172 research outputs found
A Longitudinal Study of Engineering Student Performance and Retention. V. Comparisons with Traditionally-Taught Students
In a longitudinal study at North Carolina State University, a cohort of students took five chemical engineering courses taught by the same instructor in five consecutive semesters. The courses made extensive use of active and cooperative learning and a variety of other techniques designed to address a broad spectrum of learning styles. Previous reports on the study summarized the instructional methods used in the experimental course sequence, described the performance of the cohort in the introductory chemical engineering course, and examined performance and attitude differences between students from rural and urban backgrounds and between male and female students.1–4 This paper compares outcomes for the experimental cohort with outcomes for students in a traditionally‐taught comparison group. The experimental group outperformed the comparison group on a number of measures, including retention and graduation in chemical engineering, and many more of the graduates in this group chose to pursue advanced study in the field. Since the experimental instructional model did not require small classes (the smallest of the experimental classes had 90 students) or specially equipped classrooms, it should be adaptable to any engineering curriculum at any institution
The Effects of Personality Type on Engineering Student Performance and Attitudes
The Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) was administered to a group of 116 students taking the introductory chemical engineering course at North Carolina State University. That course and four subsequent chemical engineering courses were taught in a manner that emphasized active and cooperative learning and inductive presentation of course material. Type differences in various academic performance measures and attitudes were noted as the students progressed through the curriculum. The observations were generally consistent with the predictions of type theory, and the experimental instructional approach appeared to improve the performance of MBTI types (extraverts, sensors, and feelers) found in previous studies to be disadvantaged in the engineering curriculum. The conclusion is that the MBTI is a useful tool for helping engineering instructors and advisors to understand their students and to design instruction that can benefit all of them
Non-Equilibrium Large N Yukawa Dynamics: marching through the Landau pole
The non-equilibrium dynamics of a Yukawa theory with N fermions coupled to a
scalar field is studied in the large N limit with the goal of comparing the
dynamics predicted from the renormalization group improved effective potential
to that obtained including the fermionic backreaction. The effective potential
is of the Coleman-Weinberg type. Its renormalization group improvement is
unbounded from below and features a Landau pole. When viewed self-consistently,
the initial time singularity does not arise. The different regimes of the
dynamics of the fully renormalized theory are studied both analytically and
numerically. Despite the existence of a Landau pole in the model, the dynamics
of the mean field is smooth as it passes the location of the pole. This is a
consequence of a remarkable cancellation between the effective potential and
the dynamical chiral condensate. The asymptotic evolution is effectively
described by a quartic upright effective potential. In all regimes, profuse
particle production results in the formation of a dense fermionic plasma with
occupation numbers nearly saturated up to a scale of the order of the mean
field. This can be interpreted as a chemical potential. We discuss the
implications of these results for cosmological preheating.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figures, LaTeX, submitted to Physical Review
Tuning Locked Inflation: Supergravity versus Phenomenology
We analyze the cosmological consequences of locked inflation, a model
recently proposed by Dvali and Kachru that can produce significant amounts of
inflation without requiring slow-roll. We pay particular attention to the end
of inflation in this model, showing that a secondary phase of saddle inflation
can follow the locked inflationary era. However, this subsequent period of
inflation results in a strongly scale dependent spectrum that can lead to
massive black hole formation in the primordial universe. Avoiding this
disastrous outcome puts strong constraints on the parameter space open to
models of locked inflation.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure
Conformal Orbifold Partition Functions from Topologically Massive Gauge Theory
We continue the development of the topological membrane approach to open and
unoriented string theories. We study orbifolds of topologically massive gauge
theory defined on the geometry , where is a generic
compact Riemann surface. The orbifold operations are constructed by gauging the
discrete symmetries of the bulk three-dimensional field theory. Multi-loop
bosonic string vacuum amplitudes are thereby computed as bulk correlation
functions of the gauge theory. It is shown that the three-dimensional
correlators naturally reproduce twisted and untwisted sectors in the case of
closed worldsheet orbifolds, and Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions in
the case of open ones. The bulk wavefunctions are used to explicitly construct
the characters of the underlying extended Kac-Moody group for arbitrary genus.
The correlators for both the original theory and its orbifolds give the
expected modular invariant statistical sums over the characters.Comment: 47 pages LaTeX, 3 figures, uses amsfonts and epsfig; v2: Typos
corrected, reference added, clarifying comments on modular invariance
inserted; v3: Further comments on modular invariance added; to be published
in JHE
Preheating After Modular Inflation
We study (p)reheating in modular (closed string) inflationary scenarios, with
a special emphasis on Kahler moduli/Roulette models. It is usually assumed that
reheating in such models occurs through perturbative decays. However, we find
that there are very strong non-perturbative preheating decay channels related
to the particular shape of the inflaton potential (which is highly nonlinear
and has a very steep minimum). Preheating after modular inflation, proceeding
through a combination of tachyonic instability and broad-band parametric
resonance, is perhaps the most violent example of preheating after inflation
known in the literature. Further, we consider the subsequent transfer of energy
to the standard model sector in scenarios where the standard model particles
are confined to a D7-brane wrapping the inflationary blow-up cycle of the
compactification manifold or, more interestingly, a non-inflationary blow up
cycle. We explicitly identify the decay channels of the inflaton in these two
scenarios. We also consider the case where the inflationary cycle shrinks to
the string scale at the end of inflation; here a field theoretical treatment of
reheating is insufficient and one must turn instead to a stringy description.
We estimate the decay rate of the inflaton and the reheat temperature for
various scenarios.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in JCA
Refined Chern-Simons theory and (q, t)-deformed Yang-Mills theory : Semi-classical expansion and planar limit
We study the relationship between refined Chern-Simons theory on lens spaces S-3/Z(p) and (q, t)-deformed Yang-Mills theory on the sphere S-2. We derive the instanton partition function of (q, t)-deformed U(N) Yang-Mills theory and describe it explicitly as an analytical continuation of the semi-classical expansion of refined Chern-Simons theory. The derivations are based on a generalization of the Weyl character formula to Macdonald polynomials. The expansion is used to formulate q-generalizations of beta-deformed matrix models for refined Chern-Simons theory, as well as conjectural formulas for the chi(y)-genus of the moduli space of U(N) instantons on the surface O(-p) -> P-1 for all p >= 1 which enumerate black hole microstates in refined topological string theory. We study the large N phase structures of the refined gauge theories, and match them with refined topological string theory on the resolved conifold
Symmetry, Gravity and Noncommutativity
We review some aspects of the implementation of spacetime symmetries in
noncommutative field theories, emphasizing their origin in string theory and
how they may be used to construct theories of gravitation. The geometry of
canonical noncommutative gauge transformations is analysed in detail and it is
shown how noncommutative Yang-Mills theory can be related to a gravity theory.
The construction of twisted spacetime symmetries and their role in constructing
a noncommutative extension of general relativity is described. We also analyse
certain generic features of noncommutative gauge theories on D-branes in curved
spaces, treating several explicit examples of superstring backgrounds.Comment: 52 pages; Invited review article to be published in Classical and
Quantum Gravity; v2: references adde
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