Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Jobs”

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 451 records · Page 25
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2000

NASA's Design and Development of a Field Goniometer Instrument Using Solid Works

With NASA suffering severe funding cutbacks, engineers at NASA are required to produce state-of-the-art hardware with limited personnel and financial resources. In light of these constraints, the new NASA mandate is to build better, faster and cheaper. In April of 1998, Stennis Space Center's Commercial Remote Sensing Program contracted to the Systems Engineering Division at NASA Ames Research Center to develop a device known as a Field Goniometer. A Field Goniometer is a device that measures bi-directional reflectance of a target, such as vegetation, relative to the sun and an imaging system in an aircraft or spacecraft. The device is able to provide a spectral fingerprint of the surface it is measuring in wavelengths from 350nm-2500nm using a hyperspectral imager. To accomplish this project, several obstacles had to be overcome. First, the design had to be completed in less than four months. Second, due to the complexity of the design, the use of solid modeling was highly desirable but most of the group's solid modelers were assigned to other jobs. Third, the amount of funding available from the customer was one half to one third the funding typically expended for a job of this nature. Our choices for this project were to design with standard 2-D CAD systems currently used in-house or train additional engineers on our existing solids package or purchase a new solid model package. The use of a 2D CAD system was very undesirable due to the complexity of the design. Using our existing solids modeler would have required a learning curve for our engineers that would be incompatible with our schedule. Prior to this project, a member of our design group researched the solid modeling industry and decided to purchase SolidWorks. After examining the product for ease of use, modeling capability, training time required and cost, we decided our highest probability of success would be to design with Solidworks. During the design phase, our fabrication group was able to provide input at the very early stages, which added significant benefit to the final product. Fabrication cost and schedule savings have been realized by having complex part geometries translated directly from the SolidWorks design models to Surfcam and other computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software. This direct model translation capability optimized the fabrication processes. The end result was that we were able to successfully complete the project on time and on budget. Other advantages of using SolidWorks, as cited by the design team, include a rapid negotiation of the initial learning curve, the ability to develop solid model hardware prototypes (used to communicate the design intent to both the customer and the fabricator), and the ability to work as a team collaborating on a large, complex model. These types of tools and efforts represent our response to NASA's challenge to produce higher quality products within shorter design and fabrication times.

Turner, Mark↗
NASA NTRS1998

The Athena Mars Rover Science Payload

The Mars Surveyor missions that will be launched in April of 2001 will include a highly capable rover that is a successor to the Mars Pathfinder mission's Sojourner rover. The design goals for this rover are a total traverse distance of at least 10 km and a total lifetime of at least one Earth year. The rover's job will be to explore a site in Mars' ancient terrain, searching for materials likely to preserve a record of ancient martian water, climate, and possibly biology. The rover will collect rock and soil samples, and will store them for return to Earth by a subsequent Mars Surveyor mission in 2005. The Athena Mars rover science payload is the suite of scientific instruments and sample collection tools that will be used to perform this job. The specific science objectives that NASA has identified for the '01 rover payload are to: (1) Provide color stereo imaging of martian surface environments, and remotely-sensed point discrimination of mineralogical composition. (2) Determine the elemental and mineralogical composition of martian surface materials. (3) Determine the fine-scale textural properties of these materials. (4) Collect and store samples. The Athena payload has been designed to meet these objectives. The focus of the design is on field operations: making sure the rover can locate, characterize, and collect scientifically important samples in a dusty, dirty, real-world environment. The topography, morphology, and mineralogy of the scene around the rover will be revealed by Pancam/Mini-TES, an integrated imager and IR spectrometer. Pancam views the surface around the rover in stereo and color. It uses two high-resolution cameras that are identical in most respects to the rover's navigation cameras. The detectors are low-power, low-mass active pixel sensors with on-chip 12-bit analog-to-digital conversion. Filters provide 8-12 color spectral bandpasses over the spectral region from 0.4 to 1.1 micron Narrow-angle optics provide an angular resolution of 0.28 mrad/pixel, nearly a factor of four higher than that of the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Surveyor '98 cameras. Image compression will be performed using a wavelet compression algorithm. The Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) is a point spectrometer operating in -the thermal IR. It produces high spectral resolution (5 /cm) image cubes with a wavelength range of 5-40 gm, a nominal signal/noise ratio of 500:1, and a maximum angular resolution of 7 mrad (7 cm at a distance of 10 in). The wavelength region over which it operates samples the diagnostic fundamental absorption features of rockforming minerals, and also provides some capability to see through dust coatings that could tend to obscure spectral features. The mineralogical information that Mini-TES provides will be used to select from a distance the rocks and soils that will be investigated in more detail and ultimately sampled. Mini-TES is derived from the MO/MGS TES instrument, but is significantly smaller and simpler. The instrument uses an 8-cm Cassegrain telescope, a Michelson interferometer, and uncooled pyroelectric detectors. Along with its mineralogical capabilities, Mini-TES can provide information on the thermophysical properties of rocks and soils. Viewing upward, it can also provide temperature profiles through the martian atmospheric boundary layer. Elemental and Mineralogical Composition: Once promising samples have been identified from a distance using Pancam/Mini-TES, they will be studied in detail using up to three compositional sensors that can be placed directly against them by an Instrument Arm. The two compositional sensors, presently on the payload are an Alpha-Proton-X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), and a Mossbauer Spectrometer. The APXS is derived closely from the instrument that flew on Mars Pathfinder. Radioactive alpha sources and three detection modes (alpha, proton, and x-ray) provide elemental abundances of rocks and soils to complement and constrain mineralogical data. The Athena APXS will have a revised mechanical design that will cut down significantly on backscattering of alpha particles from martian atmospheric carbon. It will also include a target of known elemental composition that will be used for calibration purposes. The Athena Mossbauer Spectrometer is a diagnostic instrument for the mineralogy and oxidation state of Fe-bearing phases, which are particularly important on Mars. The instrument measures the resonant absorption of gamma rays produced by a Co-57 source to determine splitting of nuclear energy levels in Fe atoms that is related to the electronic environment surrounding them. It has been under development for space flight for many years at the Technical University of Darmstadt. The Mossbauer Spectrometer (and the other arm instruments) will be able to view a small permanent magnet array that will attract magnetic particles in the martian soil. The payload may also include a Raman Spectrometer. If included, the Raman Spectrometer will provide precise identification of major and minor mineral phases. It requires no sample preparation, and is also sensitive to organics. Fine-Scale Texture: The Instrument Arm a also carries a Microscopic Imager that will obtain high-resolution monochromatic images of the same materials for which compositional data will be obtained. Its spatial resolution is 20 micron/pixel over a 1 cm depth of field, and 40 micron/pixel over a 1-cm depth of field. Like Pancam, it uses the same active pixel sensor detectors and electronics as the rover's navigation cameras. The Instrument Arm is a three degree-of-freedom arm that uses designs and components from the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Surveyor '98 projects. Its primary function is instrument positioning. Along with the instruments noted above, it also carries a brush that can be used to remove dust and other loose coatings from rocks. Sample Collection and Storage: Martian rock and soil samples will be collected using a low-power rotary coring drill called the Mini-Corer. An important characteristic of this device is that it can obtain intact samples of rock from up to 5 cm within strong boulders and bedrock, Nominal core dimensions are 8xl7 mm. The Mini-Corer drills a core to the commanded depth in a rock, shears it off, retains it, and extracts it. It can also acquire samples of loose soil, using soil sample cups that are pressed downward into loose material. The Mini-Corer can drill at angles from vertical to 45' off vertical. It has six interchangeable bits for long life. Mechanical damage to the sample during drilling is minimal, and heating is negligible. After acquisition, the sample may be viewed by the arm instruments, and/or placed in one of 104 compartments in the Sample Container. A subset of the acquired samples may be replaced with other samples obtained later if desired. The Sample Container has no moving parts, and is mounted external to the rover for easy removal by the Mars Surveyor 2005 flight system. Operation of the rover will make extensive use of automated onboard navigation and hazard avoidance capabilities. Otherwise, use of onboard autonomy is minimal. Data downlink capability is about 40 Mbit/sol, and the use of the Mars Surveyor '01 orbiter for data relay imposes a limit of at most two command cycles per sol. Because of the significant amount of time available between command cycles, all payload elements will be operated sequentially, rather than in parallel.; this approach also significantly simplifies operations and minimizes peak power usage. The landing site for the '01 rover has not been selected yet. Site selection will make as full use as possible of Mars Global Surveyor data, and will involve substantial input from the broad Mars science community. Summary: The following table describes the mass, power, providers, and key scientific objectives of all the major elements of the Athena payload. Additional Athena payload information may be found at: http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/athena/index.html. Additional information contained in the original.

Squyes, S. W.↗
NASA NTRS2000

JavaGenes and Condor: Cycle-Scavenging Genetic Algorithms

A genetic algorithm code, JavaGenes, was written in Java and used to evolve pharmaceutical drug molecules and digital circuits. JavaGenes was run under the Condor cycle-scavenging batch system managing 100-170 desktop SGI workstations. Genetic algorithms mimic biological evolution by evolving solutions to problems using crossover and mutation. While most genetic algorithms evolve strings or trees, JavaGenes evolves graphs representing (currently) molecules and circuits. Java was chosen as the implementation language because the genetic algorithm requires random splitting and recombining of graphs, a complex data structure manipulation with ample opportunities for memory leaks, loose pointers, out-of-bound indices, and other hard to find bugs. Java garbage-collection memory management, lack of pointer arithmetic, and array-bounds index checking prevents these bugs from occurring, substantially reducing development time. While a run-time performance penalty must be paid, the only unacceptable performance we encountered was using standard Java serialization to checkpoint and restart the code. This was fixed by a two-day implementation of custom checkpointing. JavaGenes is minimally integrated with Condor; in other words, JavaGenes must do its own checkpointing and I/O redirection. A prototype Java-aware version of Condor was developed using standard Java serialization for checkpointing. For the prototype to be useful, standard Java serialization must be significantly optimized. JavaGenes is approximately 8700 lines of code and a few thousand JavaGenes jobs have been run. Most jobs ran for a few days. Results include proof that genetic algorithms can evolve directed and undirected graphs, development of a novel crossover operator for graphs, a paper in the journal Nanotechnology, and another paper in preparation.

Globus, Al↗
NASA NTRS2001

Pricing the Computing Resources: Reading Between the Lines and Beyond

Distributed computing systems have the potential to increase the usefulness of existing facilities for computation without adding anything physical, but that is realized only when necessary administrative features are in place. In a distributed environment, the best match is sought between a computing job to be run and a computer to run the job (global scheduling), which is a function that has not been required by conventional systems. Viewing the computers as 'suppliers' and the users as 'consumers' of computing services, markets for computing services/resources have been examined as one of the most promising mechanisms for global scheduling. We first establish why economics can contribute to scheduling. We further define the criterion for a scheme to qualify as an application of economics. Many studies to date have claimed to have applied economics to scheduling. If their scheduling mechanisms do not utilize economics, contrary to their claims, their favorable results do not contribute to the assertion that markets provide the best framework for global scheduling. We examine the well-known scheduling schemes, which concern pricing and markets, using our criterion of what application of economics is. Our conclusion is that none of the schemes examined makes full use of economics.

Nakai, Junko↗
NASA NTRS1998

A Domain-Decomposed Multi-Level Method for Adaptively Refined Cartesian Grids with Embedded Boundaries

The work presents a new method for on-the-fly domain decomposition technique for mapping grids and solution algorithms to parallel machines, and is applicable to both shared-memory and message-passing architectures. It will be demonstrated on the Cray T3E, HP Exemplar, and SGI Origin 2000. Computing time has been secured on all these platforms. The decomposition technique is an outgrowth of techniques used in computational physics for simulations of N-body problems and the event horizons of black holes, and has not been previously used by the CFD community. Since the technique offers on-the-fly partitioning, it offers a substantial increase in flexibility for computing in heterogeneous environments, where the number of available processors may not be known at the time of job submission. In addition, since it is dynamic it permits the job to be repartitioned without global communication in cases where additional processors become available after the simulation has begun, or in cases where dynamic mesh adaptation changes the mesh size during the course of a simulation. The platform for this partitioning strategy is a completely new Cartesian Euler solver tarcreted at parallel machines which may be used in conjunction with Ames' "Cart3D" arbitrary geometry simulation package.

Aftosmis, M. J.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Fallout from the Shuttle Arm

Vadeko International, Inc., Mississauga, Ontario developed for the Canadian National Railways (CN) the Robotic Paint Application System. The robotic paint shop has two parallel paint booths, allowing simultaneous painting of two hopper cars. Each booth has three robots, two that move along wall-mounted rails to spray-paint the exterior, a third that is lowered through a hatch in the railcar's top to paint the interior. A fully computerized system controls the movement of the robots and the painting process. The robots can do in four hours a job that formerly took 32 hours. The robotic system applies a more thorough coating and CN expects that will double the useful life of its hoppers and improve cost efficiency. Human painters no longer have to handle the difficult and hazardous job. CN paint shop employees have been retrained to operate the computer system that controls the robots. In addition to large scale robotic systems, Vadeko International is engaged in such other areas of technology as flexible automation, nuclear maintenance, underwater vehicles, thin film deposition and wide band monitoring.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2002

The Impact of Trust on Organization Commitment

As the global economy continues to spawn competitive forces, organizations have sought to become more competitive by cutting costs, eliminating non-value added work, and using more automation. Jobs have become broader and more flexible leading to a leaner workforce with higher-level knowledge and skills and more responsibility for day-to-day decisions. More than ever, organizations depend on employees as the innovators and designers of products and processes and as a source of strategic advantage. Therefore employee commitment among knowledge workers is needed to maintain organizational viability. It would seem that stronger relationships due to greater dependency, involvement, and investment would develop between employers and high-technology workers resulting in more committed employees. However, the opposite has been evidenced as key knowledge workers are changing jobs frequently. This may be due to a perceived lack of commitment by management to its employees. The notion of exchange may dominate the development of organizational commitment whereby an individual decides what to give a firm (commitment, extra effort, better performance, etc.) based on what the firm gives them (e.g., trust and security). It is the relationship between an employee's organizational commitment and the responding level of trust in the organization that is examined in this paper. An experiment is described that will seek to identify this relationship. Preliminary results are expected to show a positive relationship whereby employee commitment is positively correlated with organizational trust.

Robinson, Kimberly↗
NASA NTRS2002

An Experimental Framework for Executing Applications in Dynamic Grid Environments

The Grid opens up opportunities for resource-starved scientists and engineers to harness highly distributed computing resources. A number of Grid middleware projects are currently available to support the simultaneous exploitation of heterogeneous resources distributed in different administrative domains. However, efficient job submission and management continue being far from accessible to ordinary scientists and engineers due to the dynamic and complex nature of the Grid. This report describes a new Globus framework that allows an easier and more efficient execution of jobs in a 'submit and forget' fashion. Adaptation to dynamic Grid conditions is achieved by supporting automatic application migration following performance degradation, 'better' resource discovery, requirement change, owner decision or remote resource failure. The report also includes experimental results of the behavior of our framework on the TRGP testbed.

Huedo, Eduardo↗
NASA NTRS2002

Simulating Snow Over Sea Ice In Climate Models

We have evaluated two methods of simulating the seasonal cycle of snow over sea ice in and around the Arctic: The NCAR global climate model CCM3, with its standard snow hydrology, and the snow pack model SNTHERM, forced with hourly atmospheric output from CCM3. A new dataset providing dates for the onset of snow melt over Arctic sea ice provides a means for assessing basin-wide how well the models simulate melt onset, but contains no information on how long it then takes for all the snow to melt. Use of data from the SHEBA site provides very detailed information on the behavior of the snow before and during the melt season, but only for a very limited area. Russian drift data provide climatological data on the seasonal cycle of snow water equivalent and snow density, over multi-year sea ice in the central Arctic basin. These datasets are used to compare the two modeling methods, and to see if use of the more physically-realistic SNTHERM provides any significant improvements. Conclusions obtained so far include: 1. Both CCM3 and CCM3/SNTHERM do a good job overall of matching the onset of snow melt dataset; although CCM3/SNTHERM consistently trends to underestimate the date and CCM3 to overestimate it. 2. SHEBA and ice drift data for the Arctic show that CCM3/ SNTHERM does a better job than CCM3 at simulating the total melt period. 3. Ice drift snow density and accumulation data suggest that while providing superior results, CCM3/SNTHERM may still suffer from overly vigorous melting. 4. Both the large-scale atmospheric forcing and snow pack physical processes are important in proper simulation of the snow seasonal cycle. Ongoing work includes further diagnosis of CCM3/SNTHERM, use of more observational datasets, especially from marginal seas in the pan-Arctic, and full coupling of SNTHERM into CCM3 (work to date has all been off-line simulations).

Arnold, James E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Transition Time: Zero

I had been in a technical/project management assignment about two years, when one day my boss asked me to come to his office to 'discuss an opportunity.' When I arrived in his office, he indicated that the project manager of one of our biggest ($10M+) and most important projects had requested to be removed from the job immediately, and the organization was going to grant the request. He felt I was the most experienced person he had and thought I would be a perfect fit for this job.

Cameron, W. Scott↗
NASA NTRS2004

The PMDP Roadmap

NASA's complex and highly technical missions rely on effective project teams and managers. Since 1993, through its Project Management Development Process (PMDP), the Academy of Program and Project Leadership (APPL) has offered direction to the Agency's project practitioners as they advance in their careers. PMDP helps identify and sequence professional experiences, courses, and other project-based learning experiences that support individual career goals and center activities by outlining competencies at four levels of development. The result is that PMDP provides NASA project practitioners with a road map to the knowledge and competencies appropriate for their job and the jobs to which they aspire. Plus, new this year, APPL has rolled out its electronic Project Management Development Process (ePMDP) tool, a learning management system that includes a dynamic presentation of the PMDP levels, competency areas, competency organizational structures, Individual Development Plans (IDP), and online PMDP enrollment. APPL's website, www.appl.nasa.gov, provides access to ePMDP as well as other online resources for NASA practitioners enrolled in the Project Management Development Process.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2002

Skills, rules and knowledge in aircraft maintenance: errors in context

Automatic or skill-based behaviour is generally considered to be less prone to error than behaviour directed by conscious control. However, researchers who have applied Rasmussen's skill-rule-knowledge human error framework to accidents and incidents have sometimes found that skill-based errors appear in significant numbers. It is proposed that this is largely a reflection of the opportunities for error which workplaces present and does not indicate that skill-based behaviour is intrinsically unreliable. In the current study, 99 errors reported by 72 aircraft mechanics were examined in the light of a task analysis based on observations of the work of 25 aircraft mechanics. The task analysis identified the opportunities for error presented at various stages of maintenance work packages and by the job as a whole. Once the frequency of each error type was normalized in terms of the opportunities for error, it became apparent that skill-based performance is more reliable than rule-based performance, which is in turn more reliable than knowledge-based performance. The results reinforce the belief that industrial safety interventions designed to reduce errors would best be directed at those aspects of jobs that involve rule- and knowledge-based performance.

Aircraft↗
NASA NTRS2004

Robot Rescue

Tests with robots and the high-fidelity Hubble Space Telescope mockup astronauts use to train for servicing missions have convinced NASA managers it may be possible to maintain and upgrade the orbiting observatory without sending a space shuttle to do the job. In a formal request last week, the agency gave bidders until July 16 to sub-mit proposals for a robotic mission to the space telescope before the end of 2007. At a minimum, the mission would attach a rocket motor to deorbit the telescope safely when its service life ends. In the best case, it would use state-of-the- art robotics to prolong its life on orbit and install new instruments. With the space shuttle off-limits for the job under strict post-Columbia safety policies set by Administrator Sean O'Keefe, NASA has designed a "straw- man" robotic mission that would use an Atlas V or Delta N to launch a 20,ooO-lb. "Hubble Robotic Vehicle" to service the telescope. There, a robotic arm would grapple it, much as the shuttle does.

Morring, Frank, Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Working at the Ohio Aerospace Institute

The Ohio Aerospace Institute is a wonderful place to work. I enjoy coming to work everyday knowing that I will be surrounded by smiling faces. My mentor, Mary Auzenne, is the Program Manager of the LERCIP College Internship Program, however, I spend most of my time working with Akua Soadwa, the Assistant Program Manager. She is in charge of planning, coordinating, and managing every event that is involved with the college internship program such as the socials, picnic, banquet, workshops, and research symposium. My job is to make her job easier. I help out with the planning, coordinating, and managing of these events. When I first got on board Akua was in the process of planning the second social for the interns. The social is a way for the interns to interact with one another as well as to find out more about where the other interns are working at NASA. We ordered the food, went shopping, and set up the Guerin House for the party. I made sign-in sheets, which helped us get a rough count of the attendees. The next event was the Technical Presentation Workshop and the Professional Development Workshop. These workshops are designed to enhance skills of the interns. We were there to sign people in and direct them to the room where the presentation was to take place. I also took pictures of the workshop and provided copies for the presenters, as well as our files.

Szabo, Hortenzia↗
NASA NTRS2004

Evaluation of Open-Source Hard Real Time Software Packages

Reliable software is, at times, hard to find. No piece of software can be guaranteed to work in every situation that may arise during its use here at Glenn Research Center or in space. The job of the Software Assurance (SA) group in the Risk Management Office is to rigorously test the software in an effort to ensure it matches the contract specifications. In some cases the SA team also researches new alternatives for selected software packages. This testing and research is an integral part of the department of Safety and Mission Assurance. Real Time operation in reference to a computer system is a particular style of handing the timing and manner with which inputs and outputs are handled. A real time system executes these commands and appropriate processing within a defined timing constraint. Within this definition there are two other classifications of real time systems: hard and soft. A soft real time system is one in which if the particular timing constraints are not rigidly met there will be no critical results. On the other hand, a hard real time system is one in which if the timing constraints are not met the results could be catastrophic. An example of a soft real time system is a DVD decoder. If the particular piece of data from the input is not decoded and displayed to the screen at exactly the correct moment nothing critical will become of it, the user may not even notice it. However, a hard real time system is needed to control the timing of fuel injections or steering on the Space Shuttle; a delay of even a fraction of a second could be catastrophic in such a complex system. The current real time system employed by most NASA projects is Wind River's VxWorks operating system. This is a proprietary operating system that can be configured to work with many of NASA s needs and it provides very accurate and reliable hard real time performance. The down side is that since it is a proprietary operating system it is also costly to implement. The prospect of replacing this somewhat costly implementation is the focus of one of the SA group s current research projects. The explosion of open source software in the last ten years has led to the development of a multitude of software solutions which were once only produced by major corporations. The benefits of these open projects include faster release and bug patching cycles as well as inexpensive if not free software solutions. The main packages for hard real time solutions under Linux are Real Time Application Interface (RTAI) and two varieties of Real Time Linux (RTL), RTLFree and RTLPro. During my time here at NASA I have been testing various hard real time solutions operating as layers on the Linux Operating System. All testing is being run on an Intel SBC 2590 which is a common embedded hardware platform. The test plan was provided to me by the Software Assurance group at the start of my internship and my job has been to test the systems by developing and executing the test cases on the hardware. These tests are constructed so that the Software Assurance group can get hard test data for a comparison between the open source and proprietary implementations of hard real time solutions.

Mattei, Nicholas S.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Master Software Requirements Specification

A basic function of a computational grid such as the NASA Information Power Grid (IPG) is to allow users to execute applications on remote computer systems. The Globus Resource Allocation Manager (GRAM) provides this functionality in the IPG and many other grids at this time. While the functionality provided by GRAM clients is adequate, GRAM does not support useful features such as staging several sets of files, running more than one executable in a single job submission, and maintaining historical information about execution operations. This specification is intended to provide the environmental and software functional requirements for the IPG Job Manager V2.0 being developed by AMTI for NASA.

Hu, Chaumin↗
NASA NTRS2008

Service-Oriented Architecture for NVO and TeraGrid Computing

The National Virtual Observatory (NVO) Extensible Secure Scalable Service Infrastructure (NESSSI) is a Web service architecture and software framework that enables Web-based astronomical data publishing and processing on grid computers such as the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid. Characteristics of this architecture include the following: (1) Services are created, managed, and upgraded by their developers, who are trusted users of computing platforms on which the services are deployed. (2) Service jobs can be initiated by means of Java or Python client programs run on a command line or with Web portals. (3) Access is granted within a graduated security scheme in which the size of a job that can be initiated depends on the level of authentication of the user.

Jacob, Joseph↗
NASA NTRS2010

A Simulation-Based Approach to Training Operational Cultural Competence

Cultural knowledge and skills are critically important for military operations, emergency response, or any job that involves interaction with a culturally diverse population. However, it is not obvious what cultural knowledge and skills need to be trained, and how to integrate that training with the other training that trainees must undergo. Cultural training needs to be broad enough to encompass both regional (culture-specific) and cross-cultural (culture-general) competencies, yet be focused enough to result in targeted improvements in on-the-job performance. This paper describes a comprehensive instructional development methodology and training technology framework that focuses cultural training on operational needs. It supports knowledge acquisition, skill acquisition, and skill transfer. It supports both training and assessment, and integrates with other aspects of operational skills training. Two training systems will be used to illustrate this approach: the Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainer (VCAT) and the Tactical Dari language and culture training system. The paper also discusses new and emerging capabilities that are integrating cultural competence training more strongly with other aspects of training and mission rehearsal.

Johnson, W. Lewis↗