Litclub
What is LitClub?
LitClub is a weekly meeting held at the Dr. Karl Remeis Observatory for all observatory members. The meeting consists of a presentation of a scientific, astrophysics-related paper chosen by a speaker, who was selected to give a talk for the current week and is followed by a general discussion. The goals of the meeting are the following:
- to improve communication and presentation skills for bachelor, master, and PhD students
- to provide a platform for free and casual discussion of scientific topics
- to learn more ;-)
- to bring all our groups together
LitClub takes place on Tuesdays at 11:30, in the conference room in the main observatory building, or (if there are too many attendees) in the library in the meridian building.
LitClub is a mandatory activity for all observatory members. All students are on the list of presenters. All postdocs are expected to contribute to the discussion and to take over the presentation in case the speaker has to cancel last minute.
Please find below the general rules and commonly asked questions.
Organization
Every week a person is chosen to present a paper.
How a person is chosen?
The selection of a presenter is done semi-randomly by Ingo, taking into account information about people's availability. At the beginning of the semester, a table is sent around where you can enter your availability on certain weeks (yes, all students are expected to be available a respectable amount of weeks per semester to make a presentation). If an observatory member provided no information in the table, the LitClub organizers assume that this person is available on any given day. The presenter is informed about the presentation a few days in advance.
How a presented paper is chosen?
A presenter chooses a paper from a list below, which contain the classical ("must-read") astrophysics-related papers, as well as some new advanced in the field. A different paper can be chosen, either from a peer-reviewed journal or the arxiv and which is related to space science (including, e.g., planetary science, instruments, methods, ...). In case you want to present something different, for example, to talk about your part or present research, please inform the organizers: astro-literature@lists.fau.de.
How presentation is done? Presentation at the LitClub requires a few prepared slides with the most essential information, which helps to guide you (and your audience) through your talk. Any time-consuming design features are strongly discouraged: you are expected to quickly prepare simple slides with valuable content. See below the section on "Guidelines" for more details on how long the talk should be etc.
Guidelines and Information
Basic guidelines and information on the purpose of the litclub, the roles of the audience and the speaker, and how to prepare and present the talk were presented in a short talk (by Thomas Dauser), which you can find here: File:Litclub guidelines.pdf
If you are new to the litclub, it is very helpful to have a look there, as it is currently the most detailed resource of information on how the litclub works.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it really mandatory for all students?
Yes.
What if I cannot present when I am asked?
In this case, you have to find a person who could present instead of you on the date. At the same time, you are expected to give a presentation within the following weeks.
What are acceptable reasons to not present, when I was asked?
Lectures and examinations - confirmed by schedule or vacation and sickness - confirmed with your supervisor. In the case of one of these reasons, please see the previous question. If you got sick on the day of the presentation and there was no time to find a different speaker, you will be shifted to one of the following weeks and LitClub will be conducted by one (or a few) of the observatory postdocs.
I have an upcoming conference talk, is it a good reason to not present at LitClub a week before?
No. It is expected that the LitClub will not take too much of your preparation time. If it does - you need (want) to learn how to make it quicker, which is possible only by practice.
I am working on my master (bachelor/PhD) thesis, is it an acceptable reason to not present at LitClub?
No. Only if you have your defence within a few days of the LitClub in question. Otherwise: it is the time for you to work with a lot of literature. Just pick one of the papers you recently read for your thesis and present it.
Do I have to have slides for the presentation
Yes. The current request by our professors is that you would prepare simple slides with the main information. (5 slides is plenty)
How much time I am expected to spend to prepare for the LitClub presentation?
It depends on the paper you choose, but in general, you should be able to prepare your talk within half of a working day.
Contact
For questions and comments, please contact the organizers: astro-literature@lists.fau.de. Any major modifications to the structure of LitClub will be discussed with the professors.
Litclub Paper List (WILL BE UPDATED!!!)
We collect potentially interesting papers in an ADS library to give some inspiration (a separate library lists the already presented papers). But everyone is encouraged to present any interesting scientific work, not restricted to astronomy! Also, in case you found interesting papers feel free to add them to the list below (create sections as required).
X-ray astronomy
- Electromagnetic extraction of energy from Kerr black holes (Blandford-Znajek mechanism): Blandford, Znajek, MNRAS 179, 433, 1977 [1] (although, astrophysically, the Blandford-Payne mechanism likely contributes more to jet launching, e.g., Livio, Ogilvie, Pringle, ApJ 512, 100, 1999)
- "The corona contracts in a black-hole transient": Kara et al., Nature 565 198, 2019 [2], although this result is disputed (e.g., arxiv/2112.08116)
- Connection of FRBs and magnetars: "INTEGRAL Discovery of a Burst with Associated Radio Emission from the Magnetar SGR 1935+2154" (Mereghetti, 2020ApJ...898L..29M)
- "Discovery of oscillations above 200 keV in a black hole X-ray binary with Insight-HXMT" (Ma et al., 2021NatAs...5...94M)
- "Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole—Implications for massive star winds" (Miller-Jones 2021Sci...371.1046M)
- EuCAPT White Paper: Opportunities and Challenges for Theoretical Astroparticle Physics in the Next Decade (Batista et al., arxiv.org/abs/2110.10074) - perhaps too long but really interesting summary
- Dark Energy Survey 3 Year Results (e.g., http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021arXiv210513549D)
Aliens? :0
- Estimating the prevalence of malicious extraterrestrial civilizations (Caballero 2022arXiv220511618C) [1]
Cosmology
- Is the Expansion of the Universe Accelerating? All Signs Still Point to Yes: A Local Dipole Anisotropy Cannot Explain Dark Energy [2]
Statistics
- "STATISTICS, HANDLE WITH CARE: DETECTING MULTIPLE MODEL COMPONENTS WITH THE LIKELIHOOD RATIO TEST" (Protassov, 2002ApJ...571..545P)
Some more extravagant stuff
- The Breakthrough Listen Search For Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center (Gajjar et al., ApJ 162, 33, 2021)
- An Objective Bayesian Analysis of Life's Early Start and Our Late Arrival (Kipping, 2020, https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.09008)
Non-astrophysics
- creating unique random numbers using the quantum noise of the vacuum: Gabriel et al., Nature Photonics 4, 711, 2010