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"Lang, Kenneth R"
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The life and death of stars
Explains the life cycle of stars, from the dense molecular clouds that are stellar nurseries to the enigmatic nebulae some stars leave behind in their violent ends\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Police Sketches: An Analysis of Witness Confidence, Accuracy, and Conviction Ratings
Researchers have sought to better understand the phenomenology that occurs with eyewitnesses and their recollection of a target when conducting identification processes. Without question, the effects of a sketch have become a part of the analytics in discerning the impact of the witnesses' confidence compared to their accuracy. Yet, there are insufficient studies involving actual police sketches from the field. Of particular interest in this study is how much of the existing research does not represent the reality of what transpires when a police sketch is conducted. Researchers admit the parameters in which their studies are completed are devoid of the actualities from real cases. For example, because participants are in a controlled environment, the case lacks stressors that often accompany the victims and witnesses of crimes who are providing characteristics to generate a sketch. Furthermore, the processes of generating a sketch are not equitable to that of actual investigations. I served as a forensic artist from 2000 to 2013. In this study, I codified the data from my forensic art logbook, conducted a linear regression analysis (ANOVA and ANCOVA) of confidence and accuracy ratings of the sketches, and analyzed the information to the conviction ratings in each case. The analysis revealed that in comparing findings between a larger and smaller group of witnesses' confidence and accuracy ratings, no correlation was found. However, when examining cases using composite sketches and being adjudicated in court, the lower accuracy ratings had no impact on the conviction rating.
Journal Article
Serendipitous Astronomy
Many of the seminal discoveries in astronomy have been unanticipated. Four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei turned his newly constructed spyglass to the skies, and thus began astronomers' use of novel telescopes to explore a universe that is invisible to the unaided eye. The search for the unseen has resulted in many important unexpected discoveries, including Jupiter's four large moons, the planet Uranus, the first asteroid Ceres, the large recession velocities of spiral nebulae, radio emission from the Milky Way, cosmic x-ray sources, gamma-ray bursts, radio pulsars, the binary pulsar with its signature of gravitational radiation, and the cosmic microwave background radiation. The observable universe is a modest part of a much vaster, undiscovered one that remains to be found, often in the least expected ways ( 1 , 2 ).
Journal Article
The Life and Death of Stars
In this well-illustrated text, Kenneth R. Lang explains the life cycle of stars, from the dense molecular clouds that are stellar nurseries to the enigmatic nebulae some stars leave behind in their violent ends. Free of mathematical equations and technical jargon, Lang's lively and accessible text provides physical insights into how stars such as our Sun are born, what fuels them and keeps them bright, how they evolve and the processes by which they eventually die. The book demonstrates the sheer scope and variety of stellar phenomena in the context of the universe as a whole. Boxed focus elements enhance and amplify the discussion for readers looking for more depth. Featuring more than 150 figures, including color plates, The Life and Death of Stars is a modern and up-to-date account of stars written for a broad audience, from armchair astronomers and popular science readers to students and teachers of science.
eBook
The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System
Richly illustrated with full-color images, this book is a comprehensive, up-to-date description of the planets, their moons, and recent exoplanet discoveries. This second edition of a now classic reference is brought up to date with fascinating new discoveries from 12 recent Solar System missions. Examples include water on the Moon, volcanism on Mercury's previously unseen half, vast buried glaciers on Mars, geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus, lakes of hydrocarbons on Titan, encounter with asteroid Itokawa, and sample return from comet Wild 2. The book is further enhanced by hundreds of striking new images of the planets and moons. Written at an introductory level appropriate for undergraduate and high-school students, it provides fresh insights that appeal to anyone with an interest in planetary science. A website hosted by the author contains all the images in the book with an overview of their importance. A link to this can be found at www.cambridge.org/solarsystem.
eBook
Valuation of Ex-offender Motivation for Participation in a Restorative Justice Praxis
Restorative justice (RJ) is an emerging concept of justice in the American penal system that seeks equality for all stakeholders involved. While RJ is vastly under researched—especially concerning RJ and violent offenses—current studies have only focused on determining victims’ motivations for participating in RJ. Determining and evaluating offender motivations for participating in RJ remains unexplored. The purpose of this study was to explore the possible motivations of criminal offenders and their willingness to participate in RJ. The social construction framework and the narrative policy framework were employed to understand the social context. A mixed-method approach was used that began with a semistructured interview of 12 ex-offenders and concluded with all the participants completing a brief questionnaire capturing their demographical information. Participants were previously convicted criminal offenders (i.e., 7 nonviolent and 5 violent) who were no longer under the authority of the judiciary system. The semistructured interviews were analyzed qualitatively and identified six motivations: (a) concern for their reputation, (b) understanding the impact of their crime, (c) explanation of actions, (d) making the victim whole, (e) apologizing to the victim, and (f) apathy towards the victim. MANOVA analysis revealed no significance difference between the groups, except with Motive 3 (explanation of actions) and whether the participant had siblings. However, observed power for this analysis varied at low intervals where only 12 participants were involved. Regardless, the results of this study could have a significant impact on positive social change in RJ because the data informs practitioners how to facilitate RJ interventions better, bringing about efficacy with offenders.
Dissertation
The Sun From Space
In less than a decade, three pioneering spacecraft have transformed our perception of the Sun, examining it with exquisitely sensitive and precise instruments and detecting previously unknown forces that link the Sun to the Earth. They are the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO for short, Ulysses and Yohkoh. This scientific troika has widened the range of our perception, giving us the eyes to see the invisible and the hands to touch what cannot be felt. SOHO, Ulysses and Yohkoh have together provided a renaissance in solar physics. Major new instruments aboard these spacecraft have extended our gaze from the visible solar disk, down to the hidden core of the Sun and out in all directions through the Sun's tenuous expanding atmosphere. They have together provided insights that are vastly more focused and detailed than those of previous solar missions, and have discovered clues to many crucial, unsolved problems in our understanding of the Sun. All three spacecraft keep a careful watch over the Sun as it approaches maximum activity near the turn of the century.
Journal Article
Atomic and Subatomic Particles
Inside the AtomWhat is matter made of? To find out, we might try breaking any material object into increasingly smaller pieces until we reach a stage when the smallest piece cannot be broken apart. The last step in this imaginary, successive division of matter suggests the existence of unseen atoms, a Greek word meaning “indivisible,” or something that cannot be divided further.In the fifth century BC, for example, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus and his mentor Leucippus proposed that all matter is composed of combinations of a small number of separate atoms coming together in different ways. They supposed that all substances are composed of four types of elemental atoms: air, earth, fire, and water. Mud, for example, could be made from earth and water, and fire could turn water into vapor, or air.Then, about two millennia ago, the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus (Lucretius) wrote a wonderful epic poem, in Latin De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe), which described these indestructible atoms that are so exceedingly small that they are invisible and infinitely vast in number. To Lucretius, these atoms were the building blocks of all that exists; the fundamental idea persists to this day. Everything that we see, from a friend to a tree, to the Sun and the stars, consists of innumerable atoms, all moving randomly about, colliding, gathering together, and breaking apart again. The atoms are immortal, the former ingredients of all that existed in the past and the seeds of everything that will exist in the future.All ordinary matter indeed is composed of elemental atoms, and there is a limited number – ninety-four naturally occurring atoms – detected directly on the Earth or in astronomical spectra. These atoms are known also as chemical elements because they cannot be decomposed by chemical means. They are very small and exceedingly numerous. A simple drop of water contains about 100,000 billion billion, or 1023 atoms – close to the number of stars in the universe.
Book Chapter
Comparisons of the Sun with Other Stars
Where and When Can the Stars Be Seen?Go outside and look up at night to locate a familiar bright star or a pattern of stars such as the Big Dipper. To make this sighting, we must get our bearings here on the Earth, as well as in the sky, and also know the time. After all, the stars only come out at night.So, once we know where we are, where the stars are located in the sky, and what time it is, we can become astronomers, from the Greek astronomos for “an arranger of stars.” Then, as the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote in the last line of his Inferno, we can “come forth, to look once more upon the stars.” The Earth has a spherical shape and we can position ourselves on it by using a grid of great circles that specify our longitude and latitude. A great circle divides the sphere in half; the name derives from the fact that no greater circles can be drawn on a sphere.Our planet spins on an axis that is speared through its center and emerges at the two geographic poles, the North and South Poles. A great circle halfway between these poles is called the Equator because it is equally distant from them. Circles of longitude are great circles that pass around the Earth from pole to pole, perpendicular to the Equator. The starting point for measuring longitudes is the great circle passing through the old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, and our longitude is measured westward along the Equator from this reference (Fig. 7.1). Our latitude is the angle measured northward (positive) or southward (negative) along a circle of longitude from the Equator to our place on the Earth.The Earth’s northern rotation axis now points close to Polaris, also known as the North Star or the Pole Star, which would lie approximately overhead when viewed from the Earth’s geographic North Pole. The latitude of any location in the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere is equal, within about 1 degree, to the angular altitude of Polaris. The uncertainty is due to the fact that Polaris is not exactly at the north celestial pole, where the north end of the Earth’s rotation axis pierces the night sky.
Book Chapter