Cryptocurrency Returns Clustering Using Japanese Candlesticks: Towards a Programmatic Trading System

Cryptocurrency trading drove the attention of individual traders during and after the lockdown period caused by COVID-19 restrictions. Trading systems use Japanese candlesticks-derived technical indicators to decide on behalf of traders. They offer insights into the market trend and help traders to decide how to manage their cryptocurrency portfolio. Japanese candlesticks help visualize the movement of cryptocurrencies' prices over a given period. This transformation is widely used to forecast the future trend, volatility, and prices of a cryptocurrency. Most of the research on forecasting returns suggests using three classes, uptrend, downtrend, and insignificant changes. Within this paper, we applied KMeans clustering to the Japanese candlesticks over a daily period of five of the highest capitalized non-stable coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB coin, Cardano, and Solana). Results indicates that the optimal number of clusters is ranging from 5 to 6 clusters using the elbow method for all the considered cryptocurrencies. The range of obtained results suggests that we should opt for a per cryptocurrency number of classes when dealing with cryptocurrencies classification tasks rather than using the three classes mentioned above. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Building Bridges into Engineering and Computer Science: Outcomes, Impacts and Lessons Learned

Wright College, an urban open-access community college, independently accredited within a larger community college system, is a federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) with the largest community college enrollment of Hispanic students in its state. In 2018, Wright College received an inaugural National Science Foundation-Hispanic Serving Institution (NSF:HSI) research project grant “Building Capacity: Building Bridges into Engineering and Computer Science”. The project's overall goals are to increase underrepresented students pursuing an associate degree (AES) in engineering and computer science and streamline two transitions: high school to community college and 2-year to 4-year institutions. Through the grant, Wright College created a holistic and programmatic framework that examines and correlates engineering students' self-efficacy (the belief that students will succeed as engineers) and a sense of belonging with student success. The project focuses on Near-STEM ready students (students who need up to four semesters of math remediation before moving into Calculus 1). The project assesses qualitative and quantitative outcomes through surveys and case study interviews supplemented with retention, persistence, transfer, associate and bachelor's degree completion rates, and time for degree completion. The key research approach is to correlate student success data with self-efficacy and belonging measures. Outcomes and Impacts Three years into the project, Wright College Engineering and Computer Science Program was able to: • Develop and implement the Contextualized Summer Bridge with a total of 132 Near-STEM participants. One hundred twenty-seven (127) completed;100% who completed the Bridge eliminated up to two years of math remediation, and 54% were directly placed in Calculus 1. All successful participants were placed in different engineering pathways, and 11 students completed Associate in Engineering Science (AES) and transferred after two years from the Bridge. • Increase enrollment by 940% (25 to 235 students) • Retain 93% of first-year students (Fall to fall retention). Seventy-five percent (75%) transferred after two years from initial enrollment. • Develop a holistic and programmatic approach for transfer model, thus increasing partnerships with 4-year transfer institutions resulting in the expansion of guaranteed/dual admissions programs with scholarships, paid research experience, dual advising, and students transferring as juniors. • Increase diversity at Wright College by bridging the academic gap for Near-STEM ready students. • Increase self-efficacy and belonging among all Program participants. • Increase institutionalized collaborations responsible for Wright College's new designation as the Center of Excellence for Engineering and Computer Science. • Increase enrollment, retention, and transfer of Hispanic students instrumental for Wright College Seal of Excelencia recognition. Lessons Learned The framework established during the first year of the grant overwhelmingly increased belonging and self-efficacy correlated with robust outcomes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic provided new challenges and opportunities in the second and third years of the grant. While adaptations were made to compensate for the negative impact of the pandemic, the face-to-face interactions were critical to support students' entry into pathways and persistence within the Program. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Heliophysics Environmental & Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite (HERMES): A Small External Payload for Gateway with Big Challenges

Currently scheduled for liftoff in 2024, Gateway will be an outpost orbiting the moon for astronauts headed to and from the lunar surface and will serve as a staging point for deep space exploration. In January 2020, NASA Headquarters contacted Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with a request that they provide a Heliophysics instrumentation package for Gateway. This package would later become known as the Heliophysics Environmental & Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite (HERMES). HERMES consists of four high-heritage instruments-a Miniaturized Electron pRoton Telescope (MERIT), an Electron Electrostatic Analyzer (EEA), a Solar Probe Analyzer-Ions (SPAN-I), and Noise Eliminating Magnetometer Instrument in a Small Integrated System (NEMISIS), which consists of one fluxgate and two magneto-inductive magnetometers. Launching HERMES with Gateway would provide an opportunity to conduct early science experiments on Gateway, but the plan to develop HERMES concurrently with Gateway and launch with the co-manifested vehicle brought numerous technical challenges for the pathfinder payload. HERMES was intended to be a low-cost, tailored Class-D mission, and maintaining that programmatic position proved difficult as the technical challenges grew. The effects of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) were not factored in from the beginning and also created programmatic challenges. This paper will discuss what's being done to overcome the technical and programmatic challenges to put HERMES on track for a 2024 Launch Readiness Date (LRD). © 2022 IEEE.

Soil Moisture Active Passive: Flying A Spacecraft From Home

During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft was flown almost entirely from the homes of operations personnel. SMAP is a science spacecraft mission, measuring soil moisture, its freeze/thaw state, and other parameters on a global scale to support weather forecasting, disaster response and climate research. Institutional pandemic response protocols at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) prescribed that only mission critical and mission essential work may be performed on-site. Fortuitously, automation is a defining characteristic of SMAP operations. Ground systems are used to automate routine tasks but not to replace or replicate the technical expertise of human operators. Nominal operations are repetitive, occur around the clock, and automation allows them to be low cost. Potential contingency scenarios were assessed. Consequences of lost or degraded capability of major mission system elements were evaluated. In particular, the impacts of progressively reduced availability of ground antenna stations were considered. Operational adjustments were made to conduct nearly all functions remotely. Naturally, all meetings were conducted online, and chat rooms were set up. For the infrequent real-time operations, an uplink team of two was deployed to the mission ops center, and all other participants remotely monitored the telemetry and systems. The project policy that all manual uplinks must be performed on-site by two persons was retained. Maneuvers, normally performed on-site with support from several system and sub-system operators, were now performed completely remotely by activating one of a set of pre-loaded maneuver sequences. Despite the situation, significant non-routine activities were accomplished to address anomalies and programmatic needs. A major upgrade of the ground data system was performed, replacing aging hardware and updating obsolete software, although on a longer timeline than originally planned. An innovative parallel operations architecture was used to validate functionality and performance of the upgraded system, while still operating on the legacy system. Similarly, the flight system testbed needed to be upgraded, with the configuration swapped multiple times to accommodate testing and other programmatic needs. The spacecraft experienced a significant corruption of the non-volatile memory. Diagnosis and recovery using new tools were performed almost entirely from home. In summary, SMAP remote operations during the pandemic have been and continue to be highly successful. These experiences have demonstrated that much of the operations may actually be conducted remotely. © 2022 IEEE.

Programmatic aspect of Hayabusa2 sample return capsule recovery operation

Hayabusa2 came back to Earth and the sample return capsule landed in Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA), Australia as planned on December 6, 2020. In the recovery operation all the function of the capsule system and finding system worked fine. The recovery operation teams found and recovered the capsule smoothly. After gas collection from the sample container, the capsule was quickly transported to Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center in Sagamihara, Japan. The sample container was carefully opened, and 5.4g of C-type asteroid material was first confirmed in the world. Before these operations, the recovery operation team discussed with the government about the transport procedure and the environment impact even in the off-nominal cases with supported by Australian Space Agency (ASA). With reflecting the discussion, the recovery operation plan was applied to Australian government with safety plan and emergency plan in August 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic was increased in early 2020. It made the situation difficult. The entry to Australia was restricted and the regular international flight was almost suspended. After many discussions, the counter measure plan was added on the operation plan and we finally obtained Authorisation of Return of Overseas-Launched Space Object (AROLSO) in August 2020. Copyright ©2021 by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). All rights reserved.

Student Impressions of Elements of a S-STEM Program

A state university received an NSF S-STEM grant to provide scholarship funds and enhanced wraparound programmatic activities for engineering and computer science students. Some of the enhanced activities available to the scholarship recipients are faculty mentoring, meetings of the cohort students, the ability to attend professional workshops and participate in STEM outreach activities, and the opportunity to attend and participate in the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) conference in Washington, D.C. Some of these activities are similar to what other schools have in their S-STEM programs. While the effectiveness of the different program activities is often studied at institutions, it is often less clear how students view the usefulness of various program activities. In this paper, we describe in more detail the scholarship program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and provide explanations of the different programmatic activities available to the students in the program. We will then provide the results of a survey of the students in the program, where they were asked to provide their impressions of the program activities. The results of the survey can be beneficial to other schools developing S-STEM programs, as it sheds light on how receptive students may be to possible common program elements. The paper will also contain some discussion on the importance of the group activities in a virtual environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we will provide some suggestions based on our experiences on how to improve the program activities to make them more beneficial to the students. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021