Geographical Notes

Abstract

To improve student retention and to combat problems of declining enrollments, many colleges are turning to freshman or first year experience (FYE) programs. These programs are designed to aid students in the transition to college, and in doing so make students more satisfied and more successful in their new environments. FYE programs are offered in many forms, one of which is to offer FYE instruction as an integral part of the existing curriculum. Using existing courses makes the inclusion of introductory geography courses viable for FYE programs. The inclusion of FYE-related materials in an Introduction to Geography course, as illustrated here, can result in greater student satisfaction with faculty and the institution as a whole, higher rates of retention, and student skill development without a significant loss in geographic course content. Although the resulting improvements may be modest, when projected over an entire incoming class, even small gains may affect significant numbers of students. Participation in FYE may give geography programs greater exposure to incoming students and could help to attract new majors to the discipline.     

银盘外区的翘曲结构

银盘外区存在翘曲结构和近边增厚现象已是不争的观测事实.自20世纪50年代通过中性氢的射电观测发现此类结构以来,对不同示踪天体(包括各类星族1天体、分子云、星际尘埃、老年恒星等)的观测都确认了这一重要发现.关于翘曲结构已提出若干形成机制,但尚未达成共识.     

The power of imaging spectroscopy

I demonstrate with examples from the Galactic centre the astronomical potency of imaging spectroscopy, derived by scanning a slit across a portion of sky to produce a data cube with one spectral and two spatial dimensions.     

依巴谷星表中的经典造父变星及其距离尺度

依巴谷星表给出了223颗经典造父变星的天体测量和光度观测资料。根据近年来的光谱和光度观测成果,从不同渠道收集了有关视向速度和光度等资料。基于Feast和Catchpole建立的PL关系,给出造父变星的距离估计。     

利用波浪频谱数值模拟畸形波的方法探究

畸形波是一种特殊的波浪,它的波高极高,波峰尖瘦,能量很集中[1].图1是一个比较典型的畸形波[1],这个波列的有效波高是5.65 m,而其中的畸形波波高是有效波高的3.19倍,达到了18.04 m,波峰的高度是13.90 m,波的周期是9.8 s,畸形程度很大.最有名的畸形波是图2给出的1995-01-01-15:20在北海Draupner石油平台记录的波高25.6m的“新年波”,1 200 s长的观测记录显示当时的有效波高是11.92 m,波峰的高度达到18.4 m.由水深70 m,畸形波的特征周期12 s,根据线性色散关系得出波长为220 m.     

短期大规模人口流动对上海市城市热岛效应的影响

城市热岛效应是一种非常重要的局地气候现象,随着全球变暖和城市化快速发展,城市热岛效应受到越来越多的关注和研究。以往的研究表明人口聚集和人口数量对城市热岛效应和区域城市气候会产生显著的影响。但是,人口短期的快速迁移流动对城市气候是否存在影响以及影响的程度多大尚不清楚。本文利用世界上每年最大规模的人类迁徙——春节人口流动来探讨人口短期快速流动对国际化大都市上海城市热岛效应的影响。研究结果表明,2000~2015年上海市春节周日最高温、日均温和日最低温城市热岛强度分别为0.35℃、0.90℃和1.53℃,相对于背景场(春节前2~4周和春节后2~4周的平均值),分别低了0.16℃、0.11℃和0.15℃,相对变化分别为31.4%、10.9%和8.9%。由此可见,人口短期快速迁移流动是影响热岛效应和城市气候一个重要因素,但是人口流动对城市热岛效应的影响是复杂的,其效应与气候背景、天气状况、城市规模、城市人口流动特征及分布甚至城市烟花爆竹燃放(通过影响气溶胶、云量及废热影响城市热岛效应)等因素交织在一起,未来仍需开展进一步的深入研究。     

Molecular clouds and star formation in the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way

Star formation is a fundamental process that dominates the life-cycle of various matters in galaxies: Stars are formed in molecular clouds, and the formed stars often affect the surrounding materials strongly via their UV photons, stellar winds, and supernova explosions. It is therefore revealing the distribution and properties of molecular gas in a galaxy is crucial to investigate the star formation history and galaxy evolution. Recent progress in developing millimeter and sub-millimeter wave receiver systems has enabled us to rapidly increase our knowledge on molecular clouds. In this proceedings, the recent results from the surveys of the molecular clouds in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds as well as the Galactic center as the most active regions in the Milky Way are presented. The high sensitivity with unrivaled high resolution of ALMA will play a key role in detecting denser gas that is tightly connected to star formation.     

Kinematic parameters of the galactic spiral pattern from data on open star clusters and OB stars

Data on the positions, radial velocities, and proper motions of open star clusters and OB stars are used to obtain the rotation curve of the Galaxy fitted by a polynomial in inverse powers of the distances from the Galactic rotation axis. We determine the locations of the corotation region and the inner and outer Lindblad resonances using a previously estimated pattern speed. Based on data for objects of the Carina-Sagittarius and Orion arms, we have determined the distortion amplitudes of the velocity field of the Galactic disk, ?_R = ?3.97±4.79 km s^?1 and f_θ=+13.27±2.57 km s^?1.     

Very high energy γ-rays from galactic sources

The field of Very High Energy (VHE) gamma ray astronomy using the Atmospheric Cerenkov Technique has entered an interesting phase with detection of various galactic and extragalactic sources. Among galactic sources, only the Crab nebula has been established as a standard candle. Most observations on pulsars are in agreement as to the necessity for the GeV spectra to steepen at < 200 GeV. While the Imaging method for increase of sensitivity has been successful with many results, an alternate technique —Wavefront Sampling Technique- is also being used by an increasing number of experiments. The recently commissioned experiment at Pachmarhi (PACT) in India is presented as an example of this technique. Preliminary results from this experiment show detection of VHE γ-ray emission from (a) the Crab nebula at a high significance and (b) Crab and Geminga pulsars at > 1.5 TeV which could be the second component of the Outer Gap pulsar models.     

Hidden broad line regions and anisotropy in AGN

We discuss the recent advances made in the search for hidden broad line regions in Seyfert and Narrow Line Radio Galaxies (NLRG) using both spectropolarimetry and infrared spectroscopy/spectropolarimetry. Two important results which support the Grand Unification Theory are presented. In the first of these we report that the famous Seyfert 1 NGC 4151 has a scattered component to its broad line region, and is most likely an object where we view obliquely into its occulting torus. In the second, we show high signal to noise observations of scattered broad lines in the NLRG of 3C 234.