T-infinity: The Dependency Inversion Principle for Rapid and Sustainable Multidisciplinary Software Development

The CFD Vision 2030 Study recommends that, NASA should develop and maintain an integrated simulation and software development infrastructure to enable rapid CFD technology maturation.... [S]oftware standards and interfaces must be emphasized and supported whenever possible, and open source models for noncritical technology components should be adopted. The current paper presents an approach to an open source development architecture, named T-infinity, for accelerated research in CFD leveraging the Dependency Inversion Principle to realize plugins that communicate through collections of functions without exposing internal data structures. Steady state flow visualization, mesh adaptation, fluid-structure interaction, and overset domain capabilities are demonstrated through compositions of plugins via standardized abstract interfaces without the need for source code dependencies between disciplines. Plugins interact through abstract interfaces thereby avoiding N 2 direct code-to-code data structure coupling where N is the number of codes. This plugin architecture enhances sustainable development by controlling the interaction between components to limit software complexity growth. The use of T-infinity abstract interfaces enables multidisciplinary application developers to leverage legacy applications alongside newly-developed capabilities. While rein, a description of interface details is deferred until the are more thoroughly tested and can be closed to modification

Applying the proto-theory of design to explain and modify the parameter analysis method of conceptual design

This article reports on the outcomes of applying the notions provided by the reconstructed proto-theory of design, based on Aristotle’s remarks, to the parameter analysis (PA) method of conceptual design. Two research questions are addressed: (1) What further clarification and explanation to the approach of PA is provided by the proto-theory? (2) Which conclusions can be drawn from the study of an empirically derived design approach through the proto-theory regarding usefulness, validity and range of that theory? An overview of PA and an application example illustrate its present model and unique characteristics. Then, seven features of the proto-theory are explained and demonstrated through geometrical problem solving and analogies are drawn between these features and the corresponding ideas in modern design thinking. Historical and current uses of the terms analysis and synthesis in design are also outlined and contrasted, showing that caution should be exercised when applying them. Consequences regarding the design moves, process and strategy of PA allow proposing modifications to its model, while demonstrating how the ancient method of analysis can contribute to better understanding of contemporary design-theoretic issues

Modernizing Nursing Education for Student Success

Nursing education has evolved over time to meet the changing demands of an increasingly complex healthcare system. To enable teaching faculty to facilitate students’ capacity in applying critical thinking and application of nursing concepts—skills required of graduate nurses--this Organization Improvement Plan (OIP) identifies classroom teaching strategies as instrumental in students’ acquiring these skills. Analysis of University and Program conditions identify challenges and strengths of both that are considered throughout this plan. Based in transformational leadership elements, this plan describes how a grassroots or informal leader can initiate change and move it forward with formal leaders’ support. Application of Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Process (1995) identifies necessary actions the informal change leader uses to raise awareness of the issue associated with conventional classroom teaching methods and follow through required to bring the plan to institutionalization. This Process also acknowledges the relationship between informal and formal leadership to advance improvements. The Harkness Model for Teaching (Trustees of Phillip Exeter Academy, 2019) is presented as a tangible way that active learning can be supported in the classroom setting. Although the long-term goal is to provide students with skills to enable them to be practice-ready on graduation, this plan focuses on providing teaching faculty with the motivation to modernize their classroom teaching strategies

Evolving Academic Advising at Polytechnic A

Over the past decade, Polytechnic A unsuccessfully implemented several academic advising models. As provincial funding for post-secondary institutions has continued to decline, Polytechnic A has commenced the most significant transformation and restructuring in its history to ensure a successful and agile future state. As resources are limited and will likely remain so, it is imperative that each portfolio critically examines its work to ensure it supports student success, financial sustainability, optimization, and innovation. Student retention will be paramount. Opportunely, the literature advocates for academic advising as a critical strategic enabler to support student success and, ultimately, student retention. Consequently, the problem of practice (POP) explores how to develop a sustainable, agile, and adaptable academic advising program in a Polytechnic environment that supports a diverse student body and optimizes resource utilization. This organizational improvement plan (OIP) recommends combining transformational and distributed leadership approaches to lead the proposed change. These approaches are congruent with the organization’s culture and align with the change leader’s leadership lens. The OIP seeks to understand the forces that shape the problem through a historical overview, a review of recent academic advising literature, and institutional and organizational theory lenses. I identified that the environment was ripe with driving forces to support the change through a force field analysis. Galbraith’s STAR model was used to conduct a gap analysis. Several possible solutions were analyzed, and the preferred solution to this OIP is to implement a centralized advising model and develop an academic advising strategy

Cased Based Reasoning in Business Process Management Design

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementArtificial intelligence became increasingly useful since the 1990s, trying to imitate the human brain with its thinking, reasoning, and learning using the key concepts of machine learning, deep learning, and artificial neural networks. Case-based reasoning (CBR), another form of artificial intelligence, stores and retrieves past cases that can be adapted to find a solution to a current problem. The new solution can then be retained and made available to solve other future problems. Business Process Management (BPM) analyzes and optimizes business processes to make them more effective and efficient for an organization’s strategy to ultimately increasing shareholder value. CBR can help to support BPM, making better decisions with existing knowledge when solving process problems. This study investigates effectively store, retrieve, and adapt Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) solutions that best fit the underlying BPM problem using case-based reasoning as a tool. Therefore, a theoretical model was proposed, containing each CBR live cycle phase with different possible tools applied to BPMN diagrams, which was validated by expert interviews. This study concludes that a whole CBR life cycle can be applied to BPMN diagram problems with the need for human intervention. This work did not have the objective to solve the whole problem but to contribute to a possible solution by using CBR through a theoretical model

Exploration of the High Entropy Alloy Space as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem

High Entropy Alloys (HEAs), Multi-principal Component Alloys (MCA), or Compositionally Complex Alloys (CCAs) are alloys that contain multiple principal alloying elements. While many HEAs have been shown to have unique properties, their discovery has been largely done through costly and time-consuming trial-and-error approaches, with only an infinitesimally small fraction of the entire possible composition space having been explored. In this work, the exploration of the HEA composition space is framed as a Continuous Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CCSP) and solved using a novel Constraint Satisfaction Algorithm (CSA) for the rapid and robust exploration of alloy thermodynamic spaces. The algorithm is used to discover regions in the HEA Composition-Temperature space that satisfy desired phase constitution requirements. The algorithm is demonstrated against a new (TCHEA1) CALPHAD HEA thermodynamic database. The database is first validated by comparing phase stability predictions against experiments and then the CSA is deployed and tested against design tasks consisting of identifying not only single phase solid solution regions in ternary, quaternary and quinary composition spaces but also the identification of regions that are likely to yield precipitation-strengthened HEAs.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

CC*IIE Networking Infrastructure - NSF Award #1440646 Project Description

CC*IIE Networking Infrastructure: Accelerating science, translational research, and collaboration at the University of Pittsburgh through the implementation of network upgrades