Category: News

By Shannon Beauregard

Writer

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Katelyn Allers published the discovery of a new rogue planet in the Journal of Astrophysical Journal letter last week in conjunction with a  group of international astronomers.

Allers was part of a team that discovered a free-floating planet approximately 80 light years from earth. The international team of astronomers that discovered rogue planet PSO J318.5-22 has been tracking it for two years. Allers and her team found this planet when they were searching for brown dwarfs, or failed stars.

The planet does not have a star to attach it to a single orbit, and it is roaming at the slow speed of 20 km per second. They estimate that PSO J318.5-22 is 12 million years old.

“Imagine a firefly,” Allers said. “They are super easy to see by themselves, but hard to see under a car’s headlights. We have found a firefly that is not in the headlights, and can now study planets without light from a sun.”

This rogue planet has six times the mass of Jupiter and is the nearest free-floating planetary-mass object ever seen.  Allers and her team have two hypotheses explaining how the planet ended up free-floating.

According to a study in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a planet can become detached from its star when a passing star exerts its gravitational pull and yanks the planet out of orbit. It’s also possible that the parent star, upon ending its hydrogen-burning life and expanding into a red giant, could push a planet out of its system.

The second possibility is that the planet has been a loner from the beginning. It might have formed in isolation from a cloud of collapsed matter, one that did not have enough mass to ever reach the stage of fusing hydrogen, at which point it could have become a star.

Now that the team has found PSO J318.5-22, they can use its infrared signature as a model to find other rogue planets in the catalogues collected by Pan-STARRS.

Allers is leaving for Hawaii in less than two weeks to continue working her research with the rest of the team.

 

Ethan Zubkoff
Assistant News Editor

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has approved the air quality plan for the construction of a tire incinerator to be located 10 miles from the University campus on Sept. 27.

National Gypsum Company, located in White Deer Township, and En-Tire Logistics LLC, a subsidiary of the Emmanuel Tire Company headquartered in Baltimore, Md., will construct the project. The proposed plant would generate about seven megawatts of electricity.

National Gypsum will consume most of the electricity generated by the incinerator. The balance will go to the Pennsylvania Power & Light grid.

“It should not have any more impact than burning coal or something else–probably less,” Norman Emmanuel, CEO of Emmanuel Tires, said.

Only one other facility like this is operational in the United States today, Associate Professor of English Alf Siewers said.

A group of 160 University faculty members signed a statement, dated Sept. 6, 2013, expressing their opposition to the construction of the tire incinerator. Siewers wrote the statement along with Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering Kevin Gilmore and Associate Professor of Geography Duane Griffin.

“Studies have shown that tire-derived fuel (TDF) incinerators release toxic chemicals into the air,” the statement said.

Other faculty members who signed the statement include Dean of the College of Engineering Keith Buffinton, Department Chair of History David Del Testa, Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering Thomas DiStefano, Department Chair of Political Science Andrea Stevenson Sanjian, Department Chair of English Ghislaine McDayter, Director of the Campus Greening Initiative Dina El-Mogazi, and Department Chair of Mathematics Tom Cassidy.

“These were faculty members supporting the opposition to the tire burner,” Siewers said, and not a position taken by the University.

Several members of the local community have also expressed concerns about the possible environmental impact of the proposed incinerator.

“It is one mile exactly from the entrance of the plant to the entrance of White Deer Elementary,” Pete Mackey, a resident of White Deer Township, said.

Emmanuel said that he sees no risk in the incinerator’s proximity to the elementary school saying he would have “no problem” with an incinerator being built near his children’s school.

“We are not doing something to harm people; money is not worth that,” Emmanuel said.

“They want to burn 100 million pounds of shredded tires per year. They are not burning or storing whole tires. Their plan is to truck in 18 wheelers everyday of shredded tires and burn the shredded tire,” Mackey said.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency and American Lung Association of Pennsylvania have already issued letters expressing concern about the now approved air quality proposal.

A petition on Change.org, entitled “National Gypsum: Keep your ETL tire incinerator out of our community,” currently has approximately 350 signatures. There is also a Facebook page called “Stop the Tire Burner.”

Residents of White Deer Township will be able to appeal the DEP decision by Oct. 25, Mackey said.

On Oct. 16, Siewers and Visiting Assistant Professor of History Jennifer Thomson will organize a group of faculty and staff to oppose the tire burner.

“We hope to reach out to the environmental club to see if there is student interest,” Siewers said.

Ethan Zubkoff
Assistant News Editor

The University’s Chief of Public Safety Stephen Barilar spoke to the Bucknell Student Government (BSG) on Oct. 6 and addressed rumors about the situation in downtown Lewisburg.

Barilar said that although the local Buffalo Valley Regional Police Department (BVRPD) is worried that the decision to cancel House Party Weekend will move student activities downtown and into BVRPD’s jurisdiction, they have not increased their patrols and are actually down an officer.

Though students have claimed it seems that enforcement has increased, like the recent night in which BVRPD officers raided four student-leased houses, Barilar attributed those incidents to “students drawing attention to themselves,” and not a change in policy.

This previous weekend three University students were hospitalized due to high-risk consumption of alcohol, Barilar said.

“This keeps me awake at night,” Barilar said.

After hearing from Barilar, the BSG Congress voted to approve funds for 500 magnets to be given out at the homecoming football game.

Ethan Zubkoff
Assistant News Editor

International

• American forces conducted twin raids in Libya and Somalia on Oct. 5. In Libya, Army Delta Force soldiers captured Anas al-Liby, the terrorist suspected of assisting in the bombing of the American embassies in Africa 15 years ago. In Somalia, Navy SEALs failed in capturing their target, Ikrima, a suspected terrorist operator there who is suspected of planning attacks against Kenya. (BBC and Reuters)
• Clashes escalated between Egypt’s military government and its Islamist opponents. On Oct. 6, Egyptian security forces shot and killed 53 protesters. On Oct. 7, three attacks took place against the government, which included a drive by shooting that killed six, the detonation of a car bomb that killed three police officers, and an RPG attack that damaged a satellite transmitter. (The New York Times)
• Nobel Prize announcements started this week. The committee announced on Oct. 9 that three scientists based in the United States, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, won the prize for chemistry for their work in creating advanced computer models that simply complex chemical interactions and create new drugs. On Oct. 8 the committee announced that François Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of Britain won the prize in physics for the discoveries on how subatomic particles acquire mass. Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof of Germany won the prize for Physiology or Medicine for their work on traffic-control systems for cells. (CBS News and The Washington Post)
  
• The Italian Coast Guard continued to find the bodies of African refugees who sought asylum in Europe. The ship capsized last week off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, and was carrying 500 people from Eritera. The Coast Guard raised the death toll to 250 with about 155 surviving. (The Telegraph and Bloomberg Business Week)

National

• Chaos engulfed Washington D.C. on Oct. 3 as a driver, Miriam Carey, tried to drive through a barricade to the White House and then led police on a fatal chase towards Capitol Hill. Carey, who had her one-year-old daughter in the car, was the only fatality; a Secret Service agent and Capitol Hill police officer were both injured. Lawmakers in Congress applauded the police for their actions as the lock-down was lifted. (The Chicago Tribune)
• A man who set himself on fire on the National Mall passed away last week. Although it did come in the wake of the federal government shutdown, it was not politically motivated. John Constantino, 64, suffered a long battle with mental illnesses. (The Washington Post)
• President Barack Obama nominated Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chairperson when Ben Bernanke’s term is over. Yellen, 67, currently the Federal Reserve’s number two, would be the first women to hold the position. Her nomination is pending Senate approval. (Reuters)

State

• Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett apologized for equating gay marriage to marriage between a brother and sister on a televised interview on Friday, Oct. 4. “My words were not intended to offend anyone,” Corbett said in a written apology released less than six hours after the interview. “If they did, I apologize.” (The Morning Call)

Brianna Marshall and Gigi Flynn
Writers

The University’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) is hosting the Bucknell Business Pitch Competition for students interested in presenting ideas for new businesses.

“The goal of this event is to inspire student entrepreneurs here in the Bucknell community and give them an opportunity to prepare and practice a business pitch–a critical skill to have when launching a venture,” Steven Stumbris, director of the SBDC, said.

The competition is open to all University students who have an interest in business or entrepreneurship. Entries may be submitted individually or by a group and must include a five-minute presentation that creatively markets the business idea and plan. A private panel will judge the presentations during the preliminary round on Nov. 4.

The pitches will be judged based on multiple criteria, including innovation, comprehensiveness, and professionalism. Additionally, contestants can earn “bonus points” for using social media forums such as the Bucknell SBDC Facebook page and #BizPitch13 on Twitter.

BizPitch is now in its second year. Last year’s competition featured approximately 57 student entrees and $3000 total in prize money.

The SBDC is a federally funded resource on campus that provides free consulting to both students and members of the local community.

“We are a resource to those who want to start a business,” Stumbris said.

The SBDC organizes dinners for students with businessmen and businesswomen to talk about their respective experiences. It is celebrating its 35 year at the University this year.  

University students are encouraged to attend the final event on Nov. 18 in the Terrace Room. Applications for the Bucknell Business Pitch Competition are due by Oct. 18.

Ben Kaufman
Editor-In-Chief

Q: You began your career in writing as a journalist for The Washington Post. How did you wind up writing about technology? 

A: I started at The [Washington] Post and then worked for a number of magazines. I became basically a journalist who writes about the media–a media critic. I realized around the turn of the century that the devices themselves were becoming more important than the content of journalism. I realized that the digital revolution was the big story. I got a fellowship out of the blue at Harvard in 2006 for a semester–very open-ended–and I could write about any topic I wanted. I decided to write about a little piece of the digital revolution which fascinated me: the claim that print is about to become obsolete.

I wrote an essay arguing that paper as a media is not going to go away. That was a controversial thing to say amidst the digital revolution, so I got some attention for that and I was on National Public Radio, and this led to publishers asking me if I wanted to write a book.

 

Q: How did you go about writing the book?

A: I feel like we spent the first few decades of the digital era living by a stupid philosophy that I called ‘digital maximalism,’ where the more connected you are, the better. I think that’s a dumb way to live and run a society because the more ways we get connected by these devices, the more we get fractured and divided into slim slices and never go into deeper conversations with our focus and relationships. It is something that everyone is talking about now, but in 2006 nobody was talking about it.

My family invented a ritual to leave behind our ‘here and now’ called the ‘internet Sabbath,’ where every weekend, my family would unplug from the internet completely. We didn’t know anyone else was thinking of doing this, we just made it up.

 

Q: Was it hard to break away from the digital world?

A: In the beginning it was so hard that it was comical. The first few weekends we felt like we were stranded on an alien planet. It was like an existential crisis because the internet was removed. It was tears and frustration and panic. That told my wife and me that we were really on to something and that we needed to do this because we had become so codependent. After about two months, we eased into it, and at the very end of the day we unplugged, and it became very natural. It became our identity, like we were that family.

It got to the point where a few weekends in the first year, it was Monday morning and we realized that we forgot to unplug. But we never bothered to look. We stopped the habit of making our way to our screens because we stopped that habit. The ritual ended two years ago, but because we did that for five years, we all now have our personal rituals, like I stay offline on Saturdays and some days during the week. It’s a little bit of a risk; you know you could miss something, but often is something truly urgent?

 

Q: Do you think that in the future the dependence on technology will get better or worse?

A: I’m really an optimist; I think that we’re just in the early stages of this. I think we’re going to look back at these times and realize how primitive these devices are because they are going to involve. Newer applications don’t feel that way because we are learning.

 

Q: You’ve seen technology usage in other countries, how do they compare to the United States in dependence to technology?

A: We’re not the most digitally addicted. Most famously is South Korea. South Korea is really intensely into gaming, so much so that there are internet addiction centers all over the country. I’ve also heard that Australia has the highest capita use of Facebook than any other country. We’re not the most extreme, but we’re also leading the revolution. The inventions are almost all ours. So in that sense, we are defining the future, even if we are not the biggest users of technology, which means that we have a big responsibility that we need to be thoughtful about.

Alexandra Rosen
Contributing Writer

The Interfaith Council sponsored a discussion on Oct. 9 that involved issues about religious apathy. The talk, called “Why am I None,” was open to members of all religious denominations and encouraged participants to voice their opinions about what several members of the council consider to be a trend toward students not identifying with a particular religion.

University Chaplain John Colatch led the conversation. Colatch said that 27 percent of college students are apathetic toward religion. Many people today don’t need religion to encourage them to do good works, and Colatch allowed part of the discussion to build from that prompt.

“It seems that the numbers are rising with each passing year,” Colatch said. “It’s not really news.”

Colatch also said that conversations about religion have become taboo.

“Teaching in the classroom has changed,” Colatch said. “Students feel uncomfortable with the religious aspect of colonialism.”

People are hesitant to bring up the subject of religion today, even during a mature discussion, Colatch said.

Colatch created the Interfaith Council during his first year at the University as a group for multiple religious traditions to converse. The council includes representatives from many of the religious affiliations found on campus, Courtney Nelson ’15, a member of the council, said.

“I hope we can have other conversations like this,” Colatch said.

Cooper Josephs
Contributing Writer

The Lewisburg chapter of the Kiwanis Club will host the Woolly Worm Festival on Oct. 12 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hufnagle Park on Market Street, which will include free craft stations for children and several dozen food and craft vendors.

“This is a year-round planning event. It is a very anxious moment for us because we (the Kiwanis Club) never really know how many people are going to show up,” Ken Kulish said.

He and his wife have coordinated the Woolly Worm Festival for the previous three years.

“When the Kiwanis Club first started the Woolly Worm Festival … there might have been probably a couple hundred people there. Now there are a few thousand people coming to it throughout the day,” Kulish said.

The festival is named for the small, orange and black caterpillars that appear during the summer and later metamorphose into the Isabella Tiger Moth.

During the annual “Weather Prognostication Ceremony,” young scientists do various tests on the woolly worms, including measuring and weighing them, and try to predict the conditions for the upcoming winter from the data obtained.

“There is a lot of showmanship to the prognostication process, but the kids have a good time having the chance to pick up the 100 or so woolly worms we bring out … and hearing how many snow days they are going to have,” Kulish said.

The proceeds from the festival go to the Kiwanis Club for several charitable works, including scholarships, school supplies for needy children, and projects for the benefit of the Lewisburg community. The proceeds also go toward a project called The Eliminate Project, which is designed to help prevent and eliminate neonatal tetanus, a disease that affects newborn children.

Due to budget shortfalls, grant money from the Lewisburg Visitor Center and Arts Center for the festival was stripped back, and organizers turned to the local community for donations.

“This year we didn’t really know what was going to happen with the festival … We weren’t able to advertise much this year, but we made it through with the help of the townspeople. We made a plea to the Lewisburg community to help support this festival, and they responded in a huge way. We raised about $3000 in start-up money, which was enough to get our bands and our advertising paid for. It was a feel-good moment when the people of Lewisburg came through to us,” Kulish said.

Lewisburg Mayor Judy Wagner praised local donations and volunteer participation in the event.

“We continue to enjoy festivals and parades, and people continue to put in the time so the whole community can enjoy themselves … We make fun for ourselves here, and we do quite well. We think of new reasons to celebrate the seasons, our town, and ourselves,” Wagner said.