Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Web based”

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 1,027 records · Page 57

Modeling UV-B Effects on Primary Production Throughout the Southern Ocean Using Multi-Sensor Satellite Data

This study has used a combination of ocean color, backscattered ultraviolet, and passive microwave satellite data to investigate the impact of the springtime Antarctic ozone depletion on the base of the Antarctic marine food web - primary production by phytoplankton. Spectral ultraviolet (UV) radiation fields derived from the satellite data are propagated into the water column where they force physiologically-based numerical models of phytoplankton growth. This large-scale study has been divided into two components: (1) the use of Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) data in conjunction with radiative transfer theory to derive the surface spectral UV irradiance throughout the Southern Ocean; and (2) the merging of these UV irradiances with the climatology of chlorophyll derived from SeaWiFS data to specify the input data for the physiological models.

Lubin, Dan↗

Underlying Data for the EVI-RoadTrip Web Tool

The dataset contains simulation-based charging infrastructure outputs that are visualized on the EVI-RoadTrip webtool. The outputs are aggregated to lower spatial resolution (e.g., state-level, corridor-level).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

XML Based Scientific Data Management Facility

The World Wide Web consortium has developed an Extensible Markup Language (XML) to support the building of better information management infrastructures. The scientific computing community realizing the benefits of HTML has designed markup languages for scientific data. In this paper, we propose a XML based scientific data management facility, XDMF. The project is motivated by the fact that even though a lot of scientific data is being generated, it is not being shared because of lack of standards and infrastructure support for discovering and transforming the data. The proposed data management facility can be used to discover the scientific data itself, the transformation functions, and also for applying the required transformations. We have built a prototype system of the proposed data management facility that can work on different platforms. We have implemented the system using Java, and Apache XSLT engine Xalan. To support remote data and transformation functions, we had to extend the XSLT specification and the Xalan package.

Mehrotra, Piyush↗

XML Based Scientific Data Management Facility

The World Wide Web consortium has developed an Extensible Markup Language (XML) to support the building of better information management infrastructures. The scientific computing community realizing the benefits of XML has designed markup languages for scientific data. In this paper, we propose a XML based scientific data management ,facility, XDMF. The project is motivated by the fact that even though a lot of scientific data is being generated, it is not being shared because of lack of standards and infrastructure support for discovering and transforming the data. The proposed data management facility can be used to discover the scientific data itself, the transformation functions, and also for applying the required transformations. We have built a prototype system of the proposed data management facility that can work on different platforms. We have implemented the system using Java, and Apache XSLT engine Xalan. To support remote data and transformation functions, we had to extend the XSLT specification and the Xalan package.

Mehrotra, P.↗

How Well do Earth System Models Capture Apparent Relationships Between Phytoplankton Biomass and Environmental Variables?

Abstract As phytoplankton form the base of the marine food web, understanding the controls on their abundance is fundamental to understanding marine ecology and its sensitivity to global climate change. While many Earth System Models (ESMs) predict phytoplankton biomass, it is unclear whether they properly capture the mechanistic relationships that control this quantity in the real ocean. We used Random Forest analysis to analyze the output of 13 ESMs as well as two observational data sets. The target variable was phytoplankton carbon and the predictors included environmental parameters known to influence phytoplankton, including nutrients, light, mixed layer depth, salinity, temperature, and upwelling. We examined the following: (a) What fractions of variability in ESMs and observations can be linked to the large‐scale environmental variables simulated by ESMs? (b) What are the dominant predictors and relationships affecting phytoplankton biomass? (c) How well do ESMs simulate phytoplankton carbon and do they simulate the relationships we see in observations? About 88%–96% of the variability in observational data sets and greater than 98% in the ESMs was accounted for by environmental variables known to influence phytoplankton biomass. The dominant predictors in the observational data sets were shortwave radiation and dissolved iron, with temperature and ammonium also relatively important. All the ESMs show that shortwave radiation is the most important variable and most of them predict the right sign of sensitivity to most variables. However, the models predict that biomass reaches maximum levels at unrealistically low levels of iron and unrealistically high levels of light.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗

Reducing roughness and improving efficiency of MAPbI3 perovskite solar cells made by high-throughput photonic curing

For perovskite solar cells (PSCs) to be commercially viable, the slow and energy-insufficient thermal annealing step must be eliminated. Among the photo-irradiation methods proposed to replace thermal annealing, photonic curing is the fastest conversion method. Photonic curing delivers short (20 μs to 100 ms) but intense light pulses from a broadband (200-1500 nm) xenon flash lamp, making it the only method to convert perovskite under 20 ms. This processing time can be extrapolated to a roll-to-roll web speed of 40 m/min based on laboratory processing conditions. However, most reported PSCs made by photonic curing under 1 second have inferior performance (~10% PCE). Although SEM images show dense and pinhole-free perovskite films, AFM images indicate secondary wavy features of 500 nm-wide ridge and 80 nm-deep trenches on photonically cured perovskite films, the existence of which correlates with poor device performance. We suggest that this morphology feature is produced by volatile solvent evaporation during the fast photonic curing process. Two approaches have been made to remedy this issue: (1) adding CH2I2 as the third solvent in the conventional DMF-DMSO system and (2) applying a controlled air-blowing step before photonic curing to remove excess solvent further. Combining these two approaches produces photonically- cured perovskite films with a comparable film roughness and device performance. Alkyl halide additives have been reported to enhance PSC performance by modulated solvent-solute interactions and C-X (X = Cl, Br, and I) cleavage. Photonic curing can cleave CH2I2, producing disassociated iodide ions to replenish iodine loss induced by photonic curing, which is confirmed by EDX. As a co-solvent, the high boiling point of CH2I2 can also make the solvent less volatile, reducing surface roughness in photonically cured perovskite films. Additionally, photonically-cured perovskite films have longer PL lifetimes and a higher recombination resistance compared to thermally-annealed counterparts. As a result, we demonstrate that photonic curing is a suitable method to replace thermal annealing in high-throughput PSC fabrication.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

An Open Source Web Map Server Implementation For California and the Digital Earth: Lessons Learned

This paper describes an Open Source implementation of the Open GIS Consortium's Web Map interface. It is based on the very popular Apache WWW Server, the Sun Microsystems Java ServIet Development Kit, and a C language shared library interface to a spatial datastore. This server was initially written as a proof of concept, to support a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Digital Earth test bed demonstration. It will also find use in the California Land Science Information Partnership (CaLSIP), a joint program between NASA and the state of California. At least one WebMap enabled server will be installed in every one of the state's 58 counties. This server will form a basis for a simple, easily maintained installation for those entities that do not yet require one of the larger, more expensive, commercial offerings.

Sullivan, D. V.↗

Entrepreneurial Aspirations

Recom Technologies, Inc., was established in 1980 by Jack Lee, a former NASA contractor. After forming the new company, Recom was awarded NASA contracts, which eventually grew to 50 percent of the company's business. Two companies have spun-off from Recom, both of which have their basis in NASA technology. The first is Attention Control Systems, Inc. with utilizes intelligent planning software that Recom developed for NASA Ames Computational Sciences Division in a hand-held planner used as an aid in cognitive rehabilitation of brain injury patients. The second is MiraNet, Inc. who uses CLIPS as the foundation for WEXpert, the first rules based help system on the Web.

Source record↗

Developing Visualization Techniques for Semantics-based Information Networks

Information systems incorporating complex network structured information spaces with a semantic underpinning - such as hypermedia networks, semantic networks, topic maps, and concept maps - are being deployed to solve some of NASA s critical information management problems. This paper describes some of the human interaction and navigation problems associated with complex semantic information spaces and describes a set of new visual interface approaches to address these problems. A key strategy is to leverage semantic knowledge represented within these information spaces to construct abstractions and views that will be meaningful to the human user. Human-computer interaction methodologies will guide the development and evaluation of these approaches, which will benefit deployed NASA systems and also apply to information systems based on the emerging Semantic Web.

Keller, Richard M.↗

Cammp Team

The International Space Station (ISS) Configuration Analysis Modeling and Mass Properties (CAMMP) Team is presenting a demo of certain CAMMP capabilities at a Booz Allen Hamilton conference in San Antonio. The team will be showing pictures of low fidelity, simplified ISS models, but no dimensions or technical data. The presentation will include a brief description of the contract and task, description and picture of the Topology, description of Generic Ground Rules and Constraints (GGR&C), description of Stage Analysis with constraints applied, and wrap up with description of other tasks such as Special Studies, Cable Routing, etc. The models include conceptual Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and Lunar Lander images and animations created for promotional purposes, which are based entirely on public domain conceptual images from public NASA web sites and publicly available magazine articles and are not based on any actual designs, measurements, or 3D models. Conceptual Mars rover and lander are completely conceptual and are not based on any NASA designs or data. The demonstration includes High Fidelity Computer Aided Design (CAD) models of ISS provided by the ISS 3D CAD Team which will be used in a visual display to demonstrate the capabilities of the Teamcenter Visualization software. The demonstration will include 3D views of the CAD models including random measurements that will be taken to demonstrate the measurement tool. A 3D PDF file will be demonstrated of the Blue Book fidelity assembly complete model with no vehicles attached. The 3D zoom and rotation will be displayed as well as random measurements from the measurement tool. The External Configuration Analysis and Tracking Tool (ExCATT) Microsoft Access Database will be demonstrated to show its capabilities to organize and track hardware on ISS. The data included will be part numbers, serial numbers, historical, current, and future locations, of external hardware components on station. It includes dates of all external ISS events and flights and the associated hardware changes for each event. The hardware location information does not always reveal the exact location of the hardware, only the general location. In some cases the location is a module or carrier, in other cases it is a WIF socket, handrail, or attach point. Only small portions of the data will be displayed for demonstration purposes.

Evertt, Shonn F.↗

Automated Cryocooler Monitor and Control System

A system was designed to automate cryogenically cooled low-noise amplifier systems used in the NASA Deep Space Network. It automates the entire operation of the system including cool-down, warm-up, and performance monitoring. The system is based on a single-board computer with custom software and hardware to monitor and control the cryogenic operation of the system. The system provides local display and control, and can be operated remotely via a Web interface. The system controller is based on a commercial single-board computer with onboard data acquisition capability. The commercial hardware includes a microprocessor, an LCD (liquid crystal display), seven LED (light emitting diode) displays, a seven-key keypad, an Ethernet interface, 40 digital I/O (input/output) ports, 11 A/D (analog to digital) inputs, four D/A (digital to analog) outputs, and an external relay board to control the high-current devices. The temperature sensors used are commercial silicon diode devices that provide a non-linear voltage output proportional to temperature. The devices are excited with a 10-microamp bias current. The system is capable of monitoring and displaying three temperatures. The vacuum sensors are commercial thermistor devices. The output of the sensors is a non-linear voltage proportional to vacuum pressure in the 1-Torr to 1-millitorr range. Two sensors are used. One measures the vacuum pressure in the cryocooler and the other the pressure at the input to the vacuum pump. The helium pressure sensor is a commercial device that provides a linear voltage output from 1 to 5 volts, corresponding to a gas pressure from 0 to 3.5 MPa (approx. = 500 psig). Control of the vacuum process is accomplished with a commercial electrically operated solenoid valve. A commercial motor starter is used to control the input power of the compressor. The warm-up heaters are commercial power resistors sized to provide the appropriate power for the thermal mass of the particular system, and typically provide 50 watts of heat. There are four basic operating modes. "Cool " mode commands the system to cool to normal operating temperature. "Heat " mode is used to warm the device to a set temperature near room temperature. "Pump " mode is a maintenance function that allows the vacuum system to be operated alone to remove accumulated contaminants from the vacuum area. In "Off " mode, no power is applied to the system.

Britcliffe, Michael J.↗

Sensor Webs with a Service-Oriented Architecture for On-demand Science Products

This paper describes the work being managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Information System Division (ISD) under a NASA Earth Science Technology Ofice (ESTO) Advanced Information System Technology (AIST) grant to develop a modular sensor web architecture which enables discovery of sensors and workflows that can create customized science via a high-level service-oriented architecture based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) web service standards. These capabilities serve as a prototype to a user-centric architecture for Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). This work builds and extends previous sensor web efforts conducted at NASA/GSFC using the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) satellite and other low-earth orbiting satellites.

Mandl, Daniel↗

Control of Thermal Stress in Dendritic Web Growth

The temperature distributions which are present during the growth of ribbon crystals generate stresses which can adversely affect the growth or perfection of the material. Several different effects occur which depend on the magnitude and distribution of these stresses. In most cases, the observed phenomena are the result of complex interactions of a number of mechanisms. In many instances, however, one mechanism predominates to such an extent that a simplified distinction between the various effects can be made. Definitions based on observed behavior in dendritic web growth are outlined.

Seidensticker, R. G.↗

Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC) Delineated in a Spectroscopic Survey. III. Accurate Measurement of Galaxy Stellar Mass Function with the Aid of Cosmological Redshift Surveys

We present a novel method to accurately measure the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) based upon the Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs (PAC) method developed in our first paper (Paper I) of the series. The method allows us to measure the GSMF to a lower-mass end that is not accessible to the spectroscopic sample used in the PAC. Compared with Paper I, the current measurement of GSMF is direct and model independent. We measure the GSMFs in the redshift ranges of z$^{3}_{s}$ < 0.2, 0.2 < z s < 0.4, and 0.5 < z s < 0.7 down to stellar masses of M* = 10 8.2 , 10 10.6 , and 10 10.6 M ⊙ , using the data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys and the spectroscopic samples of Slogan Digital Sky Survey (i.e., Main, LOWZ, and CMASS samples). Our results show that there is no evolution of GSMF from z s = 0.6 to z s = 0.1 for M* > 10 10.6 M ⊙ , and that there is a clear upturn at M* ≈ 10 9.5 M ⊙ toward smaller galaxies in the local GMSF at z s = 0.1. We provide an accurate double Schechter fit to the local GSMF for the entire range of M* and a table of our measurements at the three redshifts, which can be used to test theories of galaxy formation. Our method can achieve an accurate measurement of GSMF to the stellar mass limit where the spectroscopic sample is already highly incomplete (e.g., ~ 10 -3 ) for its target selection.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

CMS Token Transition

Within the LHC community, a momentous transition has been occurring in authorization. For nearly 20 years, services within the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) have authorized based on mapping an identity, derived from an X.509 credential, or a group/role, derived from a VOMS extension issued by the experiment. A fundamental shift is occurring to capabilities: the credential, a bearer token, asserts the authorizations of the bearer, not the identity. By the HL-LHC era, the CMS experiment plans for the transition to tokens, based on the WLCG Common JSON Web Token profile, to be complete. Services in the technology architecture include the INDIGO Identity and Access Management server to issue tokens; a HashiCorp Vault server to store and refresh access tokens for users and jobs; a managed token bastion server to push credentials to the HTCondor CredMon service; and HTCondor to maintain valid tokens in long-running batch jobs. We will describe the transition plans of the experiment, current status, configuration of the central authorization server, lessons learned in commissioning token-based access with sites, and operational experience using tokens for both job submissions and file transfers.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Global Trends in Space Access and Utilization

In the not-so-distant past, space access and air/space technology superiority were within the purview of the U.S. and former Soviet Union's respective space agencies, both vying for global leadership in space exploitation. In more recent years, with the emergence of the European Space Agency (ESA) member countries and Asian countries joining the family of space-faring nations, it is truer now more than ever that space access and utilization has become a truly global enterprise. In fact, according to the Space Report 2007, this enterprise is a $251-billion economy. It is possible to gauge the vitality of worldwide efforts from open sources in today's transparent, media-based society. In particular, print and web broadcasters regularly report and catalog global space activities for defense and civil purposes. For the purposes of this paper, a representative catalog of missions is used to illustrate the nature of the emerging "globalization." This paper highlights global trends in terms of not only the providers of space access, but also the end-users for the various recently accomplished missions. With well over 50 launches per year, in recent years, the launch-log reveals a surprising percentage of "cooperative or co-dependent missions" where different agencies, countries, and/or commercial entities are so engaged presumably to the benefit of all who participate. Statistics are cited and used to show that recently over d0% of the 50-plus missions involved multiple nations working collectively to deliver payloads to orbit. Observers, space policy professionals, and space agency leaders have eloquently proposed that it might require the combined resources and talents of multiple nations to advance human exploration goals beyond low earth orbit. This paper does not intend to offer new information with respect to whether international collaboration is necessary but to observe that, in continuing to monitor global trends, the results seem to support the thesis that a global interdependent effort with all its likely complexities is an increasingly viable and pragmatic option. The discussion includes a breakdown of space missions into those of civil (scientific), military, and strictly commercial nature. It concludes that all three are robust components of a globally diversified portfolio of activities relying, essentially, on a common space industrial base and space infrastructure. As in other industries, the distribution of space industry assets and knowledge across countries and continents enables a diverse suite of options and arrangements, particularly in the areas of civil and commercial space utilization. A survey of several ongoing bilateral and multilateral space collaboration examples are provided to augment the observations regarding multinational work in space.

Rahman, Shamim A.↗

Semantic Property Graph for Scalable Knowledge Graph Analytics

Graphs are a natural and fundamental representation to describe entities, relationships, activities, and evolution of complex systems. Many domains such as communication, citation, procurement, biology, social media, and transportation can be modeled as a set of entities and their relationships. Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Labeled Property Graph (LPG) are two of the most used data models to encode information in a graph. Both models are similar in terms of using basic graph elements such as nodes and edges but differ in terms of the modeling approach, expressibility, serialization, and target applications. RDF is a flexible data exchange model for expressing information about entities but it tends to a have high memory footprint and inefficient storage, which does not make it a natural choice to perform scalable graph analytics. In contrast, LPG has gained traction as a reliable model to perform scalable graph analytic tasks such as sub-graph matching, network alignment, and real-time knowledge graph query. It provides efficient storage, fast traversal, and flexibility to model various real-world domains. At the same time, the LPG lacks the support of a formal knowledge representation such as an ontology to provide automated knowledge inference. We propose Semantic Property Graph (SPG) as a logical projection of reified RDF into the LPG model. SPG continues to use RDF ontology to define the type hierarchy of the projected graph and validate it against a given ontology. We present a framework to convert reified RDF graphs into SPG using two different computing environments. We also present cloud-based graph migration capabilities using Amazon Web Services.

Purohit, Sumit↗