local Group

The Local Group is a small galaxy cluster with the membership of 62 nearby galaxies including the Milky Way and M31. Although the Local Group has yet to be virialized, it interacts with the surrounding matter as one gravitationally bound system. To understand the formation and evolution of the Local Group as well as its member galaxies, it is important to reconstruct the gravitational potential field from the surrounding matter distribution in the local cosmic web. By measuring the anisotropy in the spatial distribution of the Local Group galaxies, which is assumed to be induced by the local gravitational tidal field , we resolve the three dimensional structure of the gravitational potential in the vicinity of the Milky Way smoothed on the Local Group mass scale. Our results show that (i) the minor principal axis of the Local Group tidal field is in the equatorial direction of alpha_{p}=15^{h}00^{m} and delta_{p}=20^{d}; (ii) it has a prolate shape with axial ratio of 0.5 +/- 0.13; (iii) the global tides in the Local Group is quite strong, which may provide a partial explanation for the low abundance of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS, revised version, 3D potential structure in LG found, error analysis significantly improved, 8 pages, 5 figure

Spatially Resolved Galaxy Star Formation and its Environmental Dependence II. Effect of the Morphology-Density Relation

In this second of a series of papers on spatially resolved star formation, we investigate the impact of the density-morphology relation of galaxies on the spatial variation of star formation (SF) and its dependence on environment. We find that while a density-morphology relation is present for the sample, it cannot solely explain the observed suppression of SF in galaxies in high-density environments. We also find that early-type and late-type galaxies exhibit distinct radial star formation rate (SFR) distributions, with early-types having a SFR distribution that extends further relative to the galaxy scale length, compared to late-types at all densities. We find that a suppression of SF in the highest density environments is found in the highest star forming galaxies for both galaxy types. This suppression occurs in the innermost regions in late-types (r <= 0.125 Petrosian radii), and further out in radius in early-types (0.125< r <= 0.25 Petrosian radii). When the full sample is considered no clear suppression of SF is detected, indicating that the environmental trends are driven only by the highest SF galaxies. We demonstrate that the density-morphology relation alone cannot account for the suppression of SF in the highest density environments. This points to an environmentally-governed evolutionary mechanism that affects the SF in the innermost regions in both early and late-type galaxies. We suggest that this is a natural consequence of the "downsizing" of SF in galaxies.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures, replaced with accepted version, added reference

The UV-Optical Color Dependence of Galaxy Clustering in the Local Universe

We measure the UV-optical color dependence of galaxy clustering in the local universe. Using the clean separation of the red and blue sequences made possible by the NUV - r color-magnitude diagram, we segregate the galaxies into red, blue and intermediate "green" classes. We explore the clustering as a function of this segregation by removing the dependence on luminosity and by excluding edge-on galaxies as a means of a non-model dependent veto of highly extincted galaxies. We find that \xi (r_p, \pi) for both red and green galaxies shows strong redshift space distortion on small scales -- the "finger-of-God" effect, with green galaxies having a lower amplitude than is seen for the red sequence, and the blue sequence showing almost no distortion. On large scales, \xi (r_p, \pi) for all three samples show the effect of large-scale streaming from coherent infall. On scales 1 Mpc/h < r_p < 10 Mpc/h, the projected auto-correlation function w_p(r_p) for red and green galaxies fits a power-law with slope \gamma ~ 1.93 and amplitude r_0 ~ 7.5 and 5.3, compared with \gamma ~ 1.75 and r_0 ~ 3.9 Mpc/h for blue sequence galaxies. Compared to the clustering of a fiducial L* galaxy, the red, green, and blue have a relative bias of 1.5, 1.1, and 0.9 respectively. The w_p(r_p) for blue galaxies display an increase in convexity at ~ 1 Mpc/h, with an excess of large scale clustering. Our results suggest that the majority of blue galaxies are likely central galaxies in less massive halos, while red and green galaxies have larger satellite fractions, and preferentially reside in virialized structures. If blue sequence galaxies migrate to the red sequence via processes like mergers or quenching that take them through the green valley, such a transformation may be accompanied by a change in environment in addition to any change in luminosity and color.Comment: accepted by MNRA

Cold War Fictions

This chapter offers a detailed reading of McEwan’s 2012 novel Sweet Tooth as a highly self-conscious and allusive literary spy thriller of the Cold War era, one which invites a renewed attention to the Cold War themes, ideas and literary strategies which have been important in his work since the late 1970s in which the novel is set. These flourished especially in the two novels written around the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Innocent and Black Dogs which also receive extended treatment here. In McEwan’s reworking of the Cold War spy thriller as postmodern literary fiction we find, it is argued, a recurrent fascination with misunderstandings and readjustments in emotional and political relations between the sexes as an analogy for Cold War politics and vice versa. Added to this McEwan increasingly packs his fictions with informed literary debate that constitute a profound exploration of literary genres and of the complex relationship between author and reader

The importance of minor-merger-driven star formation and black-hole growth in disk galaxies

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.We use the SDSS Stripe 82 to empirically quantify the stellar-mass and black-hole growth triggered by minor mergers in local spiral (disk) galaxies. Since major mergers destroy disks and create spheroids, morphologically disturbed spirals are likely remnants of minor mergers. Disturbed spirals exhibit enhanced specific star formation rates (SSFRs), the enhancement increasing in galaxies of 'later' morphological type (which have more gas and smaller bulges). By combining the SSFR enhancements with the fraction of time spirals spend in this 'enhanced' mode, we estimate that ~40% of the star formation in local spirals is directly triggered by minor mergers. The disturbed spirals also exhibit higher nuclear-accretion rates, implying that minor mergers enhance the growth rate of the central black hole. However, the specific accretion rate shows a lower enhancement than that in the SSFR, suggesting that the coupling between stellar-mass and black-hole growth is weak in minor-merger-driven episodes. Given the significant fraction of star formation that is triggered by minor mergers, this weaker coupling may contribute to the large intrinsic scatter observed in the stellar vs. black-hole mass relation in spirals. Combining our results with the star formation in early-type galaxies -- which is minor-merger-driven and accounts for ~14% of the star formation budget -- suggests that around half of the star formation activity in the local Universe is triggered by the minor-merger process.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

A blind HI survey in the Canes Venatici region

We have carried out a blind HI survey using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope to make an inventory of objects with small HI masses (between 10^6 and 10^8 Msol) and to constrain the low-mass end of the HI mass function. The survey has been conducted in a part of the volume containing the nearby Canes Venatici groups of galaxies. The surveyed region covers an area on the sky of about 86 square degrees and a range in velocity from about -450 to about 1330 km/s. We find 70 sources in the survey by applying an automated searching algorithm. Two of the detections have not been catalogued previously, but they can be assigned an optical counterpart, based on visual inspection of the second generation Digital Sky Survey images. Only one of the HI detections is without an optical counterpart. This object is detected in the vicinity of NGC4822 and it has been already detected in previous HI studies. Nineteen of the objects have been detected for the first time in the 21-cm emission line in this survey. The distribution of the HI properties of our detections confirms our ability to find low mass objects. 86% of the detections have profile widths less than 130 km/s and can be considered dwarf galaxy candidates. The HI fluxes measured imply that this survey goes about 10 times deeper than any previous blind HI survey. The HI mass function and the optical properties of the detected sources will be discussed in future papers.Comment: 46 pages, 15 figures (including the atlas of HI observations); accepted for publication in MNRAS; the high resolution pdf available at http://www.exp-astro.phys.ethz.ch/kovac/public/WSRTCVn