Ay 141: Research Conference in Astronomy (2003-2004)
a.k.a. ``Journal Club"

Policies

In order to pass this "communications" class you must:

attend

ask questions or make comments as a member of the audience

present one or more quality talks according to the rules outlined below.

Every astronomy graduate student beyond the first year is expected to give two journal club presentations over the 2003-2004 academic year. Undergraduates signed up for the course are expected to do the same, or if signed up for less than all three terms, one presentation per term enrolled. On occasion there may be talks by postdocs, staff, or faculty. Attendance and participation by all interested parties is encouraged.

Talks (ideally more like discussions) are on Fridays from 4:00-5:00pm in 106 Robinson and are generally followed by refreshments out-of-doors or indoors during the middle of winter term.

The first journal club talk should be based on a paper chosen from the literature (including preprints). Papers must be approved in advance. The paper may be chosen from the journals or preprint servers over the past several months, or from a poorly populated list assembled by Wal and Lynne (if there is sufficient interest this list can be augmented; please let us know). Acceptable papers must meet the following two conditions: 1) refereeing must already have occurred and 2) no authors amongst the first five can be affiliated at present with Caltech. The goal of this presentation is to have the student speak on a topic outside of his/her main research area. The second of the talks can be either on a paper or on a single topic of the presenter's own research. Yes, this is a one-year-only change in policy. Senior graduate students close to completion of the PhD are encouraged to give a talk summarizing the thesis.

A good speaker will

give sufficient (but not too much) background material

motivate the new work and indicate why the paper was deemed interesting

describe techniques/methods and results

evaluate rigorousness of conclusions

put the present paper into the context of other work.

Please consider having your paper chosen by Friday of the week before the presentation date so that you can discuss it with the class organizers for approval. In order to sufficiently publicize each week's journal club, we ask that each presenter email the talk title *and* an html-formatted link to the work being presented to lah@astro. Also, to everyone, please point out any errors you notice on these web pages.

Schedule

Spring Term

April 2	Edo Berger Alicia Soderberg	Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources: An Overview Ultra-high Redshift Galaxies -- articles by Pello et al. and Kneib et al. LINK and LINK in addition to follow-up articles LINK and LINK
April 9	Joanna Brown Ben Grannett	An Observational Signature of Evolved Oceans on Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets , Jura LINK relevant to observations: LINK A multibeam HI survey of the Virgo Cluster , Davies et al. LINK
April 16	Dave Sand Luke Kotredes	Galaxy mass and luminosity scaling laws determined by weak gravitational lensing , McKay et al. LINK Low mass stars, brown dwarf candidates and the mass function of the young open cluster NGC 2547 , Jeffries et al LINK
April 23	Josh Eisner Chiao Bian	High-Resolution Spectroscopy of FU Orionis Stars , Herbig et al and High Resolution Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of FU Ori Objects, Hartmann et al LINK1 and LINK2 A search for low surface brightness dwarf galaxies in different environments LINK
April 30	Sirin Caliskan Sean Moran	Formaldehyde Abundances in Low Mass (Class 0) Protostars LINK1, LINK2, LINK3 The Dynamical Influence of a Planet at Semimajor Axis 3.4 AU on the Dust Around Epsilon Eridani LINK
May 7	Laura Hainline Melissa Enoch	Observing CO Emission in High-Redshift QSOs with OVRO (own research) LINK The history of astrophysics in Antarctica , Indermuehle et al. LINK
May 14	Nevin Weinberg Cathy Slesnick	Intermediate Mass Black Holes: Observational Constraints and Formation Scenarios , Colbert and Miller LINK1, LINK2 X-ray emission from saturn , Ness et al. LINK
May 21	Francis O'Donovan Stuartt Corder	The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission Gehrels et al. LINK Spiral Arm Spurs in M51 (own research) LINK
May 28	NO CLASS (rescheduled to following week)
June 4	Margaret Pan Alison Farmer	KH 15D LINK1 and LINK2 Planetary Aurorae, Overview

Winter Term

January 9	Sean Moran Joanna Brown	Spectroscopic follow-up of FIRBACK-South bright galaxies , Patris et al. LINK The Deuterium-to-Oxygen Ratio in the Interstellar Medium , Hebrard & Moos LINK
January 16	Margaret Pan Ben Granett	A collimated, high-speed outflow from the dying star V Hydrae , Sahai et al LINK The galactic habitable zone and the age distribution of complex life in the milky way , Lineweaver et al LINK
January 23	Lewis Kotredes Sirin Caliskan	Solar Neutrino Constraints on the BBN Production of Li , Cyburt et al. LINK The Historical Growth of Telescope Aperture , Racine LINK
January 30	Micol Christopher Francis O'Donovan	HCN and HCO+ OVRO Observations of the Galactic Center: Implications for Star Formation in the Central Parsec (own research) Long-term variability in the X-ray emission of RX J0720.4-3125 , de Vries et al LINK
February 6	Chao Bian Elina Brobeck	What can we learn from nearby AGNs , Ho LINK Gravitational Waves from Extragalactic Inspiraling Binaries: Selection Effects and Expected Detection Rates , Nutzman et al. LINK
February 13	Kartik Sheth David Kaplan	The Environmental Dependence of the Relations between Stellar Mass, Structure, Star Formation and Nuclear Activity in Galaxies LINK , ????
February 20	George Becker Stan Metchev	Radiative transfer through the Intergalactic Medium Bolton, Meiksin, & White LINK A Survey for Brown Dwarfs with Palomar Adaptive Optics (own research)
February 27	Alicia Soderberg Naveen Reddy	???? Warm Dust and Aromatic Bands as Quantitative Probes of Star-Formation Activity LINK
March 5	Dawn Erb Kevin Bundy	???? Type 1a Supernova Discoveries at z>1 From the HST: Evidence for Past Deceleration and Constraints on Dark Energy Evolution. , Riess et al. LINK

Fall Term

October 3	Elina Brobeck Bryan Jacoby	The CHICOS (California High school Cosmic ray Observatory) Project , LINK Pulsar timing research
October 10	Stan Metchev Micol Christopher	The First Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Abazajian et al., LINK The Research Productivity of Small Telescopes and Space Telescopes Ringwald et al., LINK
October 17	Edo Berger TBD	??? TBD
October 24	Melissa Enoch Stuartt Corder	Intrinsic spectral blueshifts in rapidly rotating stars? Madsen et al. LINK Possible reasons and models for the eruption of V838 Mon LINK 1 and LINK 2
October 31	Alison Farmer Josh Eisner	??? ???
November 7	Cathy Slesnick Dawn Erb	The Giant Pillars of the Carina Nebula , Rathborne et al. LINK The Metallicity of Pregalactic Globular Clusters: The Observational Consequences of the First Stars , Beasley et al.
November 14	Nevin Weinberg Kevin Bundy	Bondi Accretion and the Problem of the Missing Isolated Neutron Stars Perna et al. (2003) ApJ, 594, 936 own research
November 21	Naveen Reddy Laura Hainline	Discovery of Globular Clusters in the Proto-Spiral NGC 2915: Implications for Hierarchical Galaxy Evolution LINK The Extragalactic Origin of the Arcturus Group Navarro et al LINK
November 28	no class
December 5	George Becker David Kaplan	First stars V - Abundance patterns from C to Zn and supernova yields in the early Galaxy Cayrel et al, LINK Searching for Compact Sources in Supernova Remnants (own research)

Last Revised: 20 March by LAH

Ay 141: Research Conference in Astronomy (2003-2004) a.k.a. ``Journal Club"

Policies

Schedule

Ay 141: Research Conference in Astronomy (2003-2004)
a.k.a. ``Journal Club"