Associated Students Annual Report 2015-2016

Creating Change, Broadening Perspectiveshttps://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/associatedstudents/1008/thumbnail.jp

Prepare for Citizen Science Challenges at CERN

Abstract: To inspire more people to contribute to science, and educate the public about science, two Citizen Science "challenges" were prepared during summer 2013: the CERN Summer Webfest 2013 and the Virtual LHC Challenge. The first part of this report summarizes how to organize a Webfest at CERN and the outcome of the CERN Summer Webfest 2013.The second part gives an introduction to the current state of the Virtual LHC Challenge: a development of the LHC@Home Test4Theory project planned to attract many unskilled volunteers. This work was supported by a grant from the EU Citizen Cyberlab project, with assistance from the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC)

Converting Family Into Fans: How the Comtemporary Jewish Museum Expanded Its Reach

The last in a series of 10 case studies explores how The Contemporary Jewish Museum in SanFrancisco worked to attract families of all backgrounds and build the next generation of museum supporters. It describes how the museum convened focus groups to better understand the needs of families with young children, designed programs and exhibitions to meet those needs, offered family discounts and entered into community partnerships to build awareness of the museum's offerings.Although The Contemporary Jewish Museum sought to attract families, it did not want to become a children's museum. It therefore took extra efforts to balance the needs of children and adults. It worked to manage parents' expectations, created spaces for children to work on activities and trained its staff to draw families to areas most appropriate for children.These efforts resulted in a nearly nine-fold increase in family visitors over seven years, the report finds. Authors suggest that the museum's successes relied in part on a nuanced understanding of its target audiences, mutually beneficial partnerships with schools and libraries and careful evaluation and refinement of engagement strategies.

Leading Undergraduate Students to Big Data Generation

People are facing a flood of data today. Data are being collected at unprecedented scale in many areas, such as networking, image processing, virtualization, scientific computation, and algorithms. The huge data nowadays are called Big Data. Big data is an all encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process them using traditional data processing applications. In this article, the authors present a unique way which uses network simulator and tools of image processing to train students abilities to learn, analyze, manipulate, and apply Big Data. Thus they develop students handson abilities on Big Data and their critical thinking abilities. The authors used novel image based rendering algorithm with user intervention to generate realistic 3D virtual world. The learning outcomes are significant

How functional programming mattered

In 1989 when functional programming was still considered a niche topic, Hughes wrote a visionary paper arguing convincingly ‘why functional programming matters’. More than two decades have passed. Has functional programming really mattered? Our answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’. Functional programming is now at the forefront of a new generation of programming technologies, and enjoying increasing popularity and influence. In this paper, we review the impact of functional programming, focusing on how it has changed the way we may construct programs, the way we may verify programs, and fundamentally the way we may think about programs