3-D Printing Models of Cell Organelles and Flowers (Lower and Upper Primary, Middle School)

This hands-on module features active learning using 3-D printing technology to teach middle school students about physical scientific models and cell organelles. This activity has already proven a success at NIMBioS’ “Adventures in STEM Camp” for middle school girls. Access to 3D printing has been a growing trend in K-12 schools. In this curriculum module, aligned with Next Generation Science Standards, students learn about physical models and how they are used in science, then design and print their own representations of different cell organelles or flowers. This activity follows the 5E instructional model

PaPaS: A Portable, Lightweight, and Generic Framework for Parallel Parameter Studies

The current landscape of scientific research is widely based on modeling and simulation, typically with complexity in the simulation's flow of execution and parameterization properties. Execution flows are not necessarily straightforward since they may need multiple processing tasks and iterations. Furthermore, parameter and performance studies are common approaches used to characterize a simulation, often requiring traversal of a large parameter space. High-performance computers offer practical resources at the expense of users handling the setup, submission, and management of jobs. This work presents the design of PaPaS, a portable, lightweight, and generic workflow framework for conducting parallel parameter and performance studies. Workflows are defined using parameter files based on keyword-value pairs syntax, thus removing from the user the overhead of creating complex scripts to manage the workflow. A parameter set consists of any combination of environment variables, files, partial file contents, and command line arguments. PaPaS is being developed in Python 3 with support for distributed parallelization using SSH, batch systems, and C++ MPI. The PaPaS framework will run as user processes, and can be used in single/multi-node and multi-tenant computing systems. An example simulation using the BehaviorSpace tool from NetLogo and a matrix multiply using OpenMP are presented as parameter and performance studies, respectively. The results demonstrate that the PaPaS framework offers a simple method for defining and managing parameter studies, while increasing resource utilization.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Fungus Among Us! (Preschool, Lower and Upper Primary)

This module was designed for kids, adults, and families to be shared in an informal environment. It introduces the idea of how fungi and plants can work together in a symbiotic relationship, via a game that includes collecting data and graphing

All About Cod (Grade 2/Lower Primary)

Designed for use in the second grade classroom, this activity will help students learn to summarize data in a table and a bar graph, practice addition and subtraction in the context of a word problem (story), and solve word problems involving money

All About Cod (Grades 3-5/Upper Primary)

Lesson plan All About Cod for Grades 3-5. Aligned with TN Math Standards and includes individual plans for Grades 3, 4, and 5

Bilinear Optimal Control of the Velocity Term in a Kirchhoff Plate Equation

AbstractWe consider a bilinear optimal control problem where the state equation is a Kirchhoff plate equation. The control acts as a multiplier of the velocity term. We prove the existence of an optimal control in a class h∈UM={h∈L∞(0,T); −M≤h(t)≤M} and uniqueness of this optimal control for T sufficiently small