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In this chapter, we present our ongoing efforts in developing and sustaining interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate programs at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T) – a state-supported HBCU and National Science Foundation (NSF) Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) Institutional Implementation Project grantee. Through three rounds of NSF HBCU-UP implementation grants, a concerted effort has been made in developing interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs in geophysical and environmental science (in round 1), geospatial, computational, and information science (in round 2), and mathematical and computational biology (in round 3) on NCA&T campus. We first present a brief history and background information about the interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs developed and sustained at NCA&T, giving rationales on how these programs had been conceived, and summarizing what have been achieved. Next we give a detailed description on the development of undergraduate research infrastructure including building research facilities through multiple and leveraged funding sources, and engaging a core of committed faculty mentors and research collaborators. We then present, as case studies, some sample interdisciplinary research projects in which STEM undergraduate students were engaged and project outcomes. Successes associated to our endeavor in developing undergraduate research programs as well as challenges and opportunities on implementing and sustaining these efforts are discussed. Finally, we discuss the impact of well-structured undergraduate research training on student success in terms of academic performance, graduation rate and continuing graduate study, and summarize many of the learnings we have gained from implementation and delivery of undergraduate research experiences at HBCUs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted 222 countries across the globe, with millions of people losing their lives. The threat from the virus may be assessed from the fact that most countries across the world have been forced to order partial or complete shutdown of their economies for a period of time to contain the spread of the virus. The fallout of this action manifested in loss of livelihood, migration of the labor force and severe impact on mental health due to the long duration of confinement to homes or residences.

The current study identifies the focus areas of the research conducted on the COVID-19 pandemic. Abstracts of papers on the subject were collated from the SCOPUS database for the period December 2019 to June 2020. The collected sample data (after preprocessing) was analyzed using Topic Modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation.

Based on the research papers published within the mentioned timeframe, the study identifies the 10 most prominent topics that formed the area of interest for the COVID-19 pandemic research.

While similar studies exist, no other work has used topic modeling to comprehensively analyze the COVID-19 literature by considering diverse fields and domains.

With the acceleration of global energy structure transformation, hydrogen has been widely used for its non-pollution and high efficiency, and hydrogen detection is used to guarantee the hydrogen safety. The purpose of this paper is to study the research foundation, trend and hotspots of hydrogen detection field.

A total of 4,076 literature records from 2000 to 2021 were retrieved from the core collection of the Web of Science database selected as data sources. The literature information mining was realized by using CiteSpace software. Bibliometrics was used to analyze information, such as keywords, authors, journals, institutions, countries and cited references, and to track research hotspots.

Since the 21st century, the number of publications in the hydrogen detection field has been in a stable stepped uptrend. In terms of research foundation, the hotspots such as core-shell structures, nano-hybrid materials and optical fiber hydrogen sensors have been studied extensively. In combination with the discipline structure and research frontier, the selectivity, sensitivity, response speed and other performance parameters of hydrogen sensors need further improvement. The establishment of an interdisciplinary knowledge system centered on materials science and electronic science will become a long-term trend in the research of hydrogen detection.

This study presents an overview of research status, hotspots and laws in hydrogen detection field, through the quantitative analysis of much literature in the field and the use of data mining, so as to provide credible references for the research of hydrogen detection technology.

Since joining Bennett College in 2008, Dr. Oh has directed 17 undergraduate students’ research projects in applied mathematics. The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Dr. Oh grants from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities – Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP). The grants allowed her to mentor eight mathematics majors/minors in summer research for four years (2009–2012). Based on the four years of successful undergraduate research (UGR) experiences, she, together with Dr. Jan Rychtar from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), received funding for two summers National Research Experience for Undergraduates (NREUP), an activity of Mathematical Association of America (MAA), funded by the NSF in 2013 and 2014. During the six years of funded UGR, Bennett students made 33 presentations at regional, state, and national conferences; two teams won the outstanding student presentation award and first place for presentation. Three papers were published; two of them by Dr. Oh and one of them with a UGR coauthor. Three projects resulted in manuscripts. As a result of the UGR experiences in 2015, Dr. Oh received three more grants: the MAA NREUP, the NSF’s Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM), and the NSF’s Preparation for Industrial Careers in Mathematical Sciences (PIC Math) program awarded grants. A grant was also submitted to HBC-UP-Targeted Infusion Projects: Computational Mathematics at Bennett College.

Overall, the six years of UGR at Bennett College attained the three goals of: (1) enhancing the quality of undergraduate STEM education and research for a deeper appreciation in those disciplines; (2) supporting increased graduation rates in STEM undergraduate education of females; and (3) broadening participation in the nation’s STEM workforce as well as enrollments in graduate schools.

Primordial pattern is the name given by Grigg to the curve representing the response of many biologic systems to a single stimulus. This curve consists of a fast ascent and a lingering descent. The equation had been chosen empirically to describe the primordial pattern. This equation taken in isolation does not reveal its close interconnection with the physical world. In this paper it is seen as one of the solutions of a second‐order damped system representable by the differential equation with zero initial displacement but some initial velocity. Such a system involves contributing responses by components of threekinds: inertial, restoring and resistive. This observation should stimulate scientists to extract these different components from any biologic response. The resistive component is a term proportional to the first derivative of the response with respect to time. Evidence for the necessity of this frictional component to obtain a primordial pattern is presented. Such frictional component imparts to a process an irreversible character in agreement with Poincarés thermodynamic formulation and provides the physico‐mathematical substrata to the concept of biologic relativity, namely: as the primordial pattern runs its course, there occurs an incessant change, not only in the recorded response, but also in the respondent's reactivity. This paper offers a unifying view of biology and physics. It should be the task of biologists henceforth to try to find the pertinent analogies with inertial, restoring and resistive components of biologic entities and responses. As an example, consider the fact that the primordial pattern requires of necessity the existence of frictional elements within the system. It will be of great interest to look into these elements and try to identify them. Then, perhaps, they could be manipulated from outside the system to increase or diminish them for mankind's advantage.

The paper aims to present the main perspectives and conclusions of a doctoral research in the history and philosophy of science conducted in France and Austria by the author on the project of “general systemology” (or “general system theory”) instigated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

A genealogical enquiry accounts for its scientific, philosophical and more generally cultural origins. Its genesis in Bertalanffy's works between 1926 and 1944 is explained. The process that led it to become a collective project is then discussed: the history of the Society for General Systems Research is considered, the ambivalence of its role with regard to general systemology being demonstrated. Finally, the unity of the diverse contributions to the latter's development is asserted in a framework put forward by the author in order to account for its structure and functions.

While stating a comprehensive view of its history, the paper characterizes general systemology as the project of a general science of systemic interpretation of the “real” which remains topical, although it was never fully actualized.

A new insight is thus provided on the scope and meaning of this hermeneutics: it meets the contemporary need for a better understanding of the foundations of systems research.

This study aims to apply a numerical meshless method, namely, the boundary knot method (BKM) combined with the meshless analog equation method (MAEM) in space and use a semi-implicit scheme in time for finding a new numerical solution of the advection–reaction–diffusion and reaction–diffusion systems in two-dimensional spaces, which arise in biology.

First, the BKM is applied to approximate the spatial variables of the studied mathematical models. Then, this study derives fully discrete scheme of the studied models using a semi-implicit scheme based on Crank–Nicolson idea, which gives a linear system of algebraic equations with a non-square matrix per time step that is solved by the singular value decomposition. The proposed approach approximates the solution of a given partial differential equation using particular and homogeneous solutions and without considering the fundamental solutions of the proposed equations.

This study reports some numerical simulations for showing the ability of the presented technique in solving the studied mathematical models arising in biology. The obtained results by the developed numerical scheme are in good agreement with the results reported in the literature. Besides, a simulation of the proposed model is done on buttery shape domain in two-dimensional space.

This study develops the BKM combined with MAEM for solving the coupled systems of (advection) reaction–diffusion equations in two-dimensional spaces. Besides, it does not need the fundamental solution of the mathematical models studied here, which omits any difficulties.

This article aims to be an expository introduction to Robert Rosen's anticipatory systems, the theory of which provides the conceptual basis for foresight studies.

The ubiquity of anticipatory systems in nature is explained.

Causality is not violated by anticipatory systems, and teleology is an integral aspect of science.

A terse exposition for a general readership, such as the present article, by definition cannot get into too many details. For further exploration the reader is referred to the recent book More than Life Itself by the author.

The topic of anticipatory systems in particular, and methods of relational biology in general, provide important tools for foresight studies. It is the author's hope that this brief glimpse into the world of relational biology piques the interest of some readers to pursue the subject further.

Students studying the philosophy of mathematics were the subjects of an experiment to examine the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres. Results show that students whose right hemisphere is more developed than their left tended to prefer Platonistically presented logicism over nominalistical formalism. They also tended to prefer Brouwer's intuitionalism, which is based on Kant's temporal mode of perception, over Frege's geometrical approach. The result is tentatively explained by an information theoretical model of the brain's functioning and is related to the current discussion regarding constructivism and Kant's theory of consciousness.

The aim is to report on the 175th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held in February 2009 in Chicago.

Provides a concise review of the conference, whose theme was Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures.

Not surprisingly, because of the primary focus on Darwin and the ecology of the earth, there were few symposia that concentrated on the application of technology outside of the Life Sciences and of the Earth Sciences. However, in view of the current evolution of “cloud computing” and the formation of “mega grids,” there were two symposia devoted to these topics.

The paper is a useful summary of a conference of interest to library and information management professionals.