Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Communities”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2010

Community-Based Services that Facilitate Interoperability and Intercomparison of Precipitation Datasets from Multiple Sources

Over the past 12 years, large volumes of precipitation data have been generated from space-based observatories (e.g., TRMM), merging of data products (e.g., gridded 3B42), models (e.g., GMAO), climatologies (e.g., Chang SSM/I derived rain indices), field campaigns, and ground-based measuring stations. The science research, applications, and education communities have greatly benefited from the unrestricted availability of these data from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and, in particular, the services tailored toward precipitation data access and usability. In addition, tools and services that are responsive to the expressed evolving needs of the precipitation data user communities have been developed at the Precipitation Data and Information Services Center (PDISC) (http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/precipitation or google NASA PDISC), located at the GES DISC, to provide users with quick data exploration and access capabilities. In recent years, data management and access services have become increasingly sophisticated, such that they now afford researchers, particularly those interested in multi-data set science analysis and/or data validation, the ability to homogenize data sets, in order to apply multi-variant, comparison, and evaluation functions. Included in these services is the ability to capture data quality and data provenance. These interoperability services can be directly applied to future data sets, such as those from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. This presentation describes the data sets and services at the PDISC that are currently used by precipitation science and applications researchers, and which will be enhanced in preparation for GPM and associated multi-sensor data research. Specifically, the GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni) will be illustrated. Giovanni enables scientific exploration of Earth science data without researchers having to perform the complicated data access and match-up processes. In addition, PDISC tool and service capabilities being adapted for GPM data will be described, including the Google-like Mirador data search and access engine; semantic technology to help manage large amounts of multi-sensor data and their relationships; data access through various Web services (e.g., OPeNDAP, GDS, WMS, WCS); conversion to various formats (e.g., netCDF, HDF, KML (for Google Earth)); visualization and analysis of Level 2 data profiles and maps; parameter and spatial subsetting; time and temporal aggregation; regridding; data version control and provenance; continuous archive verification; and expertise in data-related standards and interoperability. The goal of providing these services is to further the progress towards a common framework by which data analysis/validation can be more easily accomplished.

Liu, Zhong↗
NASA NTRS2011

Venus Pressure Chamber: A Small Testing Facility Available to the Community

Venus is an inhospitable planet where the surface mean. temperature is approximately 740K and the global mean pressure is approximately 95 bars. The atmosphere is comprised mostly of CO2 (approximately 96.5%) and N2 (approximately3.5%) with trace amounts of CO and other reactive gases. Although Venus is very similar in size and mass with the Earth and is Earth's nearest planetary neighbor, it has not received many visitors from Earth, especially those that can land on the surface. The challenge most often cited for this scarcity of surface probes is the workability/survivability of instruments and equipment in Venus' harsh environment. In order to overcome this obstacle, a small pressure chamber has been acquired for use by the scientific community. It is housed at Goddard Space. Flight Center in Maryland and is available to the community for testing of small flight components, instruments and short-term experiments that require high temperatures and pressures.

Johnson, Natasha M.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Bridging the Gap between NASA Hydrological Data and the Geospatial Community

There is a vast and ever increasing amount of data on the Earth interconnected energy and hydrological systems, available from NASA remote sensing and modeling systems, and yet, one challenge persists: increasing the usefulness of these data for, and thus their use by, the geospatial communities. The Hydrology Data and Information Services Center (HDISC), part of the Goddard Earth Sciences DISC, has continually worked to better understand the hydrological data needs of the geospatial end users, to thus better able to bridge the gap between NASA data and the geospatial communities. This paper will cover some of the hydrological data sets available from HDISC, and the various tools and services developed for data searching, data subletting ; format conversion. online visualization and analysis; interoperable access; etc.; to facilitate the integration of NASA hydrological data by end users. The NASA Goddard data analysis and visualization system, Giovanni, is described. Two case examples of user-customized data services are given, involving the EPA BASINS (Better Assessment Science Integrating point & Non-point Sources) project and the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System, with the common requirement of on-the-fly retrieval of long duration time series for a geographical point

Rui, Hualan↗
NASA NTRS2010

Space Weather Products at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center

The Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) is a US inter-agency activity aiming at research in support of the generation of advanced space weather models. As one of its main functions, the CCMC provides to researchers the use of space science models, even if they are not model owners themselves. The second CCMC activity is to support Space Weather forecasting at national Space Weather Forecasting Centers. This second activity involves model evaluations, model transitions to operations, and the development of space weather forecasting tools. Owing to the pace of development in the science community, new model capabilities emerge frequently. Consequently, space weather products and tools involve not only increased validity, but often entirely new capabilities. This presentation will review the present state of space weather tools as well as point out emerging future capabilities.

Hesse, Michael↗
NASA NTRS2011

Reach and its Impact: NASA and US Aerospace Communities

REACH is a European law that threatens to impact materials used within the US aerospace communities, including NASA. The presentation briefly covers REACH and generally, its perceived impacts to NASA and the aerospace community within the US.

Rothgeb, Matthew J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Iron Homeostasis in Yellowstone National Park Hot Spring Microbial Communities

It has been postulated that life may have originated on Earth, and possibly on Mars, in association with hydrothermal activity and high concentrations of ferrous iron. However, it is not clear how an iron-rich thermal hydrosphere could be hospitable to microbes, since reduced iron appears to stimulate oxidative stress in all domains of life and particularly in oxygenic phototrophs. Therefore, the study of microbial diversity in iron-depositing hot springs (IDHS) and the mechanisms of iron homeostasis and suppression of oxidative stress may help elucidate how Precambrian organisms could withstand the extremely high concentrations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by interaction between environmental Fe(2+) and O2. Proteins and clusters of orthologous groups (COGs) involved in the maintenance of Fe homeostasis found in cyanobacteria (CB) inhabiting environments with high and low [Fe] were main target of this analysis. Preliminary results of the analysis suggest that the Chocolate Pots (CP) microbial community is heavily dominated by phototrophs from the cyanobacteria (CB), Chloroflexi and Chlorobi phyla, while the Mushroom Spring (MS) effluent channel harbors a more diverse community in which Chloroflexi are the dominant phototrophs. It is speculated that CB inhabiting IDHS have an increased tolerance to both high concentrations of Fe(2+) and ROS produced in the Fenton reaction. This hypothesis was explored via a comparative analysis of the diversity of proteins and COGs involved in Fe and redox homeostasis in the CP and MS microbiomes.

Brown, I.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Community Supported Stardust Compendia

The Stardust cometary and interstellar collections present unprecedented challenges in sample preparation and analysis. The ensemble of approx.80 tracks and dozens of foil craters from the cometary collection for which we have analyses exhibits a bewildering complexity and diversity of materials. The interstellar collection is even more challenging, because of the extremely low fluence of interstellar dust, a relatively large background of secondary ejecta from impacts on the spacecraft, and the small size of interstellar dust, approximately three orders of magnitude smaller in mass than typical cometary particles. Unlike with the other returned sample collections, characterization of these samples beyond basic photo-documentation is not generally practical at JSC. Even among the other small-particle collections, currently the cosmic dust and Hayabusa samples, SEM/EDX can provide basic chemistry. This is not possible with Stardust particles without destructive and invasive sample preparation. Furthermore, SEM/EDX requires isolating small grains from adhering aerogel. A reliable technique to carry out this task does not exist. Complete characterization of particles requires coordinated analyses using synchrotron and electron-beam microprobes, which do not exist at any one lab. Thus, it was recognized since the Stardust Preliminary Examination in 2006 that characterization of the samples would rely on the worldwide community of Stardust Investigators. Here we announce the development of community-editable, wiki-style Stardust compendia that will support this effort. Our intention is that this will facilitate sample requests by providing basic characterization of tracks. We expect that this will also support comprehensive meta-analyses (global syntheses of analyses) of the collections.

Westphal, Andrew J.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Characterization of Microbial Communities Found in Bioreactor Effluent

The purpose of this investigation was to examine microbial communities of simulated wastewater effluent from hollow fiber membrane bioreactors collected from the Space Life Science Laboratory and Texas Technical University. Microbes were characterized using quantitative polymerase chain reaction where a total count of bacteria and fungi were determined. The primers that were used to determine the total count of bacteria and fungi were targeted for 16S rDNA genes and the internal transcribed spacer, respectively. PCR products were detected with SYBR Green I fluorescent dye and a melting curve analysis was performed to identify unique melt profiles resulting from DNA sequence variations from each species of the community. Results from both the total bacteria and total fungi count assays showed that distinct populations were present in isolates from these bioreactors. This was exhibited by variation in the number of peaks observed on the melting curve analysis graph. Further analysis of these results using species-specific primers will shed light on exactly which microbes are present in these effluents. Information gained from this study will enable the design of a system that can efficiently monitor microbes that play a role in the biogeochemical cycling of nitrogen in wastewater on the International Space Station to assist in the design of a sustainable system capable of converting this nutrient.

Flowe, Candice↗
NASA NTRS2014

Waveforms and Sonic Boom Perception and Response (WSPR): Low-Boom Community Response Program Pilot Test Design, Execution, and Analysis

The Waveforms and Sonic boom Perception and Response (WSPR) Program was designed to test and demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of techniques to gather data relating human subjective response to multiple low-amplitude sonic booms. It was in essence a practice session for future wider scale testing on naive communities, using a purpose built low-boom demonstrator aircraft. The low-boom community response pilot experiment was conducted in California in November 2011. The WSPR team acquired sufficient data to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the various physical and psychological data gathering techniques and analysis methods.

Page, Juliet A.↗
NASA NTRS2014

JPSS Science Data Services for the Direct Readout Community

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) High Rate Data (HRD) link provides Direct Broadcast data to users in real-time, utilizing their own remote field terminals. The Field Terminal Support (FTS) provides the resources needed to support the Direct Readout communities by providing software, documentation, and periodic updates to enable them to produce data products from SNPP and JPSS. The FTS distribution server will also provide the necessary ancillary and auxiliary data needed for processing the broadcasts, as well as making orbital data available to assist in locating the satellites of interest. In addition, the FTS provides development support for the algorithm and software through GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory (DRL) International Polar Orbiter Processing Package (IPOPP) and University of Wisconsin (UWISC) Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP), to enable users to integrate the algorithms into their remote terminals. The support the JPSS Program provides to the institutions developing and maintaining these two software packages, will demonstrate the ability to produce ready-to-use products from the HRD link and provide risk reduction effort at a minimal cost. This paper discusses the key functions and system architecture of FTS.

Data Processing↗
NASA NTRS2014

A Cloud-Based Global Flood Disaster Community Cyber-Infrastructure: Development and Demonstration

Flood disasters have significant impacts on the development of communities globally. This study describes a public cloud-based flood cyber-infrastructure (CyberFlood) that collects, organizes, visualizes, and manages several global flood databases for authorities and the public in real-time, providing location-based eventful visualization as well as statistical analysis and graphing capabilities. In order to expand and update the existing flood inventory, a crowdsourcing data collection methodology is employed for the public with smartphones or Internet to report new flood events, which is also intended to engage citizen-scientists so that they may become motivated and educated about the latest developments in satellite remote sensing and hydrologic modeling technologies. Our shared vision is to better serve the global water community with comprehensive flood information, aided by the state-of-the- art cloud computing and crowdsourcing technology. The CyberFlood presents an opportunity to eventually modernize the existing paradigm used to collect, manage, analyze, and visualize water-related disasters.

CyberFlood↗
NASA NTRS2014

Assimilation of MODIS Snow Cover Through the Data Assimilation Research Testbed and the Community Land Model Version 4

To improve snowpack estimates in Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover fraction (SCF) was assimilated into the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4) via the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART). The interface between CLM4 and DART is a flexible, extensible approach to land surface data assimilation. This data assimilation system has a large ensemble (80-member) atmospheric forcing that facilitates ensemble-based land data assimilation. We use 40 randomly chosen forcing members to drive 40 CLM members as a compromise between computational cost and the data assimilation performance. The localization distance, a parameter in DART, was tuned to optimize the data assimilation performance at the global scale. Snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow depth are adjusted via the ensemble adjustment Kalman filter, particularly in regions with large SCF variability. The root-mean-square error of the forecast SCF against MODIS SCF is largely reduced. In DJF (December-January-February), the discrepancy between MODIS and CLM4 is broadly ameliorated in the lower-middle latitudes (2345N). Only minimal modifications are made in the higher-middle (4566N) and high latitudes, part of which is due to the agreement between model and observation when snow cover is nearly 100. In some regions it also reveals that CLM4-modeled snow cover lacks heterogeneous features compared to MODIS. In MAM (March-April-May), adjustments to snowmove poleward mainly due to the northward movement of the snowline (i.e., where largest SCF uncertainty is and SCF assimilation has the greatest impact). The effectiveness of data assimilation also varies with vegetation types, with mixed performance over forest regions and consistently good performance over grass, which can partly be explained by the linearity of the relationship between SCF and SWE in the model ensembles. The updated snow depth was compared to the Canadian Meteorological Center (CMC) data. Differences between CMC and CLM4 are generally reduced in densely monitored regions.

data assimilation↗
NASA NTRS2015

Climate Variability Drives Plankton Community Composition Changes: the 2010-2011 El Nino to La Nina Transition Around Australia

The strong La Nina of 2010-2011 provided an opportunity to investigate the ecological impacts of El Nino-Southern Oscillation on coastal plankton communities using the nine national reference stations around Australia. Based on remote sensing and across the entire Australian region 2011 (La Nina) was only modestly different from 2010 (El Nino) with the average temperature declining 0.2 percent surface chlorophyll a up 3 percent and modelled primary production down 14 percent. Other changes included a poleward shift in Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. Along the east coast, there was a reduction in salinity, increase in nutrients, Chlorophytes and Prasinophytes (taxa with chlorophyll b, neoxanthin and prasinoxanthin). The southwest region had a rise in the proportion of 19-hexoyloxyfucoxanthin; possibly coccolithophorids in eddies of the Leeuwin Current and along the sub-tropical front. Pennate diatoms increased, Ceratium spp. decreased and Scrippsiella spp. increased in 2011. Zooplankton biomass declined significantly in 2011. There was a reduction in the abundance of Calocalanus pavo and Temora turbinata and increases in Clausocalanus farrani, Oncaea scottodicarloi and Macrosetella gracilis in 2011. The changes in the plankton community during the strong La Nina of 2011 suggest that this climatic oscillation exacerbates the tropicalization of Australia.

phytoplankton↗
NASA NTRS2016

A Tool for Measuring NASA's Aeronautics Research Progress Toward Planned Strategic Community Outcomes

Description of a tool for portfolio analysis of NASA's Aeronautics research progress toward planned community strategic Outcomes is presented. For efficiency and speed, the tool takes advantage of a function developed in Excels Visual Basic for Applications. The strategic planning process for determining the community Outcomes is also briefly discussed. Stakeholder buy-in, partnership performance, progress of supporting Technical Challenges, and enablement forecast are used as the criteria for evaluating progress toward Outcomes. A few illustrative examples of using the tool are also presented.

Thrusts↗
NASA NTRS2015

Evaluation of the Snow Simulations from the Community Land Model, Version 4 (CLM4)

This paper evaluates the simulation of snow by the Community Land Model, version 4 (CLM4), the land model component of the Community Earth System Model, version 1.0.4 (CESM1.0.4). CLM4 was run in an offline mode forced with the corrected land-only replay of the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA-Land) and the output was evaluated for the period from January 2001 to January 2011 over the Northern Hemisphere poleward of 30 deg N. Simulated snow-cover fraction (SCF), snow depth, and snow water equivalent (SWE) were compared against a set of observations including the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) SCF, the Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) snow cover, the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) daily snow analysis products, snow depth from the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer (COOP) program, and Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL) SWE observations. CLM4 SCF was converted into snow-cover extent (SCE) to compare with MODIS SCE. It showed good agreement, with a correlation coefficient of 0.91 and an average bias of -1.54 x 10(exp 2) sq km. Overall, CLM4 agreed well with IMS snow cover, with the percentage of correctly modeled snow-no snow being 94%. CLM4 snow depth and SWE agreed reasonably well with the CMC product, with the average bias (RMSE) of snow depth and SWE being 0.044m (0.19 m) and -0.010m (0.04 m), respectively. CLM4 underestimated SNOTEL SWE and COOP snow depth. This study demonstrates the need to improve the CLM4 snow estimates and constitutes a benchmark against which improvement of the model through data assimilation can be measured.

northern hemisphere↗
NASA NTRS2016

Campaign 9 of the K2 Mission: Observational Parameters, Scientific Drivers, and Community Involvement for a Simultaneous Space- and Ground-based Microlensing Survey

K2ʼs Campaign 9 (K2C9) will conduct a approximately 3.7 sq. deg survey toward the Galactic bulge from 2016 April 22 through July 2 that will leverage the spatial separation between K2 and the Earth to facilitate measurement of the microlens parallax Pi(sub E) for approximately greater than 170 microlensing events. These will include several that are planetary in nature as well as many short-timescale microlensing events, which are potentially indicative of free-floating planets (FFPs). These satellite parallax measurements will in turn allow for the direct measurement of the masses of and distances to the lensing systems. In this article we provide an overview of the K2C9 space- and ground-based microlensing survey. Specifically, we detail the demographic questions that can be addressed by this program, including the frequency of FFPs and the Galactic distribution of exoplanets, the observational parameters of K2C9, and the array of resources dedicated to concurrent observations. Finally, we outline the avenues through which the larger community can become involved, and generally encourage participation in K2C9, which constitutes an important pathfinding mission and community exercise in anticipation of WFIRST.

K2s Campaign 9 (K2C9)↗
NASA NTRS2016

Optimal Reorganization of NASA Earth Science Data for Enhanced Accessibility and Usability for the Hydrology Community

A long-standing "Digital Divide" in data representation exists between the preferred way of data access by the hydrology community and the common way of data archival by earth science data centers. Typically, in hydrology, earth surface features are expressed as discrete spatial objects (e.g., watersheds), and time-varying data are contained in associated time series. Data in earth science archives, although stored as discrete values (of satellite swath pixels or geographical grids), represent continuous spatial fields, one file per time step. This Divide has been an obstacle, specifically, between the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. and NASA earth science data systems. In essence, the way data are archived is conceptually orthogonal to the desired method of access. Our recent work has shown an optimal method of bridging the Divide, by enabling operational access to long-time series (e.g., 36 years of hourly data) of selected NASA datasets. These time series, which we have termed "data rods," are pre-generated or generated on-the-fly. This optimal solution was arrived at after extensive investigations of various approaches, including one based on "data curtains." The on-the-fly generation of data rods uses "data cubes," NASA Giovanni, and parallel processing. The optimal reorganization of NASA earth science data has significantly enhanced the access to and use of the data for the hydrology user community.

data rods↗
NASA NTRS2017

Exposing NASA's Earth Observations to the Applications Community and Public

NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) generates a wealth of data products which are generally intended for scientific research. In recent years, however, this data has also become more accessible to the applications community and public through the Worldview app and Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS). These mapping interfaces provide historical and near real time access to NASA's Earth observations for a wide range of uses. This presentation will focus on how the applications community, public, and media use these interfaces for decision-making, leisure, and anything in between.

web mappin↗