Published Work
Submitted on October 6, 2009 for the Winter 2009 issue
Galotti KM, Tinkelenberg CE. Real-life decision-making: Parents: Choosing a first-grade placement. American Journal of Psychology. 2009;122:455-468. (Carleton College)
The purpose of the study was to investigate in detail a real-life important decision, made by motivated non-experts, as it unfolded over time. Parents of kindergarteners participated in a short-term longitudinal study, as they made a decision for educational placement for their child for the following year. Parents reported the number of options under active consideration to be about three and the number of criteria used to evaluate options to about five. About one-third of the options under consideration changed over a six- month period, while over half of the criteria did. Parents’ holistic appraisals of options displayed a moderate degree of calibration with predictions of linear models. Kathleen Galotti is professor of cognitive science and director of the cognitive science program at Carleton College. Carey Tinkelenberg graduated from Carleton in 2005. She originally served as an undergraduate RA in 2003-04 and 2004-05, and as a project manager the year following her graduation, in 2005-06. A former competitive figure skater, Carey is now the founder and director of the Northfield Skating School, and is considering graduate work in the near future. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Decision and Risk Management Program for financial support through Research in Undergraduate Institutions Grant # 011185.
Friedman B, Herich H, Kammermann L, Gross DS, Arneth A, Holst T, Cziczo DJ. Subarctic atmospheric aerosol composition: 1. Ambient aerosol characterization. J Geophys Res. 2009;114:D13203 doi:10.1029/2009JD011772. (Carleton College)
Subarctic aerosol was sampled during July 2007 at the Abisko Research Station Stordalen field site operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Located in northern Sweden at 68º latitude and 385 m above sea level (m asl), this site is classified as a semicontinuous permafrost mire. We observe that Arctic aerosol is not compositionally unlike that found in the free troposphere at midlatitudes. Deborah Gross is an associate professor of chemistry. Beth Friedman carried out the measurements as a rising-senior chemistry major in 2007 as part of a summer research project. Beth is currently enrolled in the Atmospheric Science Ph. D. program at the University of Washington, Seattle. This work was supported by Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) internal research funding, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Aerosol Initiative, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Carleton College, and a European Commission/Marie Curie Excellence grant.
Herich H, Kammermann L, Friedman B, Gross DS, Weingartner E, Lohmann U, Spichtinger P, Gysel M, Baltensperger U, Cziczo DJ. Subarctic atmospheric aerosol composition: 2. Hygroscopic growth properties. J Geophys Res. 2009;114:D13204 doi:10.1029/2008JD011574. (Carleton College)
Subarctic aerosols were sampled during July 2007 at the Abisko Scientific Research Station Stordalen site in northern Sweden with an instrument setup consisting of a custom built Hygroscopicity Tandem Differential Mobility Analyzer (HTDMA) connected in series to a single particle mass spectrometer. Aerosol chemical composition in the form of bipolar single particle mass spectra was determined as a function of hygroscopic growth both in situ and in real time. Deborah Gross is an associate professor of chemistry. Beth Friedman participated in these measurements as a rising-senior chemistry major in 2007 as part of a summer research project. Beth is currently enrolled in the Atmospheric Science Ph. D. program at the University of Washington, Seattle. This work was supported by Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) internal research funding, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Aerosol Initiative, Carleton College, and the European Union FP6 infrastructure project EUSAAR (European Supersites for Atmospheric Aerosol Research).
Davis JR, Goldman Z, Hilty J, Koch EN, Liben-Nowell D, Sharp A, Wexler T, Zhou E . Equilibria and efficiency loss in games on networks. IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom'09). 2009; 82–89. (Carleton College)
We introduced the problem of relating game-theoretic properties of a generic 2-player symmetric "base game" to the properties of the "networked game" where the nodes of a social network play that same base game simultaneously all of their neighbors. Previous work had looked at specific base games; our approach takes a generic perspective on the problem. We showed that (with limited exceptions for bipartite graphs) game-theoretic properties like the existence or absence of pure Nash equilibria do not carry over from the base game to the networked game. We also gave tight bounds on the price of anarchy in the networked version of coordination games. David Liben-Nowell is an assistant professor of computer science at Carleton; Joshua Davis was at the time of this work a visiting professor of mathematics of computer science at Carleton; and Alexa Sharp and Tom Wexler are assistant professors of computer science at Oberlin College. The students involved -- Zachary Goldman (Denison '11), Jacob Hilty (Carleton '09, now enrolled in the graduate program at Edinburgh), Elizabeth N. Koch (Carleton '09, now an NSF Graduate Research Fellow enrolled at the University of Minnesota), and Emma Zhou (Carleton '10) -- participated as part of a summer research program held at Carleton in the summer of 2008. The work was supported by NSF grant CCF-0728779 and grants from Carleton, Denison, and Oberlin.
Submitted on April 10, 2009 for the Summer 2009 issue
Selassie D, Davis D, Dahlin J, Feise E, Sholl DS, Kohen D. Atomistic simulations of CO2 and N2 diffusion in silica zeolites: The impact of pore size and shape. J Phys Chem C. 2008;112:16521. (Carleton College)
This paper describes the atomistic modeling of carbon dioxide and nitrogen adsorption and diffusion, both as single components and as binary mixtures, within three zeolites with identical chemical composition but differing pore structures: silicalite, ITQ-3, and ITQ-7. These studies overarching goal is to provide a basic understanding of the behavior of molecular sieves as filters to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Daniela Kohen is an Associate Professor of Chemistry. David Selassie, Disan Davis, Jayme Dahlin and Eric Feise, all chemistry majors participated in this research over summer and throughout the academic year. The National Science Foundation, Petroleum Research Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute supported this research. Selassie is a currently enrolled at Carleton, Davis is pursuing her doctorate at Cornell University, Dahlin is a M. D. /Ph. D. student at Mayo Clinic and Feise is working for Communication Integration (a non-profit organization) and studying to become a programmer for a game development company.
Submitted on January 8, 2009 for the the Spring 2009 issue
Abrams K, Schruers K, Cosci F, Sawtell S. Biological challenge procedures used to study co-occurring nicotine dependence and panic disorder. Addictive Behaviors. 2008;33:1463-1469. (Carleton College)
A wide array of biological challenge procedures - including carbon dioxide inhalation, hyperventilation, and breath holding - have been used to model panic in laboratory settings. The goals of this paper were to review studies that have employed biological challenges to study the comorbid condition, identify the advantages and limitations of the various procedures, describe desirable outcome measures for use in biological challenges, and present recommendations for future challenge studies in this field. We argued that biological challenges, though in need of standardization, are useful for studying the development, maintenance, prevention, and treatment of comorbid nicotine dependence and panic disorder. Ken Abrams is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Carleton College. Koen Schruers and Fiammetta Cosci are from Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Shaun Sawtell was a senior psychology major who assisted with the manuscript in the Fall 2007 and Winter 2008. He did the work as non-credit independent study and plans to attend law school.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, et al. All-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S4 data. Physical Review D. 2008;77:022001. (Carleton College)
The study reports on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50-1000 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -1.0E-8 Hz/s to zero. Data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4) were used in this search. Three different semicoherent methods of transforming and summing strain power from Short Fourier Transforms (SFTs) of the calibrated data have been used, known as StackSlide, “weighted Hough” scheme, and PowerFlux. The respective advantages and disadvantages of these methods are discussed. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report upper limits; we interpret these as limits on this radiation from isolated rotating neutron stars. The best population-based upper limit with 95% confidence on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude, found for simulated sources distributed isotropically across the sky and with isotropically distributed spin-axes, is 4.28E-24 (near 140 Hz). Strict upper limits are also obtained for small patches on the sky for best-case and worst-case inclinations of the spin axes. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. B. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, Ely G, Vigeland S, et al. Einstein@Home search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S4 data. Accepted and in-press, Phys Rev D. 2008:http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1747. (Carleton College)
A search for periodic gravitational waves, from sources such as isolated rapidly-spinning neutron stars, was carried out using 510 hours of data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4). The search was for quasi-monochromatic waves in the frequency range from 50 Hz to 1500 Hz, with a linear frequency drift f-dot (measured at the solar system barycenter) in the range -f/tau < f-dot < 0.1 f/tau, where the minimum spin-down age tau was 1000 years for signals below 300 Hz and 10000 years above 300 Hz. The main computational work of the search was distributed over approximately 100000 computers volunteered by the general public. This large computing power allowed the use of a relatively long coherent integration time of 30 hours, despite the large parameter space searched. No statistically significant signals were found. The sensitivity of the search is estimated, along with the fraction of parameter space that was vetoed because of contamination by instrumental artifacts. In the 100 Hz to 200 Hz band, more than 90% of sources with dimensionless gravitational wave strain amplitude greater than 1e-23 would have been detected. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan, Sarah Vigeland, and Gregory Ely were undergraduate students who worked on the NSF funded research during the academic year and summers from 2004-2008. Hans is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton, Sarah is currently a graduate student in physics at MIT, and Gregory is currently employed at Lincoln Laboratory, MIT.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)… , Bantilan H, Christensen N, et al. Beating the spin-down limit on gravitational wave emission from the Crab pulsar. Astrophys J Lett. 2008;683;49. (Carleton College)
The paper presents direct upper limits on gravitational wave emission from the Crab pulsar using data from the first 9 months of the fifth science run of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). These limits are based on two searches. In the first we assumed that the gravitational wave emission follows the observed radio timing, giving an upper limit on gravitational wave emission that beats indirect limits inferred from the spin-down and braking index of the pulsar and the energetics of the nebula. In the second we allowed for a small mismatch between the gravitational and radio signal frequencies and interpret our results in the context of two possible gravitational wave emission mechanisms. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, et al. Search for gravitational waves from binary inspirals in S3 and S4 LIGO data. Phys Rev D. 2008;77:062002. (Carleton College)
This study reported on a search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of compact binaries during the third and fourth LIGO science runs. The search focused on gravitational waves generated during the inspiral phase of the binary evolution. We considered three categories of compact binary systems, ordered by mass. Although the detectors could probe to distances as far as tens of Mpc, no gravitational-wave signals were identified in the 1364 hours of data we analyzed. Assuming a binary population with a Gaussian distribution around 0.75 - 0.75M center dot, 1.4 - 1.4M center dot, and 5.0 - 5.0M center dot, we derived 90%- confidence upper limit rates of 4.9 yr(-1)L(10)(-1) for primordial black hole binaries, 1.2 yr(-1)L(10)(-1) for binary neutron stars, and 0: 5 yr(-1)L(10)(-1) for stellar mass binary black holes, where L-10 is 10(10) times the blue-light luminosity of the Sun. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, et al. Search of S3 LIGO data for gravitational wave signals from spinning black hole and neutron star binary inspirals. Phys Rev D. 2008;78:042002. (Carleton College)
This paper reported on the methods and results of the first dedicated search for gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral of compact binaries with spinning component bodies. We analyze 788 hours of data collected during the third science run (S3) of the LIGO detectors. We searched for binary systems using a detection template family specially designed to capture the effects of the spin-induced precession of the orbital plane. We present details of the techniques developed to enable this search for spin-modulated gravitational waves, highlighting the differences between this and other recent searches for binaries with non-spinning components. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, et al. Search for gravitational waves associated with 39 gamma-ray bursts using data from the second, third, and fourth LIGO runs. Phys Rev D. 2008;77:062004. (Carleton College)
We present the results of a search for short-duration gravitational-wave bursts associated with 39 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by gamma-ray satellite experiments during LIGO's S2, S3, and S4 science runs. The search involves calculating the cross correlation between two interferometer data streams surrounding the GRB trigger time. We search for associated gravitational radiation from single GRBs, and also apply statistical tests to search for a gravitational-wave signature associated with the whole sample. For the sample examined, we find no evidence for the association of gravitational radiation with GRBs, either on a single-GRB basis or on a statistical basis. Finally, we discuss prospects for the search sensitivity for the ongoing S5 run, and beyond for the next generation of detectors. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Abbott B (LIGO Scientific Collaboration)…, Bantilan H, Christensen N, et. al. Implications for the origin of GRB 070201 from LIGO observations. Astrophys J. 2008;681:1419. (Carleton College)
We analyzed the available LIGO data coincident with GRB 070201, a short-duration, hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst (GRB) whose electromagnetically determined sky position is coincident with the spiral arms of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). Possible progenitors of such short, hard GRBs include mergers of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole, or soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) flares. These events can be accompanied by gravitational-wave emission. No plausible gravitational-wave candidates were found within a 180 s long window around the time of GRB 070201. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Hans Bantilan was an undergraduate mathematics and physics major who worked on the project during the academic terms and summers from 2004-2007. He is currently a graduate student in physics at Princeton. The research was supported by a grant from NSF.
Blackburn L (LIGO Scientific Collaboration’s Glitch Working Group)…, Caride S, Christensen N, Ely G, Isogai T, et al. The LSC glitch group: monitoring noise transients during the fifth LIGO science run. Classical Quantum Gravity. 2008; Vol. 25, no. 18:184004. (Carleton College)
Goals of the glitch group during the fifth LIGO science run (S5) included (1) offline assessment of the detector data quality, with focus on noise transients, (2) veto recommendations for astrophysical analysis and (3) feedback to the commissioning team on anomalies seen in gravitational wave and auxiliary data channels. Other activities included the study of auto-correlation of triggers from burst searches, stationarity of the detector noise and veto studies. The group identified causes for several noise transients that triggered false alarms in the gravitational wave searches; the times of such transients were identified and vetoed from the data generating the LSC astrophysical results. Nelson Christensen is a Professor of Physics at Carleton College. Santiago Caride and Gregory Ely were undergraduate physics majors who worked on the NSF funded research from 2005-2008. Santiago is currently a graduate student in physics at the University of Michigan and Gregory is currently employed at Lincoln Laboratory, MIT. Tomoki Isogai is currently an undergraduate physics major at Carleton who worked on the study in 2007-2008.