Project- and Group-Based Learning of Junior Writing in Biology

Writing in Biology, part of the Junior Writing Program, is inherently a project-based learning course. After a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Teacher Education Collaborative (STEMTEC) workshop, the course was thoroughly revised. Each of six projects was modified to increase student-active and group participation. Base groups with a balanced experience constitution are established using voluntary ordering and random assignment. A walk-around during the initial meeting serves to establish bonding within the base groups. Random groups are used within exercises to stimulate student interaction and familiarity with ad hoc group cooperation. Digital images of, and by, students are used to encourage student interaction and name recognition. A website with the entire course plan is available at an archival site to complement and help elucidate the course

Spectroscopy of Giant Stars in the Pyxis Globular Cluster

The Pyxis globular cluster is a recently discovered globular cluster that lies in the outer halo (R_{gc} ~ 40 kpc) of the Milky Way. Pyxis lies along one of the proposed orbital planes of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and it has been proposed to be a detached LMC globular cluster captured by the Milky Way. We present the first measurement of the radial velocity of the Pyxis globular cluster based on spectra of six Pyxis giant stars. The mean heliocentric radial velocity is ~ 36 km/sec, and the corresponding velocity of Pyxis with respect to a stationary observer at the position of the Sun is ~ -191 km/sec. This radial velocity is a large enough fraction of the cluster's expected total space velocity, assuming that it is bound to the Milky Way, that it allows strict limits to be placed on the range of permissible transverse velocities that Pyxis could have in the case that it still shares or nearly shares an orbital pole with the LMC. We can rule out that Pyxis is on a near circular orbit if it is Magellanic debris, but we cannot rule out an eccentric orbit associated with the LMC. We have calculated the range of allowed proper motions for the Pyxis globular cluster that result in the cluster having an orbital pole within 15 degrees of the present orbital pole of the LMC and that are consistent with our measured radial velocity, but verification of the tidal capture hypothesis must await proper motion measurement from the Space Interferometry Mission or HST. A spectroscopic metallicity estimate of [Fe/H] = -1.4 +/- 0.1 is determined for Pyxis from several spectra of its brightest giant; this is consistent with photometric determinations of the cluster metallicity from isochrone fitting.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, aaspp4 style, accepted for publication in October, 2000 issue of the PAS

Semi-automatic assessment of I/O behavior by inspecting the individual client-node timelines— an explorative study on 10^6 jobs

HPC applications with suboptimal I/O behavior interfere with well-behaving applications and lead to increased application runtime. In some cases, this may even lead to unresponsive systems and unfinished jobs. HPC monitoring systems can aid users and support staff to identify problematic behavior and support optimization of problematic applications. The key issue is how to identify relevant applications? A profile of an application doesn’t allow to identify problematic phases during the execution but tracing of each individual I/O is too invasive. In this work, we split the execution into segments, i.e., windows of fixed size and analyze profiles of them. We develop three I/O metrics to identify three relevant classes of inefficient I/O behaviors, and evaluate them on raw data of 1,000,000 jobs on the supercomputer Mistral. The advantages of our method is that temporal information about I/O activities during job runtime is preserved to some extent and can be used to identify phases of inefficient I/O. The main contribution of this work is the segmentation of time series and computation of metrics (Job-I/O-Utilization, Job-I/O-Problem-Time, and Job-I/O-Balance) that are effective to identify problematic I/O phases and jobs

Rational cohomology of algebraic solvable groups

If G is an affine algebraic group over a field F, and M is a finite-dimensional Fvector space, then M is a rational G-module if G acts on A4 via a morphism of algebraic groups over F: G p→AutF(M). An infinite-dimensional F-vector space M is a rational G-module if it is the union UiMi of finite-dimensional G-stable vector spaces M, such that the G-action on each of them is rational. In [S], Hochschild developed the foundations of rational cohomology, i.e., cohomology H*rat(G, M) in the category of rational G-modules. The most recent applications of rational cohomology (e.g. [4] and [6]) seem to be mainly restricted to groups defined over fields of nonzero characteristic. In this paper we will utilize the rational cohomology groups of algebraic solvable groups defined over the rational numbers Q. Our goal is to prove, for algebraic solvable G and for trivial Q-coefficients, an analog (Theorem 2.23) of the following theorem of Mostow [11,8.1] and Van Est [11,3.6.1]: If G is a connected simply connected real solvable Lie group and D is a discrete cocompact subgroup such that Adg(G) and Adg(D) have the same algebraic hulls, then the Lie algebra cohomology H*(gR, R) is isomorphic to the group cohomology H*(D), R) (trivial R-coefficients in both cases)

Leadership considerations for executive vice chairs, new chairs, and chairs in the 21st century.

The need to fulfill academic goals in the context of significant economic challenges, new regulatory requirements, and ever-changing expectations for leadership requires continuous adaptation. This paper serves as an educational resource for emerging leaders from the literature, national leaders, and other “best practices” in the following domains: 1. Mentorship; 2. Faculty Development; 3. Promotion; 4. Demonstrating value in each of the academic missions; 5. Marketing and communications; and 6. Barrier