Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “technological ecosystem”

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 487 records · Page 27
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1993

Telepresence in the human exploration of Mars: Field studies in analog environments

This paper describes the role of telepresence in performing exploration of Mars. As part of an effort to develop telepresence to support Mars exploration, NASA is developing telepresence technology and using it to perform exploration in space analog environments. This paper describes experiments to demonstrate telepresence control of an underwater remotely operated vehicle (TROV) to perform scientific field work in isolated and hostile environments. Toward this end, we have developed a telepresence control system and interfaced it to an underwater remotely operated vehicle. This vehicle was used during 1992 to study aquatic ecosystems in Antarctica including a study of the physical and biological environment of permanently ice-covered lake. We also performed a preliminary analysis of the potential for using the TROV to study the benthic ecology under the sea ice in McMurdo sound. These expeditions are opening up new areas of research by using telepresence control of remote vehicles to explore isolated and extreme environments on Earth while also providing an impetus to develop technology which will play a major role in the human exploration of Mars. Antarctic field operations, in particular, provide an excellent analog experience for telepresence operation in space.

Stoker, Carol R.↗
DOE OSTI2018

Expansive microbial metabolic versatility and biodiversity in dynamic Guaymas Basin hydrothermal sediments

Microbes in Guaymas Basin (Gulf of California) hydrothermal sediments thrive on hydrocarbons and sulfur and experience steep, fluctuating temperature and chemical gradients. The functional capacities of communities inhabiting this dynamic habitat are largely unknown. Here, we reconstructed 551 genomes from hydrothermally influenced, and nearby cold sediments belonging to 56 phyla (40 uncultured). These genomes comprise 22 unique lineages, including five new candidate phyla. In contrast to findings from cold hydrocarbon seeps, hydrothermal-associated communities are more diverse and archaea dominate over bacteria. Genome-based metabolic inferences provide first insights into the ecological niches of these uncultured microbes, including methane cycling in new Crenarchaeota and alkane utilization in ANME-1. These communities are shaped by a high biodiversity, partitioning among nitrogen and sulfur pathways and redundancy in core carbon-processing pathways. The dynamic sediments select for distinctive microbial communities that stand out by expansive biodiversity, and open up new physiological perspectives into hydrothermal ecosystem function.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

Quantitative assessments of water-use efficiency in Temperate Eurasian Steppe along an aridity gradient

Water-use efficiency (WUE), defined as the ratio of net primary productivity (NPP) to evapotranspiration (ET), is an important indicator to represent the trade-off pattern between vegetation productivity and water consumption. Its dynamics under climate change are important to ecohydrology and ecosystem management, especially in the drylands. In this study, we modified and used a late version of Boreal Ecosystem Productivity Simulator (BEPS), to quantify the WUE in the typical dryland ecosystems, Temperate Eurasian Steppe (TES). The Aridity Index (AI) was used to specify the terrestrial water availability condition. The regional results showed that during the period of 1999–2008, the WUE has a clear decreasing trend in the spatial distribution from arid to humid areas. The highest annual average WUE was in dry and semi-humid sub-region (DSH) with 0.88 gC mm-1 and the lowest was in arid sub-region (AR) with 0.22 gC mm-1. A two-stage pattern of WUE was found in TES. That is, WUE would enhance with lower aridity stress, but decline under the humid environment. Over 65% of the region exhibited increasing WUE. This enhancement, however, could not indicate that the grasslands were getting better because the NPP even slightly decreased. It was mainly attributed to the reduction of ET over 70% of the region, which is closely related to the rainfall decrease. The results also suggested a similar negative spatial correlation between the WUE and the mean annual precipitation (MAP) at the driest and the most humid ends. This regional pattern reflected the different roles of water in regulating the terrestrial ecosystems under different aridity levels. This study could facilitate the understanding of the interactions between terrestrial carbon and water cycles, and thus contribute to a sustainable management of nature resources in the dryland ecosystems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

BSSD 2019 Performance Metric Q4

The LANL SFA in Terrestrial Microbial Carbon Cycling aims to inform climate modeling and enable carbon management in terrestrial ecosystems by discovering widespread biological processes that control carbon storage and release in temperate biome soils. To achieve these goals, computational approaches are essential to analyze increasingly complex ‘omics’ data from microbial communities in environmental samples. The SFA continues to leverage advances in ‘omics' measurement technology and computation tools to decipher microbial community function in environmental samples. The computational approach is aligned with the recent shift in the SFA’s research approach. When the SFA began 10 years ago, computational approaches principally addressed “who is there” with extremely limited insight into function. Accessible ‘omics' data for complex soil communities were primarily amplicon DNA sequences of taxonomic or functional marker genes obtained by PCR, cloning, and Sanger sequencing. Computational tools for community analysis were nascent. Over the past decade, genome resources (DOE-Integrated Microbial Genomics database) and data acquisition increased 1000-fold, common computational pipelines for many analysis tasks have arisen, and the variety of ‘omics’ measurements has expanded to routinely include shotgun metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and versions of metabolomics. The SFA is capitalizing on these advances while also developing new computational techniques to decipher how communities with different patterns of carbon cycling function from the species to ecosystem level.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

The trends and challenges of fiber reinforced additive manufacturing

In the last few years, utilizing fiber reinforced additive manufacturing (FRAM)-based components in several industries has become quite popular. Compared to conventional AM technologies, FRAM offered complementary solutions to their needs. In general, fibers have been traditionally used in many manufacturing processes for various reasons. However, using conventional methods, there are obstacles in obtaining the desired complex geometries and low setup costs. AM offers possible avoidance of these limitations. Shape complexity, infill density, and manufacturing lead times are no longer barriers. Bridging AM with fiber reinforced materials offers a vast opportunity for lightweight and strong parts. Depending on the affinity, fibers with different structures can be mixed with different matrix materials and, thus, create stronger parts with improved mechanical properties. Process parameters like raster angle, infill speed, layer thickness, and nozzle temperature also strongly impact physical properties of FRAM products and are considered carefully. FRAM-based components are used in many industries such as aerospace, motorsports, and biomedicine, where the weight, strength, and complexity of parts are critical. Hence, numerous industrial companies and research facilities are investigating the implementation and adaptation of FRAM to their requirements. Studies are generally conducted on new materials, new FRAM technologies, the effect of fiber orientations and fraction on the performance of parts, improving the printing parameters, and other subjects. Furthermore, this study reports the current trends and challenges that FRAM is bringing to AM ecosystem.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

CyclusJS: A Distributed Web-based Fuel Cycle Visual Analytics. Research Performance (Final Report)

The overall aim of the CyclusJS project has been to design novel approaches that support fuel cycle simulations and empower decision-makers and researchers with better tools to compare and contrast results from multiple simulations to understand the landscape of potential outcomes better. In particular, nuclear fuel cycle simulations focus on modeling the nuclear industry and ecosystem at a macroscopic level, and the analysis tools connect such simulations with decision support systems. As a demonstration of the novelty and effectiveness of the proposed approach, we study scenarios for transitioning from one technology, Light Water Reactors (LWR), to a newer Sodium-cooled Fast breeder Reactor (SFR) technology.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Regional Energy Hardware Innovation Accelerator

E4 Carolinas, Inc., along with the Joules Accelerator and Savannah River National Laboratory received a grant from the DOE Office of Technology Commercialization as part of its Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC) program to develop a Regional Energy Hardware Innovation Accelerator. The project objective was to create a regional energy hardware cluster innovation and accelerator ecosystem (Accelerator) to enhance commercialization opportunities for U.S. energy startups (Ventures) and Corporate Ventures (a new venture originating within an established company).

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Recent Advances in Assessing Environmental Effects of Marine Renewable Energy Around the World

Marine renewable energy (MRE) is increasingly of interest to coastal nations as a source of renewable energy that can support climate change mitigation goals as well as provide secure locally-produced energy for coastal and island communities. MRE extracts power from tidal streams, waves, ocean currents, run of rivers, and gradients in the ocean, with specialized devices developed and tested for each energy resource. Alongside development of MRE technologies and systems, first in Europe and then in North America, Australia, Asia, and other regions, it has been universally recognized that there is also a need to examine potential effects on marine animals, habitats, ecosystem processes, local communities and other sea users, to ensure that the MRE industry can be developed in a responsible and sustainable manner. This paper looks at the status of assessment and monitoring for potential environmental effects associated with MRE projects around the world. Over 80 projects were identified worldwide as having been tested, demonstrated, or commercially deployed with associated environmental monitoring. Five of the projects that represent tidal stream, wave, and run of river projects are examined in more detail to determine the types of data and information collected for those projects, the outputs of the monitoring campaigns, and the actions taken as a result of the data collection and analysis. Recommendations are provided for standardization of the monitoring approaches, instruments, and analysis methods at MRE project sites worldwide.

marine renewable energy, environmental effects, ri↗
NASA NTRS2000

BOREAS Landsat MSS Imagery: Digital Counts

The Boreal Ecosystem-Atmospheric Study (BOREAS) Staff Science Satellite Data Acquisition Program focused on providing the research teams with the remotely sensed satellite data products they needed to compare and spatially extend point results. The Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) Program launched the first of a series of satellites (ERTS-1) in 1972. Part of the NASA Earth Resources Survey Program, the ERTS Program and the ERTS satellites were later renamed Landsat to better represent the civil satellite program's prime emphasis on remote sensing of land resources. Landsat satellites 1 through 5 carry the Multispectral Scanner (MSS) sensor. Canada for Remote Sensing (CCRS) and BOREAS personnel gathered a set of MSS images of the BOREAS region from Landsat satellites 1, 2, 4, and 5 covering the dates of 21 Aug 1972 to 05 Sep 1988. The data are provided in binary image format files of various formats. The Landsat MSS imagery is available from the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).

Hall, Forrest G.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Building a Bilingual Google Earth Engine Dashboard to Increase Accessibility to Long-term Time Series Remote Sensing Data for Monitoring Saline System Changes in Chile’s Atacama Desert

Saline systems, consisting of salt flats, ponds, and marshes, provide vital water resources to wildlife and communities in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest regions in the world. Mining is extensive in the Atacama, which contains 30% of the world’s lithium reserves and is abundant in potassium and boron. The groundwater that feeds into salt marshes and ponds is extracted in large volumes for mining operations, limiting the availability of water for ecosystems. However, identifying long-term and large-scale environmental impacts from local lithium mining on the saline systems is limited by region inaccessibility and terrain variability. Open access satellite imagery and cloud computing technology has made studying Atacama saline systems feasible and allowed for collaboration across different agencies and countries. The NASA DEVELOP Program partnered with Chile’s la Universidad de La Serena and Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería (SERNAGEOMIN) to create the Saline Analysis Tool (SalT) in Google Earth Engine (GEE). SalT is used to analyze the extent and distribution of remote saline systems in the Atacama from 1986 to the present day. The tool filters Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) data from GEE’s data catalog and creates a single composite image per year for analysis. Additional output analyses include land cover classification, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) raster images that can be displayed on the map interface or exported. The tool can also generate time-lapse videos and charts displaying NDVI, NDWI, and land cover over time. A key feature of the tool is the use of a bilingual graphical user interface to make analysis accessible and customizable to different users’ needs—SalT provides options to select an analysis area, analysis time period, and outputs to display or export. The tool also incorporates new Earth observations as they are added to GEE’s catalog. The ability to easily visualize and analyze long-term remote sensing imagery will enable SERNAGEOMIN and la Universidad de la Serena to continually monitor changes in these saline systems and inform future land management policy.

NASA DEVELOP↗
DOE OSTI2025

Land-based resources for engineered carbon dioxide removal in the United States exceed the expected needs

Gigatonne-scale atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR), alongside deep emission cuts, is critical to stabilizing the climate. However, some of the most scalable CDR technologies are also the most land intensive. Here, we examine whether adequate land resources exist in the contiguous United States to meet CDR targets when prioritizing grid emissions reduction, food production, and the protection of sensitive ecosystems. We focus on biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and direct air capture and storage (DACS) and show that suitable lands exceed the expected needs: 37.6 million hectares of land are available for BiCRS, resulting in 0.26 GtCO 2 of CDR/year, and 34 million hectares are suitable for wind- and solar-powered DACS, resulting in 4.8 GtCO 2 of CDR/year if facilities are co-located with geologic CO 2 storage. We identify biomass and energy supply hotspots to meet CDR targets while ensuring land protection and minimizing land competition.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Seeing the Disturbed Forest for the Trees: Remote Sensing Is Underutilized to Quantify Critical Zone Response to Unprecedented Disturbance

Understanding the severity and extent of near surface critical zone (CZ) disturbances and their ecosystem response is a pressing concern in the face of increasing human and natural disturbances. Predicting disturbance severity and recovery in a changing climate requires comprehensive understanding of ecosystem feedbacks among vegetation and the surrounding environment, including climate, hydrology, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry. Field surveys and satellite remote sensing have limited ability to effectively capture the spatial and temporal variability of disturbance and CZ properties. Technological advances in remote sensing using new sensors and new platforms have improved observations of changes in vegetation canopy structure and productivity; however, integrating measures of forest disturbance from various sensing platforms is complex. By connecting the potential for remote sensing technologies to observe different CZ disturbance vectors, we show that lower severity disturbance and slower vegetation recovery are more difficult to quantify. Case studies in montane forests from the western United States highlight new opportunities, including evaluating post-disturbance forest recovery at multiple scales, shedding light on understory vegetation regrowth, detecting specific physiological responses, and refining ecohydrological modeling. Learning from regional CZ disturbance case studies, we propose future directions to synthesize fragmented findings with (a) new data analysis using new or existing sensors, (b) data fusion across multiple sensors and platforms, (c) increasing the value of ground-based observations, (d) disturbance modeling, and (e) synthesis to improve understanding of disturbance.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Accounting for spectroscopic effects in laser‐based open‐path eddy covariance flux measurements

Abstract A significant portion of the production and consumption of trace gases (e.g. CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, NH 3 , etc.) by world ecosystems occurs in areas without sufficient infrastructure or easily available grid power to run traditional closed‐path flux stations. Open‐path analyzer design allows such measurements with power consumption 10–150 times below present closed‐path technologies, helping to considerably expand the global coverage and improve the estimates of gas emissions and budgets, informing the remote sensing and modeling communities and policy decisions, all the way to IPCC reports. Broad‐band nondispersive infrared devices have been used for open‐path CO 2 and H 2 O measurements since the late 1970s, but since recently, a growing number of new narrow‐band laser‐based instruments are being rapidly developed. The new design comes with its own challenges, specifically: (a) mirror contamination, and (b) uncontrolled air temperature, pressure and humidity, affecting both the gas density and the laser spectroscopy of the measurements. While the contamination can be addressed via automated cleaning, and density effects can be addressed via the Webb‐Pearman‐Leuning approach, the spectroscopic effects of the in situ temperature, pressure and humidity fluctuations on laser‐measured densities remain a standing methodological question. Here we propose a concept accounting for such effects in the same manner as Webb et al. proposed to account for respective density effects. Derivations are provided for a general case of flux of any gas, examined using a specific example of CH 4 fluxes from a commercially available analyzer, and then tested using “zero‐flux” experiment. The proposed approach helps reduce errors in open‐path, enclosed, and temperature‐ or pressure‐uncontrolled closed‐path laser‐based flux measurements due to the spectroscopic effects from few percents to multiple folds, leading to methodological advancement and geographical expansion of the use of such systems providing reliable and consistent results for process‐level studies, remote sensing and Earth modeling applications, and GHG policy decision‐making.

Burba, George↗
DOE OSTI2025

Data for "Land-based Resources for Engineered Carbon Dioxide Removal in the United States Exceed the Expected Needs"

Gigatonne-scale atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR), alongside deep emission cuts, is critical to stabilizing the climate. However, some of the most scalable CDR technologies are also the most land intensive. Here, we examine whether adequate land resources exist in the contiguous United States to meet CDR targets when prioritizing grid emissions reduction, food production, and the protection of sensitive ecosystems. We focus on biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and direct air capture and storage (DACS) and show that suitable lands exceed the expected needs: 37.6 million hectares of land are available for BiCRS, resulting in 0.26 GtCO2 of CDR/year, and 34 million hectares are suitable for wind- and solar-powered DACS, resulting in 4.8 GtCO2 of CDR/year if facilities are co-located with geologic CO2 storage. We identify biomass and energy supply hotspots to meet CDR targets while ensuring land protection and minimizing land competition.

carbon↗
DOE OSTI2019

Metagenomic Evaluation of Bacterial and Fungal Assemblages Enriched within Diffusion Chambers and Microbial Traps Containing Uraniferous Soils

Despite significant technological advancements in the field of microbial ecology, cultivation and subsequent isolation of the vast majority of environmental microorganisms continues to pose challenges. Isolation of the environmental microbiomes is prerequisite to better understand a myriad of ecosystem services they provide, such as bioremediation of contaminants. Towards this end, in this culturomics study, we evaluated the colonization of soil bacterial and fungal communities within diffusion chambers (DC) and microbial traps (MT) established using uraniferous soils collected from a historically contaminated soil from Aiken, USA. Microbial assemblages were compared between the DC and MT relative to the native soils using amplicon based metagenomic and bioinformatic analysis. The overall rationale of this study is that DC and MT growth chambers provide the optimum conditions under which desired microbiota, identified in a previous study to serve as the “core” microbiomes, will proliferate, leading to their successful isolation. Specifically, the core microbiomes consisted of assemblages of bacteria (Burkholderia spp.) and fungi (Penicillium spp.), respectively. The findings from this study further supported previous data such that the abundance and diversity of the desired “core” microbiomes significantly increased as a function of enrichments over three consecutive generations of DC and MT, respectively. Metagenomic analysis of the DC/MT generations also revealed that enrichment and stable populations of the desired “core” bacterial and fungal microbiomes develop within the first 20 days of incubation and the practice of subsequent transfers for second and third generations, as is standard in previous studies, may be unnecessary. As a cost and time cutting measure, this study recommends running the DC/MT chambers for only a 20-day time period, as opposed to previous studies, which were run for months. In summation, it was concluded that, using the diffusion chamber-based enrichment techniques, growth of desired microbiota possessing environmentally relevant functions can be achieved in a much shorter time frame than has been previously shown.

Jaswal, Rajneesh (ORCID:0000000217841805)↗
NASA NTRS2010

[Characterization of Black and Dichothrix Cyanobacteria Based on the 16S Ribosomal RNA Gene Sequence]

My project focuses on characterizing different cyanobacteria in thrombolitic mats found on the island of Highborn Cay, Bahamas. Thrombolites are interesting ecosystems because of the ability of bacteria in these mats to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mineralize it as calcium carbonate. In the future they may be used as models to develop carbon sequestration technologies, which could be used as part of regenerative life systems in space. These thrombolitic communities are also significant because of their similarities to early communities of life on Earth. I targeted two cyanobacteria in my research, Dichothrix spp. and whatever black is, since they are believed to be important to carbon sequestration in these thrombolitic mats. The goal of my summer research project was to molecularly identify these two cyanobacteria. DNA was isolated from each organism through mat dissections and DNA extractions. I ran Polymerase Chain Reactions (PCR) to amplify the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene in each cyanobacteria. This specific gene is found in almost all bacteria and is highly conserved, meaning any changes in the sequence are most likely due to evolution. As a result, the 16S rRNA gene can be used for bacterial identification of different species based on the sequence of their 16S rRNA gene. Since the exact sequence of the Dichothrix gene was unknown, I designed different primers that flanked the gene based on the known sequences from other taxonomically similar cyanobacteria. Once the 16S rRNA gene was amplified, I cloned the gene into specialized Escherichia coli cells and sent the gene products for sequencing. Once the sequence is obtained, it will be added to a genetic database for future reference to and classification of other Dichothrix sp.

Ortega, Maya↗
NASA NTRS2018

Growth-Adapted Tensegrity Structures: A New Calculus for the Space Economy

We describe a novel approach to create and engineer an economically viable space habitat development technology, for deployment of a lightweight tensegrity habitat structure orbiting at Earth-Moon L2, where onboard robotic assets will use space-based materials to provide water for shielding, irrigation and life support, soil for ecosystem development, and to enable structural maintenance and enhancement. The habitat can become a tourist destination, an economic hub, and a multi-purpose research and support facility for lunar surface development and space ecosystem life sciences.

Materials↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Arm DevSummit Keynote: Environment for Data Engineering in Virtual Reality: Ethical Considerations

Currently, the US Government is going through a large-scale data Transformation effort, where the GSA playbook is guiding all agencies to make their processes data-driven with the help of emerging technologies. To address concerns about algorithm sharing, AI adoption, and vendor lock-in, the NASA Langley Research Center Digital Transformation Group has developed the Environment for Data Engineering in Virtual Reality (EnDEVR), a data science ecosystem that allows users to command and investigate customizable data analyses from a VR environment. The system has been evaluated in the Oculus Rift S and Quest environments, two popular VR systems powered by the ARM architecture. Current and future development will employ several AI capabilities to guide research and automation within the environment and to facilitate algorithm sharing. In this talk, we will discuss the results of an initial ethical investigation and recommended considerations for the use of AI within the system.

Artificial Intelligence↗