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At least 271 records · Page 15

Field Experiments using Telepresence and Virtual Reality to Control Remote Vehicles: Application to Mars Rover Missions

This paper will describe a series of field experiments to develop and demonstrate file use of Telepresence and Virtual Reality systems for controlling rover vehicles on planetary surfaces. In 1993, NASA Ames deployed a Telepresence-Controlled Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle (TROV) into an ice-covered sea environment in Antarctica. The goal of the mission was to perform scientific exploration of an unknown environment using a remote vehicle with telepresence and virtual reality as a user interface. The vehicle was operated both locally, from above a dive hole in the ice through which it was launched, and remotely over a satellite communications link from a control room at NASA's Ames Research center, for over two months. Remote control used a bidirectional Internet link to the vehicle control computer. The operator viewed live stereo video from the TROV along with a computer-gene rated graphic representation of the underwater terrain showing file vehicle state and other related information. Tile actual vehicle could be driven either from within the virtual environment or through a telepresence interface. In March 1994, a second field experiment was performed in which [lie remote control system developed for the Antarctic TROV mission was used to control the Russian Marsokhod Rover, an advanced planetary surface rover intended for launch in 1998. Marsokhod consists of a 6-wheel chassis and is capable of traversing several kilometers of terrain each day, The rover can be controlled remotely, but is also capable of performing autonomous traverses. The rover was outfitted with a manipulator arm capable of deploying a small instrument, collecting soil samples, etc. The Marsokhod rover was deployed at Amboy Crater in the Mojave desert, a Mars analog site, and controlled remotely from Los Angeles. in two operating modes: (1) a Mars rover mission simulation with long time delay and (2) a Lunar rover mission simulation with live action video. A team of planetary geologists participated in the mission simulation. The scientific goal of the science mission was to determine what could be learned about the geologic context of the site using the capabilities of imaging and mobility provided by the Marsokhod system in these two modes of operation. I will discuss the lessons learned from these experiments in terms of the strategy for performing Mars surface exploration using rovers. This research is supported by the Solar System Exploration Exobiology, Geology, and Advanced Technology programs.

Stoker, Carol↗

Genesis Solar Wind Sample Curation Documentation

Introduction: A scientist with experience as a sample science analyst, provider of flight hardware for multiple missions, and senior engineer in an ISO 2000-rated manufacturing plant has described the timeline of key participants in any PI-led sample return mission, the breadth of the organizations involved [1,2], and, of interest to this meeting, choosing the types of data to preserve and issues of future data accessibility. This work broadens that perspective by giving similar lessons from Genesis sample curation point-of-view. Curation participation regarding data gathering was part of the mission review process from the beginning. Genesis’ story illustrates outcome of several choices about types of data to record and preserve. Precision analysis of solar wind atoms captured in pure, ultraclean substrates is the driving science goal; therefore, detailed documentation was captured from all mission and curation phases and from investigator laboratories because these processes affect the final analytical results [3]. Pre-flight: Design and fabrication of the spacecraft. Like many modern small sample return missions, Genesis was a tightly managed team integrated across science, engineering and curation. Communication across the team was excellent, and, for the most part, the hands-on engineering technicians understood the impacts of “small choices” they routinely make, and the eyes-on oversight of manufacturing processes by scientists was mindful of details. The payload was designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the spacecraft by Lockheed Martin. Solar wind collectors and instruments were fabricated by multiple vendors and laboratories. The main portion of the payload was assembled at JSC. Fabrication procedures and contamination-control data (with witness coupons) were stored primarily at JSC. The original composition, dimensions and configuration of components, results of thermal testing, etc. are still needed for interpretation of analytical data. At times, these must be estimated from secondary information acquired pre-flight. Moreover, some files (e.g., original 3-D models and early Powerpoint) cannot be opened using software. Archived curation data includes 2-D drawings, material usage lists, QA documentation and analyses of consumables used during fabrication. Important chemical information still resides in archived hardware, paints and lubricants, material coupons, cleaning coupons, environmental witness plates and reference materials from manufacturing facilities. Purity and cleanliness of collector substrates. Semi-conductor vendors provided surface cleanliness data and some purity data. Purity for specific elements of interest was verified by science team members in their laboratories [4]. Curation archived procurement and shipping records, analysis reports, and non-proprietary fabrication data. A physical archive of flight collector reference materials is maintained for future use so additional data can be collected as analytical techniques improve. These are of increased value due to the hard landing upon re-entry. Cleaning and cleanliness assessments of flight hardware. Cleaning of the science canister payload was performed at JSC in a dedicated ISO 4 cleanroom using ultrapure water (UPW). The cleanliness of this UPW was monitored throughout processing. The archive for the clean lab also includes airborne particle counts, airborne molecular and inorganic contamination measurements as well as cleanroom construction material coupons and witness coupons. Hardware cleanliness was assessed by particle counts in rinse water batches. This information is recorded in batch cleaning forms and logbooks, and are, perhaps, of decreased value due to the hard landing. Post-flight: Curation-generated data. The curation handling history of each Genesis sample is documented in a typical astromaterials sample database which captures sample location, physical description and characterization data. Samples have a “shelf life”. Crucial to the preservation of samples is ongoing documentation of the sample environment, initially under curatorial control but is now a separate facility function with requires coordination. PI-generated data. Data on sample characterization and cleaning techniques continues to be generated by sample users [5]. These are often captured in LPSC abstracts, but these “engineering” results often are not publishable as stand-alone papers. We are actively looking for ways to make this information more accessible to users. Ion implants into samples have aided science return and can be shared among investigators. These (and similar) materials should be added to the curatorial collection with appropriate process and characterization data generated externally. Summary: Complete data archives for returned astromaterial samples must be broad in types and formats, and inclusive of environmental monitoring.

Genesis↗

Performance of a distributed superscalar storage server

The RS/6000 performed well in our test environment. The potential exists for the RS/6000 to act as a departmental server for a small number of users, rather than as a high speed archival server. Multiple UniTree Disk Server's utilizing one UniTree Disk Server's utilizing one UniTree Name Server could be developed that would allow for a cost effective archival system. Our performance tests were clearly limited by the network bandwidth. The performance gathered by the LibUnix testing shows that UniTree is capable of exceeding ethernet speeds on an RS/6000 Model 550. The performance of FTP might be significantly faster if asked to perform across a higher bandwidth network. The UniTree Name Server also showed signs of being a potential bottleneck. UniTree sites that would require a high ratio of file creations and deletions to reads and writes would run into this bottleneck. It is possible to improve the UniTree Name Server performance by bypassing the UniTree LibUnix Library altogether and communicating directly with the UniTree Name Server and optimizing creations. Although testing was performed in a less than ideal environment, hopefully the performance statistics stated in this paper will give end-users a realistic idea as to what performance they can expect in this type of setup.

Finestead, Arlan↗

Software Supports Distributed Operations via the Internet

Multi-mission Encrypted Communication System (MECS) is a computer program that enables authorized, geographically dispersed users to gain secure access to a common set of data files via the Internet. MECS is compatible with legacy application programs and a variety of operating systems. The MECS architecture is centered around maintaining consistent replicas of data files cached on remote computers. MECS monitors these files and, whenever one is changed, the changed file is committed to a master database as soon as network connectivity makes it possible to do so. MECS provides subscriptions for remote users to automatically receive new data as they are generated. Remote users can be producers as well as consumers of data. Whereas a prior program that provides some of the same services treats disconnection of a user from the network of users as an error from which recovery must be effected, MECS treats disconnection as a nominal state of the network: This leads to a different design that is more efficient for serving many users, each of whom typically connects and disconnects frequently and wants only a small fraction of the data at any given time.

Norris, Jeffrey↗

A Modular Oxygen-Selective System for Combustion Systems

Small-scale modular systems for oxygen generation offer clear benefits, including improved energy efficiency, reduced operating costs, and the flexibility to meet location-specific needs. We propose that a compact modular system could be developed using a solvent-based method for capturing and releasing oxygen, enabling “oxygen on demand” for various combustion technologies. In this project, we aim to develop and demonstrate a modular oxygen-selective approach based on Battelle IPID 31740. The use of designer solvents, which are reversible, single-component solvents capable of dissolving and separating oxygen from air, offers the advantage of unlimited chemical tunability to achieve desirable properties for efficient oxygen separation. We filed U.S. Patent (32845-E, iEdison No. 0685901-23-0184).

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Grid-based minimization at scale: Feldman-Cousins corrections for light sterile neutrino search

High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments generally employ sophisticated statistical methods to present results in searches of new physics. In the problem of searching for sterile neutrinos, likelihood ratio tests are applied to short-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments to construct confidence intervals for the parameters of interest. The test statistics of the form Δχ2 is often used to form the confidence intervals, however, this approach can lead to statistical inaccuracies due to the small signal rate in the region-of-interest. In this paper, we present a computational model for the computationally expensive Feldman-Cousins corrections to construct a statistically accurate confidence interval for neutrino oscillation analysis. The program performs a grid-based minimization over oscillation parameters and is written in C++. Our algorithms make use of vectorization through Eigen3, yielding a single-core speed-up of 350 compared to the original implementation, and achieve MPI data parallelism by employing DIY. We demonstrate the strong scaling of the application at High-Performance Computing (HPC) sites. We utilize HDF5 along with HighFive to write the results of the calculation to file.

Wospakrik, Marianette↗

Walker Branch Watershed: Daily Stream Metabolism and Organic Carbon Spiraling Metrics in the West Fork of Walker Branch, Tennessee, USA, 2004-2010

This dataset contains daily metabolism estimates of gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem production (NEP), in addition to organic carbon spiraling length (SOC) and mineralization velocity (VfOC) estimates at the West Fork of Walker Branch, a small headwater stream, in the Walker Branch Watershed, Tennessee, USA. Observations were made from 2004-2010 (2004-01-01 to 2010-12-31). These data were generated to assess seasonal and interannual variability in metabolism and organic carbon spiraling and to explore potential driver variables, as analyses of intra- and interannual variability in metabolism and organic carbon spiraling are currently limited, leaving knowledge gaps in the driving mechanisms of and future changes to stream metabolism and carbon processing under climate change. Additionally, measurements of discharge (Q), stream width, stream- and canopy-level photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), water temperature, and precipitation from this time frame are included. This dataset contains one data file in comma separated (*.csv) format.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Far Ultraviolet Imaging from the Image Spacecraft: Wideband FUV Imaging - 2

The Far Ultraviolet Wideband Imaging Camera (WIC) complements the magnetospheric images taken by the IMAGE satellite instruments with simultaneous global maps of the terrestrial aurora. Thus, a primary requirement of WIC is to image the total intensity of the aurora in wavelength regions most representative of the aurora] source and least contaminated by dayglow, have sufficient field of view to cover the entire polar region from spacecraft apogee and have resolution that is Sufficient to resolve auroras on a scale of 1 to 2 latitude degrees, The instrument is sensitive in the spectral region from 140- 190 nm. The WIC is mounted on the rotating, IMAGE spacecraft viewing radially outward and has a field of view of 17 deg in the direction parallel to the spacecraft spin axis. Its field of view is 30 deg in the direction perpendicular to the spin axis, although only a 17 deg x 17 deg image of the Earth is recorded. The optics was an all-reflective, inverted Cassegrain Burch camera using concentric optics with a small convex primary and a large concave secondary mirror. The mirrors were coated by a special multi-layer coating, which has low reflectivity in the visible and near UV region, The detector consists of a MCP-Intensified CCD. The MCP is curved to accommodate the focal surface of the concentric optics. Tile phosphor of the image intensifier is deposited on a concave fiberoptic window, which is then Coupled to the CCD with a fiberoptic taper. The camera head operates in a fast frame transfer mode with the CCD being read approximately 30 full frames (512 by 256 pixel) per second with an exposure time of 0.033 s. The image motion (file to the satellite spin is minimal during such a short exposure. Each image is electronically distortion corrected using the look up table scheme. An offset is added to each memory address that is proportional to the image shift due to satellite rotation, and the charge signal is digitally summed in memory. On orbit, approximately 300 frames will be added to produce one WIC image in memory. The advantage of the electronic motion compensation and distortion correction is that it is extremely flexible, permitting several kinds of corrections including motions parallel and perpendicular to the predicted axis of rotation. File instrument was calibrated by applying ultraviolet light through a vacuum monochromator and measuring the absolute responsivity of the instrument. To obtain the data for the distortion look up table the camera was turned through various angles and the input angles corresponding to a pixel matrix were recorded. It was found that the spectral response peaked at 150 nm and fell off in either direction. The equivalent aperture of the camera, including mirror reflectivities and effective photocathode quantum efficiency, is about 0.04 sq cm. Thus, a 100 Rayleigh LBH aurora is expected to produce 23 equivalent counts per pixel per 10 s exposure at the peak of instrument response.

Mende, S. B.↗

PCI: A PATRAN-NASTRAN model translator

The amount of programming required to develop a PATRAN-NASTRAN translator was surprisingly small. The approach taken produced a highly flexible translator comparable with the PATNAS translator and superior to the PATCOS translator. The coding required varied from around ten lines for a shell element to around thirty for a bar element, and the time required to add a feature to the program is typically less than an hour. The use of a lookup table for element names makes the translator also applicable to other versions of NASTRAN. The saving in time as a result of using PDA's Gateway utilities was considerable. During the writing of the program it became apparent that, with a somewhat more complex structure, it would be possible to extend the element data file to contain all data required to define the translation from PATRAN to NASTRAN by mapping of data between formats. Similar data files on property, material and grid formats would produce a completely universal translator from PATRAN to any FEA program, or indeed any CAE system.

Sheerer, T. J.↗

A Spatiotemporal Indexing Approach for Efficient Processing of Big Array-Based Climate Data with MapReduce

Climate observations and model simulations are producing vast amounts of array-based spatiotemporal data. Efficient processing of these data is essential for assessing global challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, and diseases. This is challenging not only because of the large data volume, but also because of the intrinsic high-dimensional nature of geoscience data. To tackle this challenge, we propose a spatiotemporal indexing approach to efficiently manage and process big climate data with MapReduce in a highly scalable environment. Using this approach, big climate data are directly stored in a Hadoop Distributed File System in its original, native file format. A spatiotemporal index is built to bridge the logical array-based data model and the physical data layout, which enables fast data retrieval when performing spatiotemporal queries. Based on the index, a data-partitioning algorithm is applied to enable MapReduce to achieve high data locality, as well as balancing the workload. The proposed indexing approach is evaluated using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) climate reanalysis dataset. The experimental results show that the index can significantly accelerate querying and processing (10 speedup compared to the baseline test using the same computing cluster), while keeping the index-to-data ratio small (0.0328). The applicability of the indexing approach is demonstrated by a climate anomaly detection deployed on a NASA Hadoop cluster. This approach is also able to support efficient processing of general array-based spatiotemporal data in various geoscience domains without special configuration on a Hadoop cluster.

big data↗

Optode performance data associated with: Metabolic Multireactor: practical considerations for using simple oxygen sensing optodes for high-throughput batch reactor metabolism experiments

This data package is associated with the publication “Metabolic Multireactor: practical considerations for using simple oxygen sensing optodes for high-throughput batch reactor metabolism experiments”, submitted to PlosONE (Kaufman et al. 2023; 10.1101/2023.03.28.534656).We carried out many testing and calibration experiments on a system of small oxygen consumption batch reactors designed for use with water and sediment samples for environmental questions. The oxygen sensing system is based very directly on the work of Larsen, et al. [2011], and similar oxygen sensing technology is widely used in the literature. Our primary focus was on practical considerations, such as temperature effects, lighting angle effects, sterilization, and other similar situations that a user may find useful. Most of the tests required comparing “base” calibration curves to “treatment” calibration curves to determine the extent to which the treatment impacted the reported measurements. This data package contains the performance and calibration data collected for that purpose.This dataset is comprised of one data folder containing (1) file-level metadata; (2) data dictionary; (3) readme; (4) diffusion test result files; (5) limit of detection test result files; (6) temperature impact files; (7) a main data file that contains test results for all other tests; and (8) an R script that uses Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to determine whether treatment calibrations are significantly different from their respective base calibrations. All files are .csv, .txt, .Rmd, or .pdf.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Effect of Heat Treatment on Microstructure and Mechanical Property of 316L Stainless Steel Produced by Laser Powder Bed Fusion

The advanced non-light water reactor designs (Gen IV reactors), including molten salt/ very high temperature/ sodium-cooled and lead-cooled fast reactors, typically operate at higher temperatures and more extreme radiation conditions than light water reactors. An intrinsic part of the deployment and progress of Gen IV reactor designs is selecting the most suitable structural material for a specific application. Additive manufacturing (AM), a fairly new process of making physical, three-dimensional objects from a computer design file, is going to completely change the way of design, build and certify nuclear systems. It offers a range of opportunities to produce complex geometries from existing materials, offers new routes for processing of previously difficult to process materials, allows for design of new high-performance materials, and finally facilitates hybridization of dissimilar materials. This emerging technology has successfully produced cars, wind turbine blade molds and even live cells. It could also open up big opportunities for the nuclear industry to quickly deploy technologies at a fraction of the cost. So far, AM techniques have been preliminarily applied in the field of nuclear reactors, including the classical parts such as the pressure vessel of a small reactor with 508-III steel, the bottom nozzle of a fuel assembly with 304L steel, the fuel cladding with zirconium alloy and the integrated impeller of a pump and the multi-channel valve body with 316L steel [6,7]. The AM applications for operating nuclear reactors started in auxiliary plant components and have slowly migrated to metallic reactors and core components, but many of these are not safety critical components. Although many parts used for nuclear reactors have been fabricated by AM techniques, practical applications in engineering are still a long way off due to the uncertainty factors focused on the processing, material properties, analysis methods and application standards, which feeds the safety and life-cycle of the nuclear reactor. Due to rapid, repeated heating and cooling during production, a high dislocation density was present in the AM material. This microstructure feature is unstable at elevated temperature while high temperature is one of the typical operation environments for nuclear reactors. Thus, it is important to understand the thermal effect on the microstructure of AM material. The objectives of this study are to investigate the effect of heat treatment on the microstructure and mechanical properties of 316L stainless steel produced by laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing, and to determine an appropriate heat treatment practice that will be applied to the lightweight AM lattice-structured material with the same chemistry. The heat treatment study consisted of annealing the samples at a temperature range of 800 to 1200 oC with a 50 oC increment for different times (1-24 hours), followed by vacuum or air cooling. Microstructural characterization was carried out by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Grain size and crystallographic orientation were investigated by Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD). Vickers hardness tests with a 0.5 kg load were employed to determine the hardness of samples after different heat treatments. After heat treatment, the random crystallographic orientation was preserved, and the volume fraction of high-angle grain boundaries (grain boundary misorientation =15 oC) remained the same. The dislocation density decreased with annealing temperature due to recovery. The fine subgrain structures in the as-printed specimen were quite stable up to 1200 oC. Minimal recrystallization was observed up to 1200 oC. Recrystallization initiated only after 8.5 hours at 1200 oC. The SEM images did not show obvious dependence of microstructure on cooling rate. The hardness of the specimens decreased with increasing annealing temperature as a result of the decrease in dislocation density. It is interesting to note that the AM material showed very similar hardness to the wrought material when annealing at similar temperature, although the microstructures are very different. Annealing at 1050 oC for 1 hour followed by air cooling was selected as the heat treatment procedure for the lattice designed lightweight AM 316L material.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

macroMS: Image-Guided Analysis of Random Objects by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

Mass spectrometry imaging is well-suited to characterizing sample surfaces for their chemical content in a spatially resolved manner. However, when the surface contains small objects with significant empty spaces between them, more efficient approaches to sample acquisition are possible. Image-guided mass spectrometry (MS) enables high-throughput analysis of a diverse range of sample types, such as microbial colonies, liquid microdroplets, and others, by recognizing and analyzing selected location targets in an image. Here, we describe an imaging protocol and macroMS, an online software suite that can be used to enhance MS measurements of macroscopic samples that are imaged by a camera or a flatbed scanner. Furthermore, the web-based tool enables users to find and filter targets from the optical images, correct optical distortion issues for improved spatial location of selected targets, input the custom geometry files into an MS device to acquire spectra at the selected locations, and finally, perform limited data analysis and use visualization tools to aid locating samples containing compounds of interest. Using the macroMS suite, an enzyme mutant library of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and nL droplet arrays of Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas fluorescens have been assayed at a rate of ~2 s/sample.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Calculating and Mitigating the Risk of a Cut Glove to a Space Walking Astronaut

One of the high risk operations on the International Space Station (ISS) is conducting a space walk, or an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA). Threats to the space walking crew include airlock failures, space suit failures, and strikes from micro ]meteoroids and orbital debris (MM/OD). There are risks of becoming untethered from the space station, being pinched between the robotic arm and a piece of equipment, tearing your suit on a sharp edge, and other human errors that can be catastrophic. For decades NASA identified and tried to control sharp edges on external structure and equipment by design; however a new and unexpected source of sharp edges has since become apparent. Until recently, one of the underappreciated environmental risks was damage to EVA gloves during a spacewalk. The ISS has some elements which have been flying in the environment of space for over 14 years. It has and continues to be bombarded with MM/OD strikes that have created small, sharp craters all over the structure, including the dedicated EVA handrails and surrounding structure. These craters are capable of cutting through several layers of the EVA gloves. Starting in 2006, five EVA crewmembers reported cuts in their gloves so large they rendered the gloves unusable and in some cases cut the spacewalk short for the safety of the crew. This new hazard took engineers and managers by surprise. NASA has set out to mitigate this risk to safety and operations by redesigning the spacesuit gloves to be more resilient and designing a clamp to isolate MM/OD strikes on handrails, and is considering the necessity of an additional tool to repair strikes on non ]handrail surfaces (such as a file). This paper will address how the ISS Risk Team quantified an estimate of the MM/OD damage to the ISS, and the resulting likelihood of sustaining a cut glove in order to measure the effectiveness of the solutions being investigated to mitigate this risk to the mission and crew.

Castillo, Theresa↗

SpaceWire as a Cube-Sat Instrument Interface

SpaceWire is used in the control and data interface for an instrument on a pair of small satellites, one of which was launched in summer 2017. The instrument SpaceWire interface is implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array as an instantiated core controlled by a LEON3FT CPU, which is also implemented as an instantiated core. The UT699 processor in the flight computer provides the spacecraft side’s SpaceWire interface. A simple message based protocol consisting of four message types was defined, based on existing SpaceWire standards. One was for passing commands to and responses from the instrument in the form of text strings similar to those from a system console where each line of text is passed in a SpaceWire message. Another was for passing spacecraft time to the instrument. The third was for transferring files using a subset of the Remote Memory Access Protocol (RMAP). The fourth was for retrieving science data from the instrument. A set of user application programming interface (API) routines provided an abstracted interface to both the serial console (used during debug) and the SpaceWire device interface. Early instrument development and testing was done with a set of utilities that controlled a Star-Dundee USB-SpaceWire brick providing a user interface similar to a serial console terminal emulator with the addition of file and data transfers. Later in the integration and test process, these utilities were integrated with the COSMOS ground systems software used for spacecraft control, providing a seamless transition from standalone instrument tests to benchtop flat-sat test and full spacecraft level tests.

Lux, James P.↗

Data and scripts associated with "Coupled primary production and respiration in a large river contrasts with smaller rivers and streams."

This data package is associated with the publication "Coupled primary production and respiration in a large river contrasts with smaller rivers and streams." in review at Limnology and Oceanography (Roley et al. 2023). This study focuses on understanding ecosystem metabolism for the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington state, a free-flowing stretch with a substantial discharge. Large rivers have been overlooked compared to small and medium rivers due to the challenges associated with measurements. Our study presents novel ways to address these challenges and highlights that metabolism patterns in large rivers differ from those observed in small-medium rivers and requires the application of knowledge and tools beyond those implemented for smaller rivers.This data package includes the data and R scripts for the analyses described in Roley et al. 2023. It includes dissolved oxygen and temperature data from a dissolved oxygen HOBO sensor, light data collected from the National Solar Radiation Database (https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/) and hydrologic variables estimated from the MASS-1 model (Niehus et al.; 2014). It also includes metabolism estimates (gross primary production, ecosystem respiration, and net ecosystem production) estimated via streamMetabolizer (Appling et al.; 2018). All analyses in the paper can be replicated with these data and scripts.The data package is comprised of one main data folder. The folder includes (1) file-level metadata (flmd); (2) a data dictionary (dd) for each data file; (3) data files; and (4) R scripts for metabolism estimates and data analysis. All files are .R, .csv, or .pdf.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Compressed/reconstructed test images for CRAF/Cassini

A set of compressed, then reconstructed, test images submitted to the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF)/Cassini project is presented as part of its evaluation of near lossless high compression algorithms for representing image data. A total of seven test image files were provided by the project. The seven test images were compressed, then reconstructed with high quality (root mean square error of approximately one or two gray levels on an 8 bit gray scale), using discrete cosine transforms or Hadamard transforms and efficient entropy coders. The resulting compression ratios varied from about 2:1 to about 10:1, depending on the activity or randomness in the source image. This was accomplished without any special effort to optimize the quantizer or to introduce special postprocessing to filter the reconstruction errors. A more complete set of measurements, showing the relative performance of the compression algorithms over a wide range of compression ratios and reconstruction errors, shows that additional compression is possible at a small sacrifice in fidelity.

Dolinar, S.↗

The NASA Tournament Laboratory (NTL): Improving Data Access at PDS while Spreading Joy and Engaging Students through 16 Micro-Contests

NASA PDS hosts terabytes of valuable data from hundreds of data sources and spans decades of research. Data is stored on flat-file systems regulated through careful meta dictionaries. PDS's data is available to the public through its website which supports data searches through drill-down navigation. While the system returns data quickly, result sets in response to identical input differ depending on the drill-down path a user follows. To correct this Issue, to allow custom searching, and to improve general accessibility, PDS sought to create a new data structure and API, and to use them to build applications that are a joy to use and showcase the value of the data to students, teachers and citizens. PDS engaged TopCoder and Harvard Business School through the NTL to pursue these objectives in a pilot effort. Scope was limited to Small Bodies Node data. NTL analyzed data, proposed a solution, and implemented it through a series of micro-contests. Contest focused on different segments of the problem; conceptualization, architectural design, implementation, testing, etc. To demonstrate the utility of the completed solution, NTL developed web-based and mobile applications that can compare targets, regardless of mission. To further explore the potential of the solution NTL hosted "Mash-up" challenges that integrated the API with other publically available assets, to produce consumer and teaching applications, including an Augmented Reality iPad tool. Two contests were also posted to middle and high school students via the NoNameSite.com platform, and as a result of these contests, PDS/SBN has initiated a Facebook program. These contests defined and implemented a data warehouse with the necessary migration tools to transform legacy data, produced a public web interface for the new search, developed a public API, and produced four mobile applications that we expect to appeal to users both within and, without the academic community.

LaMora, Andy↗