AMSC 663-664 Projects, 2002-2003

Below are the links to each student's AMSC 663-664 project webpage.

• James Cooley, cooley@physics.umd.edu
  Project Title: Quasi-Static Simulation for Laser-Plasma Interactions
  Project Supervisor: Thomas Antonsen (Physics)
  

  Abstract: Recent developments in high intensity lasers have led to increased interest in applications associated with the high energy densities now achievable. These applications include Inertial-Confinement Fusion (ICF) and Laser Wakefield Accelerators (LWFA). The interaction of these high fields with matter, both netural and ionized is highly nonlinear and is characterized by a large number of instabilities. This proposal presents plans to implement and develop a three-dimensional simulation package to examine these phenomena in the quasi-static approximation.

• Daniel M. Dunlavy, ddunlavy@math.umd.edu
  Project Title: An Information Retrieval System for Improving Efficiency in Scientific Literature Searches
  Project Supervisor: Dianne O'Leary (Computer Science)
  

  Abstract: Conducting scientific research most often involves a search through existing literature in order to avoid repeating research efforts, review methods already developed for solving a problem, gain a better understanding of a problem, etc. Typically, this search is performed using the Internet, which is a convenient portal to various databases of books, journal articles, technical reports, preprints, etc.

  In order to improve efficiency in these literature searches, the QCS (= Query, Cluster, Summarize) information retrieval system is proposed. Given a query, QCS will retrieve documents relevant to the query, separate the retrieved documents into topic clusters, and create a single summary document for each topic cluster. Latent Semantic Indexing will be used for the retrieval, spherical k-means will be used for the document clustering, and a hidden Markov model coupled with a pivoted QR decomposition will be used to create a single extract summary for each topic cluster. The evaluation of QCS will be performed using data from the Document Understanding Conferences (DUC '01, '02).

• Darran Furnival, furnival@math.umd.edu
  Project Title: Numerical Simulation of Twin Jets of Matter Emerging from an Active Galactic Nucleus using the Equations of Special Relativistic Hydrodynamics
  Project Supervisor: Chris Reynolds (Astronomy)
  

  Abstract: Most galactic clusters contain an active galactic nucleus (AGN) consisting of a radio galaxy with a massive blackhole at its center. Observational evidence shows that the AGN emits highly collimated twin jets of matter into the surrounding intra-cluster medium (ICM) at relativistic speeds.

  It is the purpose of this project to develop a suite of software that can be used to run numerical simulations of the interaction between the jets and the ICM using the equations of special relativistic hydrodynamics.

• John Harlim, jharlim@math.umd.edu
  Project Title: Thickening Ensembles of Solutions to Weather Prediction Models
  Project Supervisor: Istvan Szunyogh (Meteorology/IPST)
  

  Abstract: The goal of this project is to implement an algorithm for generating initial ensemble perturbations for the purpose of improving the accuracy of numerical weather prediction. While one way to improve accuracy is to develop better models, we propose instead an algorithm that improves the accuracy of any given model. In our project, we implement the module on the operational model used at the National Center of Environmental Prediction (NCEP).