SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
The Space Station contains safety critical computer software components in systems that can affect life and vital property. These components require a multilevel secure system that provides dynamic access control of the data and processes involved. A study is under way to define requirements for a security model providing access control through level B3 of the Orange Book. The model will be prototyped at NASA-Johnson Space Center.
Simulation Data Management (SDM), the ability to securely organize, archive, and share analysis models and the artifacts used to create them, is a fundamental requirement for modern engineering analysis based on computational simulation. We have worked separately to provide secure, network SDM services to engineers and scientists at our respective laboratories for over a decade. We propose to leverage our experience and lessons learned to help develop and deploy a next-generation SDM service as part of a multi-laboratory team. This service will be portable across multiple sites and platforms, and will be accessible via a range of command-line tools and well-documented APIs. In this document, we’ll review our high-level and low-level requirements for such a system, review one existing system, and briefly discuss our proposed implementation.
In the last three years, several advancements have been made to produce a new state-of-the-art capability in the field of Aerosciences. NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluations and Test Capabilities (AETC) Portfolio Office has funded a multi-year project to produce the unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) technology as an operational capability in key ground test facilities at NASA. The research and development has primarily been conducted at NASA Ames Research Center’s (ARC) Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (UPWT) 11-by 11-ft Transonic Wind Tunnel (TWT). The NASA ARC UPWT is one of the ground test facilities under NASA AETC’s Portfolio Office. AETC’s goals are to provide the tools to deliver the technology innovations and breakthroughs necessary to address increasingly complex research and development challenges. AETC’s integrated approach will consider the complimentary high-end compute capabilities necessary to advance analysis in conjunction with ground experimental capabilities. The uPSP Capability Challenge Project is a demonstration of several different technologies: 1) the unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) technology, and 2) Project: Red Rover, establishing a secure, reliable, fast connection between experimental and computation facilities, leveraging NASA’s computational resources within the High-End Compute Capability (HECC) Project for processing, storing, and sharing data efficiently. This project demonstrates the technical diversity and technical inclusion need to advance the field of Aerosciences. The approach to combine subject matter experts in experimental methods, optical methods, production wind tunnel testing, network engineering, high-end computing, signal processing, grid generation, and visualization while establishing the required infrastructure for subject matter experts to have access to the data while the wind tunnel test is being conducted. The most recent advancements for the uPSP technology have focused on three key areas: development of data products, robust processing pipeline, operational efficiencies and uncertainty quantification.
This document contains intended technical requirements for an anticipated future procurement for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), hereafter referred to as “LLNL” or “the Laboratory”, which seeks to fund a few new and innovative proposals for developing concepts and performing studies that would lead to products available in the 2029-2030 timeframe. Our interest is to incentivize explorations and evaluations of technical capabilities in support of our vision for a High Performance Computing (HPC) center of the future at Livermore Computing (LC), the HPC center at LLNL. To realize this vision a new approach to our approach to acquisition is being considered by LC. The approach is designed to decrease risks for the vendors, while encouraging a broader set of vendors able and we hope willing to partner with LLNL and LC. The future HPC Center vision and acquisition approach was conceived to meet the future mission needs of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Application packaging and distribution are the final steps for delivering software to end-users; both are frequently neglected when creating scientific software. Commercial businesses rely on electronic distribution systems that have rendered disk drives obsolete. Still, national laboratories continue to rely heavily on removable media to distribute and limit access to controlled applications. With increasing concerns of unauthorized copying of sensitive applications, a modern distribution system that utilizes cryptographically secure communication and authentication protocols has been developed. This new distribution system will secure the chain of custody for nuclear software while simultaneously simplifying access to these tools. This report summarizes four primary advancements made toward the secure distribution of Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS)-developed, Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE)-based applications: application installation, package distribution, automated package building, and distribution of documentation. NEAMS is currently developing more than ten separate applications based on the open-source MOOSE Framework. Distribution of these applications has primarily been accomplished by distributing source code, with end-users compiling the applications themselves. This work created a mechanism where MOOSE applications can be installed in a similar way to any other software. This allows both administrators and end-users simplified access to runnable executables. With this new installation capability, it was then possible to rethink distribution. A new, secure capability for delivering MOOSE-based applications over the internet has been created. This system requires unique cryptographic tokens for authentication, greatly securing the custody chain for software. Once granted access, installation of any NEAMS code can be accomplished with these terminal commands: "conda install ncrc" "ncrc install ncrc-bison." After these two commands (and authenticating) the BISON application will be securely down- loaded from Idaho National Laboratory (INL)’s servers, installed, and ready to use. To enable this new distribution capability to be successful, the open-source Continuous Integration, Verification, Enhancement, and Testing (CIVET) Continuous Integration (CI) capability was augmented to add Continuous Delivery (CD). CD enables the automated building and packaging of MOOSE-based applications as they are modified by development teams, ensuring that our customers can obtain up-to-date versions of the software at any time. The need for instruction on how to use these applications was addressed through modifications to the MOOSE documentation system. The MooseDocs capability, which enables robust documentation of MOOSE-based applications, has been extended to allow both for the installation of documentation and the packaging of documentation with installed applications. Together, these enhancements form the core of a new, secure distribution mechanism for nuclear simulation tools. In concert with the Nuclear Computational Resource Center (NCRC), NEAMS- developed applications will now be straightforward to obtain securely.
Purpose of Review: To make a brief review on the pre-treatment evaluation of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) with positron emission tomography/computed tomography with 18F-Fluoro-deoxy-glucose ({sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT) and to discuss the use of this method after treatment, with emphasis on the evaluation of therapeutic response. Recent Findings: The {sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT pre-treatment evaluation is recommended at III–IV staging to determine metastasis foci. At post-evaluation, the use of {sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT is very important to confirm the therapeutic response based on its high negative predictive value (NPV), mostly when it is made after 12 weeks the last radiotherapy dose. Specific imaging criteria aid in the detection of active tumor lesions. Moreover, the {sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT can determine early failure treatment and overall survival and progression-free survival. Recently, the {sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT surveillance was showed an important tool to follow up HNSCC patients with stage N2 or N3 disease. Summary: The {sup 18}F-FDG PET/CT is essential in the management of HNSCC, mainly at post-treatment evaluation. Its findings can determine a complementary therapy or even avoid an aggressive and unnecessary approach. So, careful analysis using imaging interpretation criteria has been central to an accurate assessment of HNSCC patients.
We report that low-data-rate wireless networks incorporated in critical infrastructure applications can be protected through 128-bit encryption keys and address-based access control lists. However, these bit-level credentials are vulnerable to interception, extraction and spoofing using software tools available free of charge on the Internet. Recent research has demonstrated that wireless physical layer device fingerprinting can be used to defend against replay and spoofing attacks. However, radio frequency (RF) fingerprinting typically uses expensive signal collection systems; this is because fingerprinting wireless devices with low-cost receivers has been reported to have inconsistent accuracy. In conclusion, this paper demonstrates a robust radio frequency fingerprinting process that is consistently accurate with both high-end and low-cost receivers. Indeed, the results demonstrate that low-cost software-defined radios can be used to perform accurate radio frequency fingerprinting and to identify spoofing attacks in critical IEEE 802.154-based infrastructure networks such as ZigBee.
Not Available
With increasing exposure to software-based sensing and control, Photovoltaic (PV) systems are facing higher risks of cyber attacks. Here, to ensure the system stability and minimize potential economic losses, it is imperative to monitor operating states and detect attacks at the early stage. To meet this demand, Micro-Phasor Measurement Units (μPMU) are increasingly popular in monitoring distribution networks. However, due to the relatively low sampling rate, μPMU has not yet been used to detect and classify cyber-attacks in power electronics enabled smart grid. To our knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to use μPMU to detect cyber attacks that degrade the performance of power electronics systems. We propose to apply data-driven methods on micro-PMU data to implement attack detection. We have evaluated data-driven methods, including decision tree (DT), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN), long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural network (CNN). The proposed CNN model achieves the required performances with the highest 99.23% accuracy and 0.9963 F 1 score.
Barriers to the participation of distributed energy resources (DERs) in wholesale electricity markets have limited the use of DERs for power system security and resilience. In September 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved an order to reduce these barriers. FERC Order No. 2222 enables the participation of DER aggregators in wholesale electricity markets. DERs include renewable generation and technologies that support the integration of renewable generation by increasing grid flexibility and resilience. Requiring wholesale energy markets to allow DER aggregator participation provides a path for DERs to become competitive in these markets. As the contribution from aggregated DERs continues to increase, the aggregator's role in supporting grid security and resilience will become more critical. This paper reviews work that demonstrates how DER aggregators can provide resilience support through technical capabilities, operational strategies, and secure communication architectures. Socioeconomic influences and impacts of aggregators, including implications for social resilience, are presented. In surveying the current state-of-the-art across different but interconnected topics, we illustrate how aggregators can be power system participants that enhance grid security. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to enhancing resilience in a power grid that includes a growing cohort of DER aggregators, but there are many options for aggregators to contribute to a more resilient and secure power grid.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) will soon have in place the El Capitan exascale supercomputer, based on advanced micro devices (AMD) graphics processing units (GPUs). As part of a multiyear effort under the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program, we have been developing marbl, a next generation, performance portable multiphysics application based on high-order finite elements. In previous years, we successfully ported the Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE), multimaterial, compressible flow capabilities of marbl to nvidia GPUs as described in Vargas et al. Here, in this paper, we describe our ongoing effort in extending marbl's GPU capabilities with additional physics, including multigroup radiation diffusion and thermonuclear burn for high energy density physics (HEDP) and fusion modeling. We also describe how our portability abstraction approach based on the raja Portability Suite and the mfem finite element discretization library has enabled us to achieve high performance on AMD based GPUs with minimal effort in hardware-specific porting. Throughout this work, we highlight numerical and algorithmic developments that were required to achieve GPU performance.
In this work, dynamic analysis techniques help programmers find the root cause of bugs in large-scale parallel applications.
The recent advent of quantum computing has the potential to overhaul security, communications, and scientific modeling. Superconducting qubits are a leading platform that is advancing noise-tolerant intermediate-scale quantum processors. The implementation requires scaling to large numbers of superconducting qubits, circuit depths, and gate speeds, wherein high-purity RF signal generation and effective cabling transport are desirable. Fiber photonic-enhanced RF signal generation has demonstrated the principle of addressing both signal generation and transport requirements, supporting intermediate qubit numbers and robust packaging efforts; however, fiber-based approaches to RF signal distribution are often bounded by their phase instability. Here, we present a silicon photonic integrated circuit-based version of a photonic-enhanced RF signal generator that demonstrates the requisite stability, as well as a path towards the necessary signal fidelity.
The Department of Defense Science Board has stated that the United States is "not prepared to defend againsr cyber-attacks and that the military could lose "trust in the information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces [including nuclear forces]." One potential weak spot in cyber-security is storing encryption keys in computer memory. This paper explores the use of hardware devices (so-called Physical Unclonable Functions, or PUFs) to generate, in the nuclear weapon itself, unique encryption keys each time they are needed. Not only do we find that this has the potential to mitigate a number of cyberthreats, but such hardware has the potential to greatly diminish the total uncertainty associated with radiation-based warhead authentication procedures; a procedure many analysts feel will be key to future arms control regimes. After outline the use of PUFs in nuclear command, control, and communications--and indicating some of the areas that still require further research--we discuss their application to arms control and warhead authentication
A Cyber-Physical System (CPS) testbed serves as a powerful platform for testing and validating cyber intrusion detection and mitigation strategies in substations. This study presents the design and development of a CPS testbed that can effectively assess the real-time dynamics of a substation. Cyber attacks exploiting IEC 61850-based SV and GOOSE protocols are demonstrated using the testbed, along with an analysis on attack detection. Realistic timing measurements are obtained, and the time frames for deploying detection and mitigation strategies are evaluated.
The University of Illinois design of the TABLET portable computer extends the freedom of pen and notepad with a machine that draws on the projected power of 21st century technology. Without assuming any new, major technological breakthroughs, it seeks to balance the promises of today's growing technologies with the changing role of computers in tomorrow's education, research, security, and commerce. It seeks to gather together in one basket the matured fruits of such buzzword technologies as LCD, GPS, CCD, WSI, and DSP. The design is simple, yet sleek. Roughly the size and weight of a notebook, the machine is a dark, featureless monolith with no moving parts. Through magneto-optics, a simple LaserCard provides exchangeable, mass data storage. Its I/O surface, in concert with built-in infrared and cellular transceivers, puts the user in touch with anyone and anything. The ensemble of these components, directed by software that can transform it into anything from a keyboard or notepad to an office or video studio, suggests an instrument of tremendous power and freedom.
An overview is presented of the NASA Science Internet (NSI) security task. The task includes the following: policies and security documentation; risk analysis and management; computer emergency response team; incident handling; toolkit development; user consulting; and working groups, conferences, and committees.
Networks are roadways of communication that connect devices. Like all roadways, there are rules and regulations that govern whatever (information in this case) travels along them. One type of rule that is commonly used is called a protocol. More specifically, a protocol is a standard that specifies how data should be transmitted over a network. The project outlined in this document seeks to implement one protocol in particular, Precision Time Protocol, within the Kennedy Ground Control Subsystem network at Kennedy Space Center. This document also summarizes work completed for server upgrades, remote software developer training and how all three assignments demonstrated the importance of accountability and security.