Office Hours triumphantly returns! In this thrilling installment, we talk with Matthew Godbey from English and Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby from MCL. Talking points include the secret origins and evolution of the vampire, the cultural renaissance of the zombie narrative, and a bit about local events concerning the Winchester mural.
A recent online article contemplated what life might look like if there were a cure for sleep, and the possible sociological impacts that would follow.
You may think of comets as gossamer, cloudy objects that grace our skies from time-to-time. All that gas and dust has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is a dusty ball of ice, the comet nucleus. Only when that dirty snowball gets close to the Sun will it begin to grow a visible tail. The European Space Agency is attempting a space exploration first, to land a probe on a comet while still far enough from the Sun that the snowball is largely quiescent. The landing is scheduled for 11AM EST on November 12. There will be a live feed from ESA, here: #CometLanding webcast.
The MacAdam Student Observatory staff are pleased to welcome the public to our facility. We present a program of public outreach on the second Thursday of every month. A 40-minute presentation on astronomy will be held in the Chemistry-Physics Building, before moving across the street to the observatory, weather permitting. Note that the temperature at the telescope is the same as it is outside. The Observatory is located on Parking Structure #2 on the University of Kentucky campus on this map.)
Parking Note: Guests for the monthly SkyTalk that bring vehicles should plan on leaving them in Parking Structure #2, next to the observatory. Visitors that park elsewhere are subject to citation. Some streets near the observatory will be closed due to construction intermittently over the next few years. The recommended path to Parking Structure #2 is outlined in red, here: 2014-Sept Directions with street closures.pdf.
The imprint of primordial gravitational radiation on the cosmic microwave background polarization, if observed, is considered smoking gun proof of inflation. I will discuss how such an observation can not only provide information about the Universe in the epoch of inflation but also constrain theories of grand unification. In the second part of the talk I will discuss tests of gravity on scales ranging from the tabletop to the cosmological scale. Such tests may shed light on physics beyond the standard model.
Refreshments will be served in CP 179 at 3:15 PM
The average rate at which galaxies are forming stars in the Universe has decreased by more than an order of magnitude over the last 10 billion years. Understanding why certain galaxies shut off their star formation activity, while others do not is one of the key unanswered questions in astrophysics today. Observations in the local Universe suggest that the mechanism responsible for quenching star formation in galaxies may be intimately linked to both their mass assembly and their structural transformation from disks to spheroids. In order to test quenching scenarios, however, it is vital to look beyond the local Universe and identify the first generation of quiescent, "red and dead" galaxies at high redshift. I will discuss my work studying the rest-frame visible morphologies of the first massive systems to appear on the quiescent "red sequence" at redshifts z>1, when the universe was less than half its current age. Interestingly, a significant fraction (~30%) have morphologies dominated by massive exponential disks. The persistence of massive disks, long after star formation has ceased, implies that in at least some cases quenching precedes morphological transformation. I will examine what constraints these observations place on the mechanisms responsible for quenching the first generation of passive galaxies at z~2 and discuss them in context with an emerging picture of massive galaxy formation and evolution. Refreshments will be served in CP 179 at 3:15 PM
Recently published in Earth Surface Processes & Landforms: Anastamosing Channels in the Lower Neches River Valley, Texas. The abstract is below:
Active and semi-active anastomosing Holocene channels upstream of the delta in the lower valley of the meandering Neches River in southeast Texas represent several morphologically distinct and hydrologically independent channel systems. These appear to have a common origin as multi-thread crevasse channels strongly influenced by antecedent morphology. Levee breaching leads to steeper cross-valley flows toward floodplain basins associated with Pleistocene meander scars, creating multi-thread channels that persist due to additional tributary contributions and ground water inputs. Results are consistent with the notion of plural systems where main channels, tributaries, and sub-channels may have different morphologies and hydrogeomorphic functions. The adjacent Trinity and Sabine Rivers have similar environmental controls, yet the Trinity lacks evidence of extensive anastomosing channels on its floodplain, and those of the Sabine appear to be of different origin. The paper highlights the effects of geographical and historical contingency and hydrological idiosyncrasy.
I recently watched an episode of the Syfy Channel’s post-apocalyptic zombie show Z-Nation. The human survivors were making their way across the U.S. Midwest when a massive tornado spun up, picking up zombies and flinging them all over the place.
“Is that what I think it is?” asks one character, observing the oncoming cyclone of the undead. “It ain’t sharks,” says his companion. This is, of course, a reference to the infamous “Sharknado” movie in which a tornado at sea (technically a waterspout, I reckon) sucks up a bunch of sharks and blows them into Los Angeles. Sharknado is, by all accounts, a thoroughly ridiculous movie with no scientific validity.
The tornado in the background is just about to suck up these flesh-eating freaks from beyond the grave to form an un-deadly Z-nado!
This movie poster tells you all you need to know.
Professor of Sociology Dwight Billings recently appeared as a guest on BBC World Service Radio to talk about hillbilly stereotypes. Billings says there has always been an interest in the American “other” – an interest that seems to have contrasting parts of fascination and fear.
August 2014: my activist, academic, and journalistic lives collided in a digitized split-second. Online, I came face-to-surreal-face with ISIS’ execution of a colleague, terrified for the haunting film’s second captive—a friend. Although immersed professionally and personally in graphic image wars, this video proved especially disturbing, but why? Marketing’s analytical frame, strategic deployment of popular culture, and the intended audience of young, digitally networked “global citizens” best contextualizes the ISIS phenomenon: a propaganda blitzkrieg rooted in commodified rebellion’s consumption (Che t-shirts), not theology. ISIS exemplifies the paradoxical power of cultural production in contemporary geopolitical combat theater—war’s increasingly symbolic terrain.
Amanda E. Rogers holds a PhD from Emory (2013). She is an academic, journalist, artist, and political analyst whose work appears in numerous forums, including the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and the New York Times. Her forthcoming monograph, Semiotics of Rebellion From Morocco to Egypt: Advertising Revolution and Marketing Allegiance, focuses on the critical use of politicized cultural discourse for international alliances, regional stability, and intra nation-state image warfare.
With funding from Chellgren Center.
http://finearts.uky.edu/events/art/black-flags-isis-%E2%80%9Cswag%E2%80…;
For decades, many linguists have framed the study of language in terms of a language faculty, a specialized cognitive ‘organ’ unique to humans. In the last decade, even the most stalwart proponents of this view have come to acknowledge the existence of other factors in the organization of human languages. In this talk, I will concentrate on two of these factors, embodiment and competition, drawing examples from the morphology of spoken and signed languages. Neither is unique to language, nor especially human or cognitive in nature. Their role in the structuring of languages points to a new research paradigm in the study of language, in which no single factor is privileged and the importance of any one of them is gauged only by the insights it provided, not by its uniqueness to language.
