Special Chance And A Small Plea

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Texan

Ok, I have a mission for you.  Surely you have heard something about this by now, but there will be a solar eclipse Sunday evening (for you, Monday morning for me).  This isn’t a blot-out-the-sun-completely type eclipse, this one will be what is known as an annular eclipse.

The orbit of the Moon isn’t a perfect circle, so sometimes it is closer to the Earth than others.  For example, you may have heard that our last full moon was a ‘supermoon’ because the closest point in its orbit happened to coincide very closely with its full phase.  Well, during the new moon phase the Moon will be slightly farther from Earth than average and therefore will appear slightly smaller (the difference is unnoticeable unless you really, really pay attention and even then it isn’t huge).  A side effect of which is that the Moon will not be large enough in the sky to completely block out the Sun as it passes in front of it.  There will be a ring of light around the dark Moon.

Unfortunately, I am not in a place where this awesome sight will be visible.  BUT, some of you will.  Go to this website and find a city close to you.  This will show an animation with what you can expect to see and what times it will happen in a table below the animation.  Below that table will be a list of other upcoming eclipses that will be visible from that location so you can make plans ahead of time – as in decades.  At any rate, this will give you an idea of when it will happen in your area and what it should look like.

Now then, weather permitting, I would LOVE to get some pictures from some of you who will be able to see the annular phase.  Pictures before, during and after would be great, although it will be happening around sunset for you, so you will only get pictures before and possibly during the annular phase.  I will be looking at the exact same Sun and Moon you are, but it will be early morning here and the eclipse will only be partial.  I’ll try to get some pictures from here and post them, but if any of you can see the eclipse and will take a picture or two and send it to me I will be VERY grateful.  Obviously, this doesn’t happen very often so it is a pretty special event.  There is an even more rare event happening in a couple of weeks that I will post about soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Again, PLEASE get a picture of the eclipse for me if you can.  My email is somewhere here on the blog (if you don’t already know it) so snap a few pictures and send it my way – I’ll even take crappy/blurry cellphone pictures if that’s all you can do.  Spread the word to those you know (forward this post along if you want) and I hope you will at least get a chance to go out and watch it.  If you have (or know) kids you should take them out to see it as well – it’s a pretty impressive sight and could spark an interest in science, the Heavens, and maybe even astronomy.

So what are you waiting for??  Go to the website, dust off your camera, and make plans to go see an amazing sight Sunday night!

Categories: "Magic" | Leave a comment

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Reggie

“Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.” – Lin Yutang

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” – Rudyard Kipling

 

It’s the evening of May 13th here in China, and I can say I was blessed to have a wonderful Mother’s Day.  I spent today entirely with my family, and I am extremely grateful for that.  I received my first gift that my daughters picked on their own this year too.  It was… interesting!  I knew it would be something a little different when the girls and their daddy set off yesterday to do the shopping!  The girls decided they wanted to buy me a gift from IKEA.  I had asked for something I thought would be easy… flowers.  I received silk flowers and two potted plants, as well as two picture frames, and chocolates.  All of which the girls picked.  I’m not really a fan of things I have to try to keep alive, so the silk flowers are great.  The potted plants will be interesting though!  I’ve already found pictures for one of the frames as well!  All of which will be great additions for my desk at work!  I’m very proud of the girls for picking out the gifts on their own.  I’m even more proud of their dedication.  The girls walked almost two miles to IKEA to buy those things.  I think that’s pretty impressive for two preschool kids!

I am truly blessed by my children!  They are each so amazingly different, yet absolutely perfect in their own way!

My husband and I had items delivered to our mothers at work on Friday.  Not being able to be with them on Mother’s Day, we wanted others to tell them how great they are.  My mother-in-law received flowers, while my mom who isn’t a big fan of flowers had an edible arrangement delivered!  I think they both enjoyed their gifts.  We are really blessed to have their love and support!  We love them each very much!

To the rest of the moms reading this, I hope you have an amazing day with your family!  I hope your family realizes the hard work you put in to being the amazing mother you are!!

Categories: Family, Living | Comments Off

At Long Last

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Texan

No, not the fact that I haven’t posted here in a while – although it has – the title is referring to something that has been even longer in the making.  I haven’t posted much about my job lately so let me catch everybody back up.

First of all, I may or may not have mentioned that I got a raise (I think I’ve mentioned here).  The raise was pretty substantial (1/3 of my salary) so my boss(es) must be happy with what I’ve done the past year.  Unfortunately, that first year did not see me publish my own first-author paper.  I worked on a couple of papers that got published – ones where I was a co-author – and some others that should be published in the near future, but I didn’t get a paper through where I was the lead author.  Being a co-author on a paper really isn’t that big of a deal.  A lot of times people are added to papers for very minor contributions, so you never really know how much work each individual did when looking at the authors of a paper.  For example, one of the papers I was a co-author on I did quite a bit of work on.  I helped with some of the data analysis, plots for the paper, and revising the English to make it easier to get through.  For another one I am on that was submitted fairly recently I only ran a program I developed for my dissertation work on another guys set of data so he could have another set of values to compare with what he already had (I also corrected a minor problem and the English on that paper too), so my contribution was very minor in comparison.

Back before I was doing astronomy I worked on a couple of projects that had some publications.  I worked my butt off during that time, and was basically doing it for free, but my name was added to about a dozen papers for my effort.  I was only directly involved with the writing of a few of them, but the work I had done in various other areas made me worthy of inclusion in the author list for the rest.  As a side note, some of the papers I was on had 200+ authors, a few had 500+ and one had 3000+ authors.  Obviously, may name near the very bottom of the list was basically meaningless.  Furthermore, none of those papers during that time do a thing to help me now – no one cares that I was a co-author for a paper in high energy physics when they are looking for an astronomer.

I did, however, write a dissertation and I obtained my PhD.  In many places it is customary, if not expected, to have published work before you receive your PhD.  Luckily for me, TTU was not one of them.  My situation was probably a little different than many other people, though, because there was no real astronomy department or group at TTU when I was there – there was a single astronomer, who was my adviser, and he has since left.  Not having a group to work with or for help really limits your ability to publish scientific articles.  I did, however, submit my dissertation work (in a modified form) for publication in a major journal.

That was over 2 years ago.  It was ‘rejected’ (sent back for revisions) twice.  I suppose the third time is the charm, though, because several days ago I got an email that started off with:

Dear Dr. Carrell,

I am pleased to tell you that your paper has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

FINALLY!  I wish you all knew the relief, pride, and excitement I felt when I read that email.  As I’ve said, I’ve been on other papers before, and even contributed a non-trivial amount of work for several.  This is my very first first-author paper, though, and even though it is long overdue, I am very happy.  The paper is basically half my PhD dissertation – we had to cut a lot out and change the entire thing so much it is not really recognizable as such, but it is more or less a good chunk of my dissertation.  I had to redo the entire analysis procedure (which took roughly a full year after the initial rejection) and change many things throughout the entire paper, which is part of the reason it took so long.  The person who deems papers worthy or not always remains anonymous, although they know your information, and the reports I got back from them were pretty rough.  I knew the work was good, though, and some of the suggested changes were good ideas.  Some weren’t, but in order to get the paper through I had to make the referee and the editor happy, so I changed some things I didn’t completely agree with as well.

I submitted another paper several months ago and have received an initial rejection on it as well, so I’ve got a little work to do on it, but no where near what I had to go through on the first.  Hopefully that one will be accepted and published later this summer.  I’m also working on some other things so hopefully in the not too distant future I will have several first-author papers to my name, but for now, I can finally say that I’ve published an article in a prestigious scientific journal.  The competitiveness in the job market is not slacking up, so getting a few more articles under my belt is essential, but I’ve at least taken the first step, which is always the hardest.

The article is in the ‘proof’ stage right now, which means they are preparing the document for publication and will send it to me for final approval (to check the figures and for typos).  Once I know the final details I will certainly post it all on here.  Most journals have gone or are going paperless, and buying an article (either in physical or online form) is pretty expensive.  I’ll have a copy of the published version, though, so if anyone is interested in seeing/reading it let me know – PLEASE don’t buy the article, it will be the exact same PDF file I can give you for free.

Finally, and at long last, I can call myself a ‘real’ scientist now because I’ve got my own paper out there.  Of course, this really doesn’t change anything, just looks a little better on a CV and hopefully will help a little in getting a future job.

Categories: Work | 2 Comments

Ouch

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Texan

Ok, I knew that I’m not the same guy who could stay up all night drinking ‘adult beverages’ while playing Goldeneye with my friends and then go play some pickup games at the basketball courts at the rec center the next day, but this is ridiculous.  I’ve been pretty hard at work lately, and by ‘hard at work’ I obviously mean I do a lot of sitting and focusing on my computer screen.  So, I figured I didn’t want to be like Jack and become a dull boy, so when a colleague at KIAA asked if I wanted to go play a little basketball on Sunday I decided I would give it a try.  The guy is pretty nice and I’ve probably known him longer than anyone else in Beijing – I met him on my trip here before I was hired.  It’s funny because I think he is friendly, but he is also British, which as far as I know is not often said in the same sentence.  Anyway, when my loving wife had no problem with me going and leaving her with the kids the alarms should have started going off in my head.  Now then, before you rush to the end of the post to see if one of the kids got hurt or if they are alright, they are fine, it is me that is suffering.

First of all, I don’t know what it is in the air, I assume it is some sort of cottonwood or something, but it is all over the place right now.  And I haven’t had allergies in a really long time, but I haven’t been feeling the best for about a week now.  I met my friend at a subway station and then we caught a bus and walked the rest of the way.  As we walked there were places under groups of trees where it looked like snow had fallen and you couldn’t walk more than a few steps without having to swat the floating white blobs out of your face.  We joked about eating them while we played basketball, and thinking back now I probably digested quite a bit as much air as I was sucking after the first few games.  I don’t think that helped.  Anyway, we made it to the park and Shaq shaq was there to greet us (I assume that is who this is supposed to be).  Luckily no one near as good or large as him was there playing.

I’ve always considered myself fairly athletic – I played sports in high school, but it was Mertzon, so as long as you wanted to play you got to.  I’m short, but I’m not slow (well, I’m slower now than I used to be) so I’m not terrible at most sports.  Also, I’m in China, which means that in comparison I am basically Godzilla.  In any case, I’m not the short white dude here, I’m the American (which I correct as often as possible, I’m not ‘American’ I’m ‘Texan’).  I told the British guy I was a little worried because I hadn’t played in over a year and he said I should be fine because I’m American and all Americans are good at basketball so I better represent my country well.  He was only half-joking.  The last time I played basketball was when I was coaching in Mertzon and I didn’t really play then, I just showed a few of the high schoolers that old guys could play a little basketball too.  And other than a few bike rides, I really haven’t had any physical exercise since that time either.  But how hard can it be, right?  I’m not that old…

Evidently flipping the numbers in my age from 23 to 32 makes a huge difference.  I played just fine, sure I missed shots and missed everything more than once, but so did everyone else.  Luckily there were 6 of us that came together – me, the British guy, a guy from Lithuania (I think), and 3 Chinese guys – and the games were 4 on 4 so I was more than happy to sit out after a game or two.  It was half court and I did my best to pace myself because I really didn’t want to puke on the court, no one wants to be that guy.  We won some games and lost some games.  It wasn’t unbearably hot and it was a little overcast (hazy I suppose) but it was also a little humid.  Overall I had a pretty good time.  Before I left I knew I was going to be in pain for a while, though.

Before I left the courts I could feel my legs tightening up.  By the time I got home they were already sore and still tight.  I drank lots of water and tea and I felt fine this morning except for my muscles.  I’m sure I looked funny walking to work today because I felt like I was walking with my legs stiff.  Bending them very much is painful so I avoided that as much as possible.  And I was very happy to sit at my desk all day long today.  Tonight my wife rubbed my legs for me and almost brought me to tears, she thought it was hilarious but I wasn’t laughing.  Hopefully by the time I go play again I’ll be fine, just to get sore again but hopefully not as bad or as long.  I don’t think it will kill me to get out and exercise a little, but man is it painful.

Categories: City, Entertainment, Family, Health, Living, People | 3 Comments

The Fresh Air

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Texan

Now that the weather is getting nicer here in Beijing, more and more people are out doing fun things.  Kites are very common here just about anywhere there is room for one to get up in the air.  On my commute to work now, though, I get off the subway in the middle of all the Olympic stuff and walk from there.  There are huge open areas there with trees and grass and flowers, which naturally makes it an attractive place for people to gather in the morning for different activities.

For a while I saw groups that looked like some sort of ROTC type thing.  There were 3 or 4 groups of a little over a dozen young people (teenagers it looked like) dressed in camo and doing drill type things.  The drills weren’t very hard, and there were quite a few girls, so I don’t know if it was for fun, or for some presentation or what.  It wasn’t like those scare shows either, where the ‘bad’ kids get a wakeup call from being ‘in the military’.  I wanted to take a picture and/or video of it, but I try to keep a low profile because I don’t want to cause any trouble.

Just about every morning I see older people all around the Olympic area.  They are doing various things, some are playing Jianzi – a hacky sack type game, but the leather (or thread) hacky is replaced with a disk and feather shuttlecock type thing – and a lot are doing different forms of wushu (martial arts).  The wushu varies, some are small groups of people with ‘weapons’, others are doing scripted sequences of moves (forms) by themselves, others are doing forms of meditation, but they are all out in the fresh morning air exercising.  I’m guessing the average age of these ‘martial artists’ is in the 60s.

The last group is the one I really like seeing, though.  There is a large open area off to the side of the Olympic Green that has a big concrete slab surrounded by grass and a few small(ish) trees.  This group is usually a little younger than the wushu crowd and I presume are either rich/important people, or they have jobs that don’t require them to be there early in the morning.  It’s different people a lot of times, but most mornings there is at least one person with an RC airplane out there.  The other morning there were quite a few so I stopped and watched for a while and even took a video:

Airplanes

Make sure your volume is up so you can hear what they sound like.  Some of the planes are impressively fast and do some crazy maneuvers, others are a little more pedestrian, but they all look like a lot of fun.  The biggest I’ve seen are several feet across but they are as small as a foot or so across as well.  Every once in a while there will also be a helicopter or two, but for the most part they are planes.  Watching them every day reminds me of a time when I was younger when I stayed at my great aunt and uncle’s house.  My great uncle had an awesome RC plane that he got out and was flying around for us.  It was really cool until he got it too close to the tree tops and crashed it.  That ended the fun, but I’ve never forgotten that.  Now, I really want to get one and go fly it, but I’m almost positive I would destroy it within the first few times I took it out.  So, as a ‘stepping stone’ (or ‘gateway drug’ if you will) I bought a cheap little RC helicopter to practice my flying skills.  The kids love the little thing (it’s about the size of a coke can), especially when it crashes into things and falls to the ground.  I think all 4 main blades of the helicopter were cracked and/or broken the first day I had it.  I’ve got replacement blades for it, but I’m waiting to put them on until I’m a little better with it.  I must say that I’m much better than I was at first, and flying the thing is a blast.  I’m glad it only cost me 100 RMB (~$15) though.  Maybe later this summer I can graduate to a bigger helicopter and then to a plane.  Until then I’ll just have to enjoy the show every morning when I walk by in the fresh morning air.

Categories: City, Entertainment, Family, Health, Living, People, Weather | Leave a comment