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Guide To Ph093 Viola Mary Hadlock Anderson Photograph Collection, Abbie Weiser

Finding Aids

The Viola Mary Hadlock Anderson photograph collection, PH093, dates from the 1940s. The collection consists of nine photographs of the campus of the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy (now UTEP).

Why Was Nicholson's Theory So Successful: An Explanation Of A Mysterious Episode In 20 Century Atomic Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the early 1910s, John Nicholson suggested that all atoms are formed by four basic elementary particles. This theory had a spectacular match with observations: it explained, with an unbelievable accuracy of 0.1, the atomic weights of all 92 elements known at that time. Specifically, it was shown that every atomic weight can be represented, with this accuracy, as an integer combination of four basic atomic weights. However, in a few years, this theory turned out to be completely wrong: atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons, not of Nicholson's particles. This mysterious episode seems to contradict the usual development …

Need For Shift-Invariant Fractional Differentiation Explains The Appearance Of Complex Numbers In Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Complex numbers are ubiquitous in physics, they lead to a natural description of different physical processes and to efficient algorithms for solving the corresponding problems. But why this seemingly counterintuitive mathematical construction is so natural here? In this paper, we provide a possible explanation of this phenomenon: namely, we show that complex numbers appear if take into account that some physical system are described by derivatives of fractional order and that a physically meaningful analysis of such derivatives naturally leads to complex numbers.

Why Physical Processes Are Smooth Or Almost Smooth: A Possible Physical Explanation Based On Intuitive Ideas Behind Energy Conservation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While there are some non-smooth (and even discontinuous) processes in nature, most processes are smooth or almost smooth. This smoothness help estimate physical quantities, but a natural question is: why are physical processes smooth or almost smooth? Are there any fundamental reasons for this ubiquitous smoothness? In this paper, we provide a possible physical explanation for emirical smoothness: namely, we show that smoothness naturally follows from intuitive ideas behind energy conservation.

Building Postsecondary Pathways For Latinx Students In Computing: Lessons From Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Anne-Marie Núñez, David S. Knight, Sanga Kim

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the use of technology in education and the workforce, a shortage of computer scientists continues, and computing remains one of the least diverse STEM disciplines. Efforts to diversify the computing industry often focus on the most selective postsecondary institutions, which are predominantly White. We highlight the role of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) in gradating large numbers of STEM graduates of color, particularly Latinx students. HSIs are uniquely positioned to leverage asset-based approaches that value students’ cultural background. We describe the practices educators use in the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a network of 40 HSIs …

So How Were The Tents Of Israel Placed? A Bible-Inspired Geometric Problem, Julio Urenda, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In one of the Biblical stories, prophet Balaam blesses the tents of Israel for being good. But what can be so good about the tents? A traditional Rabbinical interpretation is that the placement of the tents provided full privacy: from each entrance, one could not see what is happening at any other entrance. This motivates a natural geometric question: how exactly were these tents placed? In this paper, we provide an answer to this question.

Students Who Took The Class Help Studenrs Who Are Taking It: What Is The Best Arrangement?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The more help students get, the better. It is therefore reasonable to ask students who took the class to help students who are currently taking this class. This arrangement also help the helpers: it is known that the best way to learn the material is to teach it. An important question is: how to pair the students to get the maximal effect? In this paper, we show that, under reasonable conditions, the best effect is when we match the best performing "older" student with the worst performing "younger" one, the second best with the second worst, etc.

Just-In-Time Teaching Adds Motivation But Is Less Efficient, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva, Christian Servin

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

For each major, in addition to directly major-related topics, students also need to learn auxiliary topics –- e.g., math topics –- which are needed to understand more direct major-related ones. To learn these auxiliary topics, students are required to take some prerequisite math class. The problem is that when the students take these classes, they do not fully understand how these classes are related to their major. As a result, they often lack motivations, do not study well, and this hinders their performance in the follow-up major-related classes. One way to enhance the students' motivation is to use just-in-time teaching, …

The Hertzog Collection, Claudia A. Rivers

Presentations & Slide Shows

No abstract provided.

Paso Del Norte Economic Indicator Review, December, Hunt Institute For Global Competitiveness

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Highlights From The Borderplex Economic Outlook To 2022, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 4, Number 12, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Guide To Ms132 El Paso County Records Wills, Special Collections Staff

Finding Aids

The wills in the El Paso County records are local governmental records housed in Special Collections as part of the Texas Regional Historical Resources Depository program. These handwritten and typed wills date circa 1886 – 1930 and were indexed as part of the probate records.

Guide To Ms132 El Paso County Records - Old Civil Cases, Abbie Weiser

Finding Aids

The “Old Civil Cases” are local governmental records housed in Special Collections as part of the Texas Regional Historical Resources Depository program. These files, part of the El Paso County records, date 1866 – 1918.

The Prospector, November 3, 2020, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Public Health Crisis Trickles to UTEP

How To Find The Dependence Based On Measurements With Unknown Accuracy: Towards A Theoretical Justification For Midpoint And Convex-Combination Interval Techniques And Their Generalizations, Somsak Chanaim, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In practice, we often need to find regression parameters in situations when for some of the values, we have several results of measuring this same value. If we know the accuracy of each of these measurements, then we can use the usual statistical techniques to combine the measurement results into a single estimate for the corresponding value. In some cases, however, we do not know these accuracies, so what can we do? In this paper, we describe two natural approaches to solving this problem. In addition to describing general techniques, our results also provide a theoretical explanation for several semi-heuristic …

Why Ancient Egyptians Preferred Some Sum-Of-Inverses Representations Of Fractions?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Ancient Egyptians represented a fraction as a sum of inverses of natural numbers, with the smallest possible number of terms. In our previous paper, we explained that this representation makes sense since it leads to the optimal way of solving a problem frequently mentioned in the Egyptian papyri: dividing bread between workers. However, this does not explain why ancient Egyptians preferred some representations with the same number of terms but not others. For example, to represent 2/3, they used the sum 1/2 + 1/6 but not the sum 1/3 + 1/3 with the same number of terms. In this paper, …

What If You Are Late On Several (Relatively Small) Tasks?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In practice, we sometimes end up in a situation when we are late on several relatively small tasks. We cannot finish them all, so which ones should we do first? We show that in general, this is an NP-complete problem. In the typical situation when all the tasks are of approximately the same importance and requires approximately the same time to finish, we can have an explicit solution to this problem. In a nutshell, the resulting (somewhat counterintuitive) recommendation is to start with things which are not yet late or only a few days late. Actually, this recommendation makes sense: …

A Possible (Qualitative) Explanation Of The Hierarchy Problem In Theoretical Physics, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the important open problem in theoretical physics is the hierarchy problem: how to explain that some physical constant are many orders of magnitude larger than others. In this paper, we provide a possible qualitative explanation for this phenomenon.

Possibility To Algorithmically Check: Yet Another Reason Why Current Definitions Have Been Selected In Elementary Mathematics, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

At first glance, many definitions in mathematics -- especially in elementary mathematics -- seem arbitrary. Why is 1 not considered a prime number? Why is a square considered to be a particular case of a parallelogram -- in some old textbooks, a parallelogram was defined in such a way as to exclude the square. In his 2018 article, Art Duval explained many such definitions by a natural requirement to make the corresponding results (theorems) as simple as possible. However, elementary mathematics is not just about theorems and proofs, it is also about computations. In this paper, we show that from …

Why Strings, Why Quark Confinement: A Simple Qualitative Explanation, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In this pedagogical article, we recall the infinities problem of modern physics, and we show that the natural way to overcome this problem naturally leads to strings and to quark confinement.

Why Quantiles Are A Good Description Of Volatility In Economics: A Pedagogical Explanation, Sean R. Aguilar, Vladik Kreinovich, Uyen Pham

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To make investment decisions, we need to know, for each financial instrument, not only its expected return -- but also how the actual return may deviate from its expected value. A numerical measure of such deviations is known as volatility. Originally, volatility was measured by the srabdard deviation from the expected price, but it turned out that this measure does not always adequately describe our perception of volatility. Empirically, it turned out that quantiles are a more adequate description of volatility. In this paper, we provide an explanation of this empirical phenomenon.

Should Fighting Corruption Always Be One Of The Main Pre-Requisites For Economic Help?, Sean R. Aguilar, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In general, corruption is bad. In many cases, it makes sense to make fighting corruption one of the main pre-requisites for getting financial help: we do not want this money to line the pockets of corrupted officials, we want to help the people. In this paper, we argue, however, that in some cases -- of over-regulated and/or oppressive regimes -- too much emphasis on fighting corruption may be counter-productive: instead of helping people, it may hurt them.

Being Active In Research Makes A Person A Better Teacher And Even Helps When Working For A Company, Francisco Zapata, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

At first glance, it looks like being active in research is not necessarily related to a person's success in being a teacher or being a productive company employee -- moreover, it looks like research distracts from other tasks. Somewhat surprisingly, however, in practice, the best teachers and the best employees are actually the ones who are active in research. In this paper, we provide an explanation for this seemingly counter-intuitive phenomenon.

Yet Another Possible Explanation Of Egyptian Fractions: Motivated By Fairness, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Ancient Egyptians represented fractions as sums of inverses of natural numbers, and they made sure that all these natural numbers are different. The representation as a sum of inverses makes some sense: it is known to lead to an optimal solution to the problem of dividing bread between workers, a problem often described in the Egyptian papyri. However, this does not explain why the corresponding natural numbers should be all different: some representations with the same natural number repeated several times lead to the same smallest number of cuts as the representations that the ancient Egyptians actually used. In this …

Why Min, Max, Opening, And Closing Stock Prices Are Empirically Most Appropriate For Predictions, And Why Their Linear Combination Provides The Best Estimate For Beta, Somsak Chanaim, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

While we have moment-by-moment prices of each stock, we cannot use all this information to predict the future stock prices, we need to combine them into a few characteristics of the daily stock price. Empirically, it turns out that the best characteristics are the lowest daily price, the highest daily price, the opening price, and the closing price. In the paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical phenomenon. We also explain why empirically, it turns out that the best way to find the stock's beta coefficient is to consider a convex combination of the about four characteristics.

A Natural Formalization Of Changing-One's-Mind Leads To Square Root Of "Not" And To Complex-Valued Fuzzy Logic, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

We show that a natural formalization of the process of changing one's mind leads to such seemingly non-intuitive ideas as square root of "not" and complex-valued fuzzy degrees.

The Prospector, November 25, 2020, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Another Graduation Lost to COVID-19

Graduation issue. Contains a list of the 2020 graduates.

The Development Of An Innovative Mentorship Experience For An Online Rn-To-Bsn Program, Melissa Wholeben, Gloria Mckee, Audrey Tolouian, Diane Rankin

Nursing Faculty Publications

The Institute of Medicine, Carnegie Foundation and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) initially accelerated the movement to increase the number of Baccalaureate (BSN) prepared nurses in the workforce. Research demonstrated lower mortality rates, fewer medication errors and positive outcomes linked to nurses prepared at the BSN and higher levels. The purpose of this article is to describe the steps utilized in the development of an innovative mentorship project that provides mentored clinical practice experiences to students enrolled in an RN-to-BSN program delivered 100% online. This mentorship project was developed with two main aims in mind: 1) To …

Herbal Medicines In The Treatment Of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19), Audrey C. Tolouian, Maryam Khosravian, Hedieh Ragati Haghi, Alireza Bolourian, Zahra Mojtahedi, Masoumeh Asgharpour, Amirhesam Alirezaei

Nursing Faculty Publications

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by a novel coronavirus, started in livestock within the markets of Wuhan, China and was consequently spread around the world. The virus has been rapidly spread worldwide due to the outbreak. COVID-19 is the third serious coronavirus outbreak in less than 20 years after Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012. The novel virus has a nucleotide identity closer to that of the SARS coronavirus than that of the MERS coronavirus. Since there is still no vaccine, the main ways to improve personal immunity against this disease …