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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.

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At least 595 records · Page 33
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1975

CARETS: A prototype regional environmental information system. Volume 9: Shore zone land use and land cover; Central Atlantic Regional Ecological Test Site

Anderson's 1972 United States Geological Survey classification in modified form was applied to the barrier-island coastline within the CARETS region. High-altitude, color-infrared photography of December, 1972, and January, 1973, served as the primary data base in this study. The CARETS shore zone studied was divided into six distinct geographical regions; area percentages for each class in the modified Anderson classification are presented. Similarities and differences between regions are discussed within the framework of man's modification of these landscapes. The results of this study are presented as a series of 19 maps of land-use categories. Recommendations are made for a remote-sensing system for monitoring the CARETS shore zone within the context of the dynamics of the landscapes studied.

Coastal ecosystems↗
NASA NTRS2000

New Human-Computer Interface Concepts for Mission Operations

The current climate of budget cuts has forced the space mission operations community to reconsider how it does business. Gone are the days of building one-of-kind control centers with teams of controllers working in shifts 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Increasingly, automation is used to significantly reduce staffing needs. In some cases, missions are moving towards lights-out operations where the ground system is run semi-autonomously. On-call operators are brought in only to resolve anomalies. Some operations concepts also call for smaller operations teams to manage an entire family of spacecraft. In the not too distant future, a skeleton crew of full-time general knowledge operators will oversee the operations of large constellations of small spacecraft, while geographically distributed specialists will be assigned to emergency response teams based on their expertise. As the operations paradigms change, so too must the tools to support the mission operations team's tasks. Tools need to be built not only to automate routine tasks, but also to communicate varying types of information to the part-time, generalist, or on-call operators and specialists more effectively. Thus, the proper design of a system's user-system interface (USI) becomes even more importance than before. Also, because the users will be accessing these systems from various locations (e.g., control center, home, on the road) via different devices with varying display capabilities (e.g., workstations, home PCs, PDAS, pagers) over connections with various bandwidths (e.g., dial-up 56k, wireless 9.6k), the same software must have different USIs to support the different types of users, their equipment, and their environments. In other words, the software must now adapt to the needs of the users! This paper will focus on the needs and the challenges of designing USIs for mission operations. After providing a general discussion of these challenges, the paper will focus on the current efforts of creatin(y an effective USI for one specific suite of tools, SERS (The Spacecraft Emergency Response System), which has been built to enable lights-out operations. SERS is a Web-based collaborative environment that enables secure distributed fault management.

Fox, Jeffrey A.↗
NASA NTRS1989

AVHRR image navigation - Summary and review

The navigation of imagery from polar orbiting weather satellites includes the correction for geometric distortions due to earth shape/earth rotation, satellite orbit variations, and satellite attitude along with the resampling of the satellite image to a selected geographic map projection. The routine image navigation procedure also compensates for the distortion of the satellite imagery due to the nonlinear scanning of the sensor system. This paper reviews general methods for performing this image navigation, ranging from a method that assumes no orbital information and, thus, relies on nominal orbital parameter values and image corrections computed by matching ground control points (GCPs), to a method that uses high-quality satellite ephemeris data to make the correction with a limited number of GCPs. A procedure to optimize the image navigation by using a spatial remapping, or interpolation, is introduced and outlined. Recommendations are made for people interested in the processing of AVHRR imagery.

Emery, William J.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Los Alamos Enterprise Analysis and Data System (LEADS)

The Los Alamos Enterprise Analysis and Data System (LEADS) is an integrated database system and analysis application used to examine the Laboratory’s assets and equities. The data mapping framework is structured to follow laboratory organizations, programs, geographical technical areas, and other functional groupings, such as facilities and equipment. LEADS application goal is to quantify the size and information related to the current condition of assets and equities. The data and inter-dependent relationships allow for insights and further analyses to be conducted of current program-of-records, the laboratory agenda, and “what-if” scenario studies. The understanding and the outputs of this application will support understanding of the laboratory’s current state, planning, and decision-making processes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

CERES ERBE-like Monthly Geographical Averages (ES-4) in HDF (CER_ES4_PFM+FM1_Edition2)

The ERBE-like Monthly Geographical Averages (ES-4) product contains a month of space and time averaged Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) data for a single scanner instrument. The ES-4 is also produced for combinations of scanner instruments. For each observed 2.5-degree spatial region, the daily average, the hourly average over the month, and the overall monthly average of shortwave and longwave fluxes at the Top-of-the-Atmosphere (TOA) from the CERES ES-9 product are spatially nested up from 2.5-degree regions to 5- and 10-degree regions, to 2.5-, 5-, and 10-degree zonal averages, and to global monthly averages. For each nested area, the albedo and net flux are given. For each region, the daily average flux is estimated from an algorithm that uses the available hourly data, scene identification data, and diurnal models. This algorithm is 'like' the algorithm used for the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE). The following CERES ES4 data sets are currently available: CER_ES4_FM1+FM2_Edition1 CER_ES4_PFM+FM1+FM2_Edition1 CER_ES4_PFM+FM1+FM2_Edition2 CER_ES4_PFM+FM1_Edition1 CER_ES4_PFM+FM2_Edition1 CER_ES4_TRMM-PFM_Edition1 CER_ES4_TRMM-PFM_Edition2 CER_ES4_Terra-FM1_Edition1 CER_ES4_Terra-FM2_Edition1 CER_ES4_FM1+FM2_Edition2 CER_ES4_Terra-FM1_Edition2 CER_ES4_Terra-FM2_Edition2 CER_ES4_Aqua-FM3_Edition1 CER_ES4_Aqua-FM4_Edition1 CER_ES4_FM1+FM2+FM3+FM4_Edition1 CER_ES4_Aqua-FM3_Edition2 CER_ES4_Aqua-FM4_Edition2 CER_ES4_FM1+FM3_Edition2 CER_ES4_FM1+FM4_Edition2 CER_ES4_PFM+FM1_Edition2 CER_ES4_PFM+FM2_Edition2 CER_ES4_Aqua-FM3_Edition1-CV CER_ES4_Aqua-FM4_Edition1-CV CER_ES4_Terra-FM1_Edition1-CV CER_ES4_Terra-FM2_Edition1-CV. [Location=GLOBAL] [Temporal_Coverage: Start_Date=1998-01-01; Stop_Date=2000-03-31] [Spatial_Coverage: Southernmost_Latitude=-90; Northernmost_Latitude=90; Westernmost_Longitude=-180; Easternmost_Longitude=180] [Data_Resolution: Latitude_Resolution=2.5 degree; Longitude_Resolution=2.5 degree; Horizontal_Resolution_Range=250 km - < 500 km or approximately 2.5 degrees - < 5.0 degrees; Temporal_Resolution=1 month; Temporal_Resolution_Range=Monthly - < Annual].

CLEAR-SKY ALBEDO↗
NASA NTRS1995

Alaska Humans Factors Safety Study: The Northern Area

At the request of the Alaska Air Carriers Association, researchers from the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, at NASA Ames Research Center, conducted a study on aspects of safety in Alaskan Part 135 air taxi operations. An interview form on human factors safety issues was created by a representative team from the FAA-Alaska, NTSB-Alaska, NASAASRS, and representatives of the Alaska Air Carriers Association which was subsequently used in the interviews of pilots and managers. Because of the climate and operational differences, the study was broken into two geographical areas, the southern coastal areas and the northern portion of the state. This presentation addresses the northern area, specifically: Bethel, Fairbanks, Nome, Kotzebue, and Barrow. The interview questions dealt with many of the potential pressures on pilots and managers associated with the daily air taxi operations in Alaska. The impact of the environmental factors such as the lack of available communication, navigation and weather information systems was evaluated. The results of this study will be used by government and industry working in Alaska. These findings will contribute important information on specific Alaska safety issues for eventual incorporation into training materials and policies that will help to assure the safe conduct of air taxi flights in Alaska.

Connell, Linda↗
NASA NTRS1975

Results of phase one of land use information Delphi study

The Land Use Management Information System (LUMIS) is being developed for the city portion of the Santa Monica mountains. LUMIS incorporates data developed from maps and aerial photos as well as traditional land based data associated with routine city and county record keeping activities and traditional census data. To achieve the merging of natural resource data with governmental data LUMIS is being designed in accordance with restrictions associated with two other land use information systems currently being constructed by Los Angeles city staff. The two city systems are LUPAMS (Land Use Planning and Management System) which is based on data recorded by the County Assessor's office for each individual parcel of land in the city, and Geo-BEDS, a geographically based environmental data system.

Paul, C. K.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optimal Electric Vehicle Charging and Discharging Strategies Under DER Compensation Programs: Preprint

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is becoming increasingly popular because of environmental concerns, the greater availability of models, and increased cost-competitiveness with gas vehicles. Because EVs have both charging and discharging capabilities, they provide great potential to help electric utilities with grid operation. When the grid demand is high, EVs can discharge to the grid to reduce the peak load, and vice versa; therefore, electric utilities have designed different policies to encourage EV charging station operators to charge or discharge at certain time periods. The New York State Public Service Commission established the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER), or the Value Stack, to compensate for energy created by distributed energy resources, including EVs. This paper presents an optimization-based approach to identify the "golden hours" and "golden spots," i.e., the effective time periods and geographic locations for EV charging station operators to charge or discharge under the VDER program that can provide them the highest benefit. The proposed methodology can be applied to other compensation mechanisms and distribution systems as well. By working with industry partner NineDot Energy, realistic charging station information is used in this study, and the proposed approach is tested on a distribution feeder. The results from this study can help electric utilities and EV charging station operators determine the ideal charging/discharging time and the ideal locations for the charging station(s) in their distribution systems to achieve maximized benefit.

electric vehicle↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Data Processing Pipeline To Extract A Knowledge Graph From Heterogeneous Data For Socio-technical Analysis Of Critical Infrastructure Influence

The code is written in Python and consists of the following pipeline that is implemented in Apache Airflow. This pipeline intends to understand the companies that are directly or indirectly involved with a type of critical infrastructure system at some point in that system's lifecycle. The pipeline takes a configuration file that specifies a list of initial companies to consider, a geographic region of interest, and a set of SEC form types as well as other data sources (e.g. CrunchBase) from which to extract entities and relations. There are four main components to this pipeline as currently implemented: Entity Extraction, Network Construction, Analysis, and Visualization. First, Entity Extraction, is implemented as the `topear-extract_organizations` Apache Airflow workflow. Given an initial query that specifies a geographic region of interest and a time interval, the software will extract CI facilities of interest and organizations that have a direct influence relationship to those facilities (e.g. ownership). During the course of the LDRD, we focused on Electric Vehicle charging stations and this information is available via the Department of Energy (DOE) database on fueling stations maintained by NREL. Within the context of the DOE CESER project, we have focused on Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). Second, the Network Extraction component will iteratively construct a social network graph given the set of organizations and people extracted in the previous step. Organizations (and eventually People if desired) are then fed as a query to the `topgear-construct_social_network` Apache Airflow workflow which given a set of initial companies and data sets (e.g. SEC EDGAR form types, OpenCorporates, Crunchbase). This Airflow workflow will iteratively query such data sources to discover relationships with new organizations and people. For example, this module can iteratively query SEC EDGAR for metadata that documents the number of each type of form for the given set of companies and their location. This forms metadata represents a catalog of data sources from SEC EDGAR for the extracted social network knowledge graph. The pipeline then downloads these forms from the website and saves them in a build directory for further processing. These documents are then parsed for entities and relations. Again, we note that in additional to SEC data sources, this step can also pull in information on organizations via API services such as CrunchBase and OpenCorporates or bulk data sources. At the end of this step, the resultant social network, the Critical Infrastructure network, and the edges that encode relationships between organizations and CI facilities, form the Adversarial Socio-Technical Network (ASTN) that informs the analysis. Third, the Analysis component processes these generated ASTN. Previously, that has included the ability to compare prevalence of different vendors for a given infrastructure component type across different regions as well as identify common public and private investors across those vendors. This was demonstrated for EV Charging Stations across several different metropolitan areas within an IEEE PES GridEdge publication. More recently, we have looked at ways to identify infrastructure owners and operators of BESS with the most nameplate capacity across different states as well as other indictors of risk resulting from changes in ownership over time. Finally, the Visualization component consists of an HTML/CSS/JS framework by which users can interact geospatial, operational, and organizational relationships across a given portfolio of Critical Infrastructure facilities. The objective is to provide a library of UI/UX modules that can be repurposed for stakeholder-specific dashboards. All of the modules are related via a common event model that enables UI actions in one view to percolate across the other views.

Weaver, Gabriel [Idaho National Laboratory (INL), ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Toward Improved Regional Hydrological Model Performance Using State-Of-The-Science Data-Informed Soil Parameters

Accurate soil moisture and streamflow data are an aspirational need of many hydrologically relevant fields. Model simulated soil moisture and streamflow hold promise but models require validation prior to application. Calibration methods are commonly used to improve model fidelity but misrepresentation of the true dynamics remains a challenge. In this study, we leverage soil parameter estimates from the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database and the probability mapping of SSURGO (POLARIS) to improve the representation of hydrologic processes in the Weather Research and Forecasting Hydrological modeling system (WRF-Hydro) over a central California domain. Our results show WRF-Hydro soil moisture exhibits increased correlation coefficients ( r ), reduced biases, and increased Kling-Gupta Efficiencies (KGEs) across seven in situ soil moisture observing stations after updating the model's soil parameters according to POLARIS. Compared to four well-established soil moisture data sets including Soil Moisture Active Passive data and three Phase 2 North American Land Data Assimilation System land surface models, our POLARIS-adjusted WRF-Hydro simulations produce the highest mean KGE (0.69) across the seven stations. More importantly, WRF-Hydro streamflow fidelity also increases, especially in the case where the model domain is set up with SSURGO-informed total soil thickness. The magnitude and timing of peak flow events are better captured, r increases across nine United States Geological Survey stream gages, and the mean KGE across seven of the nine gages increases from 0.12 to 0.66. Our pre-calibration parameter estimate approach, which is transferable to other spatially distributed hydrological models, can substantially improve a model's performance, helping reduce calibration efforts and computational costs.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2011

Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) Pressurized Excursion Module (PEM) Systems Integration Strategy

The Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) project team constructed an analog prototype lunar surface laboratory called the Pressurized Excursion Module (PEM). The prototype unit subsystems were integrated in a short amount of time, utilizing a rapid prototyping approach that brought together over 20 habitation-related technologies from a variety of NASA centers. This paper describes the system integration strategies and lessons learned, that allowed the PEM to be brought from paper design to working field prototype using a multi-center team. The system integration process was based on a rapid prototyping approach. Tailored design review and test and integration processes facilitated that approach. The use of collaboration tools including electronic tools as well as documentation enabled a geographically distributed team take a paper concept to an operational prototype in approximately one year. One of the major tools used in the integration strategy was a coordinated effort to accurately model all the subsystems using computer aided design (CAD), so conflicts were identified before physical components came together. A deliberate effort was made following the deployment of the HDU PEM for field operations to collect lessons learned to facilitate process improvement and inform the design of future flight or analog versions of habitat systems. Significant items within those lessons learned were limitations with the CAD integration approach and the impact of shell design on flexibility of placing systems within the HDU shell.

Gill, Tracy↗
NASA NTRS2012

Recent Upgrades to NASA SPoRT Initialization Datasets for the Environmental Modeling System

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center has developed several products for its National Weather Service (NWS) partners that can initialize specific fields for local model runs within the NOAA/NWS Science and Training Resource Center (STRC) Environmental Modeling System (EMS). In last year's NWA abstract on this topic, the suite of SPoRT products supported in the STRC EMS was presented, which includes a Sea Surface Temperature (SST) composite, a Great Lakes sea-ice extent, a Green Vegetation Fraction (GVF) composite, and NASA Land Information System (LIS) gridded output. This abstract and companion presentation describes recent upgrades made to the SST and GVF composites, as well as the real-time LIS runs. The Great Lakes sea-ice product is unchanged from 2011. The SPoRT SST composite product has been expanded geographically and as a result, the resolution has been coarsened from 1 km to 2 km to accommodate the larger domain. The expanded domain covers much of the northern hemisphere from eastern Asia to western Europe (0 N to 80 N latitude and 150 E to 10 E longitude). In addition, the NESDIS POES-GOES product was added to fill in gaps caused by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) being unable to sense in cloudy regions, replacing the recently-lost Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS with negligible change to product fidelity. The SST product now runs twice per day for Terra and Aqua combined data collections from 0000 to 1200 UTC and from 1200 to 0000 UTC, with valid analysis times at 0600 and 1800 UTC. The twice-daily compositing technique reduces the overall latency of the previous version while still representing the diurnal cycle characteristics. The SST composites are available at approximately four hours after the end of each collection period (i.e. 1600 UTC for the nighttime analysis and 0400 UTC for the daytime analysis). The real-time MODIS GVF composite has only received minor updates in the past year. The domain was expanded slightly to extend further west, north, and east to improve coverage over parts of southern Canada. Minor adjustments were also made to the manner in which GVF is calculated from the distribution of maximum Normalized Difference Vegetation Index from MODIS. The presentation will highlight some examples of the substantial inter-annual change in GVF that occurred from 2010 to 2011 in the U.S. Southern Plains as a result of the summer 2011 drought, and the early vegetation green up across the eastern U.S. due to the very warm conditions in March 2012. Finally, the SPoRT LIS runs the operational Noah land surface model (LSM) in real time over much of the eastern half of the CONUS. The Noah LSM is continually cycled in real time, uncoupled to any model, and driven by operational atmospheric analyses over a long-term, multi-year integration. The LIS-Noah provides the STRC EMS with high-resolution (3 km) LSM initialization data that are in equilibrium with the operational analysis forcing. The Noah LSM within the SPoRT LIS has been upgraded from version 2.7.1 to version 3.2, which has improved look-up table attributes for several land surface quantities. The surface albedo field is now being adjusted based on the input real-time MODIS GVF, thereby improving the net radiation. Also, the LIS-Noah now uses the newer MODIS-based land use classification scheme (i.e. the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme [IGBP]) that has a better depiction of urban corridors in areas where urban sprawl has occurred. STRC EMS users interested in initializing their LSM fields with high-resolution SPoRT LIS data should set up their model domain with the MODIS-IGBP 20-class land use database and select Noah as the LSM.

Case, Jonathan L.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Using NASA LANCE Near Real-Time Earth Observations for Disaster Risk Reduction

The NASA Earth Science Disasters Program handles requests from stakeholders and provides rapid response for Disaster Risk Reduction using Near Real-Time (NRT) products from NASA’s Land, Atmosphere NRT Capability for Earth Observing System (EOS) (LANCE). The combination of all available LANCE NRT satellite products provides global coverage at multiple times per day, which makes it possible to help users in different phases of the disaster’s life cycle. For wildfires and volcano eruption disasters, LANCE NRT fire and atmosphere products have been used to locate fires and high-temperature heat sources, and to assess the extent of air pollutions. Knowledge of the geographical position and direction of smokes, fires, lava flows provided critical information for disaster prediction and prevention. For hurricanes, tropical cyclones and earthquakes, LANCE global flood products and NASA’s Black Marble night-time light products have been used for monitoring land cover and land use change over time in disaster impacted areas. Users can use pre- and post-disaster maps to assess the extent of damage, and to make decisions for activities in reconstruction and recovery in infrastructure and health on the ground. LANCE NRT data are made available through the Earth data website and have been archived and visualized in NASA Disasters Mapping Portal, NASA LANCE Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) and NASA Worldview for the use of stakeholders.

Tian Yao↗
NASA NTRS1995

Alaska Humans Factors Safety Study: The Southern Coastal Area

At the request of the Alaska Air Carriers Association, researchers from the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, at NASA Ames Research Center, conducted a study on aspects of safety in Alaskan Part 135 air taxi operations. An interview form on human factors safety issues was created by a representative team from the FAA-Alaska, NTSB-Alaska, NASA-ASRS, and representatives of the Alaska Air Carriers Association which was subsequently used in the interviews of pilots and managers. Because of the climate and operational differences, the study was broken into two geographical areas, the southern coastal areas and the northern portion of the state. This presentation addresses the southern coastal areas, specifically: Anchorage, Dillingham, King Salmon, Kodiak, Cold Bay, Juneau, and Ketchikan. The interview questions dealt with many of the potential pressures on pilots and managers associated with the daily air taxi operations in Alaska. The impact of the environmental factors such as the lack of available communication, navigation and weather information systems was evaluated. The results of this study will be used by government and industry working in Alaska. These findings will contribute important information on specific Alaska safety issues for eventual incorporation into training materials and policies that will help to assure the safe conduct of air taxi flights in Alaska.

Chappell, Sheryl L.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Sensible Success

Commercial remote sensing uses satellite imagery to provide valuable information about the planet's features. By capturing light reflected from the Earth's surface with cameras or sensor systems, usually mounted on an orbiting satellite, data is obtained for business enterprises with an interest in land feature distribution. Remote sensing is practical when applied to large-area coverage, such as agricultural monitoring, regional mapping, environmental assessment, and infrastructure planning. For example, cellular service providers use satellite imagery to select the most ideal location for a communication tower. Crowsey Incorporated has the ability to use remote sensing capabilities to conduct spatial geographic visualizations and other remote-sensing services. Presently, the company has found a demand for these services in the area of litigation support. By using spatial information and analyses, Crowsey helps litigators understand and visualize complex issues and then to communicate a clear argument, with complete indisputable evidence. Crowsey Incorporated is a proud partner in NASA's Mississippi Space Commerce Initiative, with research offices at the John C. Stennis Space Center.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2020

A data-driven mobility–energy typology framework for New York State

Exploring multidimensional aspects of differences in technology adoption, travel, and vehicle ownership across settlement types can help inform energy-efficient and affordable mobility system goals. Concurrently, mapping key enablers, barriers, and risks for successfully meeting ambitious goals and targets (e.g. by geography, age, income, education, population density) offer important explanatory power as to context-specific challenges and opportunities. This paper explores how a highly geographically resolved understanding of social, economic, techno-infrastructural, environmental, and governance (SET EG) factors shape variations in technology adoption and associated mobility and energy outcomes in diverse communities of New York State, in terms of electric vehicle adoption rates, alternative commute mode choices, vehicles per household, and vehicle fuel economy. Results indicate the range of two to three times higher adoption rates for electric vehicles by more highly educated, wealthier, “Core Urban” populations relative to the other identified typologies, given the labels “Rural”, “Suburban”, and “Urban” populations. Additionally, commute mode choice is closely linked with population and employment density—more than 89% of Core Urbanites use transit or active modes, compared with just 26% and 18% of Suburban and Rural residents, respectively. Household vehicle ownership varies from approximately 1.9 vehicles per household in Rural areas to only 0.6 in Core Urban settings. Findings on differences among the four settlement types, which go beyond simply rural to urban contexts, suggest an important need to explore how best to manage and anticipate very different types of services that may be supportive in achieving energy-efficient and affordable mobility systems statewide.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2010

Life Sciences Data Archives (LSDA) in the Post-Shuttle Era

Now, more than ever before, NASA is realizing the value and importance of their intellectual assets. Principles of knowledge management-the systematic use and reuse of information, experience, and expertise to achieve a specific goal-are being applied throughout the agency. LSDA is also applying these solutions, which rely on a combination of content and collaboration technologies, to enable research teams to create, capture, share, and harness knowledge to do the things they do well, even better. In the early days of spaceflight, space life sciences data were collected and stored in numerous databases, formats, media-types and geographical locations. These data were largely unknown/unavailable to the research community. The Biomedical Informatics and Health Care Systems Branch of the Space Life Sciences Directorate at JSC and the Data Archive Project at ARC, with funding from the Human Research Program through the Exploration Medical Capability Element, are fulfilling these requirements through the systematic population of the Life Sciences Data Archive. This project constitutes a formal system for the acquisition, archival and distribution of data for HRP-related experiments and investigations. The general goal of the archive is to acquire, preserve, and distribute these data and be responsive to inquiries for the science communities. Information about experiments and data, as well as non-attributable human data and data from other species' are available on our public Web site http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov. The Web site also includes a repository for biospecimens, and a utilization process. NASA has undertaken an initiative to develop a Shuttle Data Archive repository. The Shuttle program is nearing its end in 2010 and it is critical that the medical and research data related to the Shuttle program be captured, retained, and usable for research, lessons learned, and future mission planning. Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. LSDA works with the HRP community of practice to ensure that we are preserving the relevant research and data they need in the LSDA repository. An evidence-based approach to risk management is required in space life sciences. Evidence changes over time. LSDA has a pilot project with Collexis, a new type of Web-based search engine. Collexis differentiates itself from full-text search engines by making use of thesauri for information retrieval. The high-quality search is based on semantics that have been defined in a life sciences ontology. Additionally, Collexis' matching technology is unique, allowing discovery of partially matching dicuments. Users do not have to construct a complicated (Boolean) search query, but can simply enter a free text search without the risk of getting "no results". Collexis may address these issues by virtue of its retrieval and discovery capabilities across multiple repositories.

Fitts, Mary A.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Mapping brucellosis risk in Kenya and its implications for control strategies in sub-Saharan Africa

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), effective brucellosis control is limited, in part, by the lack of long-term commitments by governments to control the disease and the absence of reliable national human and livestock population-based data to inform policies. Therefore, we conducted a study to establish the national prevalence and develop a risk map for Brucella spp. in cattle to contribute to plans to eliminate the disease in Kenya by the year 2040. We randomly generated 268 geolocations and distributed them across Kenya, proportionate to the area of each of the five agroecological zones and the associated cattle population. Cattle herds closest to each selected geolocation were identified for sampling. Up to 25 cattle were sampled per geolocation and a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to their owners. We tested 6,593 cattle samples for Brucella immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies using an Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). We assessed potential risk factors and performed spatial analyses and prevalence mapping using approximate Bayesian inference implemented via the integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) method. The national Brucella spp. prevalence was 6.8% (95% CI: 6.2–7.4%). Exposure levels varied significantly between agro-ecological zones, with a high of 8.5% in the very arid zone with the lowest agricultural potential relative to a low of 0.0% in the agro-alpine zone with the highest agricultural potential. Additionally, seroprevalence increased with herd size, and the odds of seropositivity were significantly higher for females and adult animals than for males or calves. Similarly, animals with a history of abortion, or with multiple reproductive syndromes had higher seropositivity than those without. At the herd level, the risk of Brucella spp. transmission was higher in larger herds, and herds with a history of reproductive problems such as abortion, giving birth to weak calves, or having swollen testes. Geographic localities with high Brucella seroprevalence occurred in northern, eastern, and southern regions of Kenya all primarily characterized by semi-arid or arid agro-ecological zones dominated by livestock pastoralism interspersed with vast areas with mixed livestock-wildlife systems. The large spatial extent of our survey provides compelling evidence for the widespread geographical distribution of brucellosis risk across Kenya in a manner easily understandable for policymakers. Our findings can provide a basis for risk-stratified pilot studies aiming to investigate the cost-effectiveness and efficacy of singular and combined preventive intervention strategies that seek to inform Kenya’s Brucellosis Control Policy.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗