Since 2011, members of Variable Stars South have undertaken intensive time series observations and analysis of eclipsing binary systems, most of which are south of declination –40°. Many of them have not been observed in detail since their discovery 50 to 80 years ago. New or revised light elements are presented here for 60 systems and revised O–C values for a further 18 systems. A pulsating component has been discovered in four of the binary systems: RZ Mic, V632 Sco, V638 Sco, and LT Her. Streamer, et al., JAAVSO Volume 43, 2015 2

We report the discovery by M. Linnolt on JD 2455665.7931 (UT 2011 April 14.29) of the sixth eruption of the recurrent nova T Pyxidis. This discovery was made just as the initial fast rise was starting, so with fast notification and response by observers worldwide, the entire initial rise was covered (the first for any nova), and with high time resolution in three filters. The speed of the rise peaked at 9 mag/day, while the light curve is well fit over only the first two days by a model with a uniformly expanding sphere. We also report the discovery by R. Stubbings of a pre-eruption rise starting 18 days before the eruption, peaking 1.1 mag brighter than its long-time average, and then fading back towards quiescence 4 days before the eruption. This unique and mysterious behavior is only the fourth known anticipatory rise closely spaced before a nova eruption. We present 19 timings of photometric minima from 1986 to February 2011, where the orbital period is fast increasing with P/dot{P}=313,000 yrs. From 2008-2011, T Pyx had a small change in this rate of increase, so that the orbital period at the time of eruption was 0.07622950+-0.00000008 days. This strong and steady increase of the orbital period can only come from mass transfer, for which we calculate a rate of 1.7-3.5x10^-7 Mo/yr. We report 6116 magnitudes between 1890 and 2011, for an average B=15.59+-0.01 from 1967-2011, which allows for an eruption in 2011 if the blue flux is nearly proportional to the accretion rate. The ultraviolet-optical-infrared spectral energy distribution is well fit by a power law with flux proportional to nu^1.0, although the narrow ultraviolet region has a tilt with a fit of \nu^{1/3}. We prove that most of the T Pyx light is not coming from a disk, or any superposition of blackbodies, but rather is coming from some nonthermal source.

Computers and other digital devices have become ubiquitous in our lives. Almost all aspects of our lives are in part or wholly impacted by computers and the software that runs on them. Unknowingly, we are placing our livelihoods and even our lives in the hands unknown software developers. Ethical and moral decisions made during software development projects may impact how lives are lived and businesses conducted. Traditional studies of ethics in information technology (IT) have primarily centered on the ethical uses of computers and software; issues such as privacy, piracy, copyright protection, hacking, and so forth. These are in reality, “after-the-fact” issues in that the processes or capabilities used in each of these examples were designed into the system before any ethical or moral behavioral issues occurred. Little research has been done on how IT professionals, specifically software developers, make ethical and moral decisions, or if they even believe that they encounter ethical or moral decision making opportunities, during software development projects. Many theories for explaining and predicting ethical and moral behavior have been developed. Traditional theories ranging from deontology to virtue ethics have helped researchers and social scientists categorize human behavior in relation to ethical and moral judgments. Another theory, proposed by Forsyth (A taxonomy of ethical ideologies, 1980), called ethics position theory (EPT), calls for categorizing human behavior and thinking into four categories labeled situationism, absolutism, subjectivism, and exceptionism. EPT suggests ethical characteristics and tendencies can be determined, based on where a person falls in relation to the four categories identified. This study examined the application of EPT in relation to decisions made by software designers and developers during software development projects. The initial hypotheses proposed were; (1) Software developers and designers do not believe they encounter ethical or moral decision making opportunities during their software development projects; (2) the ethical and moral beliefs of software developers and designers fall primarily into the situationism or subjectivism categories; (3) and that factors such as age, gender, career experience, and culture are mitigating factors in determining where on the EPT scale software developers and designers fall.

We systematically surveyed period variations of superhumps in SU UMa-type dwarf novae based on newly obtained data and past publications. In many systems, the evolution of the superhump period is found to be composed of three distinct stages: an early evolutionary stage with a longer superhump period, a middle stage with systematically varying periods, and a final stage with a shorter, stable superhump period. During the middle stage, many systems with superhump periods of less than 0.08 d show positive period derivatives. We present observational characteristics of these stages and give greatly improved statistics. Contrary to an earlier claim, we found no clear evidence for a variation of period derivatives among different superoutbursts of the same object. We present an interpretation that the lengthening of the superhump period is a result of the outward propagation of an eccentricity wave, which is limited by the radius near the tidal truncation. We interpret that late-stage superhumps are rejuvenated excitation of a 3:1 resonance when superhumps in the outer disk are effectively quenched. The general behavior of the period variation, particularly in systems with short orbital periods, appears to follow a scenario proposed in Kato, Maehara, and Monard (2008, PASJ, 60, L23). We also present an observational summary of WZ Sge-type dwarf novae. Many of them have shown long-enduring superhumps during a post-superoutburst stage having longer periods than those during the main superoutburst. The period derivatives in WZ Sge-type dwarf novae are found to be strongly correlated with the fractional superhump excess, or consequently with the mass ratio. WZ Sge-type dwarf novae with a long-lasting rebrightening or with multiple rebrightenings tend to have smaller period derivatives, and are excellent candidates for those systems around or after the period minimum of evolution of cataclysmic variables.

Qualitative data analysis is an approach to the use of unstructured data that is widely practised (and studied) in the social sciences, history and literary studies. It is used in many areas derivative from social sciences, such as market analysis, legal evidence analysis, health and demographic studies, education, journalism, etc. It is also coming to be recognised as significant in the knowledge acquisition stage of knowledge engineering or systems analysis. The raw material of qualitative analysis is text or other unstructured material, such as audio or video tapes and music scores. The purposes of qualitative analysis are various, e.g. to analyse the material to support a hypothesis, to determine a factual narrative of events from the material, or to find patterns and themes that "make sense" of the material. For most of these purposes, attempts to organise this material into the record-and-field format of a standard database package, or to find specific material in the data by text search, is of little use. Consequently existing software systems for supporting qualitative analysis, e.g. The Ethnograph, have adopted a "cut-and-paste" approach in which text portions, selected visually by the user, are collected into one or more of a possibly large number of categories. Retrieval is simply on the categories or a restricted subset of boolean combinations of them. This paper begins by arguing that such an approach is insufficent for qualitative analysis methodology, and indeed distorts it. In its place it describes an approach using a tree-structured database and operators of several types for database insertion and deletion, structure modification, storage of comments and access histories, and the relational combination of existing database items to make new ones, representing concepts or categories built out of ones already contained in the database. This latter is argued to be central to the type of creative data-driven analysis that is typically wanted in qualitative research, and is opposed to the hypothesis-driven deductive analysis that typifies e.g. the handling of structured questionnaires. The system described is currently in wide use in many places. The method described lends itself readily to extensions that explicitly employ artificial intelligence techniques. The paper concludes with a discussion of planned extensions to frame-based reasoning, incorporation of semantic nets, and search based on patterns of concepts.

We photometrically observed four southern dwarf novae in outburst (NSV 10934, MM Sco, AB Nor and CAL 86). NSV 10934 was confirmed to be an SU UMa-type dwarf nova with a mean superhump period of 0.07478(1) d. This star also showed transient appearance of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) during the final growing stage of the superhumps. Combined with the recent theoretical interpretation and with the rather unusual rapid terminal fading of normal outbursts, NSV 10934 may be a candidate intermediate polar showing SU UMa-type properties. The mean superhump periods of MM Sco and AB Nor were determined to be 0.06136(4) d and 0.08438(2) d, respectively. We suggest that AB Nor belongs to a rather rare class of long-period SU UMa-type dwarf novae with low mass-transfer rates. We also observed an outburst of the suspected SU UMa-type dwarf nova CAL 86. We identified this outburst as a normal outburst and determined the mean decline rate of 1.1 mag/d.

We observed the long-term behavior of the helium dwarf nova V803 Cen, and clarified the existence of at least two distinct states (a state with 77-d supercycles and a standstill-like state) that interchangeably appeared with a time-scale of 1-2 yr. We also conducted a time-resolved CCD photometry campaign during a bright outburst in 2003 June. The overall appearance of the outburst closely resembles that of the late stage of the 2001 outburst of WZ Sge, consisting of the initial peak stage (super-outburst plateau), the dip, and the oscillating (rebrightening) states. During the initial peak stage, we detected a large-amplitude superhump-type variation with a period of 0.018686(4)d = 1614.5(4)s, and during the oscillation stage we detected variations with a period of 0.018728(2)d 1618.1(2) s. We consider that the former period better represents the superhump period of this system, and the latter periodicity may be better interpreted as arising from late superhumps. The overall Picture of the V803 Cen outburst resembles that of a WZ S-e-type outburst, but apparently with a higher mass-transfer rate than that in hydrogen-rich WZ Sge-type stars. We suggest that this behavior may be either the result of difficulty in maintaining the hot state in a helium disk, or the effect of an extremely low tidal torque resulting from the extreme mass ratio.

The black hole X-ray binary V4641 Sgr experienced an outburst in 2002 May, which was detected at X-ray, optical, and radio wavelengths. The outburst lasted for only 6 days, but the object remained active for the next several months. Here, we report on the detailed properties of light curves during the outburst and the post-outburst active phase. We reveal that rapid optical variations of similar to 100 s became more prominent when a thermal flare weakened and the optical spectrum flattened in the I-c, R-c, and V-band regions. In conjunction with the flat spectrum in the radio ran-e, this strongly indicates that the origin of rapid variations is not thermal emission, but synchrotron emission.Just after the outburst, we detected repeated flares at optical and X-ray wavelengths. The optical and X-ray light curves exhibited a strong correlation with the X-rays lagging by about 7 min. The X-ray lag can be understood in terms of a hot region propagating into the inner region of the accretion flow. The short X-ray lag, however, requires modifications of this simple scenario to account for the short propagation time. We also detected high-amplitude rapid variations 50 days after the outburst, which we call optical flashes. During the most prominent optical flash, the object brightened by 1.2 mag only within 30 s. The released energy indicates that the emission source should be at the innermost region of the accretion flow.

Specialized computer programs for Qualitative Research in social sciences have greatly changed ways of doing QR, the reliability and comprehensiveness of results, the ability to inspect and challenge a researcher's working, and the relationship with quantitative methods in social research. This article explores these claims in the context of N6 (NUD*IST) and NVivo, the two programs designed by the authors; and considers possible future developments in the field.

We photometrically observed the three dwarf novae V877 Ara, KK Tel and PU CMa. We discovered the undisputed presence of superhumps in V877 Ara and KK Tel, with mean periods of 0.084 11(2) and 0.088 08(3) d, respectively. Both V877 Ara and KK Tel are confirmed to belong to long-period SU UMa-type dwarf novae. In V877 Ara, we found a large decrease of the superhump period . There is evidence that the period of KK Tel decreased at a similar or a more exceptional rate. Coupled with the past studies of superhump period changes, these findings suggest that a previously neglected diversity of phenomena is present in long-period SU UMa-type dwarf novae. The present discovery of a diversity in long-period SU UMa-type systems would become an additional step towards a full understanding of the dwarf nova phenomenon. PU CMa is shown to be an excellent candidate for an SU UMa-type dwarf nova. We examined the outburst properties of these dwarf novae, and derived characteristic outburst recurrence times. Combined with the recently published measurement of the orbital period of PU CMa, we propose that PU CMa is the first object filling the gap between the extreme WZ Sge-type and ER UMa-type stars.