An evening recital with Jay Bitner : an honors project

The concept of my senior recital as a honors project began in the fall of 1993. It was at that time my voice teacher, Mary Hagopian, and I began choosing the repertoire that I would sing on April 29th. After much discussion regarding having a balanced and complete program, we settled on two arias from Bach cantatas, Schumann's Dichterliebe, Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring, and Prince Gremin's aria from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin as a suitable program. In the ensuing months of work, it became evident that singing the Russian would prove too difficult a challenge at this point. Due to the deletion of this selection and in the maintenance of balance another aria needed to be inserted. We decided that Ah! un loco insolito would be a good solid aria to close the program with, also adding a different emotion compared with the serious and somber nature of the program's previous material. Now with the absence of the Russian language, we felt we needed to add some French songs to round out the recital. We came across some pieces by Saint-Saens and decided upon Danse Macabre and LAttente. Now we thought we were set. We had a run through of the program in February and it ran about 7 minutes too long. So we decided to cut one of the Bach arias. This was to be the final program.My practice routine also increased. I had two voice lessons a week the entire semester. In addition I spent from five to eight hours a week in the practice rooms working on my material. In April, following the opera production of Menthe's The Consul, I began to increase the intensity of my rehearsal time. I lived and breathed my recital. Recordings of the works by other artists, and recordings of my voice lessons were the only music I listened to for the rest of the month. I watched no television, read no books for pleasure, and devoted almost every waking hour to my recital. In the end the result convinced me I should have begun this routine earlier, but I was impaired by my role in the opera. This is a lesson that I will apply to future recitals.It was in February as well that I decided upon what to do regarding the publicity of my recital. I spoke briefly on the phone with my sister, Carol-Margaret, an artist, and asked if she would be interested in designing my posters for me. She graciously agreed. Over spring break I decided that in addition to the posters I would run off, I could have T-shirts made out of the poster design. This would allow me yet another avenue of getting the word out. Also over the break I designed some invitations with my mothers, which were sent out in early April to selected faculty and friends. By the time April rolled around, I had the T-shirts and matching posters on order, to be delivered on April 15th, a full two weeks prior to the performance. It was the following week when I realized that fifty posters were not going to be enough to gain the desired audience size of 100+. So with the help of my friend Steve Lidy, a graphics arts design major, I designed a new poster from the original concept. We decided to incorporate a black and white photograph of myself into the design. This decision was made because we both thought it was I who would draw people to the performance. After we finished I enlarged it to 11 "X14" and ran off two hundred fifty posters at a village copy outlet. That evening of the 23rd I personally went to every residence hall on campus dropping of 8-12 posters at each hall or complex to be distributed throughout the building. The following day I posted the remaining posters throughout the campus in every academic building. This method of publicity had the desired effect, as there was a head count of 193 people at my recital. Also I sold approximately two dozen T-shirts to friends and another two dozen to family members.Honors CollegeThesis (B.A.

On the probability of occurrence of rogue waves

A number of extreme and rogue wave studies have been conducted theoretically, numerically, experimentally and based on field data in the last years, which have significantly advanced our knowledge of ocean waves. So far, however, consensus on the probability of occurrence of rogue waves has not been achieved. The present investigation is addressing this topic from the perspective of design needs. Probability of occurrence of extreme and rogue wave crests in deep water is here discussed based on higher order time simulations, experiments and hindcast data. Focus is given to occurrence of rogue waves in high sea states

TEXES Observations of Pure Rotational H_2 Emission from AB Aurigae

We present observations of pure rotational molecular hydrogen emission from the Herbig Ae star, AB Aur. Our observations were made using the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Observatory. We searched for H_2 emission in the S(1), S(2), and S(4) lines at high spectral resolution and detected all three. By fitting a simple model for the emission in the three transitions, we derive T = 670 ± 40 K and M = 0.52 ± 0.15 M_⊙ for the emitting gas. On the basis of the 8.5 km s^(-1) FWHM of the S(2) line, assuming the emission comes from the circumstellar disk, and with an inclination estimate of the AB Aur system taken from the literature, we place the location for the emission near 18 AU. Comparison of our derived temperature to a disk structure model suggests that UV and X-ray heating are important in heating the disk atmosphere

The North Sea Andrea storm and numerical simulations

A coupling of a spectral wave model with a nonlinear phase-resolving model is used to reconstruct the evolution of wave statistics during a storm crossing the North Sea on 8–9 November 2007. During this storm a rogue wave (named the Andrea wave) was recorded at the Ekofisk field. The wave has characteristics comparable to the well-known New Year wave measured by Statoil at the Draupner platform 1 January 1995. Hindcast data of the storm at the nearest grid point to the Ekofisk field are here applied as input to calculate the evolution of random realizations of the sea surface and its statistical properties. Numerical simulations are carried out using the Euler equations with a higher-order spectral method (HOSM). Results are compared with some characteristics of the Andrea wave record measured by the down-looking lasers at Ekofisk

Optical and Infrared Light Curves of the Eclipsing X-ray Binary V395 Car = 2S 0921-630

We present results of optical and infrared photometric monitoring of the eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary V395 Car (2S 0921-630). Our observations reveal a clear, repeating orbital modulation with an amplitude of about one magnitude in B, and V and a little less in J. Combining our data with archival observations spanning about 20 years, we derive an updated ephemeris with orbital period 9.0026+/-0.0001d. We attribute the modulation to a combination of the changing aspect of the irradiated face of the companion star and eclipses of the accretion disk around the neutron star. Both appear to be necessary as a secondary eclipse of the companion star is clearly seen. We model the B, V, and J lightcurves using a simple model of an accretion disk and companion star and find a good fit is possible for binary inclinations of 82.2+/-1.0 degrees. We estimate the irradiating luminosity to be about 8x10^35 erg/s, in good agreement with X-ray constraints.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA

Moving from a Product-Based Economy to a Service-Based Economy for a More Sustainable Future

Traditionally, economic growth and prosperity have been linked with the availability, production and distribution of tangible goods as well as the ability of consumers to acquire such goods. Early evidence regarding this connection dates back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), in which any activity not resulting in the production of a tangible good is characterized as unproductive of any value." Since then, this coupling of economic value and material production has been prevalent in both developed and developing economies throughout the world. One unintended consequence of this coupling has been the exponential increase in the amount of solid waste being generated. The reason is that any production and consumption of material goods eventually generates the equivalent amount of (or even more) waste. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that, with today's manufacturing and supply chain management technologies, it has become cheaper to dispose and replace most products rather than to repair and reuse them. This has given rise to what some call a disposable society." To put things in perspective: In 2012 households in the U.K. generated approximately 22 thousand tons of waste, which amounted to 411 kg of waste generated per person (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2015). During the same time period, households in the U.S. generated 251 million tons of waste, which is equivalent to a person generating approximately 2 kg of waste every day (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2012). Out of these 251 million tons of total waste generated, approximately 20% of the discarded items were categorized as durable goods. The disposal of durable goods is particularly worrisome because they are typically produced using material from non- renewable resources such as iron, minerals, and petroleum-based raw materials

Climate Change and invasibility of the Antarctic benthos

Benthic communities living in shallow-shelf habitats in Antarctica (<100-m depth) are archaic in their structure and function. Modern predators, including fast-moving, durophagous (skeleton-crushing) bony fish, sharks, and crabs, are rare or absent; slow-moving invertebrates are the top predators; and epifaunal suspension feeders dominate many soft substratum communities. Cooling temperatures beginning in the late Eocene excluded durophagous predators, ultimately resulting in the endemic living fauna and its unique food-web structure. Although the Southern Ocean is oceanographically isolated, the barriers to biological invasion are primarily physiological rather than geographic. Cold temperatures impose limits to performance that exclude modern predators. Global warming is now removing those physiological barriers, and crabs are reinvading Antarctica. As sea temperatures continue to rise, the invasion of durophagous predators will modernize the shelf benthos and erode the indigenous character of marine life in Antarctica

HD 101088, An Accreting 14 AU Binary in Lower Centaurus Crux With Very Little Circumstellar Dust

We present high resolution (R=55,000) optical spectra obtained with MIKE on the 6.5 m Magellan Clay Telescope as well as Spitzer MIPS photometry and IRS low resolution (R~60) spectroscopy of the close (14 AU separation) binary, HD 101088, a member of the ~12 Myr old southern region of the Lower Centaurus Crux (LCC) subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association. We find that the primary and/or secondary is accreting from a tenuous circumprimary and/or circumsecondary disk despite the apparent lack of a massive circumbinary disk. We estimate a lower limit to the accretion rate of > 1x10^-9 solar masses per year, which our multiple observation epochs show varies over a timescale of months. The upper limit on the 70 micron flux allows us to place an upper limit on the mass of dust grains smaller than several microns present in a circumbinary disk of 0.16 moon masses. We conclude that the classification of disks into either protoplanetary or debris disks based on fractional infrared luminosity alone may be misleading.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, ApJ accepte

The ‘T-Shaped Buyer’: a transactional perspective on supply chain relationships

This paper challenges the normative view of interdependent buyer-seller relationships and provides a more holistic perspective of the contextual reality that shapes buyer behaviour. By proposing an innovative qualitative methodology, which focusses on boundary-spanning, pre-sales interactions, the research penetrates complex and commercially sensitive buyer-seller relationships. The longitudinal research design uses web-based diaries and follow-up interviews to explore conditions of power based interdependence between buyers and sellers. The ensuing data is mapped using qualitative content analysis and the results are aggregated graphically for assessment. Using this approach the study develops a nuanced view of the dominant patterns of buyer behaviour, and challenges the opinion that a search for competitive advantage will strengthen cooperative relationships in conditions of power based interdependence. The paper introduces the metaphor of the 'T-Shaped Buyer' to explain the empirical findings and, while acknowledging the contextual limits of the study, suggests that this metaphor may cause both academics and practitioners to reflect on normative thinking