AY 616 Papers - Spring 07

Everyone in the class will be responsible to find/summarize/present a paper from the literature once every two weeks. The papers should be something from the literature (either published, astro-ph, or preprint) within the past five years.

For each paper, you will be required to hand in a one-two page (single-spaced) summary of the paper, which should include:

• Reference information (title, date, source, authors)
• One-two sentence overview about what the paper is about in general terms (more general than abstract)
• Summary of main results/ideas of paper
• Brief discussion of how paper fits in with ideas/material we have discussed in class

The report may include one or two key figures, but in no cases should it comprise more than 3 pages of material. The report should be in a form that I can put on the web, so it can be accessed by all class members (if you have it in LaTeX, I can convert it to HTML).

Each report will be due on a Friday. The topic of the chosen paper should be related to material which was covered the previous week, i.e. 10-12 days earlier. For each topic, however, you should email me (holtz@nmsu.edu) the paper you wish to do by the previous Friday, so I can insure no duplications and advise if I think your paper is not a good choice.

It would be nice if the reports could be accompanied by in-class short presentations to spread the knowledge and give you practice on short (i.e., AAS length) talks). However, previous classes have suggested that this is not worth the loss of traditional class time. Still, some in-class presentations may be requested, e.g., if I need to miss a class. I also suggest the possibility of interested students establishing an independent meeting time for short presentations/questions.

The biweekly paper summaries will be staggered: second year grad students will need to choose a paper by 26 January and hand in their summaries a week later; first year grad students will lag by a week.