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CLUSTER HIGHLIGHTS-- Each cluster is busy and fully under way. Highlights from each: ASTRONOMY: Students have already begun their nightly visits to the UCI Observatory. On Monday night students had their orientation at the Observatory. The UCI Observatory is located in the fields on the outskirts of campus. It has a large computer-controlled telescope and numerous other smaller, portable, telescopes. The observatory's main computer-controlled telescope has a 24-inch primary mirror and 8.5-inch secondary mirror. The telescope is operated in person or remotely via the ethernet with a LINUX-based control program. They received instruction on the basics of downloading “live data” from space and taking in the conceptual framework, vocabulary, and the perspective of astronomers. Students are starting to gather data on star clusters, binary stars, and stellar spectra. They have had a brief introduction to photometry and a lesson on “Powers of Ten,” Newton’s laws, force, motion, gravity, electromagnetic spectrum and Doppler Effect. The 21 students are organized into seven groups of three, to provide optimum hands-on experience in the Observatory. ATMOSPHERIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES: The Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences cluster opened with a bang, as a slightly out-of-control demonstration ended up spewing green foam all over the front of the room and making a dark purple iodine stain on the front wall. It has since served as a reminder of the power of chemistry! Lecture sessions so far have discussed the atmosphere as a large chemical reactor, and the students saw how the reactions of NO, NO2 and ozone eventually produce smog in large urban areas. Friday we will be discussing the stratosphere and ozone depletion. Students have been organized into groups based on class, and one of their first projects as lab partners was to explode highly unstable nitrogen triiodide. Some groups had excellent explosions, blowing bullet-sized holes in filter paper. Ear plugs were handed out; don't worry. During Thursday's lab session, the students constructed Winogradsky columns to investigate phototrophic bacteria, and tried their hand at floatation de-inking, one of the major steps in the industrial paper recyling process. Students also visited the San Joaquin Marsh. BIOINFORMATICS: Students are getting acquainted with the bioinformatics research paradigm as a way of understanding the genome. The paradigm consists of starting with a biological problem, biological data and biological knowledge and then building an approximate computational model. The model is then applied to real data and its predictions are then validated by additional biological experiments. Students are learning about genes and gene sequencing and the genome, especially in relation to genetic disorders. They were in the computer lab this week, getting oriented to the Python software used in the field of bioinformatics, in which vast biological databases are organized, sequenced, and made available for analysis and interpretation. CHEMISTRY: In the first week of COSMOS, the students in the cluster 'Chemistry at the space-time limit' were introduced to the theoretical building blocks of chemistry. This theory, called Quantum Mechanics, is quite a departure from regular classical physics, but it provides a fundamental explanation of the configuration of atoms and molecules. With the quantum mechanical concepts freshly in their minds, the students dissected the structure and systematic of the well-known periodic table of elements. The lectures also laid bare the essence of the chemical bond by discussing the combination of elements and identifying the binding role of electrons. By the end of week one, the warp and woof of different types of chemical bonds, including the atomic bonds in metals and semiconductors, were no longer a mystery. In the lab, students learned about different techniques that help scientists to investigate atoms and molecules. In one experiment, for instance, images of so called carbon nanotubes were recorded with a resolution so minute that nanoscale features could be resolved. In another lab, the concentration of alcohol in mouthwash and vodka was determined using infrared lightwaves. ENGINEERING: Students have been introduced to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering fields in the cluster on "Rockets to Robots", and have gained an idea of what working with mechanical, aeronautical, and astronautical systems entails. This week, they are learning about the scaling of power and energy, and have discovered the place of human power in the world. On the specific issue of combustion, the students will learn about the production of power and the characteristics of various types of flames. On the aerospace side, they are presented with the concepts of lift, drag, stall, and moments and how to apply these laws to the design of aircraft. In the labs, they have already begun designing and constructing a small-scale, working airplane, which they will fly near the end of the program. The students have also begun to identify the various components of wheeled robots in preparation for designing and building their own. In the Science Communication course, the students are learning about the various forms of communication and how they differ in content and structure. MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF CRYSTALS: During the first week of COSMOS, the students in the cluster Mathematical Materials Science were introduced to the basics of crystal growth. The students learned about the growth of snowflakes. They learned how snowflakes form in the atmosphere, why they have such beautiful symmetry and about the instabilities that result in their complex shapes. They learned how to start modeling crystal growth mathematically and about the crystal structure, lattices and descriptors that are needed to describe crystal growth in general. They even learned about the capabilities of space shuttle tiles by holding a shuttle tile in a bare hand and heating with a propane torch and about the materials failure aspects of the two shuttle program losses. In the computational labs, the students tested a variety of different mathematical models that have been used to simulate growing crystals. In fact, the students tested computationally the growth of crystals with different lattice symmetries. In the experimental labs, the students built sample crystal lattice structures and, even in the Southern California summer, grew snow crystals! NEUROSCIENCE AND PHYSIOLOGY OF EXERCISE: This week in Exercise Physiology, as part of an overview of exercise and sports physiology, Dr. Will Wu instructed students to design exercise and diet regimes tailored to the phsiological goals and challenges of competitive athletes vs others desiring physical fitness. In lab with Dr. Melissa Albers, they demonstrated that skeletal muscles are really lever systems, with ideal lengths for generating ideal forces. They related neurobiology of motor units to generation of maximum muscle force by taking their own EMG (electromyography) readings while lifting various loads. In Neurobiology with Dr. Engesser Cesar, students learned the basics of neuron communication via action potentials. In lab with graduate student Shara Stough, students dissected sheep brains in order to identify the major cranial nerves and neural pathways, and dissected a frog in order to measure the action potential of the sciatic nerve. We are looking forward to our tour of the UC Irvine Transgenic Mouse Facilty next week! SPECIAL LECTURE: Did you know that there are 80 computer chips in a new car? and that the software is written by teams -- giving a large margin for bugs? This and other techno insights were shared by our special guest lecture by Dr. André van der Hoek, associate professor in the Department of Informatics of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and a faculty member of the Institute for Software Research, both at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Van der Hoek described several global projects he is involved with, with colleagues in India and Argentina and New York -- and says that every day there is a national holiday somewhere in the world -- just three days a year in which there is no holiday during which all members of the software design team are at work. He said that trying to design error free software is very difficult, such as with a team of 1,500 working at the same time. His talk covered the many new branches of computer science, and illustrated that what has been traditionally seen as computer science is branching off and readily changing -- in fields such as informatics. He described the relationships between computers and people, the technical issues and social issues. His posed the question, "What would happen if we gave a software engineer, such as an automobile engineer, all the advanced hardware technology he can use?" and he showed some of the latest hardware such as interactive whiteboards and tables that are actually monitors. He closed with inviting students to consider if a major in computer science might meet their goals, and shared the UCI website with 20 questions that give an idea of whether a career in computing is something for you. Dr. van der Hoek holds a joint B.S. and M.S. degree in Business-Oriented Computer Science from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research focuses on understanding and advancing the role of design, coordination, and education in software. last updated: |
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