Digital Commons Network^™

Increasing Student Interactions With Learning Objectives, Emily Kaye Faulconer

Publications

As educators, we recognize the importance of strong student learning objectives. We also know that students benefit by being well informed of expectations. Existing literature offers little guidance in methods and teaching strategies to apply in exposing students to their learning objectives. In this article, we discuss the use of specific teaching strategies to increase student interactions with the learning objectives. Student opinions regarding learning objectives were measured using an end-of-course Likert survey. Although no statistically significant changes in student opinions were detected in this study, a future study will investigate the influence of these targeted strategies on content mastery. …

Lessons Learned From Successful Black Male "Buoyant Believers" In Engineering And Engineering-Related Fields, Leroy L. Long Iii, Trevion Henderson

Publications

In high-demand fields like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), more success strategies are needed to effectively recruit and retain college students. One-size fits-all approaches (i.e., those that are supposed to work for all students) often neglect the unique needs of underrepresented populations. Although some strategies exist for helping minority students succeed in STEM, the present investigation uncovered detailed information about how Black male students in engineering and engineering-related fields develop important academic traits such as confidence and resilience. To add to the limited body of literature on Black males in STEM, interview data from 27 Black male students majoring …

The Remote Observatories Of The Southeastern Association For Research In Astronomy (Sara), William C. Keel, Terry D. Oswalt, Peter Mack, Gary Henson, Todd Hillwig, Et Al.

Publications

We describe the remote facilities operated by the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) , a consortium of colleges and universities in the US partnered with Lowell Observatory, the Chilean National Telescope Allocation Committee, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. SARA observatories comprise a 0.96 m telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona; one of 0.6 m aperture on Cerro Tololo, Chile; and the 1 m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain. All are operated using standard VNC or Radmin protocols communicating with on-site PCs. Remote operation offers considerable flexibility in scheduling, allowing long-term …

Utilizing The O-C Method To Determine Third-Body Existence In Eclipsing Binary Systems, Patrice Majewski, Tomomi Otani, Terry D. Oswalt

Publications

Previous studies on the subject of eclipsing binaries (EBs) within the Kepler field have been adequately determined the period, distance, and other stellar parameters of these systems (Borkovits, et al. 2015). Additionally, with the use of Observed-minus-Calculated (O-C) plots, variation in the timing of timing of eclipses can be easily detected. The eclipse timing shifts may be caused by dynamical effects or by light-travel time effects (LTTE) caused by the existence of a third body. The following research was conducted on ten binaries within the Kepler “K2” Campaign 5 field whose light curves (LCs) showed evidence of eclipses with periods …

Gyrochronology Of Wide Binaries In The Kepler K2 Fields, Alexander Stone-Martinez, Gustavo Villarroel, Patrice Majewski, Tomomi Otani, Terry Oswalt, Andrew Mcnaughton

Publications

Gyrochronology is the method of determining a stars age based on its rotation period and mass. A cool main sequence star loses it's angular momentum as it ages, so the rotation rate slows down. Gyrochronology has been tested on star clusters in previous studies and now we are applying the theory to binary stars. Components of a binary should be the same age, so Gyrochronology should return the same age for both stars in binary systems. We examined the rotation periods for 290 wide binary main sequence stars in the Kepler K2 fields. These observations are part of a continuing …

Information Technology Approaches To Forest Management, Mary Snow, Richard Snow

Publications

The majority of the world’s forests occur where there is a dry season long enough to affect a seasonal change in the forest community. The seasonal forest may include evergreen, semi-deciduous, deciduous trees, or some combination of these. Local differences in soil or other site characteristics often determine which community persists. Since the seasonal forests exist where there is seasonal precipitation, the character of the forest is closely associated with the length of the rainy season. As the length of the rainy season decreases, the density of the canopy decreases. If the global climate system warms and prolonged drought gives …

Gyrochronology Of Wide Binaries In The Kepler K2 Campaign 5 Field, Terry D. Oswalt, Derek Buzasi, Tomomi Otani

Publications

We are determining rotation periods for an ensemble of over 100 wide non-interacting binary stars in the K2 Campaign 5 field that contain two main sequence dwarfs, as well as a smaller sample containing at least one white dwarf component. Observations of such coeval pairs provide the basis for our new investigation of rotation-based age determinations. Such “gyrochronology” ages can achieve a precision that exceeds most other current method of stellar age determination. Here we present a status report on our analysis of the light curves extracted from the K2 Campaign 5 field.

Testing The Stellar Rotation Vs. Age Paradigm Using Wide Binaries In The Kepler & K2 Fields, T. D. Oswalt, T. Otani, A. Stone-Martinez, P. Majewski, D. Buzasi

Publications

Essential to understanding the history of the Galaxy’s stellar populations, ages are among the most difficult to measure properties of stars. Accurate stellar ages would provide key leverage on problems ranging from the habitability of exoplanets to the Galaxy’s chemical evolution and age. Gyrochronology, the empirical relation between rotation and age, is believed to be among the best current methods of stellar age determination. Using several hundred wide non-interacting binaries identified in the Kepler mission “K2” extended mission fields we are testing this paradigm. Such wide pairs afford a unique opportunity to unravel and calibrate the effects of mass, rotation, …

Spatial And Temporal Variability In Mlt Turbulence Inferred From In Situ And Ground-Based Observations During The Wadis-1 Sounding Rocket Campaign, Boris Strelnikov, Arthur Szewczyk, Irina Strelnikova, Ralph Latteck, Gerd Baumgarten, Franz-Josef Lübken, Et. Al.

Publications

In summer 2013 the WADIS-1 sounding rocket campaign was conducted at the Andøya Space Center (ACS) in northern Norway (69° N, 16° E). Among other things, it addressed the question of the variability in mesosphere/lower thermosphere (MLT) turbulence, both in time and space. A unique feature of the WADIS project was multi-point turbulence sounding applying different measurement techniques including rocket-borne ionization gauges, VHF MAARSY radar, and VHF EISCAT radar near Tromsø. This allowed for horizontal variability to be observed in the turbulence field in the MLT at scales from a few to 100 km. We found that the turbulence dissipation …

Exploring Myths In Digital Forensics: Separating Science From Ritual, Gary C. Kessler, Gregory H. Carlton

Publications

Digital forensic methodology deviates significantly relative to the methods of other forensic sciences for numerous practical reasons, and it has been largely influenced by factors derived from the inception and evolution of this relatively new and rapidly changing field. Digital forensics methodology was developed more by practitioners in its early days rather than by computer scientists. This led to accepted best practices in the field that may not represent the best or, at least, tested, science. This paper explores some of these differences in the practice and evolution between digital and other forensic sciences, and recommends scientific approaches to apply …

Multi-Scale Cardiovascular Flow Analysis By An Integrated Meshless-Lumped Parameter Model, Leonardo A. Bueno, Eduardo A. Divo, Alain J. Kassab

Publications

A computational tool that integrates a Radial basis function (RBF)-based Meshless solver with a Lumped Parameter model (LPM) is developed to analyze the multi-scale and multi-physics interaction between the cardiovascular flow hemodynamics, the cardiac function, and the peripheral circulation. The Meshless solver is based on localized RBF collocations at scattered data points which allows for automation of the model generation via CAD integration. The time-accurate incompressible flow hemodynamics are addressed via a pressure-velocity correction scheme where the ensuing Poisson equations are accurately and efficiently solved at each time step by a Dual-Reciprocity Boundary Element method (DRBEM) formulation that takes advantage …

Using Journals To Assess Non-Stem Student Learning In Stem Courses: A Case Study In Cybersecurity Education, Gary Kessler, Glenn S. Dardick, Douglas L. Holton

Publications

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University offers a minor course of study in cybersecurity as an option in our undergraduate Homeland Security program. Since the students are, by and large, social scientists, the focus of the program is to build hyper-awareness of how cybersecurity integrates within their professional aspirations rather than to provide cybersecurity career-level proficiency. Assessing student learning of the technical aspects cannot be performed using traditional tests, as they would not properly measure what the students are learning in a practical sense. Instead, we employ journals and self-reflection to ask the students to express and demonstrate their learning. Although somewhat harder …

O-C Analysis Of The Pulsating Subdwarf B Star Pg 1219 + 534, Tomomi Otani, Terry Oswalt, Alexander Stone-Martinez, Dana Singh, Kenneth Sampson, Aliyah Khan, Austin Seepersad, Caila Deabreu, Adam Moss, Claudia Morello

Publications

PG 1219 + 534 (KY Uma) is a subdwarf B pulsating star with multiple periodicities between 120 – 175 s. PG 1219 + 534 was monitored for 90 hours during 2010-1 and 2016 using the 0.9 m SARA-KP telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona and the 0.8m Ortega telescope at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. So far, the most promising theory for the origin of subdwarf B (sdB) stars is that they result from binary mass transfer near the Helium Flash stage of evolution. The observations of PG 1219 + 534 reported here are part …

Green Building Business Is Booming, Richard Snow, Mary Snow

Publications

Shelter is one of life’s basic necessities. However, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, residential and commercial buildings account for nearly 40% of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) released in the United States annually [1]. The percentage is even higher in China, which leads the world in CO2 emissions from buildings. Most of this CO2 comes from burning fossil fuels to provide the energy necessary to cool, heat, and light homes, office buildings, and retail space. CO2 emissions from residential and commercials buildings are forecast to increase more than emissions from any other sector over the next 25 years. …

First Performance Results Of A New Field-Widened Spatial Heterodyne Spectrometer For Geocoronal Hα Research, D. D. Gardner, E. J. Mierkiewicz, F. L. Roesler, J. M. Harlander, K. P. Jaehnig, S. M. Nossal, L. M. Haffner

Publications

A new, high-resolution field-widened spatial heterodyne spectrometer (FW-SHS) designed to observe geocoronal Balmer α (Hα, 6563 Å) emission was installed at Pine Bluff Observatory (PBO) near Madison, Wisconsin. FW-SHS observations were compared with an already well-characterized dual-etalon Fabry-Perot Interferometer (PBO FPI) optimized for Hα, also at PBO. The FW-SHS is a robust Fourier transform instrument that combines a large throughput advantage with high spectral resolution and a relatively long spectral baseline (~10 times that of the PBO FPI) in a compact, versatile instrument with no moving parts.Coincident Hα observations by FW-SHS and PBO FPI were obtained over similar integration times, …

Assessing The Efficiency Of Different Sustainable Farming Practices In Reducing The Environmental Impacts Caused By Aquaculture, Rajee Olaganathan, Alicia Tang Kar Mun

Publications

Sustainability of aquaculture is achieved when aquaculture farming systems are capable of preserving the natural resource base and involves an institutional change to the environment by the attainment and continued satisfaction for present and future generations. Sustainable farming practices produce sufficient aquaculture output to satisfy the seafood demand while not burdening the environment more. The potentiality and efficiency of different sustainable aqua farming practices in reducing anthropogenic impacts to the environment by aquaculture are assessed in this paper. Polyculture is mostly adopted by small-scale rural farmers as it requires low entry barrier and help in income diversification. The input of …

A Safety Management Model For Far 141 Approved Flight Schools, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Thomas Q. Carney

Publications

The Safety Management Annex (Annex 19), which became applicable in November 2013, consolidates safety management provisions previously contained in six other International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annexes, and will serve as a resource for overarching state safety management responsibilities. Through Annex 19, ICAO has required that its member states develop and implement safety management systems (SMS) to improve safety. This mandate includes an approved training organization that is exposed to aviation safety risks. In 2015, the FAA published AC 120-92B to provide guidance material for certificate holders operating under FAR 121, to implement and maintain an SMS. This AC may …

Hubble Parameter Measurement Constraints On The Redshift Of The Deceleration-Acceleration Transition, Dynamical Dark Energy, And Space Curvature, Omer Farooq, Foram Ranjeet Madiyar, Sara Crandall, Bharat Ratra

Publications

We compile an updated list of 38 measurements of the Hubble parameter H(z) between redshifts 0.07 ≤ z ≤ 2.36 and use them to place constraints on model parameters of constant and time-varying dark energy cosmological models, both spatially flat and curved. We use five models to measure the redshift of the cosmological deceleration-acceleration transition, zda, from these H(z) data. Within the error bars, the measured zda are insensitive to the model used, depending only on the value assumed for the Hubble constant H0. The weighted mean of our measurements is zda = 0.72±0.05 (0.84±0.03) for H0 = 68 ± …

Wave Motion Induced By Turbulent Shear Flows Over Growing Stokes Waves, Shahrdad Sajjadi, Serena Robertson, Rebecca Harvey, Mary Brown

Publications

The recent analytical of multi-layer analyses proposed by Sajjadi et al. (J Eng Math 84:73, 2014) (SHD14 therein) is solved numerically for atmospheric turbulent shear flows blowing over growing (or unsteady) Stokes (bimodal) water waves, of low-to-moderate steepness. For unsteady surface waves, the amplitude a(t)∝ekcita(t)∝ekcit, where kcikci is the wave growth factor, k is the wavenumber, and cici is the complex part of the wave phase speed, and thus, the waves begin to grow as more energy is transferred to them by the wind. This will then display the critical height to a point, where the thickness of the inner …

Quantifying Gravity Wave Momentum Fluxes With Mesosphere Temperature Mappers And Correlative Instrumentation, David C. Fritts, Pierre-Dominique Pautet, Katrina Bossert, Michael J. Taylor, Bifford P. Williams, Hiroyuki Iimura, Tao Yuan, Nicholas J. Mitchell, Gunter Stober

Publications

An Advanced Mesosphere Temperature Mapper and other instruments at the Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmosphere Research in Norway (69.3°N) and at Logan and Bear Lake Observatory in Utah (42°N) are used to demonstrate a new method for quantifying gravity wave (GW) pseudo-momentum fluxes accompanying spatially and temporally localized GW packets. The method improves on previous airglow techniques by employing direct characterization of the GW temperature perturbations averaged over the OH airglow layer and correlative wind and temperature measurements to define the intrinsic GW properties with high confidence. These methods are applied to two events, each of which involves superpositions …

Ionospheric Signatures Of Gravity Waves Produced By The 2004 Sumatra And 2011 Tohoku Tsunamis: A Modeling Study, Michael P. Hickey, Yonghui Yu, Wenqing Wang

Publications

Ionospheric fluctuations inferred from observations of total electron content have previously been attributed to tsunamis and have confirmed the strong coupling between Earth’s ocean and ionosphere via atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). To further advance our understanding of this wave coupling process we employ a linear full-wave model and a nonlinear time-dependent model to examine the ionospheric response to the AGW perturbations induced by the 2004 Sumatra and the 2011 Tohoku tsunamis. In the 2004 case, our modeling analyses reveal that one component of the propagating AGWs becomes dynamically unstable in the E-region ionosphere at a range exceeding 2000 km in …

The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

A transient gravitational-wave signal, GW150914, was identified in the twin Advanced LIGO detectors on 2015 September 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC. To assess the implications of this discovery, the detectors remained in operation with unchanged configurations over a period of 39 days around the time of the signal. At the detection statistic threshold corresponding to that observed for GW150914, our search of the 16 days of simultaneous two-detector observational data is estimated to have a false-alarm rate (FAR) of

A Formative Experiment To Align Middle-School History Instruction With Literacy Goals, Jamie Colwell, David Reinking

Publications

Background/Context

Recent curricular trends based on new standards emphasize the centrality of reading and studying texts in history instruction. That trend suggests a closer alignment between middle-school history instruction and goals for developing literacy. Yet potential obstacles identified in the literature, particularly a teacher's stance toward teaching history, imply challenges to instantiating that alignment. Relatively little research has addressed how relevant conceptual positions such as disciplinary literacy might be realized in authentic practice.

Purpose/Objective

The objective was to investigate how middle-school history instruction could be transformed to align with the literacy goals addressed in new curricular standards and to better …

The Economic Situation, 2016 December 1, Bruce Yandle

Publications

Quarterly report on the economic situation of the United States and South Carolina.

Supplement: The Rate Of Binary Black Hole Mergers Inferred From Advanced Ligo Observations Surrounding Gw150914, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, M. Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

This article provides supplemental information for a Letter reporting the rate of (BBH) coalescences inferred from 16 days of coincident Advanced LIGO observations surrounding the transient (GW) signal GW150914. In that work we reported various rate estimates whose 90% confidence intervals fell in the range 2–600 Gpc−3 yr−1. Here we give details on our method and computations, including information about our search pipelines, a derivation of our likelihood function for the analysis, a description of the astrophysical search trigger distribution expected from merging BBHs, details on our computational methods, a description of the effects and our model for calibration uncertainty, …

Tests Of Lorentz Symmetry In The Gravitational Sector, Aurélien Hees, Quentin G. Bailey, Adrien Bourgoin, Hélène Pihan-Le Bars, Christine Guerlin, Christophe Le Poncin-Lafitte

Publications

Lorentz symmetry is one of the pillars of both General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics. Motivated by ideas about quantum gravity, unification theories and violations of CPT symmetry, a significant effort has been put the last decades into testing Lorentz symmetry. This review focuses on Lorentz symmetry tests performed in the gravitational sector. We briefly review the basics of the pure gravitational sector of the Standard-Model Extension (SME) framework, a formalism developed in order to systematically parametrize hypothetical violations of the Lorentz invariance. Furthermore, we discuss the latest constraints obtained within this formalism including analyses of the …

Results Of The Deepest All-Sky Survey For Continuous Gravitational Waves On Ligo S6 Data Running On The Einstein@Home Volunteer Distributed Computing Project, B. P. Abbott, K. Gill, B. Hughey, M. J. Szczepańczyk, Michele Zanolin, Et Al.

Publications

We report results of a deep all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in data from the S6 LIGO science run. The search was possible thanks to the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home distributed computing project.

Observation And Modeling Of Gravity Wave Propagation Through Reflection And Critical Layers Above Andes Lidar Observatory At Cerro Pachón, Chile, Bing Cao, Christopher J. Heale, Yafang Guo, Alan Z. Liu, Jonathan B. Snively

Publications

A complex gravity wave event was observed from 04:30 to 08:10 UTC on 16 January 2015 by a narrow-band sodium lidar and an all-sky airglow imager located at Andes Lidar Observatory (ALO) in Cerro Pachón (30.25∘S, 70.73∘W), Chile. The gravity wave packet had a period of 18–35 min and a horizontal wavelength of about 40–50 km. Strong enhancements of the vertical wind perturbation, exceeding10 m s−1, were found at ∼90 km and ∼103 km, consistent with nearly evanescent wave behavior near a reflection layer. A reduction in vertical wavelength was found as the phase speed approached the background wind speed …

Synchrony In A Boolean Network Of The L-Arabinose Operon In Escherichia Coli, Andy Jenkins, Matthew Macauley

Publications

The lactose operon in Escherichia coli was the first known gene regulatory network, and it is frequently used as a prototype for new modeling paradigms. Historically, many of these modeling frameworks use differential equations. More recently, Stigler and Veliz-Cuba proposed a Boolean network model that captures the bistability of the system and all of the biological steady states. In this paper, we model the well-known arabinose operon in E. coli with a Boolean network. This has several complex features not found in the lac operon, such as a protein that is both an activator and repressor, a DNA looping mechanism …

A Note On The Relationship Between The Pearson Product-Moment And The Spearman Rank-Based Coefficients Of Correlation, Todd C. Headrick

Publications

This note derives the relationship between the Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation and the Spearman rank-based coefficient of correlation for the bivariate normal distribution. This new derivation shows the relationship between the two correlation coefficients through an infinite cosine series. A computationally efficient algorithm is also provided to estimate the relationship between the Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation and the Spearman rank-based coefficient of correlation. The algorithm can be implemented with relative ease using current modern mathematical or statistical software programming languages e.g. R, SAS, Mathematica, Fortran, et al . The algorithm is also available from the author of this …