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At least 73 records · Page 4

STS-76 Flight Day 4

On this fourth day of the STS-76 mission, the flight crew, Cmdr. Kevin P. Chilton, Pilot Richard A. Searfoss, and Mission Specialists Shannon W. Lucid, Linda M. Godwin, Michael R. Clifford, and Ronald M. Sega, are shown performing various experiments on the Middeck and transferring supplies to the Mir Space Station. Godwin explains the European Space Agency (ESA) Biorack investigations. Chilton, Lucid and Mir Cmdr. Yuri Onufrienko talk with NASA Administrator Dan Goldin via satellite link. Lucid will be joining the cosmonauts, Onufrienko and Flight Engineer Yuri Usachev, for a 140-day mission on Mir.

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Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology

Spacewalkers enjoy a view of Earth once reserved for Apollo, Zeus, and other denizens of Mt. Olympus. During humanity's first extravehicular activity (EVA), Alexei Leonov floated above Gibraltar, the rock ancient seafarers saw as the gateway to the great unknown Atlantic. The symbolism was clear, Leonov stepped past a new Gibraltar when he stepped into space. More than 32 years and 154 EVAs later, Jerry Linenger conducted an EVA with Vladimir Tsibliyev as part of International Space Station Phase 1. They floated together above Gibraltar. Today the symbolism has new meaning: humanity is starting to think of stepping out of Earth orbit, space travel's new Gibraltar, and perhaps obtaining a new olympian view, a close-up look at Olympus Mons on Mars. Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology chronicles the 154 EVAs conducted from March 1965 to April 1997. It is intended to make clear the crucial role played by EVA in the history of spaceflight, as well as to chronicle the large body of EVA "lessons learned." Russia and the U.S. define EVA differently. Russian cosmonauts are said to perform EVA any time they are in vacuum in a space suit. A U.S. astronaut must have at least his head outside his spacecraft before he is said to perform an EVA. The difference is based in differing spacecraft design philoso- phies. Russian and Soviet spacecraft have always had a specialized airlock through which the EVA cosmonaut egressed, leaving the main habitable volume of the spacecraft pressurized. The U.S. Gemini and Apollo vehicles, on the other hand, depressurized their entire habitable volume for egress. In this document, we apply the Russian definition to Russian EVAS, and the U.S. definition to U.S. EVAS. Thus, for example, Gemini 4 Command Pilot James McDivitt does not share the honor of being first American spacewalker with Ed White, even though he was suited and in vacuum when White stepped out into space. Non-EVA spaceflights are listed in the chronology to provide context and to display the large num- ber of flights in which EVA played a role. This approach also makes apparent significant EVA gaps, for example, the U.S. gap between 1985 and 1991 following the Challenger accident. This NASA History Monograph is an edited extract from an extensive EVA Chronology and Reference Book being produced by the EVA Project Office, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. The larger work will be published as part of the NASA Formal Series in 1998. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance rendered by Max Ary, Ashot Bakunts, Gert-Jan Bartelds, Frank Cepollina, Andrew Chaikin, Phillip Clark, Richard Fullerton, Steven Glenn, Linda Godwin, Jennifer Green, Greg Harris, Clifford Hess, Jeffrey Hoffman, David Homan, Steven Hopkins, Nicholas Johnson, Eric Jones, Neville Kidger, Joseph Kosmo, Alexei Lebedev, Mark Lee, James LeBlanc, Dmitri Leshchenskii, Jerry Linenger, Igor Lissov, James McBarron, Clay McCullough, Joseph McMann, Story Musgrave, Dennis Newkirk, James Oberg, Joel Powell, Lee Saegesser, Andy Salmon, Glen Swanson, Joseph Tatarewicz, Kathy Thornton, Chris Vandenberg, Charles Vick, Bert Vis, David Woods, Mike Wright, John Young, and Keith Zimmerman. Special thanks to Laurie Buchanan, John Charles, Janet Kovacevich, Joseph Loftus, Sue McDonald, Martha Munies, Colleen Rapp, and Jerry Ross. Any errors remain the responsibility of the authors.

Portree, David S. F.

Third Annual HEDS-UP Forum

The HEDS-UP (Human Exploration and Development of Space-University Partners) program has been instituted to build new relationships between university faculty and students and NASA in support of the Human Exploration and Development of Space. The program provides a mechanism whereby university students can explore problems of interest to NASA through student design projects, led by a university professor or mentor, and aided by the HEDSUP staff. HEDS-UP advises on the type of project that is of interest and provides contacts to NASA and industry professionals who may serve as mentors to the student project. Students become acquainted with objectives, strategies, development issues, and technologic characteristics of space exploration programs. In doing so, they are preparing themselves for future engineering challenges and may well find that the program is on their critical path to professional advancement. Many of the ideas are novel and are of interest to NASA. Industry finds in HEDS-UP a mechanism to meet many bright and enthusiastic students who are about to enter the work force. The universities become more involved with space exploration and the students are encouraged to include an outreach element in their work, to bring their efforts and their excitement to others in their universities or in their communities. The climax of the HEDS-UP program each year is the HEDS-UP Forum, held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Here, the university teams bring their projects - written reports, oral reports, models, prototypes, and experiment demonstrations - to show to one another and to NASA and industry participants. NASA, industry, and academic professionals present discussions of problems of current interest to space exploration. All meet informally around the posters that each of the teams brings to the Forum. This year the HEDS-UP Forum was held May 4-5 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Thirteen university teams from twelve universities participated. Eleven teams were undergraduate teams; two were composed of graduate students. Each team contributed a 20-page written report, and these reports are reproduced in this volume. The specially invited NASA presenters included Mr. John Connolly, Dr. David McKay and Dr. Donald Henninger of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Dr. Paul Spudis and Dr. Steve Clifford of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and Dr. Pascal Lee of the NASA Ames Research Center.

Duke, Michael B.

STS-53 TCDT Training and Press Q&A at Pad A

Footage shows the training activities for the crew of STS-53 (Commander David M. Walker, Pilot Robert D. Cabana, and Mission Specialists Guion S. Bluford, James S. Voss, and Michael R. Clifford), including Emergency Egress Training. Commander Walker introduces the crew and they answer questions from the press.

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STS-53 TCDT O&C Exit

Footage shows the crew of STS-53 (Commander David M. Walker, Pilot Robert D. Cabana, and Mission Specialists Guion S. Bluford, James S. Voss, and Michael R. Clifford) leaving the Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building during the Terminal Countdown and Demonstration Test (TCDT).

Source record

STS-53 TCDT Activities

The crew of STS-53, Commander David M. Walker, Pilot Robert D. Cabana, and Mission Specialists Guion S. Bluford, James S. Voss, and Michael R. Clifford, is seen during Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT) activities. Included is footage of Emergency Egress Training and a press question and answer session.

Source record

STS-59 Crew Arrival

The crew of STS-59, Commander Sidney M. Gutierrez, Pilot Kevin P. Chilton, Payload Commander Linda M. Godwin, and Mission Specialists Jay Apt, Michael R. Clifford, and Thomas D. Jones, emerge from several T-38 aircraft. Commander Gutierrez introduces the crew and they each make a brief statement about the upcoming Endeavour mission.

Source record

Evaluating Putative Shoreline Adjacent to the Dichotomy Boundary near Arabia Terra

In 1989, Parker et al. identified two geologic contacts, Contact #1 and Contact #2, which they believed demarcated two distinct highstands of a global ocean ponded within the northern lowlands. Since then, Clifford and Parker presented new nomenclature for Contact #1 and Contact #2, now known as the Arabia and Deuteronilus trends, respectively. To date, a total of nine putative shorelines have been identified by Parker et al., who categorized both global and regional scale trends. Our approx. 400,000 sq km study area is just north of Arabia Terra, contiguous to the dichotomy boundary and centered on Cydonia Mensae. It is significant in further testing the shoreline hypothesis because it contains both the global scale trends Arabia and Deuteronilus, along with a regional trend known as Acidalia.

Valeri E Webb

A Radiation Chemistry Code Based on the Greens Functions of the Diffusion Equation

Ionizing radiation produces several radiolytic species such as.OH, e-aq, and H. when interacting with biological matter. Following their creation, radiolytic species diffuse and chemically react with biological molecules such as DNA. Despite years of research, many questions on the DNA damage by ionizing radiation remains, notably on the indirect effect, i.e. the damage resulting from the reactions of the radiolytic species with DNA. To simulate DNA damage by ionizing radiation, we are developing a step-by-step radiation chemistry code that is based on the Green's functions of the diffusion equation (GFDE), which is able to follow the trajectories of all particles and their reactions with time. In the recent years, simulations based on the GFDE have been used extensively in biochemistry, notably to simulate biochemical networks in time and space and are often used as the "gold standard" to validate diffusion-reaction theories. The exact GFDE for partially diffusion-controlled reactions is difficult to use because of its complex form. Therefore, the radial Green's function, which is much simpler, is often used. Hence, much effort has been devoted to the sampling of the radial Green's functions, for which we have developed a sampling algorithm This algorithm only yields the inter-particle distance vector length after a time step; the sampling of the deviation angle of the inter-particle vector is not taken into consideration. In this work, we show that the radial distribution is predicted by the exact radial Green's function. We also use a technique developed by Clifford et al. to generate the inter-particle vector deviation angles, knowing the inter-particle vector length before and after a time step. The results are compared with those predicted by the exact GFDE and by the analytical angular functions for free diffusion. This first step in the creation of the radiation chemistry code should help the understanding of the contribution of the indirect effect in the formation of DNA damage and double-strand breaks.

Plante, Ianik

Positron emission tomography harmonization in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative: A scalable and rigorous approach to multisite amyloid and tau quantification

Abstract INTRODUCTION A key goal of the Alzheimer's Disease NeuroImaging Initiative (ADNI) positron emission tomography (PET) Core is to harmonize quantification of β‐amyloid (Aβ) and tau PET image data across multiple scanners and tracers. METHODS We developed an analysis pipeline (Berkeley PET Imaging Pipeline, B‐PIP) for ADNI Aβ and tau PET images and applied it to PET data from other multisite studies. Steps include image pre‐processing, refacing, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/PET co‐registration, visual quality control (QC), quantification of tracer uptake, and standardization of Aβ and tau standardized uptake value ratios (SUVrs) across tracers. RESULTS Measurements from 10,105 cross‐sectional and longitudinal Aβ and tau PET scans acquired in several studies between 2010 and 2024 can be processed, harmonized, and directly merged across tracers and cohorts. DISCUSSION The B‐PIP developed in ADNI is a scalable image harmonization approach used in several observational studies and clinical trials that facilitates rigorous Aβ and tau PET quantification and data sharing. Highlights Quantitative results from ADNI Aβ and tau PET data are generated using a rigorous, scalable image processing pipeline This pipeline has been applied to PET data from several other large, multisite studies and trials Quantitative outcomes are harmonizable across studies and are shared with the scientific community

Neurosciences & Neurology

Regional Earthquake Ground Motion Simulations for Southern California With EQSIM: Insights From the 2008 Chino Hills, 2024 Highland Park, and 2021 Carson Earthquakes

This study presents physics-based, 3D simulations using the EQSIM framework for several earthquakes in the Los Angeles region. The primary objective was to assess the ability of deterministic physics-based ground motion simulations to reproduce the observed motions from historical events. The selected events included the mathematical equation M w 5.4 2008 Chino Hills, the mathematical equation M w 4.4 2024 Highland Park, and the mathematical equation M w 4.3 2021 Carson events. The simulated motions were evaluated by comparing the recorded and simulated seismograms, as well as the Fourier amplitude spectra, across multiple seismic stations. The SCEC 3D velocity model, CVM-S4.26.M01, was used to represent the regional geology, and ground motion simulations were carried out with a resolution of up to 5 Hz. The results indicate that the simulated motions captured the recorded motions up to approximately 4 Hz. While careful iterations regarding source parameters and corner frequencies were required, and, for the case of the Highland Park event, some of the near-source stations had relatively low accuracy, the present study established a positive step toward the utilization of physics-based simulations in practical applications. The computational efficiencies exhibited by EQSIM, especially on GPU clusters, further supported this assertion, as wall-clock times of simulations involving more than 10 billion grid points were as low as mathematical equation minutes. This permits ensemble simulations for a considered scenario event so that modeling uncertainties (e.g., source and geology) can be bracketed.

EQSIM

Extended JT supergravity and random matrix models: The power of the string equation

A number of supersymmetric Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) gravity theories are known to be described (in the Euclidean path integral formulation) by double-scaled random matrix models. Such matrix models can be characterized using a certain “string equation”. It was shown recently that in extended supergravity, when the number of BPS states scales as e$^{S_0}$, where $S_0$ is the extremal entropy, a special ansatz for the leading order solution of the string equation yields the supergravity spectrum. Somewhat miraculously, the construction showed that the functional form of the non-BPS (continuum) sector predicts the precise form of the BPS sector, showing the robustness of the supergravity/matrix-model correspondence. In this paper, we refine the analysis and show that the string equation, combined with some simple requirements on solutions, are powerful tools for constraining the spectrum of extended JT supergravity theories. We re-explore the cases of $\mathcal{N} = 2$ and (small) $\mathcal{N} = 4$ JT supergravity, and then explore the new cases of spectra from $\mathcal{N} = 3$ and $\mathcal{N} = 4$ large JT supergravity (recently derived by Heydeman, Shi, and Turiaci) showing that our approach also works naturally for (nearly) all the models. Based on this success, we conjecture that these new supergravity models also have matrix model descriptions.

Extended Supersymmetry

Gravitational scattering and beyond from extreme mass ratio effective field theory

We explore a recently proposed effective field theory describing electromagnetically or gravitationally interacting massive particles in an expansion about their mass ratio, also known as the self-force (SF) expansion. By integrating out the deviation of the heavy particle about its inertial trajectory, we obtain an effective action whose only degrees of freedom are the lighter particle together with the photon or graviton, all propagating in a Coulomb or Schwarzschild background. The 0SF dynamics are described by the usual background field method, which at 1SF is supplemented by a “recoil operator” that encodes the wobble of the heavy particle, and similarly computable corrections appearing at 2SF and higher. Our formalism exploits the fact that the analytic expressions for classical backgrounds and particle trajectories encode dynamical information to all orders in the couplings, and from them we extract multiloop integrands for perturbative scattering. As a check, we study the two-loop classical scattering of scalar particles in electromagnetism and gravity, verifying known results. We then present new calculations for the two-loop classical scattering of dyons, and of particles interacting with an additional scalar or vector field coupling directly to the lighter particle but only gravitationally to the heavier particle.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS

Generalized symmetry in dynamical gravity

We explore generalized symmetry in the context of nonlinear dynamical gravity. Our basic strategy is to transcribe known results from Yang-Mills theory directly to gravity via the tetrad formalism, which recasts general relativity as a gauge theory of the local Lorentz group. By analogy, we deduce that gravity exhibits a one-form symmetry implemented by an operator U α labeled by a center element α of the Lorentz group and associated with a certain area measured in Planck units. The corresponding charged line operator W ρ is the holonomy in a spin representation ρ, which is the gravitational analog of a Wilson loop. The topological linking of U α and W ρ has an elegant physical interpretation from classical gravitation: the former materializes an exotic chiral cosmic string defect whose quantized conical deficit angle is measured by the latter. We verify this claim explicitly in an AdS-Schwarzschild black hole background. Notably, our conclusions imply that the standard model exhibits a new symmetry of nature at scales below the lightest neutrino mass. More generally, the absence of global symmetries in quantum gravity suggests that the gravitational one-form symmetry is either gauged or explicitly broken. The latter mandates the existence of fermions. Finally, we comment on generalizations to magnetic higher-form or higher-group gravitational symmetries.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS

Regularizing the linearly extrapolated BDF2 scheme for incompressible flows with time relaxation

This paper presents a highly-efficient finite element scheme for the time relaxation model (TRM). The efficiency is achieved through the second-order BDF2 time-stepping scheme with linear extrapolation (BDF2LE). The accuracy of the scheme is also greatly enhanced through the use of the divergence-free Scott-Vogeulis finite elements, and van Cittert approximate deconvolution. A complete finite element analysis is provided, which includes rigorous proofs for the stability, well-possessedness, and convergence of both velocity and pressure solutions. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the inclusion of the linear time relaxation term preserves the long-time stability of the unregularized BDF2LE scheme. Finally, numerical experiments are presented that demonstrate the added stability and accuracy that time relaxation can provide.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Heat transfer coefficients of moving particle beds from flow-dependent thermal conductivity and near-wall resistance

Accurate determination of heat transfer coefficients for flowing packed particle beds is essential to the design of particle heat exchangers and other thermal and thermochemical equipment. While such dense granular flows mostly fall into the well-known plug-flow regime, the discrete nature of granular materials alters the thermal transport processes in both the near-wall and bulk regions of flowing particle beds from their stationary counterparts. As a result, heat transfer correlations based on the stationary particle bed thermal conductivity could be inadequate for flowing particles in a heat exchanger. Most earlier works have achieved a reasonable agreement with experiments by treating granular heat transfer media as a plug-flow continuum with a near-wall thermal resistance in series. However, the thermal conductivity values of the continuum were often obtained from measurements on stationary beds owing to the difficulty of flowing bed measurements. In this work, it was found that the properties of a stationary bed are highly sensitive to the method of particle packing and there is a decrease in the particle bed thermal conductivity and increase in the near-wall thermal resistance, measured as an effective air gap thickness, on the onset of particle flow. These variations in thermal conductivity of stationary and flowing particle beds can lead to errors in heat transfer coefficient calculations. Therefore, the heat transfer coefficients for granular flows were calculated using experimentally determined flowing particle bed thermal conductivity and near-wall air gap for ceramic particles – CARBO CP 40/100 (mean diameter = 275 µm), HSP 40/70 (404 µm) and HSP 16/30 (956 µm); at velocities of 5–15 mm·s –1 ; and temperatures of 300–650 °C. The thermal conductivity and air gap values for CP 40/100 and HSP 40/70 were further used to calculate heat transfer coefficients across different particle bed temperatures and velocities for different parallel-plate heat exchanger dimensions. Furthermore, these calculations, which show good agreement with measured HTC values reported in literature, can be used as a guide for heat exchanger designs. Graphical abstract

14 SOLAR ENERGY