Shodor

tation in education through disseminating unique uses of computation in the classroom as well as research findings in computational science education, with submissions from both professionals and students. JOCSE utilizes internet technology and a web-based format to allow for enhanced interactivity in all publications.

tion from the editor.

ence. However, many students do not seem to recognize the serious applications and implications of computing to the sciences. Wagner College, like many liberal arts colleges, requires a semester of a Computer Science affiliated course to provide students with an exposure to ``technological skills''. Sadly, such courses typically do not delve into high-level computational skills or computational thinking and generally provide instruction in using Microsoft Office extregistered{} products and rudimentary worldwide web concepts. These courses and approaches were probably valuable a decade ago when computing devices were not quite as prevalent. However, in today's world these courses appear outdated and do not provide relevant skills to the modern undergraduate student. We have created a course called, ``Introduction to Scientific Computing'', to remedy this problem and to provide students with state-of-the-art technological tools. The course provides students with hands-on training on typical work-flows in scientific data analysis and data visualization. Students are trained in the symbolic computing platform, Wolfram Mathematica extregistered{}, to apply functional programming to develop data analysis and problem solving skills. The course presents computational thinking examples in the framework of various scientific disciplines. This exposure helps students to understand the advantages of technical computing and its direct relevance to their educational goals. The students are also trained to perform molecular visualization using open source software packages to understand secondary and tertiary protein structures, construct molecular animations, and to analyze computer simulation data. These experiences stimulate students to apply these skills across multiple courses and their research endeavors. Student self-assessment data suggests that the course satisfies a unique niche in undergraduate education and enriches the training of future STEM graduates.

sing student engagement and retention in STEM. However, authentic undergraduate research leading to primary authorship peer-reviewed publications is a challenge due to the relatively short time the students work on their capstone projects, and the insufficient preparation of the students as researchers. The challenge is further magnified in the field of computer science, where the absence of ``traditional'' labs limits the opportunities of undergraduate students to participate in research. Here we present a novel approach to authentic computer science undergraduate research, based on interdisciplinary computational science and student ownership of their research projects. Instead of the traditional role of undergraduate research assistant, the students select their own research topic based on their personal interests, and with the assistance of a faculty complete all stages of their research project. The uniqueness of the approach is its ability to lead to scientific discoveries and peer-reviewed publications such that the primary author is the student, while allowing the student to experience the entire research process, from defining the research question through analysis of the experimental results. In three years the model led to a dramatic increase in the number of undergraduate students who publish primary-author peer-reviewed scientific papers. The intervention increased the number of peer-reviewed student-authored publications from none to a very high rate of about one third of the students, in many cases publishing in the top outlets in their field.

g with AutoDock Vina which uses less electricity than computers using typical x64 CPUs. We tested a cluster of ODROID-XU3 Lite computers with ARM CPUs and compared its performance to a server with x64 CPUs. In order to be a viable solution, our cluster needed to perform the screen without sacrificing speed or increasing hardware costs. The cluster completed the virtual screen in a little less time than our comparison server while using just over half the electricity that the server used. Additionally, the hardware for the cluster cost about 38% less than the server, making it a viable solution.

as proven useful in providing information about how gene interactions influence life. However, Bayesian network learning is slow due to the nature of the algorithm. K2, a search space reduction, helps speed up the learning process but may introduce bias. To eliminate this bias, multiple Bayesian networks must be computed. This paper evaluates and realizes parallelization of network generation and the reasoning behind the choices made. Methods are developed and tested to evaluate the results of the implemented accelerations. Generating networks across multiple cores results in a linear speed-up with negligible overhead. Distributing the generation of networks across multiple machines also introduces linear speed-up, but results in additional overhead.

notation files in formats suitable for the performance of complex cognitive activities such as decision making, sense making and analytical reasoning. The goal of the research reported in this article was to interactive analytics resources to support the performance of complex cognitive activities on a collection of publicly available genome information spaces. A supercomputing infrastructure (Blue Waters Supercomputer) provided computational tools to construct information spaces while visual analytics software and online bioinformatics resources provided tools to interact with the constructed information spaces. The Rhizobiales order of bacteria that includes the Brucella genus was the use case for preforming the complex cognitive activities. An interesting finding among the genomes of the dolphin pathogen, Brucella ceti, was a cluster of genes with evidence for function in conditions of limited nitrogen availability.

tremendously important concept for students at all levels of education to understand. Computational knowledge is especially important due to the tremendous impact that computer programming has had on all scientific and engineering disciplines. As technology evolves, so must our educational system in order for society to evolve as a whole. We undertook direct instruction of a computational science course, and have developed a curriculum that can be expanded upon to provide students entering technical disciplines with the background that they need to be successful. The course would provide insight to the C programming language as well as how computers function at a more basic level. Students would undertake projects that explores how to program simple tasks and operations and ultimately ends in a final project aimed at assessing the knowledge accumulated from the course.

f interplanetary low-thrust trajectories from Earth to Mars for spacecrafts supplying necessary cargo for future human-crewed missions. Since these cargo missions use ionic propulsion that causes a gradual change in the spacecraft's velocity, the modeling is more computationally expensive than conventional trajectories assuming instantaneous spacecraft velocity changes. This model calculates the spacecraft's time of flight and swept angle at different payload masses with other parameters kept constant and correlates them with known locations of the planets. With parallelization using OpenMP on Blue Waters, its runtime has decreased from 10.55 to 1.53 hours. The program takes a user-selected Mars arrival date and outputs a given range of dates with maximum payload capabilities. This parallelized model will greatly reduce the time required for future mission design projects when other factors like spacecraft solar panel power output may vary with new mission specifications. The internship experience has enhanced the intern's ability to manage a project and will impact positively on his future graduate studies or research career.