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Bridge programs are common interventions colleges implement to improve student recruitment, retention, and performance. Key components are typically specific content instruction, tutoring, mentoring, and college orientation. This paper provides the results of a short-duration summer bridge program designed to increase student awareness of emerging technological fields in engineering technology (ET), specifically the semiconductor and data center industries. High school students in the summer bridge program were provided with information about NOVA’s ET programs, participated in hands-on activities around topics important to semiconductor and data center operations (DCO) technician careers, and met industry representatives through industry site tours. Student data includes participant changes in understanding of ET educational and career pathways, knowledge of OSHA and industrial safety, understanding of college success skills and strategies, and interest in ET careers. Results of the study demonstrated that students of all subgroups (e.g., gender, grade level, race, ethnicity) exhibited equivalent improvement in their understanding of ET education and career pathways while student outcomes in OSHA and college success skills varied by subgroup. Based on these results, the use of a short-duration bridge program is one mechanism for post-secondary institutions to increase awareness of emerging technologies and educational pathways to support careers in those technologies 

Markets with emerging technologies face a challenge in finding employees with the knowledge base and skills necessary to fulfill their workforce needs. Generating awareness of these career fields is essential to meet workforce needs now and into the future. This paper discusses the extent to which educator awareness of the engineering technology (ET) and data center operations (DCO) programs and careers change as a result of participation in a professional learning (PL) externship program. Secondary educators in the PL program learned specifics of Northern Virginia Community College’s (NOVA) ET programs, toured an ET facility and data center, and developed a plan to disseminate the ET credentialing and career information to their colleagues, students, and parents. In post-participation surveys, educators indicated increased awareness of and interest in ET education programs and career pathways. Additionally, educators indicated an understanding of the industry’s need for ET talent and the skills and technical knowledge students need for ET careers. The data supports an educator externship as a PL mechanism for post-secondary institutions to increase awareness of the educational pathways and careers in emerging technologies. 

Data centers are large, centralized clusters of computing hardware. Enterprise and economic activities that rely on internet services (e.g., cloud-based computing, online commerce, video and audio streaming) require significant data center infrastructure to ensure continuity of services. To provide these services, data centers require significant capital investment, ongoing operational maintenance, and the engineering workforce capacity to support these. Nationally, increasing reliance on distributed computing and off-site data storage has caused a boom in data center construction in multiple key markets nationwide. Additionally, shifts towards telecommuting and spikes in internet demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic have spurred increased demand for fast and reliable access to remote computing infrastructure (Miller, 2020). Northern Virginia has the largest and fastest growing market for data center capacity in the US (JLARC, 2019). Data center capacity is forecasted to double in Virginia during the next 10 years, with most of that growth concentrated in regions of Loudoun County and Manassas (Miller, 2018). The jobs created as a result of these investments offer high salaries for entry level technicians, especially compared with other regional opportunities to 2-year degree holders (Patil, 2019; Schneider & Vivari, 2012). Despite this rapid growth, data center pathways remain underdeveloped in Northern Virginia. Student and teacher awareness of data centers is low, with the sector operating almost invisibly to the education system (Magnolia Consulting, 2022). This project attempts to improve regional awareness of data center careers through an industry externship targeted to high school counselors from Virginia districts with highly concentrated data center industries. During their externships, educators attended structured tours of Micron Technology and Stack Infrastructure, participated in networking sessions at NOVA campuses, and developed an action plan to bring awareness of data center careers to their institutions. Using pre- and post-surveys, focus groups, and content analysis of action plans, this paper investigates the extent to which participation in externship activities improves educator awareness and knowledge of the data center industry, knowledge of regional career pathways, and intentions to change professional practice. The results are generalized to provide recommendations for practitioners seeking to increase awareness of emerging technological fields within the K-12 education system. 

Abstract Extreme (>20 nT/s) geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs, also denoted as MPEs—magnetic perturbation events)—impulsive nighttime disturbances with time scale ∼5–10 min, have sufficient amplitude to cause bursts of geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) that can damage technical infrastructure. In this study, we present occurrence statistics for extreme GMD events from five stations in the MACCS and AUTUMNX magnetometer arrays in Arctic Canada at magnetic latitudes ranging from 65° to 75°. We report all large (≥6 nT/s) and extreme GMDs from these stations from 2011 through 2022 to analyze variations of GMD activity over a full solar cycle and compare them to those found in three earlier studies. GMD activity between 2011 and 2022 did not closely follow the sunspot cycle, but instead was lowest during its rising phase and maximum (2011–2014) and highest during the early declining phase (2015–2017). Most of these GMDs, especially the most extreme, were associated with high‐speed solar wind streams (Vsw >600 km/s) and steady solar wind pressure. All extreme GMDs occurred within 80 min after substorm onsets, but few within 5 min. Multistation data often revealed a poleward progression of GMDs, consistent with a tailward retreat of the magnetotail reconnection region. These observations indicate that extreme GIC hazard conditions can occur for a variety of solar wind drivers and geomagnetic conditions, not only for fast‐coronal mass ejection driven storms. 

A collisionless shock is a self-organized structure where fields and particle distributions are mutually adjusted to ensure a stable mass, momentum and energy transfer from the upstream to the downstream region. This adjustment may involve rippling, reformation or whatever else is needed to maintain the shock. The fields inside the shock front are produced due to the motion of charged particles, which is in turn governed by the fields. The overshoot arises due to the deceleration of the ion flow by the increasing magnetic field, so that the drop of the dynamic pressure should be compensated by the increase of the magnetic pressure. The role of the overshoot is to regulate ion reflection, thus properly adjusting the downstream ion temperature and kinetic pressure and also speeding up the collisionless relaxation and reducing the anisotropy of the eventually gyrotropized distributions. 

Abstract We analyze a magnetotail reconnection onset event on 3 July 2017 that was observed under otherwise quiescent magnetospheric conditions by a fortuitous conjunction of six space and ground‐based observatories. The study investigates the large‐scale coupling of the solar wind–magnetosphere system that precipitated the onset of the magnetotail reconnection, focusing on the processes that thinned and stretched the cross‐tail current layer in the absence of significant flux loading during a 2‐hr‐long preconditioning phase. It is demonstrated with data in the (a) upstream solar wind, (b) at the low‐latitude magnetopause, (c) in the high‐latitude polar cap, and (d) in the magnetotail that the typical picture of solar wind‐driven current sheet thinning via flux loading does not appear relevant for this particular event. We find that the current sheet thinning was, instead, initiated by a transient solar wind pressure pulse and that the current sheet thinning continued even as the magnetotail and solar wind pressures decreased. We suggest that field line curvature‐induced scattering (observed by magnetospheric multiscale) and precipitation (observed by Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) of high‐energy thermal protons may have evacuated plasma sheet thermal energy, which may require a thinning of the plasma sheet to preserve pressure equilibrium with the solar wind. 

Magnetometers are a key component of heliophysics research providing valuable insight into the dynamics of electromagnetic field regimes and their coupling throughout the solar system. On satellites, magnetometers provide detailed observations of the extension of the solar magnetic field into interplanetary space and of planetary environments. At Earth, magnetometers are deployed on the ground in extensive arrays spanning the polar cap, auroral and sub-auroral zone, mid- and low-latitudes and equatorial electrojet with nearly global coverage in azimuth (longitude or magnetic local time—MLT). These multipoint observations are used to diagnose both ionospheric and magnetospheric processes as well as the coupling between the solar wind and these two regimes at a fraction of the cost of in-situ instruments. Despite their utility in research, ground-based magnetometer data can be difficult to use due to a variety of file formats, multiple points of access for the data, and limited software. In this short article we review the Open-Source Python library GMAG which provides rapid access to ground-based magnetometer data from a number of arrays in a Pandas DataFrame, a common data format used throughout scientific research. 

Abstract Magnetic reconnection plays an important role in converting energy while modifying field topology. This process takes place under varied plasma conditions during which the transport of magnetic flux is intrinsic. Identifying active magnetic reconnection sites with in situ observations is challenging. A new technique, Magnetic Flux Transport (MFT) analysis, has been developed recently and proven in numerical simulation for identifying active reconnection efficiently and accurately. In this study, we examine the MFT process in 37 previously reported electron diffusion region (EDR)/reconnection-line crossing events at the day-side magnetopause and in the magnetotail and turbulent magnetosheath using Magnetospheric Multiscale measurements. The coexisting inward and outward MFT flows at an X-point provides a signature that magnetic field lines become disconnected and reconnected. The application of MFT analysis to in-situ observations demonstrates that MFT can successfully identify active reconnection sites under complex varied conditions, including asymmetric and turbulent upstream conditions. It also provides a higher rate of identification than plasma outflow jets alone. MFT can be applied to in situ measurements from both single- and multi-spacecraft missions and laboratory experiments. 

X-ray characterization of catalyst materials using synchrotron radiation has become more widely available to the scientific community in recent decades.