Correlation Between Student Collaboration Network Centrality and Academic Performance

We compute nodal centrality measures on the collaboration networks of students enrolled in three upper-division physics courses, usually taken sequentially, at the Colorado School of Mines. These are complex networks in which links between students indicate assistance with homework. The courses included in the study are intermediate Classical Mechanics, introductory Quantum Mechanics, and intermediate Electromagnetism. By correlating these nodal centrality measures with students' scores on homework and exams, we find four centrality measures that correlate significantly with students' homework scores in all three courses: in-strength, out-strength, closeness centrality, and harmonic centrality. These correlations suggest that students who not only collaborate often, but also collaborate significantly with many different people tend to achieve higher grades. Centrality measures between simultaneous collaboration networks (analytical vs. numerical homework collaboration) composed of the same students also correlate with each other, suggesting that students' collaboration strategies remain relatively stable when presented with homework assignments targeting different skills. Additionally, we correlate centrality measures between collaboration networks from different courses and find that the four centrality measures with the strongest relationship to students' homework scores are also the most stable measures across networks involving different courses. Correlations of centrality measures with exam scores were generally smaller than the correlations with homework scores, though this finding varied across courses.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. PE

Signal synthesis by means of evolutionary algorithms

In this article, we investigate a procedure for generating signals with genetic algorithms. Signals are obtained from elementary patterns characterized by different degrees of freedom. These patterns are repeated and combined in order to reach specific signal shapes. The whole signal parametrization has to be determined by solving a difficult inverse problem of high dimensionality and strong multimodality. This can be carried out using evolutionary algorithms with the aim of finding all pattern configurations in the signal. The different signal synthesis schemes are evaluated, tested and applied to the generation of particular railway driving profiles

Educating and Training Accelerator Scientists and Technologists for Tomorrow

Accelerator science and technology is inherently an integrative discipline that combines aspects of physics, computational science, electrical and mechanical engineering. As few universities offer full academic programs, the education of accelerator physicists and engineers for the future has primarily relied on a combination of on-the-job training supplemented with intense courses at regional accelerator schools. This paper describes the approaches being used to satisfy the educational interests of a growing number of interested physicists and engineers.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure

A Corporate Model of Similitude for SMEs Reunion into a Corporation, Viewed from the Angle of Physical Thought, and Its Complex Economic and Social Impact

In order to exceed the circularity of formal economic thinking, the authors of the present paper favour the models of thinking specific to physics, which are also constructed statistically and mathematically, in an attempt to find an answer to the reunion of similar small and medium enterprises (SMEs), into multinational corporations. A model based on the theory of similitude is thus made use of, born from the very essence of physics, and having an economic and social destination and a complex impact. The physical models intended for economic systems are expressed as systems of partial differential equations, and the result becomes a new vision of reality. This paper details an original model based on physical similitude for SME amalgamation under the name of multinational corporations. After an introduction to the physical theory of similitude, the first section describes the physics model because of the reunion of similar SMEs. The real birth of some corporations in Serbia forms the content of the second section; the economic and social phenomena relating to the generation of such corporations, and the corporate social responsibility are emphasized. The idea of social complexity and its impact as the fifth dimension of a modern multinational corporation conclude the paper.physical model, small and medium enterprise (SME), multinational corporation (MNE), corporate social responsibility (CSR), economic and social complexity

Clustering analysis of railway driving missions with niching

A wide number of applications requires classifying or grouping data into a set of categories or clusters. Most popular clustering techniques to achieve this objective are K-means clustering and hierarchical clustering. However, both of these methods necessitate the a priori setting of the cluster number. In this paper, a clustering method based on the use of a niching genetic algorithm is presented, with the aim of finding the best compromise between the inter-cluster distance maximization and the intra-cluster distance minimization. This method is applied to three clustering benchmarks and to the classification of driving missions for railway applications