The State University of New
York at Alfred, Jamestown Community College,
and Brookhaven National
Laboratory were recently funded by the NSF
Advanced Tecnology Education
program to pursue a unique arrangement to
create an accessible,
self-perpetuating, 'real-world' capstone
experience for students in
isolated, rural two-year colleges. The three
institutions have developed
lead teams composed of student and faculty
collaborators via summer
internships at Brookhaven. The teams work on
problems selected by staff
members at Brookhaven that span the gamut of
the sciences and engineering,
and which take advantage of capabilities
unique to institutions such as
Brookhaven: e.g. scientific
visualization facilities,
advanced scientific instruments, cutting edge
material science and
world-class staffs.
Following internship, the lead
teams are responsible for transporting
key pieces of these projects
back to their home campus, where they
involve other faculty and
students. This program creates an extended
learning community that
emphasizes campus-based, realtime interactions
between participants at
different sites. The earliest projects involved
construction of scientific
visualization facilities at the two campuses,
and mastery of selected
measurement techniques resident at BNL. Later
projects are focusing on
problems for which a combination of
measurement capabilities and
visualization technology are uniquely
helpful.
The incorporation of immersive
stereographic visualization techniques,
in particular, makes possible
the delivery of learning experiences not
commonly found in the domain of
distance education. Virtual laboratory
experiences such as the remote
control of instrumentation, navigation
through apparatus, and
computer-aided fabrication and analysis are
introduced in a realistic,
attention grabbing way despite the span of
miles. Thus the work
environment and teaming concepts introduced during
the summer at Brookhaven have
been largely continued at the home
campuses.
The Virtual Sky project (http://virtualsky.org) provides stunning,
seamless images of the night sky; not just an album of
popular places,
but the entire northern sky at
high resolution. Virtual Sky has ingested
the complete DPOSS survey
(Digital Palomar Observatory Sky Survey),
with an easy-to-use, intuitive
interface that anyone can use. Users can
zoom out so the entire sky is
on the screen, or zoom in, to a maximum
resolution of 1.4 seconds per
pixel, a magnification of 2000. Another
theme is the Hubble Deep Field,
an further magnification of 32. There
is also a gallery of
interesting places, and a blog (bulletin board) where
users can record comments. The
architecture is based on a hierarchy of
pre-computed image tiles, so
that response is fast. Multiple "themes"
are possible, each one being a
different representation of the night sky.
The largest theme is DPOSS, but
also there is:
-- The "Uranometria",
a set of etchings from 1603 that was the
first true star atlas;
-- A competent star map from
John Walker, based on the Yoursky
server;
-- The ROSAT All Sky Survey in
soft and hard Xrays;
-- The NRAO VLA Sky Survey at
radio wavelengths (1.4 GHz);
-- The 100 micron Dust Map from
Finkbeiner et. al.
-- The Hubble Deep Field.
-- The NOAO Deep Wide Field
survey.
-- Public release of Sloan
Digital Sky Survey.
All the themes are resampled to
the same standard projection, so that the
same part of the sky can be
seen in its different representations, yet perfectly
aligned. The Virtual Sky is
connected to other astronomical data services,
such as NASA's extragalactic
catalog, NED (http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/).
NED can be invoked simply by clicking
on a galaxy, and its name, citations,
and much other information is
automatically provided from NED.
Education
Virtual Sky could be an
unparalleled educational resource, using the natural
fascination that we all have
with astronomy to teach science and mathematics.
Students could find and
classify galaxies, then compare with the Hubble
classification. Find things in
the survey that are not of astronomical origin; count
stars and galaxies at different
scales leading to statistical analysis and the Hubble
deep field; compare the
Uranometria representation with the photographic survey;
make a treasure hunt in the
sky. When other surveys have been incorporated, the
same patch of sky can be
considered in different ways. Other historical
perspectives could provide a
truly far-reaching cultural view: questions of why
the star atlases were created
and who funded them; how mythological stories
were represented from classical
times through the enlightenment; how the
measure of quality became
accuracy rather than respect of the past.
Main Site - http://virtualsky.org
Sidebar: Mystery of Tycho's
Supernova. - http://virtualsky.org/about/tycho.html
Sidebar: Presentation "Down
the Rabbit Hole with Virtual Sky" -–
http://virtualsky.org/RabbitHole.ppt
SciCentr and SciFair: Online
Virtual Worlds for Informal Science Education
The Cornell Theory Center
(CTC), Cornell University's high-performance
computing center began in 1998
to focus our science and technology outreach
efforts on the new multi-user
3D Internet technology, virtual worlds. Our belief
was that this new tool, which
combines online chat, gaming technology, and all
the features of the World Wide
Web in a secure and easily monitored
environment, appeals to youth
and offers us the opportunity to engage them in
fun, constructivist learning
activities focused on our research.
Our goal is to found and
support a hands-on virtual science center that exists
only in cyberspace and to build
a community of users engaged in its programs.
We are now working in two
areas: development of 3D interactive, multi-user
exhibits in the primary world,
SciCentr, created by undergraduates at Cornell
with help from high school
student interns; and a related after-school program
for teens that takes place in
the sister world, SciFair. Content for all projects
features research supported by
CTC, including crop genomics/bioinformatics,
wave science, structural
biology, and materials science. World development is
a team-based activity that
takes place in a secure online multi-user environment
that allows the teens,
undergrads, researchers, and experts to work together
from distant locations.
The first SciFair team, twelve
teens at rural Spencer Van-Etten High School in
Chemung County, New York, has
been meeting with two undergraduate
mentors coming online from
Cornell. They come "inworld" to learn about
bioengineering of crops, and to
be introduced to a new online digital medium.
They call their project the
Tomato Islands. It is a series of virtual greenhouses
that comprise a knowledge space
where they display what they have learned
about the crop's biodiversity,
cultural requirements, history, biogeography, and
modern production. Fall of 2001
brings them face to face with bioengineering
crops, the climax of this
project. SciFair teams at participating locations need to
provide standard computers with
reliable network connections and adult
supervision at the remote site.
Funding for program development and the online
mentors comes from CTC with
additional support from Intel Corporation,
USDA Agricultural
Research Services, the Cornell Presidential Research
Fellows program, the National
Science Foundation, the Spencer-VanEtten
School District, the Ithaca
Youth Bureau Youth Employment Services, the
Ithaca Sciencenter's Computer
Clubhouse and Youth Alive projects, the
Learning Web of Tompkins
County, and other local and national organizations.
Elsevier Science is the world
largest scientific publisher. Almost 50 journal
titles will be on display at
SuperComputing 2001. Teachers will be more than
happy to take sample copies
away. We will offer them and their students free
electronic access to selected
journals and for a period of time.
The GLOBE (Global Learning and
Observations to Benefit the
Environment) Program involves
over 11,000 schools in 97 countries in
observing and reporting data on
environmental phenomena. The NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center
GLOBE team visualizes the millions of
GLOBE observations that have
been reported since 1995 and makes these
Visualizations
aavailable on the GLOBE Web Site.
The GLOBE visualizations can
show the more than 60 student datasets
on the Web on the same day that
they are taken! Seventeen zoom levels
range from whole Earth maps
down to 25 x 25 km, and up to six schools
or datasets can be shown on a
single time graph.
University of Tennessee
Innovative
Computing Laboratory
At the University of Tennessee (UT), Computer Science
(CS) is concerned
with software, hardware, and theory;. Computer scientists have to be able
to
creatively integrate knowledge and ideas from these areas, so students
must
become knowledgeable about all three basic areas and about the algorithms
that
interrelate themis material. For someone to be a computer
scientist, they must be able to integrate material and concepts from these
areas. So, for example, students and graduates of the CS programalumni
are benchmarking in Java cache performance on parallel
processors; are
writing the software for routers (combining optimization
theory, graph
algorithms, networking, and hardware knowledge); are
designing algorithms
for parallel processors; and are solving real-world internetworking
problems.
The challenges are diverse and therefore the emphasis
is on flexibility.
In
addition to teaching, many CS faculty members actively engage in research
in a wide range of various areas of research.
In fact, one of the largest research laboratories within
the
UT system, the Innovative Computing Laboratory (ICL), is part of the
CS
department. Employing nearly 40 staff and students, ICL performs research
in
various aspects of parallel
and distributed computing. With the phenomenal
growth
and pace of change in
these areas of
computing over
the last several
years, in parallel computing technology
as well asand
the demands placed on such technology by government and
private
business, ICL faces
constantis consistently challengesd to find new ways to apply its
expert-level
understanding toto
each of its research efforts. But wThe areas of distributed and network computing are
no exception as ICL has also learned to harness enormous computing power to
quickly and efficiently solve mathematical problems that would take humans
years or decades to solve by hand.ith more than
a decade of research successes
to build on, ICL and
the UT CS Department
have established themselves as
international leaders in making the discoveries
and creating the technologies
that propel the information
revolution and the
new era of scientific
simulation forward.