Living-learning communities improve first-year engineering student academic performance and retention at a small private university

Living-Learning Communities (LLCs), in which students share a residence, one or more classes, and extracurricular activities, have been shown to improve first-year student engagement, academic performance, and retention in non-engineering fields. Research on Engineering LLCs has focused primarily on student engagement. Two studies to examine performance and retention found that LLCs had little effect on first-semester grades but increased first-year retention in engineering by 2 to 12%. Unfortunately, one of these studies did not control for differences in incoming student characteristics, and another used a comparison group that differed little from the LLC group, possibly causing them to understate the LLC’s true effects. To improve our understanding, this paper examines performance and retention in the inaugural Engineering LLCs at a small, private non-profit, regional university in the northeastern United States. Results indicate that 82% of the Engineering LLC participants were retained within the engineering program, compared to 66% of first-year engineering students who chose not to participate. More strikingly, the average first-semester GPA of the LLC participants was 0.31 points (nearly a third of a letter grade) higher than that of the non-participants. To address the possibility that these improvements were caused by differences in incoming student characteristics, linear and logistic regression analyses were performed to control for gender, race/ethnicity, SAT scores, and other factors. These analyses suggest that LLC participation increased GPA by 0.35 points compared to first-year engineering students from prior years, while non-participation lowered GPA by 0.07 points. LLC participation increased the odds of retention in the major by 2.3 times compared to first-year students from prior years, while nonparticipation lowered the odds of retention by 1.35 times

Highly eccentric inspirals into a black hole

We model the inspiral of a compact stellar-mass object into a massive nonrotating black hole including all dissipative and conservative first-order-in-the-mass-ratio effects on the orbital motion. The techniques we develop allow inspirals with initial eccentricities as high as $e\sim0.8$ and initial separations as large as $p\sim 50$ to be evolved through many thousands of orbits up to the onset of the plunge into the black hole. The inspiral is computed using an osculating elements scheme driven by a hybridized self-force model, which combines Lorenz-gauge self-force results with highly accurate flux data from a Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli code. The high accuracy of our hybrid self-force model allows the orbital phase of the inspirals to be tracked to within $\sim0.1$ radians or better. The difference between self-force models and inspirals computed in the radiative approximation is quantified.Comment: Updated to reflect published versio

Evolution of small-mass-ratio binaries with a spinning secondary

We calculate the evolution and gravitational-wave emission of a spinning compact object inspiraling into a substantially more massive (non-rotating) black hole. We extend our previous model for a non-spinning binary [Phys. Rev. D 93, 064024] to include the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon spin-curvature force. For spin-aligned binaries we calculate the dephasing of the inspiral and associated waveforms relative to models that do not include spin-curvature effects. We find this dephasing can be either positive or negative depending on the initial separation of the binary. For binaries in which the spin and orbital angular momentum are not parallel, the orbital plane precesses and we use a more general osculating element prescription to compute inspirals.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Fast spectral source integration in black hole perturbation calculations

This paper presents a new technique for achieving spectral accuracy and fast computational performance in a class of black hole perturbation and gravitational self-force calculations involving extreme mass ratios and generic orbits. Called \emph{spectral source integration} (SSI), this method should see widespread future use in problems that entail (i) point-particle description of the small compact object, (ii) frequency domain decomposition, and (iii) use of the background eccentric geodesic motion. Frequency domain approaches are widely used in both perturbation theory flux-balance calculations and in local gravitational self-force calculations. Recent self-force calculations in Lorenz gauge, using the frequency domain and method of extended homogeneous solutions, have been able to accurately reach eccentricities as high as $e \simeq 0.7$. We show here SSI successfully applied to Lorenz gauge. In a double precision Lorenz gauge code, SSI enhances the accuracy of results and makes a factor of three improvement in the overall speed. The primary initial application of SSI--for us its \emph{raison d'\^{e}tre}--is in an arbitrary precision \emph{Mathematica} code that computes perturbations of eccentric orbits in the Regge-Wheeler gauge to extraordinarily high accuracy (e.g., 200 decimal places). These high accuracy eccentric orbit calculations would not be possible without the exponential convergence of SSI. We believe the method will extend to work for inspirals on Kerr, and will be the subject of a later publication. SSI borrows concepts from discrete-time signal processing and is used to calculate the mode normalization coefficients in perturbation theory via sums over modest numbers of points around an orbit. A variant of the idea is used to obtain spectral accuracy in solution of the geodesic orbital motion.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Government Information Quarterly. Volume 7, no. 2: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Scientific and Technical Information Programs. Special issue

NASA scientific and technical information (STI) programs are discussed. Topics include management of information in a research and development agency, the new space and Earth science information systems at NASA's archive, scientific and technical information management, and technology transfer of NASA aerospace technology to other industries

A study of the elements copper through uranium in Sirius A: Contributions from STIS and ground-based spectra

We determine abundances or upper limits for all of the 55 stable elements from copper to uranium for the A1 Vm star Sirius. The purpose of the study is to assemble the most complete picture of elemental abundances with the hope of revealing the chemical history of the brightest star in the sky, apart from the Sun. We also explore the relationship of this hot metallic-line (Am) star to its cooler congeners, as well as the hotter, weakly- or non-magnetic mercury-manganese (HgMn) stars. Our primary observational material consists of {\em Hubble Space Telescope} ($HST$) spectra taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) in the ASTRAL project. We have also used archival material from the %\citep/{ayr10}. $COPERNICUS$ satellite, and from the $HST$ Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS), as well as ground-based spectra from Furenlid, Westin, Kurucz, Wahlgren, and their coworkers, ESO spectra from the UVESPOP project, and NARVAL spectra retrieved from PolarBase. Our analysis has been primarily by spectral synthesis, and in this work we have had the great advantage of extensive atomic data unavailable to earlier workers. We find most abundances as well as upper limits range from 10 to 100 times above solar values. We see no indication of the huge abundance excesses of 1000 or more that occur among many chemically peculiar (CP) stars of the upper main sequence. The picture of Sirius as a hot Am star is reinforced.Comment: With 6 Figures and 4 Tables; accepted for publication in Ap

PROTEUS two-dimensional Navier-Stokes computer code, version 1.0. Volume 2: User's guide

A new computer code was developed to solve the two-dimensional or axisymmetric, Reynolds averaged, unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations in strong conservation law form. The thin-layer or Euler equations may also be solved. Turbulence is modeled using an algebraic eddy viscosity model. The objective was to develop a code for aerospace applications that is easy to use and easy to modify. Code readability, modularity, and documentation were emphasized. The equations are written in nonorthogonal body-fitted coordinates, and solved by marching in time using a fully-coupled alternating direction-implicit procedure with generalized first- or second-order time differencing. All terms are linearized using second-order Taylor series. The boundary conditions are treated implicitly, and may be steady, unsteady, or spatially periodic. Simple Cartesian or polar grids may be generated internally by the program. More complex geometries require an externally generated computational coordinate system. The documentation is divided into three volumes. Volume 2 is the User's Guide, and describes the program's general features, the input and output, the procedure for setting up initial conditions, the computer resource requirements, the diagnostic messages that may be generated, the job control language used to run the program, and several test cases