PCSI
701
Frontiers of
Physical
Sciences
J.H. Beall
The course introduces students
to various questions at the frontiers of the physical sciences. Some
lectures will be presented on a range of interdisciplinary topics, but
the principal format of the course will be that of a graduate seminar.
The assignments include readings from the current literature and some
texts as well as modeling projects, class presentations, and a course
project.
Fall Semester - 3 semester hours
Course Work
This course considers elements
of questions at the frontiers of the physical sciences. The work
of the semester will cover selected topics of current interest from the
literature at a level appropriate to the beginning graduate student.
Likely topics include issues about the nature of modeling, nonlinear
dynamics and chaos, modeling of biological systems, some aspects of
nanotechnology and neurosciences,
and topics in astrophysics and relativity. Some lectures will be
presented on these topics, but the principal format of the course will
be that of a graduate seminar.
The work of the semester will consist of readings of selected papers,
some work from texts, analysis of some sample data, modeling projects,
and a course project based on the course topics. Papers will be taken
from journals (notably
Science, Nature, the Journal of Geophysical
Research, and the Astrophysical
Journal, among others). There will be some discussion of
chapters
of conference proceedings and texts. Students will be asked to lead
discussions on the readings and engage in analysis and modeling
projects related to the readings. The work of the
course will be collaborative.
Grades will be determined from
daily work in the seminars, presentations of journal articles and
related projects, and the course project. Please
provide me with a 1
page description of the course project by the 8th week of class.
Texts:
The text material for the course comes from various articles in the
journals Science, Nature, Journal of Geophysical Research,
the Astrophysical Journal,
and excerpts from some texts and conference proceedings.
Reference texts:
Applied
Chaos Theory: A Paradigm for Complexity
by Ali Cambel
Format: Hard cover, 2nd ed., 246pp.
ISBN: 0121559408
Publisher: Academic Press, Incorporated,
March 1993
Mathematical
Ideas in Biology
by J. Maynard Smith
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 521095506
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Visualizing Data
by William s. Cleveland
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by E. Tufte
How to contact your professor:
J.H. Beall
703 993 1996 SCS
S&T I, Room 113
email: jbeall@gmu.edu
Plotting and Analysis Tools:
I have no preference as to which of the many available packages you use
for the modeling and analysis you do for this course. Excel
spreadsheets can be used for many aspects of the course. Some of the
available packages include SPLUS, AVS, Vis-5D, XV, PV-Wave, and IDL,
among many others.
I recommend, however, that you investigate IDL or PV-Wave (which are
clones of one another), since they are a nice compromise betweenease of
use of graphical tools and transparency of code for manipulating
data.. IDL is currently installed on the cluster of machines in
S&T I, Room 228. GNU-plot is also a credible graphing tool.
The SCS license for IDL is current.
Initial Data Sets:
Three types of data sets will be described at the first class.
These will be interesting as test samples for your initial work with
your chosen data analysis system.
data files
Vostok
Ice Core Data Page
PSCI 701
Frontiers of Physical Sciences
J.H. Beall
Syllabus:
Week 1:
Overview of the course
What is a frontier?
Likely current topics and questions
Week 2:
Climate and Paleoclimate
"Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the
Vostok ice core, Antarctica,", Petit, J.R., et al, Nature, 399, 429.
PDF version of paper at:
http://ptolemy.gmu.edu/~beall/psci701_syllabus.html
under http://ptolemy.gmu.edu/~beall/data/vostok_papers_data
Week 3:
The Solar Cycle and the Sun as a Variable Star
"The Sun's Variable Radiation and Its Relevance
for Earth, Lean, J., 1997, Annual
Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 35, 33-67.
Week 4: Space Weather
"Observational impacts of space weather,"
Lambour et al. 2003, Geophysical
Research Letters, 30, 1136.
Magnetospheric physics and space weather: The
solar storm of October 30th, 2003
Week 5: Neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts
Ionospheric effects of gamma-ray
bursts
Week 6: Extraterrestial Life
Week 7: Infrared Astronomy
Week 8: Formation of Terrestrial Planets
Models of accretion disks in astrophysics
Relation of accretion disks to the formation of terrestrial planets
Week 9: Cosmology
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Week 10: Elementary paticles and neutrino
astrophysics
The Solar Neutrino Problem
The detection of extrasolar neutrinos
Week 11: Non-linear Systems and Deterministic
Chaos
"Complicated Behavior of Simple Dynamical Systems," by Robert May,
Nature, 1976, 261, 439.
Week 12: Predictability and Chaos
"Predictability in the Midst of Chaos: A Scientific Basis for Climate
Forecasting," Shukla, J., 1998, Science,
282, 728-731.
Week 13:Issues related to modeling
"Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of
Numerical Models...,
" by Oreskes et al., Science,
1994, 263, 641.
"Persistence of Transients in
Spatially Structured Ecological
Models,"
by Hastings and Higgins
Week 14: Presentations of class projects
Week 15: Presentations of class projects
End of semester
Possible additional
topics and papers:
Computational social science: MASON modeling tool
Analytical models of social systems?
Carbon nanotube computer memory
Case Studies: NGC 6814: Short Time Scale Variability
Chaos in the solar cycle: an an analysis
of time series data
Relation of accretion disks to astrophysical jets
Discussiion of atmospheres of planets and moons
Methane rain and water rain
`Chaos, Strange Attractors, and Fractal Basin Boundaries in Nonlinear
Dynamics," by Grebogi, Ott, and Yorke.
How Long is the Coast of Britain," in Mandelbrot's The Fractal
Geometry of NatureEnd of Semester