Data Driven Urban Planning
Mentors: Dr. Huiping Cao
2018 REU New Mexico State University

Abstract
Urban planning seeks to use big data to build smart cities. Urban data in New
Mexico was crawled from creditable sources on-line and by requesting. Two
case studies were conducted in this research for the purpose of urban plan-
ning and address two questions in our research. For case study 1, all the data
was collected from New Mexico Environmental Public Health Tracking, such as,
Asthma, COPD, and Ozone, which are the major factors focused in this research
and case study II requested data from the New Mexico Department of Trans-
portation. Case study I, processed the data using programming language of
python by implementing imported library,pandas. The data was inputted into
scatter plots to nd correlation between Ozone and Asthma, Ozone and COPD.
However, the plots did not show much promising correlation, so Pearson corre-
lation and K-means clusters are the analysis tools used to test whether there is a
correlation between these factors. Case study II used python imported libraries
pandas, sklearn, and seaborn to visualize the data spatially and by time. Trends
found through visualization was used as a basis for preprocessing of data and
then running the apriori algorithm to determine highest frequent combinations
of factors. Future study will involve crawling of more factors to include in spa-
tial analysis to help better understand the trends and peaks seen in the data.
Analysis of the factors will provide invaluable information to the Department
of Transportation and rst responders in the area.

Abstract
Many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms are faced with a common issue; lack of involvement from minority and low-socioeconomic students. Not only are these students not participating in STEM, but they are not receiving as much support when it comes to pursing STEM as an option for higher education or as a career. A major part of this pattern starts with a system used by many schools called tracking. “In the US, it has become obvious that tracking is causing inequality in students’ mathematics levels” (Holm, 2013). Based on my findings, there is currently a presence of bias and discrepancy when involving minorities in not only mathematics, but STEM as a whole. The first step to addressing these issues is to evaluate current systems, interventions, and resources that are in place in schools. Also, other factors that will be discussed include parent involvement, peer influences, outside and additional influences, and educational collectiveness.

Abstract
The Science Gateway Community 4-Week Coding Institute was a rigorous coding workshop that was held with the intentions of teaching undergraduate students about different programming languages including Python and Unix Shell. During the first week of the workshop Dr. Hayden introduced the students to the SGCI program as well as the activities that the students would be expected to complete during the duration of the program.

Following the introductory week the students were introduced to the Software Carpentry team as well as new programming languages. During the Software Carpentry tutorials the students were introduced to git bash as well as GitLab.com. The students were taught how to use the Linux terminal to navigate GitLab.com and how to save their work. Along with the Software Carpentry tutorials the students also learned a few different programming languages such as R, Python, and Unix Shell.

After the tutorial portion of the workshop the students traveled to New Orleans to attend the PEARC17 conference. During the PEARC17 conference the students participated in a verity of different events and activities. One event that the students attended was a Python tutorial in which students who haven’t had any experience in the Python programming language would be taught the basics. The tutorial sessions were about one hour and thirty minutes. Given the limited amount of time, the tutorial was well planned out and perfectly timed. The tutorial included lessons on how to import modules as well as create and call a custom or built-in function.

Student modeling day was another event that help the students interact with one another. The object of modeling was that the students would split into groups and work together to solve and plot a scientific problem using python. An example problem during modeling day was the infection and immunity rate of malaria on a population of villagers as well as the spread of malaria amongst the mosquitos. In conclusion the Science Gateway Community Institute 4-Week Coding Internship offered a great opportunity for students to gain experience in different programming languages as well as applying their skills to scientific problems.

Abstract
During the summer of 2018 I took part in a 10-week undergraduate internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL). The department in which I was working under was the Data Science and Technology department, directed by Dr. Deborah Agarwal. During the course of the internship I was tasked with the development of user tools for a service by the name of Environmental Systems Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE). This included working on multiple different project during my 10 weeks at LBL. ESS-DIVE is a data archiving service that is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The purpose of ESS-DIVE is to archive and publicly share data obtained from observational, experimental, and modeling research in Environmental Systems Science that is funded by the DOE’s Office of Science.

Abstract
ABSTRACT

Thomas Johnson III
SO-CS
thomash.johnson261@gmail.com

Poster PPT / PDF

Abstract
From June 3rd, 2018, to August 2nd, 2018, Thomas Johnson interned at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) through the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI). Over the course of two months he was tasked with assignments that extensively refined his skills in the front-end development work - front-end being what a website user sees and interacts with versus the back-end which is the infrastructure a website is built on. This included knowledge and usage of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Bootstrap, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP). The importance of the dependencies between files that ran a website was also taught. Cloud computing was also presented in the use of the Jetstream cloud computing system during the internship. Jetstream is a high performance batch-based streaming middleware, which enables multi-route streaming across cloud sites.

For the first couple of weeks at TACC materials were provided to create a reliable base of skills and knowledge in elemental design. HTML and CSS handled the appearance and PHP served as the spine that supported the services that were provided through the website. PHP is a scripting language that does not possess the safety nets that programming languages such as Java, C or C++ had for the expanse of errors that can be encountered. PHP is a sharp contrast from building strictly HTML and CSS files given that HTML and CSS rendered elements if they are correctly implemented. PHP would point out an error with a given line or returned an error in the HTTP request. Bootstrap also allowed for efficiency when the work required responsive webpages or elements. Over the course of the internship experience HTML and CSS skills were strengthened, and JavaScript, Bootstrap, and PHP knowledge was gained. These skills were utilized in a volunteer computing project, named TACC-2-BOINC (T2B): http://t2b.tacc.utexas.edu/. This project brings together volunteer computing with supercomputing by utilizing computing resources from individuals or institutions to complete high-throughput computing jobs from the TACC systems. The skills developed during the internship are applicable to the other projects supported by SGCI.

Scrum, an agile software development methodology, was adopted to manage project team members’ time during the internship. A Scrum meeting in the morning delineated the days’ goals, concerns, and previous work, and an evening Scrum meeting helped in reviewing progress, establish the next days’ goals, and analyze any issues that arose during the workday. Interns also learnt about version control and using Github for multi-author commits. All these helped the interns experience team-work and enhance communication skills.

The internship considerably refined Thomas Johnson’s abilities in developing user interfaces and in the usability analysis of the websites. During the internship, skills were developed on the topics of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and Angular JS. The interns also developed familiarity with the resources that can be utilized for front-end development on future projects as well.

Disaiah Bennett
SR-CS
dlbennett365@students.ecsu.edu

Presentation PDF

Abstract
IBM Cloud Internet Service (CIS) API was developed to process HTTP requests with the assistance of cloudflare. With the production of the API, IBM needed the API to perform at a higher level and produce/handle more than 100 request per second. To fix the problem, a new python module was developed in reference to the pyCURL module. With the implementation of the module, the system was able to produce more request with an overall improved performance.