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The primary goal of the Adventures in Supercomputing activity is to capture and cultivate the interest of minority and disadvantaged elementary through high school students in science, mathematics, and computing. The program consists of five major components: (1) a summer institute for teacher enhancement and curriculum material development; (2) a fully supported classroom computing environment in participating schools; (3) summer research positions in high-performance computing for selected teachers from the program; (4) collaboration with the Colleges of Education in each laboratory's local university; and (5) an in-depth and ongoing assessment for both formative and summative evaluation of the program. These components will be extended to lower-grade levels over the course of the five-year activity. >

Within the realm of education, seldom does an innovative program become available with the potential to change an educator's teaching methodology. Adventures in Supercomputing (AiS), sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE), is such a program. It is a program for high school teachers that changes the teacher paradigm from a teacher-directed approach of teaching to a student-centered approach. Not only is the process of teaching changed, but the cross-curricula integration within the AiS materials is remarkable. Written from a teacher's perspective, this paper describes the AiS program and its effects on teachers and students, primarily at Wartburg Central High School, in Wartburg, Tennessee. The AiS program in Tennessee is sponsored by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Adventures in Supercomputing (AiS) is an innovative educational outreach program to address the shortfall in human resources in science and engineering. The program has been funded since 1992 as part of the Department of Energy's High Performance Computing and Communications Program. Supercomputers are used both as a magnet to draw students into science and engineering and as an enabling tool to assist them to explore simulations based on mathematical or physical models. The program presently involves 69 high schools and 5 middle schools in five states: Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, and Tennessee. The primary goal of this program is to capture and cultivate the interest of minority, female and disadvantaged students in science, mathematics, and computing. By improving the teachers' computer expertise and scientific knowledge through intense training, teachers are able to reach out confidently to this target group of students. An environment to support computing education for both students and teachers is strengthened during the year through continued technical support. The paper discusses methods of encouraging minorities, women, and disadvantaged students to become involved in the Adventures in Supercomputing program. It shares achievements of this diverse school population over the past years as these students engage in long term computational science projects. It also shares the assessment results, showing the success of the program.

We have analyzed K+p cross-section and polarization data in the momentum range 0.78–2.53 GeV/c. Single energy fits were made using an ACE parametrization which had no cutoff in J, was analytic and had Regge-asymptotic behavior in the cut cos θ plane, and contained explicit contributions from P, ϱ, A2, Λ, Σ, and low-mass di-pion exchange. Direct channel analyticity constraints were imposed by a partial-wave dispersion relation interpolation procedure, fitting expansions in regulated-norm optimal bases to each partial wave which entered as a search parameter in the single energy fits. Output from these two programs was then used for a simultaneous fit by a linearized least squares program which provided input for another iterative fitting cycle. We find no strong evidence for the existence of exotic resonances. The method of analytic smoothing, in comparison with “shortest path” methods, is found to allow more significant threshold structure to appear in the amplitudes.

This handbook tells the casual user how to run the program MHD2V106, a computer program to determine linear growth rates and eigenmodes for an ideal MHD plasma in a cylinder or toroid of rectangular cross section.

The nonlinear evolution of ideal MHD internal instabilities is investigated in straight cylindrical geometry by means of a 3-D initial-value computer code. These instabilities are characterized by pairs of velocity vortex cells rolling off each other and helically twisted down the plasma column. The cells persist until the poloidal velocity saturates at a few tenths of the Alfven velocity. The nonlinear phase is characterized by convection around these essentially fixed vortex cells. For example, the initially centrally peaked temperature profile is convected out and around to form an annulus of high temperature surrounding a small region of lower temperature. Weak, centrally localized instabilities do not alter the edge of the plasma. Strong, large-scale instabilities, resulting from a stronger longitudinal equilibrium current, drive the plasma against the wall. After three examples of instability are analyzed in detail, the numerical methods and their verification are discussed.

We have studied the nonlinear evolution of fixed-boundary instabilities using a 3-D ideal-MHD computer simulation. Here, we concentrate on the effect of elongation and peaked profile. It is found that the dominant process is convection around essentially fixed velocity vortex cells.