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Weigel's research and teaching page

This page contains descriptions of things that I have worked on, research interests and notes, the courses I have taught, and a list of some of the projects that I am involved in. There are also links to the research pages of my graduate and undergraduate students.

Contents

  1. Research
    1. Geomagnetic
      1. Medium time scale
    2. Radiation belt
    3. Decision Theory
    4. Forecasting
  2. Projects
    1. SWx Contest
    2. Autoplot
    3. ViRBO
    4. VxOware
    5. CISM_DX
  3. Education/Outreach
    1. CDS Blog
    2. CDS 101
  4. Courses
    1. 2009, Fall
    2. 2009, Spring
    3. 2008, Fall
    4. 2008, Spring
    5. 2007, Fall
    6. 2007, Spring
    7. 2006, Fall
    8. 2006, Spring
  5. Students
    1. Graduate
      1. Current
      2. Former
    2. Undergraduate
      1. Current
      2. Former
    3. High School
      1. Former
  6. Notes
    1. PI Reports
    2. Unix, Sysadmin, and Hardware Notes
    3. Presentation Notes
      1. Portability
      2. Creating Bitmap images
      3. Screencasts
    4. Unfinished Notes

[edit] 1 Research

My research interests include magnetospheric physics and geomagnetism, solar wind/magnetosphere/ionosphere coupling, inverse methods for magnetospheric modeling, nonlinear dynamics, decision theory applied to rare event forecasting, scientific visualization, and collaborative software development.

[edit] 1.1 Geomagnetic

The magnetic field on Earth's surface is approximately 30,000 nT. On top of this are fluctuations of the order of 1,000 nT. These fluctuations are caused by changes in the solar wind that are mediated by the magnetosphere and ionosphere. This system can be modeled as a dynamical system of varying orders of complexity.

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[edit] 1.1.1 Medium time scale

One way to probe a system’s internal dynamical properties is to look at it while it relaxes. The advantage of this is that the input driver is eliminated, allowing one to look at “relaxation events”, time intervals when the input is near zero after an enhancement in activity. Given enough events, one can test various hypotheses about amplitude-dependent processes that are predicted to affect decay time scales. Previous studies of magnetospheric time scales derived decay parameters from looking at epoch averages. The problem with this is the decay time is a function of the solar wind driver amplitude, whose epoch average is non-zero. Preliminary results indicate that the relaxation time scale following a substorm is strongly dependent on the amplitude of the geomagnetic storm (Weigel and Wiltberger, 2006).

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[edit] 1.2 Radiation belt

[edit] 1.3 Decision Theory

To date, most algorithms developed to predict a magnetospheric space weather time series involve the filtering of data measured by a satellite upstream of Earth. The filters are optimized to have the minimum mean of the square prediction errors (MSE). This is in contrast to what the users of a prediction a user wants to know: will something happen? A filter optimized to give a small MSE will not generally give the best answer to the user-relevant question. These ideas have been developed in the paper Decision theory and the analysis of rare event space weather forecast pdf.

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[edit] 1.4 Forecasting

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[edit] 2 Projects

[edit] 2.1 SWx Contest

The Space Weather Forecasting Contest is a competition to predict a few space weather environment parameters. The goal of this contest is to allow students and professionals from around the world to learn and experience about space weather by actively trying to predict it.

[edit] 2.2 Autoplot

In the VxO world, searches often return a long list of "granules" (in the form of files). The next step in usability and scientific value is to present the user a way of quickly visualizing the granules. With Jeremy Faden, we designed the program Autoplot to automatically make sense of data files, in the same way that your web browser makes sense of many file formats (png, gif, htm, xml, etc.). Underneath, Autoplot uses the das2 framework. See http://autoplot.org.




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[edit] 2.3 ViRBO

ViRBO is one of the Virtual Observatories as part of NASA's Heliophysics Data Environment program. See http://virbo.org








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[edit] 2.4 VxOware

A metadata search, discovery, accesss, version control, and edit tool. See http://vxoware.org and http://virbo.org/meta
A metadata search, discovery, accesss, version control, and edit tool. See http://vxoware.org and http://virbo.org/meta

In space physics, there is a very large effort to create standard metadata for data products [1]. The most important reason for this is to enable search; the number of data products is increasing, and with the advent of small satellites http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008SpWea...605007M, we will likely double the number of available data products in a very short amount of time (I talk more about this here [link]). In our proposal for the ViRBO project, we laid out a plan to build on an existing code base that had metadata search, discovery, access, version control, and edit functions. The developers of this code base are from GC RAS and NGDC, and as part of the ViRBO project, we have significantly extended its capabilities.




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[edit] 2.5 CISM_DX

http://bu.edu/cism/cismdx
http://bu.edu/cism/cismdx

The project goal is to coordinate the diverse contributions of analysis software, data, and visualization tools used by CISM scientists into a package of software with parts that could be built upon by researchers and used by forecasters, students, and teachers. The CISM_DX software package was initially based entirely on the extensive OpenDX module package (SPDX) by Wiltberger, Lyon, and Guild. To it we added and coordinated contributions from many other researchers and students, including tutorials, forecast models, documentation, cross-platform installs, computer labs and exercises, and time series data.






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[edit] 3 Education/Outreach

[edit] 3.1 CDS Blog

http://computationalanddatascience.blogspot.com

[edit] 3.2 CDS 101

Developing labs for CDS 101 course: http://cds101.org.

[edit] 4 Courses

[edit] 4.1 2009, Fall

[edit] 4.2 2009, Spring

Sabbatical

[edit] 4.3 2008, Fall

[edit] 4.4 2008, Spring

[edit] 4.5 2007, Fall

[edit] 4.6 2007, Spring

[edit] 4.7 2006, Fall

  • Astronomy 111 Lecture Tuesday and Thursday 9:00-10:15 am Enterprise Hall Room 80. The textbook is "The Universe, 7th Edition" by Freedman and Kaufmann.

[edit] 4.8 2006, Spring

[edit] 5 Students

[edit] 5.1 Graduate

[edit] 5.1.1 Current

  • Brian Curtis works on problems in space weather forecasting, model analysis, and general science software tools. He developed and runs the Space Weather Forecasting Contest [2] and is working on validating MHD-based magnetosphere and solar wind simulations.
  • Andrew Kercher
  • Christy Henderson is analyzing the periodicities in the solar wind observed by the Ulysses satellite in an attempt to distinguish between the different mechanisms that have been proposed to cause them, such as current sheet crossings or non-radial expansion effects near the poles of the sun.
  • Randy Bell is investigating wave particle interactions using kinetic and hybrid plasma models and comparison to observations to characterize magnetosphere transient activity.

[edit] 5.1.2 Former

  • Nathaniel Stickley implemented the Rice Convection Model algorithm in MATLAB. Eventually we will validate and test this code in a course on simulation and then use it in course magnetospheric physics for studying the role of different aspects of the system (ionospheric conductance, magnetic field model, etc.). The project left off with the code running and preliminary plots that looked as expected, but much more validation and testing is needed. Nathaniel finished his MS in Physics at GMU and now studies Astrophysics at the University of California at Riverside.
  • Juan Luna
  • Sandya Bandaru

[edit] 5.2 Undergraduate

[edit] 5.2.1 Current

[edit] 5.2.2 Former

[edit] 5.3 High School

[edit] 5.3.1 Former

[edit] 6 Notes

[edit] 6.1 PI Reports

  • http://discoverer.gmu.edu/pireports/
  • By month range
  • Use default DB, end user layer, etc.
  • Use pin for patriot web and login for patriot web
  • Commitments go thru June 9th (State Fiscal year) but last pay period is 16th
  • Do not include May 24th-June 9th as that is scheduled later
  • Faculty special payments = summer salary
  • Fringe =~ all salaries, complicated formula, 7% GRA, 7.65% Faculty summer, 36% Faculty other (clamps at a $ amount).
  • Use File->Export (not Export to File)
  • Put all items in text fields in single quotes
  • Click on arrow buttons to drill down
  • Pooled budget level is a 5-digit number which shows up in a column for Pooled Budget Summary.
  • Data refreshed daily
  • Discoverer guides https://docushare.gmu.edu/dsweb/View/Collection-2951
  • Grant with multiple funds can occur.
  • Click on fund arrow.
  • Equipment is everything > 2000
  • Use IE, Java 1.4
  • Lose value when you move from tuition to something other than equipment or subs > 25 (because of indirect).
  • New rate is 45.0% Indirect
  • Offsite is 24% Indirect
  • Grad assistants -> Select Labor
  • If pooled budget (starts with 6) -> Labor
  • Suffix is 00 means first contract -> 01 second contract under that grant
  • If you move grad student to a different grant, you need to fill out a form. Suffix starts at 00 for new grant.
  • Right click on arrow
    • Direct expenses by pooled budget means to look at all expenses with that full pooled number
    • Direct expenses "All" shows all with same pooled budget number
    • Labor summary only works on labor stuff.
  • Indirect do File->Open FIN_Labor and DE Drill -> Initial view


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[edit] 6.2 Unix, Sysadmin, and Hardware Notes

System, Sysadmin, Unix tips, and Hardware Notes

http://aurora.gmu.edu/projects/index.php/Hardware_Software

[edit] 6.3 Presentation Notes

Things a student should know before giving a a presentation.

[edit] 6.3.1 Portability

  • If you have any equations in your document, make it more portable by embedding fonts (In powerpoint Tools-Options-Save and check Embed TrueType/Embed All)
  • If you have Powerpoint 2007, save in 2003 format.
  • Embedding Quicktime movies in PowerPoint on a Mac: http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00534.htm

[edit] 6.3.2 Creating Bitmap images

  • Know the difference between a bitmap and vector file format. Always create a .ps or a .eps first. Then convert it to png. See Hardware_Software#Ghostscript for information on how to make the image clear. Do not use JPEG (text will not be clear when defaults are used).

[edit] 6.3.3 Screencasts

[edit] 6.4 Unfinished Notes

http://aurora.gmu.edu/projects/index.php/Notes

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