Recent studies reveal people from marginalized groups (e.g., people of color and women) continue to earn physics degrees at alarmingly low rates. This phenomenon is not surprising given reports of ...the continued perception of physics as a masculine space and the discrimination faced by people of color and women within the field. To realize the vision of an equitable physics education, fully open to and supportive of marginalized groups, teachers need ways of seeing equity as something that is concrete and actionable on an everyday basis. In our work, teachers have found value in intentionally reflecting on their instruction and their students explicitly in terms of race, gender, and other social markers. We find they are then better positioned to build equitable physics classrooms. Without a focus on specific social markers, common obstacles such as color-evasiveness emerge, which obstruct the pursuit of equity in classrooms.
Improving equity in undergraduate STEM is a national imperative. Although there is a rapidly growing body of research in this area, there is still a need to generate empirical evidence for equitable ...teaching techniques. We ground our work in Complex Instruction, an extensively researched pedagogical approach based on sociological theories and the malleability of status. This approach has been applied primarily in K-12 classrooms. In this manuscript, we explore the application of one strategy from Complex Instruction-assigning competence-to undergraduate STEM classrooms. We provide an analysis of three instructors' implementation of assigning competence and track the impact on student participation. This work makes a unique contribution to the field, as the first study that directly documents changes in student participation resulting from assigning competence in undergraduate STEM.
In this article, we explore the role of racialized narratives (e.g., Asians are good at math) in the mathematics learning experiences of African American male students. Drawing on concepts from ...sociocultural theory and cultural psychology, we conceptualize racialized narratives as dynamic cultural artifacts, which students appropriate and deploy in processes of identification and positioning. Interview data suggest that students had deep knowledge of these narratives, and made sense of them in a way that linked perceptions of Asian Americans as a mathematically gifted model minority to perceptions of African American males as intellectually inferior. Despite this positioning, many students spoke of repurposing racialized narratives in order to assume positions of mathematical competence.
Magnetic Stopping of Transient Laser Plasmas McKenna, Nicholaus; Shah, Niral; Harilal, Sivanandan S. ...
IEEE transactions on plasma science,
10/2014, Volume:
42, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We investigated the expansion features of laserproduced Al plasma in the presence of 0.8 T magnetic field. Fast-gated photography was used to record 2-D snapshots of plasma at various moments during ...its expansion. The slowing down and stopping of the plasmas were observed at all laser irradiance levels used (3-10 GW·cm -2 ), however, increasing convexity of the plasma periphery was noticed at higher irradiance levels.
In this article, we theorize the relation between race and schooling and consider the implications for learning. While the body of research on culture and learning has come to define learning as an ...inherently cultural and social process, scholars have few theoretical tools to help us think about the role of race and racism in relation to students’ access to identities as learners and to learning. We draw on both theoretical and empirical literature to make three core arguments: (a) racial ‘storylines’ or narratives are prevalent in our society and have powerful implications for learners, particularly for youth from marginalized communities; (b) these racial storylines are a critical aspect of life in schools, which serve the purpose of racially and academically socializing students; and (c) as these storylines are invoked in school settings, certain identities are made available, imposed, or closed down. Such identities have important implications for students’ opportunities to learn and their engagement in learning settings. As we conclude, we consider the potential of alternative spaces, which can serve to counter dominant narratives about who is capable of learning and how learning takes place, and open new spaces for identity and learning.
Most imaging systems for terrestrial nuclear imaging are static in that the design of the system and the data acquisition protocol are defined prior to the experiment. Often, these systems are ...designed for general use and not optimized for any specific task. The core concept of adaptive imaging is to modify the imaging system during a measurement based on collected data. This enables scenario specific adaptation of the imaging system which leads to better performance for a given task. This dissertation presents the first adaptive, cylindrical, time-encoded imaging (c-TEI) system and evaluates its performance on tasks relevant to nuclear non-proliferation and international safeguards. We explore two methods of adaptation of a c-TEI system, adaptive detector movements and adaptive mask movements, and apply these methods to three tasks, improving angular resolution, detecting a weak source in the vicinity of a strong source, and reconstructing complex source scenes. The results indicate that adaptive imaging significantly improves performance in each case. For the MATADOR imager, we find that adaptive detector movements improve the angular resolution of a point source by 20% and improve the angular resolution of two point sources by up to 50%. For the problem of detecting a weak source in the vicinity of a strong source, we find that adaptive mask movements achieve the same detection performance as a similar, non-adaptive system in 20%-40% less time, depending on the relative position of the weak source. Additionally, we developed an adaptive detection algorithm that doubles the probability of detection of the weak source at a 5% false-alarm rate. Finally, we applied adaptive imaging concepts to reconstruct complex arrangements of special nuclear material at Idaho National Laboratory. We find that combining data from multiple detector positions improves image uniformity of extended sources by 38% and reduces the background noise by 50%. We also demonstrate 2D (azimuthal and radial) imaging in a crowded source scene. These promising experimental results highlight the potential for adaptive imaging using a c-TEI system and motivate further research toward specific, real-world applications.
Computing is being integrated into a range of STEM disciplines. Still, computing remains inaccessible to many minoritized groups, especially girls and certain people of color. In this mixed methods ...study, we investigated racial and gendered patterns of equity and inequity in high school physics classrooms incorporating computational modeling, with an emphasis on group work.
The objectives of this study were: 1) to document equity patterns in student participation and how they vary based on group composition by race and gender; and 2) to understand how discourses of race and gender influence group interactions.
We used the EQUIP web app (
https://www.equip.ninja
) to analyze quantitative patterns in student participation. We then identified video of three group sessions and analyzed how discourses of race and gender mediated classroom interactions.
Data show that racial hierarchies were prominent, with White students dominating group interaction and Black and Latinx students experiencing substantial marginalization. While there was evidence of gender equity in many groups - particularly those with greater proportions of girls - we show how computing and physics were still maintained as masculine spaces.
Teachers of computing should intentionally structure learning environments to attenuate the impact of White supremacy and patriarchy. More research is also needed on how power operates in computing education at the level of classroom interaction.
Rapidly growing energy demands, community, population and economy require adopting new technologies for a better sustainable future. Earth has tremendous amounts of renewable energy sources that can ...be utilized. Among those resources, the United States has excessive amount of wind energy. In the last decades, U.S. is one of the top wind energy producing countries. In this project, different wind energy potentials in three selected types of regions, including rural, urban and offshore areas, were analyzed using statistical methods. Frequency distribution analysis, simple wake effect analysis, terrain conditions and locations analysis methods were used to calculate five different wind energy potentials. Wind speed distribution, monthly wind power density, monthly wind turbine power output was calculated. Changes in wind speed and wind power with different distances between wind turbines were calculated and examined. Wind power densities of urban, rural and offshore area were 250 W/m 2, 300 W/m2, 350 W/m2 respectively. Wind speed reductions because of the wake effect were around 7% for 2D placement, 4% for 4D placement, 3% for 6D placement and 2% for 8D placement.
