A Recreation to Great Persons: Bowling in Colonial Boston

In 1994 archaeologists working in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, recovered what turned out to be the oldest lawn bowling ball in the New World. This research note is the result of the unexpected public interest in this artifact. The lawn ball belonged to the household of Katherine Nanny Naylor, a wealthy resident of 17th-century Boston. The lawn ball became a starting point for a small research project on the history of bowling in the New World and Puritan attitudes towards recreation in general and bowling in particular. This note opens a discusion of the tension between the need to relax and recreate oneself and Puritan ideas towards appropriate activity and work

Award for Excellence in Service

Mary Beaudry was given the Award for Excellence in Service for encouraging future generations of archaeologists, her commitment and professional service to CNEHA and for her many presentations over the years

Effects of Urbanization on House Sparrow \u3cem\u3e(Passer domesticus)\u3c/em\u3e and House Finch \u3cem\u3e(Haemorhous mexicanus)\u3c/em\u3e Song Propagation

The recent surge in urbanization has increased pollution, which includes both physical pollution (e.g. exhaust) and sensory pollution (e.g., anthropogenic noise). We know birds increase the frequency and amplitude of their song in urban areas to reduce masking by low frequency noise pollution. However, bird song (i.e., a signal) is also affected by the environment and accompanying ambient noise. This study investigates how anthropogenic disturbances alter the ability of birds to communicate. Specifically, we aim to understand how urbanization affects the propagation of bird song by examining differences in active space, or the maximum distance a receiver can detect a signal, across an urbanization gradient. This study utilized the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and the house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus), as both species inhabit urban areas and rely on vocal cues from conspecifics. Songs were recorded in the laboratory and also collected from the Macaulay Library and Stokes Fieldguide to Bird Songs. These songs were played back with a speaker at urban, rural, and suburban locations in Holland, MI, and recorded at a variety of distances up to 100 meters. This set-up mimicked bird communication, with the speaker acting as the sender, the song as the signal, and the recorder as the receiver. We expect bird song in rural areas to have a larger active space compared to urban environments due to lower levels of noise pollution. Analysis of sound files to determine active space will include cross correlations of the playback against the original recorded song. The results of this study will be essential in understanding how urbanization has impacted bird communication; noise pollution may inhibit birds ability to communicate to potential mates or kin

Editors\u27 Introduction

The editors give an introduction to the volume

Thermal Emission and Albedo Spectra of Super Earths with Flat Transmission Spectra

Planets larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are some of the most numerous in the galaxy, but observational efforts to understand this population have proved challenging because optically thick clouds or hazes at high altitudes obscure molecular features (Kreidberg et al. 2014b). We present models of super Earths that include thick clouds and hazes and predict their transmission, thermal emission, and reflected light spectra. Very thick, lofted clouds of salts or sulfides in high metallicity (1000x solar) atmospheres create featureless transmission spectra in the near-infrared. Photochemical hazes with a range of particle sizes also create featureless transmission spectra at lower metallicities. Cloudy thermal emission spectra have muted features more like blackbodies, and hazy thermal emission spectra have emission features caused by an inversion layer at altitudes where the haze forms. Close analysis of reflected light from warm (~400-800 K) planets can distinguish cloudy spectra, which have moderate albedos (0.05-0.20), from hazy models, which are very dark (0.0-0.03). Reflected light spectra of cold planets (~200 K) accessible to a space-based visible light coronagraph will have high albedos and large molecular features that will allow them to be more easily characterized than the warmer transiting planets. We suggest a number of complementary observations to characterize this population of planets, including transmission spectra of hot (>1000 K) targets, thermal emission spectra of warm targets using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), high spectral resolution (R~10^5) observations of cloudy targets, and reflected light spectral observations of directly-imaged cold targets. Despite the dearth of features observed in super Earth transmission spectra to date, different observations will provide rich diagnostics of their atmospheres.Comment: 23 pages, 23 figures. Revised for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

On the Emergent Spectra of Hot Protoplanet Collision Afterglows

We explore the appearance of terrestrial planets in formation by studying the emergent spectra of hot molten protoplanets during their collisional formation. While such collisions are rare, the surfaces of these bodies may remain hot at temperatures of 1000-3000 K for up to millions of years during the epoch of their formation. These object are luminous enough in the thermal infrared to be observable with current and next generation optical/IR telescopes, provided that the atmosphere of the forming planet permits astronomers to observe brightness temperatures approaching that of the molten surface. Detectability of a collisional afterglow depends on properties of the planet's atmosphere -- primarily on the mass of the atmosphere. A planet with a thin atmosphere is more readily detected, because there is little atmosphere to obscure the hot surface. Paradoxically, a more massive atmosphere prevents one from easily seeing the hot surface, but also keeps the planet hot for a longer time. In terms of planetary mass, more massive planets are also easier to detect than smaller ones because of their larger emitting surface areas. We present preliminary calculations assuming a range of protoplanet masses (1-10 M_\earth), surface pressures (1-1000 bar), and atmospheric compositions, for molten planets with surface temperatures ranging from 1000 to 1800 K, in order to explore the diversity of emergent spectra that are detectable. While current 8- to 10-m class ground-based telescopes may detect hot protoplanets at wide orbital separations beyond 30 AU (if they exist), we will likely have to wait for next-generation extremely large telescopes or improved diffraction suppression techniques to find terrestrial planets in formation within several AU of their host stars.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, ApJ manuscript format, accepted into the Ap