PREVIOUS “ASTROBIOLOGY” – NEXT “INTERACTIVE DRAKE EQUATION” With an estimated diameter of 93 billion light years and age of 13.7 billion years, our Universe is an astonishingly big place that’s been around for a very long time. When you look up, you only get a short glimpse at a fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars that populate our Galaxy (which in turn is one of hundreds of billions in the cosmos), but it’s enough to make you wonder: “Are we alone?” In the previous post we discussed the likelihood of the emergence of (intelligent) extraterrestrial life. Starting from the famous Drake Equation and using recent findings in astrophysics and some astrobiology arguments, we obtained a simple way to estimate N, the number of communicative civilizations in our Galaxy. This reduces to the product of the chance of emergence of intelligent life fi and the longevity L (in years) of a civilization’s communicative phase: N \approx \, {4}\, f_i \, L \,.

Scientists are busy people. We have deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, lectures to give. And OF COURSE WE NEED TO WRITE PAPERS, not only because we are excited to share our findings, but also because scientific papers are the currency of the academic world. Authorea was created by scientists and for scientists. The idea: improving the process of writing and sharing the results of research. While Authorea has big plans for the paper of the future, in this post I want to focus on the here and now. This is because when I talk about the platform with my colleagues, by far the most common question I get is “Why should I use Authorea to write my paper?” GREAT QUESTION! Here some highlights that should make you curious: 1. With Authorea, your paper is accessible from any computer anywhere in the world. 2. You can write it from your browser, no installations required. 3. You can write in rich text (wysiwyg) LaTeX or in markdown. 4. Your paper is also a beautiful web page. 5. Collaboration is made easy. Managing your co-authors is straightforward. 6. Authorea is version controlled. Again, no installations required. 7. Adding citations has never been easier. Believe me, you will never wanna go back. 8. You can include data and code in your paper. This allows for transparency and reproducibility of results. 9. Export to any journal format with just one click. 10. Powerful commenting system. For internal or even external review. Ok, If you got this far you deserve more than a list of fancy features, so here’s my personal experience and why I think you should start using Authorea. I switched to writing papers with Authorea about a year ago and I noticed a number of immediate improvements: first of all MY PAPERS GET WRITTEN FASTER. Then I noticed that I have NO NEED TO EXCHANGE EMAILS WITH COLLABORATORS concerning the paper. This is fantastic. All the action happens (and it’s logged) on Authorea, including discussions about revisions and suggestions for improvements. This said, I didn’t really expect the most important upturn. By getting rid of the overhead I previously considered necessary, unavoidable parts of the scientific writing process, something remarkable happened. I actually STARTED ENJOYING WRITING MORE! And I do not mean just publishing; I had experienced that joy before. The difference is I now cherish the time I spend putting my science into words. It might sound crazy, but Authorea did something amazing: it made me DISCOVER THE PLEASURE OF WRITING SCIENCE TOGETHER with my collaborators.

This post was written by Matteo Cantiello, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and Authorea’s Chief Scientist. It is intended to be published as a post on Astrobetter.com. I am aware that a while back a lot of astronomers have tried out writing their research articles on Authorea, a web-based collaborative writing platform. Some were disappointed by the lack of certain advanced LaTeX features (e.g., deluxetables, now supported). You were disappointed, you told us why, and we just implemented some big changes to make you happy. Authorea now has a “Power LaTeX user” mode which supports a much much larger subset of LaTeX. Essentially everything. And unlike some services such as ScribTeX and WriteLaTeX (previously reviewed on Astrobetter), all your LaTeX renders both to PDF _and_ to HTML (i.e., the web). So, why should you give Authorea a spin and start using it daily for your research? It’s a good question. Here some highlights that might guide that decision. 1. With Authorea, your paper is accessible from any computer, anywhere in the world. 2. You can write your paper from your browser, no installation of TeX required. 3. You can write in LaTeX or in markdown. Advanced LaTeX and tables are now supported. 4. Collaboration is made easy. No need for endless emails threads with multiple draft revisions. 5. Every Authorea paper is a Git repo, version controlled. Again, no installations required. 6. Want to work offline via Github? You can. Authorea becomes the rendered version so that your coauthors can still work with you without having to learn Git. 7. Adding citations has never been easier. One click and done. Believe me, you will never want to go back. 8. You can include data and code in your paper, like IPython Notebooks. This allows for transparency and reproducibility of results. 9. Export to any journal format with just one click. We support all the usual suspects, from ApJ to AJ, from MNRAS to A&A. Switch back and forth between these styles in one click. 10. Powerful commenting system. For internal or even external review. 11. Authorea has templates to get you started fast with your next Astronomy grant proposal or d3.js paper. 12. Did I say deluxetables? Well, here’s the same deluxetable posted on Astrobetter a while back, as it is rendered on Authorea: https://www.authorea.com/38778_deluxe. Ok, enough with the list of fancy features. Here’s my personal experience as an astrophysicist using Authorea. I switched to writing papers with Authorea about a year ago and I noticed a number of immediate improvements: first of all MY PAPERS GET WRITTEN FASTER. Then I noticed that I have NO NEED TO EXCHANGE EMAILS WITH COLLABORATORS concerning the paper. All the action happens (and it’s logged) on Authorea, including discussions about revisions and suggestions for improvements. This said, I didn’t really expect the most important upturn. By getting rid of the overhead I had previously considered a messy unavoidable part of the scientific writing process, something remarkable happened. I actually STARTED ENJOYING WRITING MORE! And I don’t mean just publishing; I had experienced that joy before. The difference is I now cherish the time I spend putting my science into words. It might sound crazy, but Authorea did something amazing: it made me DISCOVER THE PLEASURE OF WRITING SCIENCE TOGETHER with my collaborators. So if you ask me “Why should I write my next paper with Authorea?” my honest answer is “Because you will love it!”. My suggestion is that you take Authorea for a spin and make up your own mind. The Astronomical community has a lot of experience with early adoption and innovation, so your feedback can help to substantially improve this tool. Do you think Authorea is on the right track? Is there a particular feature missing that would improve substantially your workflow? Share your reviews and suggestions in the comments!

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Moved to https://natejenkins.ch/steph-shooting-streak

This post is part of a series called _Is Academia Broken?_ It relates the experiences of Jeff, Authorea’s Community coordinator, and weighing the options on pursuing a PhD. Be sure to check out Alberto’s first blog post, on the perils of early career interdisciplinary research, and his second, on the overabundance of PhDs and dearth of academic positions.

In this short post series I try to tackle one of the biggest questions out there: ARE WE ALONE? The reasoning leads to some radical implications for the VERY NEAR FUTURE OF HUMANKIND. Read till the end and feel free to comment as you go. Hopefully this will spark interesting discussions. 1. Habitable Planets How many habitable planets exist in the Universe? 2. The Drake Equation How to estimate the number of technological civilizations in our Galaxy? 3. Astrobiology Is biological life common in the Universe? 4. The Fermi Paradox Is intelligent life common in the Universe? And if yes, does it last? 5. Interactive Drake Equation Use your own intuition to calculate the chance of being alone or not

In order to estimate the number of technological civilizations that might exist among the stars, in 1961 Frank Drake proposed a simple equation. Below you can play with an interactive plot showing the number N of communicative civilizations in the Galaxy as function of their average longevity L. You can change the values of the various parameters using the sliders.

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THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN Science is going through a rapid phase of transformation. Two important trends are emerging: 1. Research is becoming more complex, requiring larger collaborations and bigger experiments. 2. Science and technology increasingly affect modern society. The first trend is easy to understand. Let’s think of the cumulative knowledge of humankind as a sphere. Scientists work at the surface and try to “push the boundary”. Discovery increases the volume of knowledge. As the sphere’s volume grows, so does its surface area. Therefore an ever increasing number of researchers is required to tessellate the expanding cutting-edge of science. Moreover, contrary to a few hundred years ago when the sphere of knowledge was so small that a single polymath could master large chunks of it, nowadays no human can understand the details of more than a few research topics. To capture the bigger picture and understand very complex research questions, collaborative efforts combining together a number of highly specific expertises are required.

_This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Nature on 04 January 2016, DOI:10.1038/nature16171_ Magnetic fields play a role in almost all stages of stellar evolution . Most low-mass stars, including the Sun, show surface fields that are generated by dynamo processes in their convective envelopes . Intermediate-mass stars do not have deep convective envelopes , although 10% exhibit strong surface fields that are presumed to be residuals from the stellar formation process . These stars do have convective cores that might produce internal magnetic fields , and these might even survive into later stages of stellar evolution, but information has been limited by our inability to measure the fields below the stellar surface . Here we use asteroseismology to study the occurrence of strong magnetic fields in the cores of low- and intermediate-mass stars. We have measured the strength of dipolar oscillation modes, which can be suppressed by a strong magnetic field in the core , in over 3,600 red giant stars observed by . About 20% of our sample show mode suppression but this fraction is a strong function of mass. Strong core fields only occur in red giants above 1.1 solar masses (1.1), and the occurrence rate is at least 60% for intermediate-mass stars (1.6–2.0), indicating that powerful dynamos were very common in the convective cores of these stars.

Recent asteroseismic analyses have revealed the presence of strong (B≳10⁵ G) magnetic fields in the cores of many red giant stars. Here, we examine the implications of these results for the evolution of stellar magnetic fields, and we make predictions for future observations. Those stars with suppressed dipole modes indicative of strong core fields should exhibit moderate but detectable quadrupole mode suppression. The long magnetic diffusion times within stellar cores ensure that dynamo-generated fields are confined to mass coordinates within the main sequence convective core, and the sharp increase in dipole mode suppression rates above 1.5 M⊙ may be explained by the larger convective core masses and faster rotation of these more massive stars. In clump stars, core fields of $\sim 10^5 \, {\rm G}$ can suppress dipole modes, whose visibility should be equal to or less than the visibility of suppressed modes in ascending red giants. High dipole mode suppression rates in low-mass (M ≲ 2 M⊙) clump stars would indicate that magnetic fields generated during the main sequence can withstand subsequent convective phases and survive into the compact remnant phase. Finally, we discuss implications for observed magnetic fields in white dwarfs and neutron stars, as well as the effects of magnetic fields in various types of pulsating stars.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION STATE OF THE ART AND PRELIMINARY WORK Here comes the state of the art. First paper that is relevant , a second one , and another one (bibtex import) Project-related publications Articles published by outlets with scientific quality assurance, book publications, and works accepted for publication but not yet published here own publications Other publications Patents not applicable

Example of an “astronomer friendly” deluxe table formatted with Authorea. This is the example posted by Jess K on astrobetter in How to Make Awesome Latex Tables. For this table we are using the LaTeXML engine, have a look at this quick tutorial if you are a prospective Authorea power LaTeX user. cccccccc 1/3 Bright & & 4.24 ⋅ 10−4 & 6.19 && 96.97 & & & [0.3,3] & & & 1.77 & & 96.7 & 1.9σ 2/3 Dim & & 4.26 ⋅ 10−4 & 4.48 & & 52.77

Authorea is a collaborative platform for writing in research and education, with a focus on web-first, high quality scientific documents. We offer a tour through our integration of technologies that evolve math-rich papers into transparent, active objects. To enumerate, we currently employ Pandoc and LaTeXML (for authoring), MathJax (for math rendering and clipboard), D3.js (data visualization), iPython (computation), Flotchart and Bokeh (interactive plots). This paper presents the challenges and rewards of integrating active web components for mathematics, while preserving backwards-compatibility with classic publishing formats. We conclude with an outlook to the next-to-come mathematics enhancements on Authorea, and a technology wishlist for the coming year.

This collaborative document has been created for the panel discussion on “Rotation in massive stars” (FOE 2015). All conference participants have been added to the document and can edit / comment / add figures (just drag&drop) / references and even LaTeX equations if needed (check the help page for more infos on how to edit the document). Hopefully this will capture the essential ideas and interactions that will stem during and after the discussion. The document can be forked at any time, so that particular discussions can be taken further and potentially lead to active collaborations.

We study the convection zones in the outer envelope of hot massive stars which are caused by opacity peaks associated with iron and helium ionization. We determine the occurrence and properties of these convection zones as function of the stellar parameters. We then confront our results with observations of OB stars. A stellar evolution code is used to compute a grid of massive star models at different metallicities. In these models, the mixing length theory is used to characterize the envelope convection zones. We find the iron convection zone (FeCZ) to be more prominent for lower surface gravity, higher luminosity and higher initial metallicity. It is absent for luminosities below about $10^{3.2}\lso$, $10^{3.9}\lso$, and $10^{4.2}\lso$ for the Galaxy, LMC and SMC, respectively. We map the strength of the FeCZ on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram for three metallicities, and compare this with the occurrence of observational phenomena in O stars: microturbulence, non-radial pulsations, wind clumping, and line profile variability. The confirmation of all three trends for the FeCZ as function of stellar parameters by empirical microturbulent velocities argues for a physical connection between sub-photospheric convective motions and small scale stochastic velocities in the photosphere of O- and B-type stars. We further suggest that clumping in the inner parts of the winds of OB stars could be caused by the same mechanism, and that magnetic fields produced in the FeCZ could appear at the surface of OB stars as diagnosed by discrete absorption components in ultraviolet absorption lines.

What is Lorem Ipsum?Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.Why do we use it?It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).