Papers in Preparation Chris Churchill Associate Professor of Astronomy last updated May 2012 The MgII Absorption-Galaxy Virial Mass Connection Churchill,, C.W, Trujillo-Gomez, S., Nielsen, N.N., & Kacprzak, G.G anticipated submission to ApJ June 2012 Contrary to previous works, we find no direct dependence of MgII equivalent width with galaxy mass. We find that MgII equivalent width scales as the inverse square of D/Rvir, the fraction out into the virial radius at which the gas is probed (in projection). Analysis mostly complete; Paper is not started. Modeling Astrophysical Plasmas Churchill, C.W. & Klimek, L. anticipated submission to ApJ July 2012 A comprehensive code for computing equilibrium ionization conditions in optically thin gases. The code is used to compute the ionization balance in hydrodynamic cosmological simulations (post processing) for "mock" absorption line studies. Code is complete, paper mostly written.