Global Hot Gas in and around the Galaxy

The hot interstellar medium traces the stellar feedback and its role in regulating the eco-system of the Galaxy. I review recent progress in understanding the medium, based largely on X-ray absorption line spectroscopy, complemented by X-ray emission and far-UV OVI absorption measurements. These observations enable us for the first time to characterize the global spatial, thermal, chemical, and kinematic properties of the medium. The results are generally consistent with what have been inferred from X-ray imaging of nearby galaxies similar to the Galaxy. It is clear that diffuse soft X-ray emitting/absorbing gas with a characteristic temperature of $\sim 10^6$ K resides primarily in and around the Galactic disk and bulge. In the solar neighborhood, for example, this gas has a characteristic vertical scale height of $\sim 1$ kpc. This conclusion does not exclude the presence of a larger-scale, probably much hotter, and lower density circum-Galactic hot medium, which is required to explain observations of various high-velocity clouds. This hot medium may be a natural product of the stellar feedback in the context of the galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 11 pages, invited talk in the workshop "The Local Bubble and Beyond II

An Analysis of Defense Information and Information Technology Articles: A Sixteen Year Perspective

Over the past two decades, information and information technology (IT) have evolved significantly and have become increasingly important to our national security. Many different journals have described this evolution. The purpose of this study is to examine the evolution of information and IT through the articles of two defense journals over a sixteen-year period. It provides a review of the article subject matter, the changes in the subject matter, the contributing authors and their institutions, and predictions for the next five years

Multi-wavelength analysis of the Galactic supernova remnant MSH 11-61A

Due to its centrally bright X-ray morphology and limb brightened radio profile, MSH 11-61A (G290.1-0.8) is classified as a mixed morphology supernova remnant (SNR). H\textsc{i} and CO observations determined that the SNR is interacting with molecular clouds found toward the north and southwest regions of the remnant. In this paper we report on the detection of $\gamma$-ray emission coincident with MSH 11-61A, using 70 months of data from the Large Area Telescope on board the \textit{Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope}. To investigate the origin of this emission, we perform broadband modelling of its non-thermal emission considering both leptonic and hadronic cases and concluding that the $\gamma$-ray emission is most likely hadronic in nature. Additionally we present our analysis of a 111 ks archival \textit{Suzaku} observation of this remnant. Our investigation shows that the X-ray emission from MSH 11-61A arises from shock-heated ejecta with the bulk of the X-ray emission arising from a recombining plasma, while the emission towards the east arises from an ionising plasma.Comment: 12 Pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Reducing Disparities by way of a Cancer Disparities Research Training Program

Background: For minority populations, there is a continuing disparity in the burden of death and illness from cancer. Research to address this disparity should be conducted by investigators who can best understand and address the needs of culturally diverse communities. However, minorities are under-represented in health-related research. The goal of this project was to develop and evaluate an approach to motivating and preparing master’s degree students for careers dedicated to cancer disparities research. Method: A Cancer Disparities Research Training Program (CDRTP) was initiated in 2010. The program consists of coursework, practicum experiences, and research opportunities. Assessment of the curriculum is based on monitoring achievement of evaluation indicators and includes a quantitative assessment and qualitative approach. Results: In its first three years, the program graduated 20 trainees, all of whom were minorities (18 African Americans and two Asians). When asked about career goals, two-thirds of the trainees indicated interest in pursuing careers in research on cancer prevention and control. The trainees expressed high satisfaction with the courses, instructor, materials, and curriculum. Although trainees had suggestions about course details, evaluations overall were positive. Across focus groups, three recurrent themes emerged regarding activities to enhance the student experience: having a wider variety of topics, more guest speakers, and field trips. Conclusion: The CDRTP was intended to recruit students – primarily African Americans – into research on prevention and control of cancer disparities. Although final evaluation of the program’s overall outcome will not be available for several years, a preliminary evaluation indicates the program is being successful

Comparative analysis of knowledge representation and reasoning requirements across a range of life sciences textbooks.

BackgroundUsing knowledge representation for biomedical projects is now commonplace. In previous work, we represented the knowledge found in a college-level biology textbook in a fashion useful for answering questions. We showed that embedding the knowledge representation and question-answering abilities in an electronic textbook helped to engage student interest and improve learning. A natural question that arises from this success, and this paper's primary focus, is whether a similar approach is applicable across a range of life science textbooks. To answer that question, we considered four different textbooks, ranging from a below-introductory college biology text to an advanced, graduate-level neuroscience textbook. For these textbooks, we investigated the following questions: (1) To what extent is knowledge shared between the different textbooks? (2) To what extent can the same upper ontology be used to represent the knowledge found in different textbooks? (3) To what extent can the questions of interest for a range of textbooks be answered by using the same reasoning mechanisms?ResultsOur existing modeling and reasoning methods apply especially well both to a textbook that is comparable in level to the text studied in our previous work (i.e., an introductory-level text) and to a textbook at a lower level, suggesting potential for a high degree of portability. Even for the overlapping knowledge found across the textbooks, the level of detail covered in each textbook was different, which requires that the representations must be customized for each textbook. We also found that for advanced textbooks, representing models and scientific reasoning processes was particularly important.ConclusionsWith some additional work, our representation methodology would be applicable to a range of textbooks. The requirements for knowledge representation are common across textbooks, suggesting that a shared semantic infrastructure for the life sciences is feasible. Because our representation overlaps heavily with those already being used for biomedical ontologies, this work suggests a natural pathway to include such representations as part of the life sciences curriculum at different grade levels