Supercomputing Challenge MMM, Nov. 5, 2007

Supercomputing Challenge Monday Morning Message, November 5, 2007
Greetings,

We will organize our weekly epistles in four sections:

A To Do List
Challenge Website Link
Sponsor Link
Science Link

To Do

1) Schedule a November visit to your school from Consult and/or its extended family. We can visit your administration, talk to parents, and work with students on proposals or units.

2) Create an account on our open source content management page! Do so today, if you haven't already at

http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/forum/?q=user/register

There is a Challenge Website Scavenger Hunt there in the forum Be the first one on your block to report one of the answers. First 10 people to enter a correct answer will win a prize.

High Schoolers and some self selected mid schoolers: Create a team blog and a Challenge mentor will meet you there to discuss your project.

3) Sign St. Pius' Erika DeBenedictis' online petition at

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/SCfunding/

if you haven't already. Let's get 1000 signatures on there by December 1, 2007. Ask your families sign it also.

4) Do research on your topic, use sources besides the Internet, look for solutions or codes already discussed and modify them. Please have three to five references ready for your Interim Report in December.

5) Sign up for the NM 3rd Annual Young Researchers Banquet

When Fri., Nov 30, 6:00pm - 9:30pm
Where Rio Rancho High School
Description Celebrate yourselves as a young researcher of NM! Hear the inspirational story of Katie Liberatore, a recent UNM graduate back from Australia, whose life changed direction because of her involvement in research and the Intel ISEF.
Contact randy@gotoif.org with your vitals (Name and contact information) and he will follow up to finalize your ticket purchase. $20 each or 4 for $60!

6) Come to the NMRoboRAVE International – Competition
A FREE event for the family
When Sat., Dec 1, 8:00am - 4:30pm
Where SIPI - along Coors NW and Paseo Del Norte, Albuquerque
Description Dynamic Competition

7) Fill out the Pre-Challenge Survey at: http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/pre-survey_login.php
(It was step 7 of 10 on the http://www.challenge.nm.org/registration.shtml web page but only 40 surveys
have been completed.)

8) Teachers: Have you heard back from your legislators? Does anyone need a copy of the the sample letter?


Challenge Website Highlights

Each week, we will guide you to a portion of our new and improved website. This week, we share the About section at http://challenge.nm.org/about/ which highlights the 18 year history of the Challenge. Check out the DVD at the bottom of the page. You may see someone you know there!

Notice that each page has a “Search the Challenge Website” feature so you can easily find whatever you are looking for.

Sponsor Link

The Sponsor of the week is MathWorks at http://www.mathworks.com/

Special thanks goes to Cleve Moler for offering MATLAB to Challenge students. Wikipedia defines MATLAB as

MATLAB is a numerical computing environment and programming language. Created by The MathWorks, MATLAB allows easy matrix manipulation, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs in other languages. Although it specializes in numerical computing, an optional toolbox interfaces with the Maple symbolic engine, allowing it to be part of a full computer algebra system.

Cleve's Wikipedia entry reads:


Cleve Barry Moler is a mathematician and computer programmer specializing in numerical analysis. In the mid to late 1970s, he was one of the authors of LINPACK and EISPACK, Fortran libraries for numerical computing. He invented MATLAB, a numerical computing package, to give his students at the University of New Mexico easy access to these libraries without writing Fortran. In 1984, he co-founded The MathWorks with Jack Little to commercialize this program.

Write to Cleve at Cleve.Moler@mathworks.com

if your team will be needing to use MATLAB and you don't already have a student edition.

Science Link

Our Project GUTS students are starting their epidemiology unit. Irene Lee, Project GUTS Director and Consult member, sends us these sites to check out about infectious disease:
http://www.bam.gov/teachers/epidemiology.html
http://www.montclair.edu/Detectives/
http://www.cdc.gov/excite/classroom/intro_epi.htm

Happy November!

The Consult Management Team
Betsy, Celia and David

Supercomputing Challenge Consulting, consult@challenge.nm.org