Osman Yaşar

State University of New York College at Brockport | SUNY Brockport · Department of Computational Science

The authors of Integrated Education and Learning were asked how they would see the future of their field 30 years later. This chapter presents the authors’ views on cognitive semiotics as an integrated field of science in 2050, along with thinking skills (computational thinking, scientific thinking, and critical thinking); early childhood education...

The notion of teaching experts’ habits of mind (e.g., computational thinking and scientific thinking) to novices seems to have inspired many educators and researchers worldwide. In particular, a great deal of efforts has been invested in computational thinking (CT) and its manifestations in different fields. However, there remain some troubling spo...

The amount of spark energy deposited into the combustion chamber is key to an optimum ignition as one can end up with misfires when this energy is low or with other undesired eects on engine performance and byproducts when it is high. Experimentally, up to now, no one has been able to correlate the combustion outcome accurately to the spark paramet...

Historically taught as the scientific method, the thought process in a scientist’s experimental, theoretical, and computational research is referred to nowadays as scientific thinking (ST). Skills that a scientist employs during inquiry include both the content of sciences and a set of processes that permeate the field of science. According to the...

is an endowed professor and director of the CMST Institute at The College at Brockport, SUNY. He established the first undergraduate degree program in computational science in the United States, and his research interests include engineering and science education, computational pedagogy, fluid and particle dynamics, engine ignition modeling, and pa...

Computational pedagogical experiences were designed and implemented to help students retrieve content they learned in class, retain it, and apply it in different contexts to solve novel problems. Supported by professional development for teachers, these experiences ranged in complexity from simple electronic flashcards for basic retrieval strategie...

Addressing its cognitive essence, universal value, and curricular practices.

The term computational thinking (CT) was popularized a decade ago as an "attitude and skillset" for everyone. However, since it is equated with thinking by experts in solving problems, more than a decade of discourse to capture its cognitive essence has resulted in a rather broad set of skills whose teaching to novices continues to pose challenges...

A decade of discourse to capture the essence of computational thinking (CT) has resulted in a set of skills whose teaching at the K-12 level poses many challenges because of the reliance on the use of electronic computers and programming concepts that are often found too abstract and difficult by young students. This article attempts to link cognit...

This article is an attempt to contribute to the discourse on the essence of scientific and engineering thinking by presenting a cognitive framework that is aligned with views from epistemology, cognitive and neurosciences, and supported by empirical data from computational sciences. By merging and synthesizing relevant concepts from these fields, w...

Modeling and simulation has a computational connotation but it actually is a universal process by which all quantifiable (discrete) stuff forms and grows, and this includes matter and information. Ever since the first heterogeneous units of physical matter appeared after the Big Bang, they have either united to make bigger units (i.e., models) or b...

A decade of discourse to capture the essence of computational thinking has resulted in a broad set of skills whose teaching continue to pose challenges because of the reliance on the use of electronic computers and programming concepts. This article not only links computational thinking skills to fundamental cognitive competencies but also describe...

The construct of computational thinking (CT) was popularized a decade ago as an “attitude and skillset” for everyone. However, since it is equated with thinking by computer scientists, the teaching of these skills poses many challenges at K-12 because of their reliance on the use of electronic computers and programming concepts that are often found...

Teaching with technology still remains as a challenge. Making judicious choices of when, what and how specific tools and pedagogies to use in the teaching of a topic can be improved with the help of curriculum inventories, training, and practices but as new and more capable technologies arrive, such resources and experience do not often transfer to...

We discuss cognitive aspects of modeling and simulation in an efficacy study of computational pedagogical content knowledge professional development of K-12 STEM teachers. Evidence includes data from a wide range of educational settings over the past ten years. We present a computational model of the mind based on an iterative cycle of deductive an...

Teaching with technology still remains as a challenge. Making judicious choices of when, what and how specific tools and pedagogies to use in the teaching of a topic can be improved with the help of curriculum inventories, training, and practices but as new and more capable technologies arrive, such resources and experience do not often transfer to...

There are scientific reports suggesting striking similarities between the structures of networked systems, ranging from the tiny brain cells to atoms, to the Internet, and all the way up to even the galaxies. It is further argued that the similarities might be due to the existence of a universal natural growth process. At the microscopic level we d...

Making judicious choices of when, what and how specific tools and pedagogies to use in the teaching of a topic can be improved with the help of curriculum inventories, professional development, and practice but such resources and experience do not often transfer to new circumstances, particularly those involving computational modeling and simulatio...

Modeling and simulation technology helps us pedagogically teach STEM concepts by deductively introducing a topic from a general simplistic framework and then gradually leading the learner to inductively discover the underlying principles through experimentation.

this article describes findings and evolution of a teacher-training program based on a partnership of knowledge domains (technology, content, and pedagogy), teaching staff (college faculty and school teachers), educational institutions (colleges and k-12), and local communities (urban and suburban). Within 5 years, more than 180 teachers from 15 se...

We present a computational pedagogy approach to teaching an interdisciplinary science course. Modeling and simulation tools allow us to introduce a science topic from a simplistic framework and then move into details after learners gain a level of interest to help them endure the hardships and frustration of deeper learning. More than 90% of studen...

A newly developed adaptive-grid finite difference scheme is applied to the simulations of Z-pinch plasma channels for the light ion beam reactor-Study LIBRA. Besides its powerful adaptation scheme to resolve the steep gradients in temperature, density, momentum and electrical resistivity, the one-dimensional radiation magnetohydrodynamics code deve...

The conjugate gradient method has been used extensively to solve a given set of (symmetric) positive definite linear equations instead of Gaussian's elimination based direct methods, especially for very large systems when parallel solution environment ...

Detailed experimental measurements of a compressor (pressure, temperature, speed) are not easily available because of size, cost, and access difficulties. A comprehensive computer model is necessary to obtain pressure-volume diagrams for the compressor. The valve is a key component of a compressor as it determines both the efficiency and reliabilit...

As technology is increasingly used in most facets of the workplace, it is imperative that primary and secondary schools and colleges help create a workforce capable of turning technological advancements into societal benefits. Such a workforce should possess strong backgrounds in math, science, and technology, and its numbers should be sustainable....

Integrated approach to education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has recently become a common practice. Technologies such as wireless graphing calculators, electronic whiteboards, and computers help engage students in classroom activities. Modeling and simulation software allow experimentation without usual prerequisites...

Istanbul Technical University (ITU) has long recognized the importance of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) education, and in 2002, it designed a master's and doctoral program within its Informatics Institute. The university currently has approximately 6,000 graduate student and 11,000 undergraduates. Senior CSE members in the Informatics...

We describe math modeling and computer simulations as a new pedagogical approach to math and science education. Computational approach to Math, Science, and Technology (CMST) involves inquiry-based, project-based, and team-based instruction. It takes the constructivist approach recommended by national learning standards. Our college has formed a pa...

Computational Science and Engineering is a multi-disciplinary area with growing recognition in the past decade. The affordability and availability of high performance computers and communication have helped shrink the technological divide; both internally within each country and globally among industrial and developing countries. Although there is...

The multidisciplinary nature of computational science and engineering (CSE) and its relation to other disciplines is described. The stages through which CSE education is evolving, from initial recognition in the 1980's to present growth, are discussed. The challenges and benefits of different approaches to CSE education are discussed, as is the eme...

Detailed ignition modeling has been traditionally left out of the combustion simulations, mainly due to its relatively small time and length scales that could not be integrated into much larger length and time scales of combustion and fluid dynamics. Although the advancements in computing power has now made possible to integrate ignition and combus...

We have entered a new phase in the growth process of computational science. The first phase (1990–2000), which coincides with the federal high performance computing and communication program, can be named as the recognition phase, at the end of which there was a general agreement to accept computation and computational science as a distinct methodo...

The amount of spark energy deposited into the combustion chamber is key to an optimum ignition as one can end up with misfires when this energy is low or with other undesired effects on engine performance and byproducts when it is high. Experimentally, up to now, no one has been able to correlate the combustion outcome accurately to the spark param...

Under legislation the US House of Representatives is considering and under a recent directive of the European Union, the legal status of databases is poised to undergo a sea change. For example, if the periodic table were developed today, under the proposed ...

We describe a scalable parallel algorithm for numerical simulations of turbulent, radiative, magnetized, and reactive fluid + particle systems on message-passing, distributed-memory computers. Accurate simulation of such complex flows has applications in engine combustion, industrial pulverized coal burners, astrophysics, inertial confinement fusio...

We report two aspects of a computational molecular dynamics study of large-scale problems on a distributed-memory MIMD parallel computer: (1) efficiency and scalability results on Intel Paragon parallel computers with up to 1024 nodes for 400 million particles and (2) a new method for dynamic load balancing.

KIVA-3 is the latest version of a 3-D Finite Difference CFD code developed by Amsden for combustion engine simulations. A distributed-memory implementation has many advantages for problems that hardly fit affordable existing memory banks. Previous attempts to parallelize KIVA-2 by Yasar, et al. were focused mostly on diffusion solvers because of th...

Presents a parallel computational model to simulate plasmas in the radiation-magnetohydrodynamics (R-MHD) framework. The solution of the radiation field usually dominates the R-MHD computation. The authors solve the linear Boltzmann equation for the radiation field intensity, using the deterministic S_N discrete ordinates method. Choosing...

A one-dimensional adaptive-grid finite-differencing computer code is presented for radiation-magnetohydrodynamics (R-MHD) simulations of fusion plasmas. The governing equations consist of the continuity, momentum, and energy equations of a non-relativistic, radiative and magnetized fluid plus field-intensity equations of radiation and magnetic fiel...

An explicit adaptive-grid finite differencing method for one-dimensional radiation-magnetohydrodynamics computations is described. Based on the equidistribution principle, this explicit procedure moves the grid points to regions with high spatial gradients in physical quantities, such as temperature, mass density, pressure, and momentum. The govern...

One method of propagating light ions from beam generating diodes to ICF targets in a fusion reactor is to use laser-guided plasma discharge channels to magnetically guide the ions. Earlier studies of different cavity gases (argon, nitrogen, helium) for the LIBRA reactor study indicated that the lower atomic number gases (helium) were most suitable...

An adaptive grid finite difference scheme was derived for simulating non-linear and unsteady one dimensional (planar, cylindrical and spherical) fluid flow by adapting to steep gradients in different physical quantities. The scheme is applied to z-pinch plasma channels that are used for ion beam transport in Light Ion Beam Fusion Reactor designs. T...

The interlayer magnetic coupling in ultrathin Fe/Cr (100) multilayers is studied, using the non-collinear locally self-consistent multiple scattering method (NC-LSMS). The direction and magnitude of magnetization in each monolayer of the system are calculated. We have found a general canted magnetic coupling between two neighboring Fe layers. This...

Critical design issues associated with a light ion driven high gain Target Development Facility (TDF) have been explored in a preliminary conceptual design study. Calculational mthods and key conclusions related to the TDF target chamber concept are described in the present paper. 19 refs.