Academic integrity in the HyFlex learning environment.

This study analyzed how students' personality traits and course attendance preferences impact academic integrity in the HyFlex learning environment. 535 undergraduate students were given a choice among courses face-to-face (F2F), online, or a hybrid combination of both. The Big Five Inventory and the Academic Integrity Inventory were administered through online questionnaires to STEM students.

Consistent scaling of persistence time in metapopulations.

Recent theory and experimental work in metapopulations and metacommunities demonstrates that long-term persistence is maximized when the rate at which individuals disperse among patches within the system is intermediate; if too low, local extinctions are more frequent than recolonizations, increasing the chance of regional-scale extinctions, and if too high, dynamics exhibit region-wide synchrony, and local extinctions occur in near unison across the region. Although common, little is known about how the size and topology of the metapopulation (metacommunity) affect this bell-shaped relationship between dispersal rate and regional persistence time. Using a suite of mathematical models, we examined the effects of dispersal, patch number, and topology on the regional persistence time when local populations are subject to demographic stochasticity.

Controlling effect of geometrically defined local structural changes on chaotic Hamiltonian systems.

An effective characterization of chaotic conservative Hamiltonian systems in terms of the curvature associated with a Riemannian metric tensor derived from the structure of the Hamiltonian has been extended to a wide class of potential models of standard form through definition of a conformal metric. The geodesic equations reproduce the Hamilton equations of the original potential model through an inverse map in the tangent space. The second covariant derivative of the geodesic deviation in this space generates a dynamical curvature, resulting in (energy-dependent) criteria for unstable behavior different from the usual Lyapunov criteria.

Modeling epidemics dynamics on heterogenous networks.

The dynamics of the SIS process on heterogenous networks, where different local communities are connected by airlines, is studied. We suggest a new modeling technique for travelers movement, in which the movement does not affect the demographic parameters characterizing the metapopulation. A solution to the deterministic reaction-diffusion equations that emerges from this model on a general network is presented.

Optimizing metapopulation sustainability through a checkerboard strategy.

The persistence of a spatially structured population is determined by the rate of dispersal among habitat patches. If the local dynamic at the subpopulation level is extinction-prone, the system viability is maximal at intermediate connectivity where recolonization is allowed, but full synchronization that enables correlated extinction is forbidden. Here we developed and used an algorithm for agent-based simulations in order to study the persistence of a stochastic metapopulation.

Applications of geometrical criteria for transition to Hamiltonian chaos.

Using a recently developed geometrical method, we study the transition from order to chaos in an important class of Hamiltonian systems. We show agreement between this geometrical method and the surface of section technique applied to detect chaotic behavior. We give, as a particular illustration, detailed results for an important class of potentials obtained from the perturbation of an oscillator Hamiltonian by means of higher-order polynomials.

Detecting order and chaos in three-dimensional Hamiltonian systems by geometrical methods.

We use a geometrical method to distinguish between ordered and chaotic motion in three-dimensional Hamiltonian systems. We show that this method gives results in agreement with the computation of Lyapunov characteristic exponents. We discuss some examples of unstable Hamiltonian systems in three dimensions, giving, as a particular illustration, detailed results for a potential obtained from a Hamiltonian obtained from a Yang-Mills system.

Geometry of Hamiltonian chaos.

The characterization of chaotic Hamiltonian systems in terms of the curvature associated with a Riemannian metric tensor in the structure of the Hamiltonian is extended to a wide class of potential models of standard form through definition of a conformal metric. The geodesic equations reproduce the Hamilton equations of the original potential model when a transition is made to an associated manifold. We find, in this way, a direct geometrical description of the time development of a Hamiltonian potential model.