Patterns in Road Maintenance: An Analysis of San Diego Roads

This paper examines what impacts road improvement patterns in San Diego, with a particular focus on how the income or racial demographics of an area may effect the area\u27s roads. There are also, however, several other types of variables that are examined to understand how road maintenance is distributed across the city. The analysis covers a four year period from 2011 to 2015 and uses an Overall Condition Index number to assess the roads. Three linear models are run, and some of the key findings include: areas with a higher income generally have better roads; racial demographics don\u27t impact road quality; areas that are densely populated with businesses have better roads; and roads near the international border are also generally better off. The results of this paper are specific to San Diego and cannot be generalized to other cities, however the results do offer an important look into the world of road maintenance and encourage questions such as what does it mean to have a fair distribution of road maintenance

Energy minimization using Sobolev gradients: application to phase separation and ordering

A common problem in physics and engineering is the calculation of the minima of energy functionals. The theory of Sobolev gradients provides an efficient method for seeking the critical points of such a functional. We apply the method to functionals describing coarse-grained Ginzburg-Landau models commonly used in pattern formation and ordering processes.Comment: To appear J. Computational Physic

Teaching the Process of Science: Faculty Perceptions and an Effective Methodology

Most scientific endeavors require science process skills such as data interpretation, problem solving, experimental design, scientific writing, oral communication, collaborative work, and critical analysis of primary literature. These are the fundamental skills upon which the conceptual framework of scientific expertise is built. Unfortunately, most college science departments lack a formalized curriculum for teaching undergraduates science process skills. However, evidence strongly suggests that explicitly teaching undergraduates skills early in their education may enhance their understanding of science content. Our research reveals that faculty overwhelming support teaching undergraduates science process skills but typically do not spend enough time teaching skills due to the perceived need to cover content. To encourage faculty to address this issue, we provide our pedagogical philosophies, methods, and materials for teaching science process skills to freshman pursuing life science majors. We build upon previous work, showing student learning gains in both reading primary literature and scientific writing, and share student perspectives about a course where teaching the process of science, not content, was the focus. We recommend a wider implementation of courses that teach undergraduates science process skills early in their studies with the goals of improving student success and retention in the sciences and enhancing general science literacy

A convergence result for discreet steepest decent in weighted sobolev spaces

A convergence result is given for discrete descent based on Sobolev gradients arising from differential equations which may be expressed as quadratic forms. The argument is an extension of the result of David G. Luenberger on Euclidean descent and compliments the work of John W. Neuberger on Sobolev descent