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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 217 records · Page 12
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

FY 18 Status Report on the Computing Systems for the Yucca Mountain Project TSPA-LA Models and Inventory of Software used for Process Models

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) continued evaluation of total system performance assessment (TSPA) computing systems for the previously considered Yucca Mountain Project (YMP). This was done to maintain the operational readiness of the computing infrastructure (computer hardware and software) and knowledge capability for total system performance assessment (TSPA) type analysis, as directed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DOE 2010. This work is a continuation of the ongoing readiness evaluation reported in Lee and Hadgu (2014), Hadgu et al. (2015) and Hadgu and Appel (2016), and Hadgu et al. (2017). The TSPA computing hardware (2014 server cluster -CL2014) and storage system described in Hadgu et al. (2015) were used for the current analysis. One floating license of Gold Sim with Versions 9.60.300, 10.5, 11.1 and 12.0 was installed on the cluster head node, and its distributed processing capability was mapped on the cluster processors. Other supporting software were tested and installed to support the TSPA-type analysis on the server cluster. The FY18 task included developing an inventory of software used for the Yucca Mountain Project process models and preliminary assessment of status of the software; enhancing security of the cluster and setting a backup system. The 2014 server cluster and supporting software systems are fully operational to support TSPA-LA type analysis.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
NASA NTRS2016

Design and Development of a Flight Route Modification, Logging, and Communication Network

There is an overwhelming desire to create and enhance communication mechanisms between entities that operate within the National Airspace System. Furthermore, airlines are always extremely interested in increasing the efficiency of their flights. An innovative system prototype was developed and tested that improves collaborative decision making without modifying existing infrastructure or operational procedures within the current Air Traffic Management System. This system enables collaboration between flight crew and airline dispatchers to share and assess optimized flight routes through an Internet connection. Using a sophisticated medium-fidelity flight simulation environment, a rapid-prototyping development, and a unified modeling language, the software was designed to ensure reliability and scalability for future growth and applications. Ensuring safety and security were primary design goals, therefore the software does not interact or interfere with major flight control or safety systems. The system prototype demonstrated an unprecedented use of in-flight Internet to facilitate effective communication with Airline Operations Centers, which may contribute to increased flight efficiency for airlines.

Merlino, Daniel K.↗
DOE OSTI2015

The U.S./IAEA Workshop on Software Sustainability for Safeguards Instrumentation: Report to the NNSA DOE Office of International Nuclear Safeguards (NA-241)

The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convened a workshop on Software Sustainability for Safeguards Instrumentation in Vienna, Austria, May 6-8, 2014. Safeguards instrumentation software must be sustained in a changing environment to ensure existing instruments can continue to perform as designed, with improved security. The approaches to the development and maintenance of instrument software used in the past may not be the best model for the future and, therefore, the organizers’ goal was to investigate these past approaches and to determine an optimal path forward. The purpose of this report is to provide input for the DOE NNSA Office of International Nuclear Safeguards (NA-241) and other stakeholders that can be utilized when making decisions related to the development and maintenance of software used in the implementation of international nuclear safeguards. For example, this guidance can be used when determining whether to fund the development, upgrade, or replacement of a particular software product. The report identifies the challenges related to sustaining software, and makes recommendations for addressing these challenges, supported by summaries and detailed notes from the workshop discussions. In addition the authors provide a set of recommendations for institutionalizing software sustainability practices in the safeguards community. The term “software sustainability” was defined for this workshop as ensuring that safeguards instrument software and algorithm functionality can be maintained efficiently throughout the instrument lifecycle, without interruption and providing the ability to continue to improve that software as needs arise.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2024

Innovating the next generation of commercial smart building software

Nearly 30% of commercial building energy use is wasted due to equipment faults and HVAC controls problems. The result is increased emissions, compromised comfort and productivity, and less reliable coordination of building power needs with a clean grid. The energy impact alone represents $17 billion in potential savings. Today’s smart building software provides a robust solution to address these operational deficiencies. Energy management and information systems (EMIS) are saving up to 9% on average, with two-year paybacks. They are being incorporated into energy management processes, commissioning services, and utility programs. As effective as they are, two barriers prevent even deeper benefits; limited personnel to fix problems once they are identified, and the expense and time to manually implement changes in control systems. In partnership with the research community, the EMIS industry is developing new capabilities to overcome these barriers. Moving beyond siloed products for either fault detection and diagnostics, or optimal control, these new capabilities empower users to not only automatically identify faults, but also to push corrective action, and control improvements to their buildings. In this paper, several areas for enhancements are documented: ‘one-time’ correction of faults such as setpoints, schedules, and economizer lockouts; short-term active testing for automated proportional integral derivative (PID) loop tuning and functional testing; and continuous supervisory control for demand flexibility and year-round efficiency. Results are presented from a pair of partner implementations out of a dozen providers integrating these enhancements into their products, including field tests from across the country, and insights into operator acceptance and integration into operations and maintenance practices.

Casillas, Armando↗
DOE OSTI2024

Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning for Science: Challenges and Research Directions

This paper discusses the key challenges and future research directions for privacy-preserving federated learning (PPFL), with a focus on its application to large-scale scientific AI models, in particular, foundation models~(FMs). PPFL enables collaborative model training across distributed datasets while preserving privacy-- an important collaborative approach for science. We discuss the need for efficient and scalable algorithms to address the increasing complexity of FMs, particularly when dealing with heterogeneous clients. In addition, we underscore the need for developing advance privacy-preserving techniques, such as differential privacy, to balance privacy and utility in large FMs emphasizing fairness and incentive mechanisms to ensure equitable participation among heterogeneous clients. Finally, we emphasize the need for a robust software stack supporting scalable and secure PPFL deployments across multiple high-performance computing facilities. We envision that PPFL would play a crucial role to advance scientific discovery and enable large-scale, privacy-aware collaborations across science domains.

Kim, Kibaek [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)]↗
DOE OSTI2024

IRI Technology Landscape – A survey of re-usable components and methodologies

This document describes technical implementation details on network access schemes connecting API-driven workflows to supercomputer centers. API-driven workflows are a central theme in connected computing, since they bring the terminal-mainframe' access pattern present since the 1970s up to the task of interfacing with modern web browser technologies. Both security (HTTPS/TLS/IPSec/VPNs/public key cryptography/digital signatures) and network protocol stacks (HTTP-REST APIs, tokens, gRPC, SRTP) have evolved to the point where implementing API-driven workflows is possible using stable, secure off-the-shelf software.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2002

Ethernet for Space Flight Applications

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is adapting current data networking technologies to fly on future spaceflight missions. The benefits of using commercially based networking standards and protocols have been widely discussed and are expected to include reduction in overall mission cost, shortened integration and test (I&T) schedules, increased operations flexibility, and hardware and software upgradeability/scalability with developments ongoing in the commercial world. The networking effort is a comprehensive one encompassing missions ranging from small University Explorer (UNEX) class spacecraft to large observatories such as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Mission aspects such as flight hardware and software, ground station hardware and software, operations, RF communications, and security (physical and electronic) are all being addressed to ensure a complete end-to-end system solution. One of the current networking development efforts at GSFC is the SpaceLAN (Spacecraft Local Area Network) project, development of a space-qualifiable Ethernet network. To this end we have purchased an IEEE 802.3-compatible 10/100/1000 Media Access Control (MAC) layer Intellectual Property (IP) core and are designing a network node interface (NNI) and associated network components such as a switch. These systems will ultimately allow the replacement of the typical MIL-STD-1553/1773 and custom interfaces that inhabit most spacecraft. In this paper we will describe our current Ethernet NNI development along with a novel new space qualified physical layer that will be used in place of the standard interfaces. We will outline our plans for development of space qualified network components that will allow future spacecraft to operate in significant radiation environments while using a single onboard network for reliable commanding and data transfer. There will be a brief discussion of some issues surrounding system implications of a flight Ethernet. Finally, we will show an onboard network architecture for a proposed new mission using Ethernet for science data transport.

Webb, Evan↗
NASA NTRS2002

Better Pictures in a Snap

Retinex Imaging Processing, winner of NASA's 1999 Space Act Award, is commercially available through TruView Imaging Company. With this technology, amateur photographers use their personal computers to improve the brightness, scene contrast, detail, and overall sharpness of images with increased ease. The process was originally developed for remote sensing of the Earth by researchers at Langley Research Center and Science and Technology Corporation (STC). It automatically enhances a digital image in terms of dynamic range compression, color independence from the spectral distribution of the scene illuminant, and color/lightness rendition. As a result, the enhanced digital image is much closer to the scene perceived by the human visual system, under all kinds and levels of lighting variations. TruView believes there are other applications for the software in medical imaging, forensics, security, recognizance, mining, assembly, and other industrial areas.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2016

Exe-Guard Project

The exe-Guard Project is an alliance between Dominion Virginia Power (DVP), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Dartmouth University, and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL). SEL is primary recipient on this project. The exe-Guard project was selected for award under DE-FOA-0000359 with CFDA number 81.122 to address Topic Area of Interest 4: Hardened platforms and Systems. The exe-Guard project developed an antivirus solution for control system embedded devices to prevent the execution of unauthorized code and maintain settings and configuration integrity. This project created a white list antivirus solution for control systems capable of running on embedded Linux® operating systems. White list antivirus methods allow only credible programs to run through the use of digital signatures and hash functions. Once a system’s secure state is baselined, white list antivirus software denies deviations from that state because of the installation of malicious code as this changes hash results. Black list antivirus software has been effective in traditional IT environments but has negative implications for control systems. Black list antivirus uses pattern matching and behavioral analysis to identify system threats while relying on regular updates to the signature file and recurrent system scanning. Black list antivirus is vulnerable to zero day exploits which have not yet been incorporated into a signature file update. System scans hamper the performance of high availability applications, as revealed in NIST special publication 1058 which summarizes the impact of blacklist antivirus on control systems: Manual or “on-demand” scanning has a major effect on control processes in that they take CPU time needed by the control process (Sometimes close to 100% of CPU time). Minimizing the antivirus software throttle setting will reduce but not eliminate this effect. Signature updates can also take up to 100% of CPU time, but for a much shorter period than a typical manual scanning process. Control systems are vulnerable to performance losses if off-the-shelf blacklist antivirus solutions aren’t implemented with care. This investment in configuration in addition to constant decommissioning to perform manual signature file updates is unprecedented and impractical. Additionally, control systems are often disconnected or islanded from the network making the delivery of signature updates difficult. Exe-Guard project developed a white list antivirus solution that mitigated the above drawbacks and allows control systems to cost-effectively apply malware protection while maintaining high reliability. The application of security patches can also be minimized since white listing maintains constant defense against unauthorized code execution. Security patches can instead be applied in less frequent intervals where system decommissioning can be scheduled and planned for. Since control systems are less dynamic than IT environments, the feasibility of maintaining a secure baselined state is more practical. Because upgrades are performed in infrequent, calculated intervals, it allows a new security baseline to be established before the system is returned to service. Exe-Guard built on the efforts of SNL under the Code Seal project. SNL demonstrated prototype Trust Anchors on the project which are independent monitoring and control devices that can be integrated into untrustworthy components. The exe-Guard team started with the lessons learned under this project then designed commercial solution for white list malware protection. Malware is a real threat, even on islanded or un-networked installations, since operators can unintentionally install infected files, plug in infected mass storage devices, or infect a piece of equipment on the islanded local area network that can then spread to other connected equipment. Protection at the device level is one of the last layers of defense in a security-in-depth defense model before an asset becomes compromised. This project provided non-destructive intrusion, isolation and automated response solution, achieving a goal of the Department of Energy (DOE) Roadmap to Secure Control Systems. It also addressed CIP-007-R4 which requires asset owners to employ malicious software prevention tools on assets within the electronic security perimeter. In addition, the CIP-007-R3 requirement for security patch management is minimized because white listing narrows the impact of vulnerabilities and patch releases. The exe-Guard Project completed all tasks identified in the statement of project objective and identified additional tasks within scope that were performed and completed within the original budget. The cost share was met and all deliverables were successfully completed and submitted on time. Most importantly the technology developed and commercialized under this project has been adopted by the Energy sector and thousands of devices with exe-Guard technology integrated in them have now been deployed and are protecting our power systems today

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Strengthening the Security of Operational Technology: Understanding Contemporary Bill of Materials

The evolution of cyber-physical infrastructure has made its security more challenging. The last few years have witnessed a convergence of hardware and software segments in various domains, including operational technology (OT) which is responsible for carrying out critical tasks such as monitoring and controlling power grids, nuclear plants, transportation, and emergency services. Both hardware and software encapsulate numerous open source and proprietary subcomponents, making it crucial for end-users to understand the composition of the products they are using. For example, wind turbines incorporate thousands of lines of code (software) used for the turbine's design, planning, operation, and analytics in addition to the numerous hardware subcomponents that construct it. Due to the highly complex nature of software and hardware, knowledge of the components and subcomponents is required to mitigate cyber vulnerabilities and defend against cyberattacks. There has also been a transformation from a traditional linear supply chain into a global, dynamic, diverse, and interconnected system. The digitization of the supply chain makes it easier to find and exploit vulnerabilities. Critical infrastructures (e.g., power grids, oil, natural gas, water, and wastewater) rely on OT to function, and if the OT is compromised, equipment damage and potential interruption of services could result. A significant security measure to protect OT systems from disruption is to develop a supply chain bill of materials (BoM) corresponding to the software and hardware used in OT, along with attestations amongst vendors and asset owners. A supply chain BoM is a proactive way to understand the inherent vulnerabilities in the system and mitigate them in advance of being exploited. BoMs bolster the trust placed in the digital infrastructure and enhance software supply chain security by sustaining the management of component obsolescence and compliance, along with the seclusion of unsafe segments of a specific product. Adopting BoM tools is becoming increasingly important across various government sectors, as evidenced by the recent U.S. executive order on cybersecurity (NIST 2021). This paper aims to classify BoMs based on structure, functionality, component type, and architecture. The work also discusses case studies to further highlight the benefits of BoMs. In addition, it identifies missing pieces in existing BoM implementations so that future research may identify bounds on where it could expect to make improvements and directly enable researchers to identify promising areas for exploration. Further, the authors provide valuable recommendations to tool developers, researchers, and standardizing organizations (policymakers), additionally benefitting critical infrastructure owners and government executives. This aids in paving a path for future work, thereby, providing suggestions to determine a tool for consumers that best suit their needs.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

Singularity: Scientific containers for mobility of compute

Here we present Singularity, software developed to bring containers and reproducibility to scientific computing. Using Singularity containers, developers can work in reproducible environments of their choosing and design, and these complete environments can easily be copied and executed on other platforms. Singularity is an open source initiative that harnesses the expertise of system and software engineers and researchers alike, and integrates seamlessly into common workflows for both of these groups. As its primary use case, Singularity brings mobility of computing to both users and HPC centers, providing a secure means to capture and distribute software and compute environments. This ability to create and deploy reproducible environments across these centers, a previously unmet need, makes Singularity a game changing development for computational science.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2014

The U.S./IAEA Workshop on Software Sustainability for Safeguards Instrumentation

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration’s Next Generation Safeguards Initiative, the U.S. Department of State, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) organized a a workshop on the subject of ”Software Sustainability for Safeguards Instrumentation.” The workshop was held at the Vienna International Centre in Vienna, Austria, May 6-8, 2014. The workshop participants included software and hardware experts from national laboratories, industry, government, and IAEA member states who were specially selected by the workshop organizers based on their experience with software that is developed for the control and operation of safeguards instrumentation. The workshop included presentations, to orient the participants to the IAEA Department of Safeguards software activities related to instrumentation data collection and processing, and case studies that were designed to inspire discussion of software development, use, maintenance, and upgrades in breakout sessions and to result in recommendations for effective software practices and management. This report summarizes the results of the workshop.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
DOE OSTI2022

Open-Source Architecture for Multi-Party Update Verification for Data Acquisition Devices

Power grids are integral parts of modern daily life and are increasingly under cyberattack. Common software update processes for grid control devices rely on only one organization to provide verification. This paper roposes a multi-signature software update process to help better secure data acquisition devices from malicious actions by using standard cryptosystems such as TLS. A prototype system build on Linux and off-the-shelf hardware has shown successful update and attack prevention with our customized multi-party update software.

Newberg, Benjamin↗
NASA NTRS2001

Making Sense of Remotely Sensed Ultra-Spectral Infrared Data

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California, Earth Observing System (EOS) programs, the Deep Space Network (DSN), and various Department of Defense (DOD) technology demonstration programs, combined their technical expertise to develop SEASCRAPE, a software program that obtains data when thermal infrared radiation passes through the Earth's atmosphere and reaches a sensor. Licensed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), SEASCRAPE automatically inverts complex infrared data and makes it possible to obtain estimates of the state of the atmosphere along the ray path. Former JPL staff members created a small entrepreneurial firm, Remote Sensing Analysis Systems, Inc., of Altadena, California, to commercialize the product. The founders believed that a commercial version of the software was needed for future U.S. government missions and the commercial monitoring of pollution. With the inversion capability of this software and remote sensing instrumentation, it is possible to monitor pollution sources from safe and secure distances on a noninterfering, noncooperative basis. The software, now know as SEASCRAPE_Plus, allows the user to determine the presence of pollution products, their location and their abundance along the ray path. The technology has been cleared by the Department of Commerce for export, and is currently used by numerous research and engineering organizations around the world.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2022

VAC: A Software Approach to Resilient SCADA Automation

To better secure critical infrastructure, especially power systems, this paper introduces a virtual SCADA automation controller. The automation controller is a gateway into a power subsystem, making it a valuable target for cyber-attacks that could cut it off from the control center and cause a loss of view and control. To prevent this, the Virtual Automation Controller (VAC) is a backup device that mirrors the capabilities of the physical controller. It can communicate via Modbus and DNP3 and is containerized so it can be deployed on a variety of platforms. Furthermore, it utilizes software-defined networking to quickly disconnect a failed automation controller and preserve its state for forensics. The VAC gives system operators time to replace the failed controller and prevents dangerous and costly damage to power systems. The VAC is compared against the SEL 3505-3 RTAC and shown to have the necessary features to act as a failover controller.

Johnson, Jordan↗
DOE OSTI2022

PEAR Objective 3.2

NTESS and its aviation security industry partners developed the Open Threat Assessment Platform (OTAP), an open-architecture platform project that provides a common set of software interfaces and data standards, for Transportation Security Administration airport screening.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗
NASA NTRS2011

LCS Content Document Application

My project at KSC during my spring 2011 internship was to develop a Ruby on Rails application to manage Content Documents..A Content Document is a collection of documents and information that describes what software is installed on a Launch Control System Computer. It's important for us to make sure the tools we use everyday are secure, up-to-date, and properly licensed. Previously, keeping track of the information was done by Excel and Word files between different personnel. The goal of the new application is to be able to manage and access the Content Documents through a single database backed web application. Our LCS team will benefit greatly with this app. Admin's will be able to login securely to keep track and update the software installed on each computer in a timely manner. We also included exportability such as attaching additional documents that can be downloaded from the web application. The finished application will ease the process of managing Content Documents while streamlining the procedure. Ruby on Rails is a very powerful programming language and I am grateful to have the opportunity to build this application.

Hochstadt, Jake↗
DOE OSTI2014

Development and Demonstration of a Security Core Component

In recent years, the convergence of a number of trends has resulted in Cyber Security becoming a much greater concern for electric utilities. A short list of these trends includes: · Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) have evolved from depending on proprietary hardware and operating software toward using standard off-the-shelf hardware and operating software. This has meant that these ICSs can no longer depend on “security through obscurity. · Similarly, these same systems have evolved toward using standard communications protocols, further reducing their ability to rely upon obscurity. · The rise of the Internet and the accompanying demand for more data about virtually everything has resulted in formerly isolated ICSs becoming at least partially accessible via Internet-connected networks. · “Cyber crime” has become commonplace, whether it be for industrial espionage, reconnaissance for a possible cyber attack, theft, or because some individual or group “has something to prove.” Electric utility system operators are experts at running the power grid. The reality is, especially at small and mid-sized utilities, these SCADA operators will by default be “on the front line” if and when a cyber attack occurs against their systems. These people are not computer software, networking, or cyber security experts, so they are ill-equipped to deal with a cyber security incident. Cyber Security Manager (CSM) was conceived, designed, and built so that it can be configured to know what a utility’s SCADA/EMS/DMS system looks like under normal conditions. To do this, CSM monitors log messages from any device that uses the syslog standard. It can also monitor a variety of statistics from the computers that make up the SCADA/EMS/DMS: outputs from host-based security tools, intrusion detection systems, SCADA alarms, and real-time SCADA values – even results from a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system. When the system deviates from “normal,” CSM can alert the operator in language that they understand that an incident may be occurring, provide actionable intelligence, and informing them what actions to take. These alarms may be viewed on CSM’s built-in user interface, sent to a SCADA alarm list, or communicated via email, phone, pager, or SMS message. In recognition of the fact that “real world” training for cyber security events is impractical, CSM has a built-in Operator Training Simulator capability. This can be used stand alone to create simulated event scenarios for training purposes. It may also be used in conjunction with the recipient’s SCADA/EMS/DMS Operator Training Simulator. In addition to providing cyber security situational awareness for electric utility operators, CSM also provides tools for analysts and support personnel; in fact, the majority of user interface displays are designed for use in analyzing current and past security events. CSM keeps security-related information in long-term storage, as well as writing any decisions it makes to a (syslog) log for use forensic or other post-event analysis.

Turke, Andy↗