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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 109 records · Page 6

On the Relationship Between Sub-Daily Instantaneous and Daily Total Gross Primary Production: Implications for Interpreting Satellite-Based SIF Retrievals

Spatially and temporally continuous estimation of plant photosynthetic carbon fixation (or gross primary production, GPP) is crucial to our understanding of the global carbon cycle and the impact of climate change. Besides spatial, seasonal and interannual variations, GPP also exhibits strong diurnal variations. Satellite retrieved solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provides a spatially continuous, but temporally discrete measurement of plant photosynthesis, and has the potential to be used to estimate GPP at global scale. However, it remains unclear whether the seasonal time series of SIF snapshots taken at a fixed time of the day can be used to infer daily total GPP variation at spatial and seasonal scales. In this study, we first used GPP estimates from 135 eddy covariance flux sites, covering a wide range of geographic locations and biome types, to investigate the relationship between the instantaneous GPP (GPP(sub inst)) and daily GPP (GPP(sub daily)) on the seasonal course for different times of the day. Latitudinal and diurnal patterns were found to correspond to variations in photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and light use efficiency (LUE), respectively. We then used the Soil-Canopy Observation Photosynthesis and Energy Balance (SCOPE) model and the FluxCom GPP product to investigate the instantaneous and daily SIF-GPP relationships at five flux tower sites along a latitudinal gradient and at a global scale for different biome types. The results showed that daily SIF had a stronger linear correlation with daily GPP than instantaneous SIF at the seasonal scale, with an instantaneous to daily SIF conversion factor following the latitudinal and seasonal pattern driven by PAR. Our study highlights the necessity to take the latitudinal and diurnal factors into consideration for SIF-GPP relationship analyses or for physiological phenology analyses based on SIF.

photosynthesis model↗

A Process Model of Interpersonal Relationship Formation in Isolated and Confined Environments

Future space crews will face several challenges such as living and working in a confined environment, isolated from others. These circumstances increase the importance of interpersonal compatibility, teamwork, and team performance. The interpersonal compatibility of space crews has been and continues to be of interest to both NASA and the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP), whose research informs operations for Roscosmos. In NASA-sponsored research, interpersonal compatibility has been examined in terms of how the combination of team members’ personality traits, values, and demographics shape team member relationships and team performance overtime. IBMP-sponsored research mostly has moved away from trait-based approaches toward an idiographic (in-depth, heavily descriptive) approach to researching crew interpersonal relations. This research uses software such as Personal Self-Perception and Attitudes (PSPA), network approaches to team member relations, and content analysis of interactions to assess interpersonal compatibility, and infer states and team dynamics. Our research program integrated these ideas. Our primary research aim was to develop and empirically test a process model of interpersonal relationship formation in isolated and confinement environments. We created a model, collected data from teams in an isolated and confined environment, and applied a novel analytical strategy that combines trait, state, and interaction data (i.e., relational events). We focused specifically on the formation of strained relationships in isolation and confinement—or with whom fellow crewmembers find it difficult to work.

S T Bell↗

Scientist-Stakeholder Relationships Drive Carbon Data Product Transfer Effectiveness within NASA Program

Carbon cycle science is at the heart of research on global climate change and its long-term impacts, as it examines the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and the impact of fossil fuel emissions on this cycling. Given the urgency of the climate challenge, NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) requires all funded investigators to identify and work with stakeholder organizations at project inception to accelerate the transfer of the products developed by funded research into decision making systems. In this study, we contribute to the literature through the implementation of a quantitative analysis of 908 unique survey responses from funded investigators to explore the maturity of the scientist-stakeholder engagement. The paper employs multiple correspondence analysis to provide evidence to support policy options to increase stakeholder integration into research programs. Despite limitations of the dataset used, we demonstrated that multiple funding rounds, long-standing relationships between the stakeholder and scientist, and the scientific productivity of the PI, including the ability to produce datasets and research papers on these datasets, all contribute to carbon products moving from research to operational use. The maturity of relationships between scientists and stakeholders was shown to result improved stakeholder engagement. The use of carbon products should be identified in every stage of the program, and that capacity building is needed to support both existing and newly identified stakeholders better understand and use CMS products. As Federal, State, and local policy on climate adaptation and mitigation matures, the need for information on carbon will expand. Building of stakeholder-scientist relationships in CMS results in an effective generation and use of datasets to support this need and prototype ways that improved information needed for decision making can be created.

Monitoring↗

Scientist-Stakeholder Relationships Drive Carbon Data Product Transfer Effectiveness within NASA Program

Carbon cycle science is at the heart of research on global climate change and its long-term impacts, as it examines the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and the impact of fossil fuel emissions on this cycling. Given the urgency of the climate challenge, NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) requires all funded investigators to identify and work with stakeholder organizations at project inception to accelerate the transfer of the products developed by funded research into decision making systems. In this study, we contribute to the literature through the implementation of a quantitative analysis of 908 unique survey responses from funded investigators to explore the maturity of the scientist-stakeholder engagement. The paper employs multiple correspondence analysis to provide evidence to support policy options to increase stakeholder integration into research programs. Despite limitations of the dataset used, we demonstrated that multiple funding rounds, long-standing relationships between the stakeholder and scientist, and the scientific productivity of the Principal Investigator, including the ability to produce datasets and research papers on these datasets, all contribute to carbon products moving from research to operational use. The maturity of relationships between scientists and stakeholders was shown to result improved stakeholder engagement. The use of carbon products should be identified in every stage of the program, and that capacity building is needed to support both existing and newly identified stakeholders better understand and use CMS products. As federal, state, and local policy on climate adaptation and mitigation matures, the need for information on carbon will expand. Building of stakeholder-scientist relationships in CMS results in an effective generation and use of datasets to support this need and prototype ways that improved information needed for decision making can be created.

Molly E Brown↗

The Spatial Distribution of Soluble Organic Matter and Their Relationship to Minerals in the Asteroid (162173) Ryugu

We performed in-situ analysis on a ~1 mm-sized grain A0080 returned by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft from near-Earth asteroid (162173) Ryugu to investigate the relationship of soluble organic matter (SOM) to minerals. Desorption electrospray ionization-high resolution mass spectrometry (DESI-HRMS) imaging mapped more than 200 CHN, CHO, CHO–Na (sodium adducted), and CHNO soluble organic compounds. A heterogeneous spatial distribution was observed for different compound classes of SOM as well as among alkylated homologues on the sample surface. The A0080 sample showed mineralogy more like an Ivuna-type (CI) carbonaceous chondrite than other meteorites. It contained two different lithologies, which are either rich (lithology 1) or poor (lithology 2) in magnetite, pyrrhotite, and dolomite. CHN compounds were more concentrated in lithology 1 than in lithology 2; on the other hand, CHO, CHO–Na, and CHNO compounds were distributed in both lithologies. Such different spatial distribution of SOM is likely the result of interaction of the SOM with minerals, during precipitation of the SOM via fluid activity, or could be due to difference in transportation efficiencies of SOMs in aqueous fluid. Organic-related ions measured by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF–SIMS) did not coincide with the spatial distribution revealed by DESI-HRMS imaging. This result may be because the different ionization mechanism between DESI and SIMS, or indicate that the ToF–SIMS data would be mainly derived from methanol-insoluble organic matter in A0080. In the Orgueil meteorite, such relationship between altered minerals and SOM distributions was not observed by DESI-HRMS analysis and field-emission scanning electron microscopy, which would result from differences of SOM formation processes and sequent alteration process on the parent bodies or even on the Earth. Alkylated homologues of CHN compounds were identified in A0080 by DESI-HRMS imaging as observed in the Murchison meteorite, but not from the Orgueil meteorite. These compounds with a large C number were enriched in Murchison fragments with abundant carbonate grains. In contrast, such relationship was not observed in A0080, implying different formation or growth mechanisms for the alkylated CHN compounds by interaction with fluid and minerals on the Murchison parent body and asteroid Ryugu.

Ryugu↗

A Meta-Analytic Approach to Investigating the Relationship Between Human-Automation Trust and Attention Allocation

Trust and attention allocation are pivotal determinants in human-automation interaction. However, there are scarce empirical findings regarding the relationship between trust and attention allocation. Observations from our previous work suggested there may be a negative correlation between trust in automation and eye movement towards automation, though no formal analysis of these data had been conducted to quantify this relationship. The present meta-analysis examined the relationship between three dimensions of trust in automation (performance, process, and purpose) and visual attention allocation to the automation. Specifically, we applied Cumming’s (2014) meta-analysis technique to combine evidence across three experiments. Results indicated a negative correlation between trust in automation and visual sampling of the automated system monitoring task for performance-based trust, but not for process- or purpose-based trust. These findings suggest that operators scanned the automation’s behavior less frequently when indicating higher performance-based trust towards the automation.

Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT)↗

Is There A Relationship Between Cornered-Hat Methods and A Residual Approach to Estimate System Uncertainty?

Recently a relationship has been established between a now traditional residual diagnostic used to estimate observation, background and analysis error covariances of interest to data assimilation and the three-cornered hat (3CH) method. An existing extension of the traditional residual diagnostic uses residuals from a fixed lag-1 Kalman smoother to retrieve system (model) error covariance. It is thus natural to ask if an additional relationship can be established between this extended residual method and some form of cornered--hat method. The answer might seem straightforward. Unlike in the standard residual estimation case, attempting to estimate model error amounts to estimating the statistics of a residual quantity itself. As shown in this presentation, in such cases the 3CH method becomes trivial: the sought out uncertainty can be derived directly from the covariance of the residual quantity at hand. In the particular case of estimating model error, one of the corners would have to be composed of vectors providing estimates of model error; these are not typically available in practice. Therefore, at first glance the present work finds no relationship between the lag-1 smoother residual diagnostic for system error estimation and cornered--hat methods. However, the work suggests that a two-tiered 3CH might be all that is necessary for system uncertainty to be obtained with 3CH.

Ricardo Todling↗

The Global Seasonal Relationship Between Satellite-Observed Cold Pools and Rainfall

Convective cold pools are important modulators of the onset and evolution of deep convection in the tropics. This work leverages a dataset derived from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) satellite instrument by Garg et al. (2020) to quantify seasonal variations in cold pool activity and their relationship to deep convection across tropical ocean basins. The dataset identifies gradient features (GFs) in the surface wind field, which have been shown to serve as reliable proxies for the boundaries of atmospheric cold pools. We examine the relationship between GFs and climatologies of precipitation, column relative humidity (CRH), and bulk vertical wind shear. We also collocate GFs with precipitation and CRH. High GF frequency, precipitation, and CRH coincide in many regions of the tropics, consistent with our understanding of the physical connections between precipitation and cold pool generation. On the other hand, climatological bulk wind shear is often low in convective regions, and there is a weak inverse correlation between GF frequency and bulk wind shear, while our prior expectation might have been that shear promotes cold pool formation. Compared to GF frequency, GF size shows a weaker relationship with the convective environment, with some of the largest GF sizes occurring at lower CRH values for a given rainfall rate. In a few exceptional regions and seasons, such as the Indian Ocean in northern hemisphere summer, the region of greatest precipitation does not coincide with the region of greatest GF frequency. These cases also have very high seasonal mean CRH, suggesting that in these regions cold pool formation is suppressed by reduced evaporation of precipitation.

Convective cold pools↗

The RBE-LET relationship for rodent intestinal crypt cell survival, testes weight loss, and multicellular spheroid cell survival after heavy-ion irradiation

This report presents data for survival of mouse intestinal crypt cells, mouse testes weight loss as an indicator of survival of spermatogonial stem cells, and survival of rat 9L spheroid cells after irradiation in the plateau region of unmodified particle beams ranging in mass from 4He to 139La. The LET values range from 1.6 to 953 keV/microns. These studies examine the RBE-LET relationship for two normal tissues and for an in vitro tissue model, multicellular spheroids. When the RBE values are plotted as a function of LET, the resulting curve is characterized by a region in which RBE increases with LET, a peak RBE at an LET value of 100 keV/microns, and a region of decreasing RBE at LETs greater than 100 keV/microns. Inactivation cross sections (sigma) for these three biological systems have been calculated from the exponential terminal slope of the dose-response relationship for each ion. For this determination the dose is expressed as particle fluence and the parameter sigma indicates effect per particle. A plot of sigma versus LET shows that the curve for testes weight loss is shifted to the left, indicating greater radiosensitivity at lower LETs than for crypt cell and spheroid cell survival. The curves for cross section versus LET for all three model systems show similar characteristics with a relatively linear portion below 100 keV/microns and a region of lessened slope in the LET range above 100 keV/microns for testes and spheroids. The data indicate that the effectiveness per particle increases as a function of LET and, to a limited extent, Z, at LET values greater than 100 keV/microns. Previously published results for spread Bragg peaks are also summarized, and they suggest that RBE is dependent on both the LET and the Z of the particle.

Non-NASA Center↗

Inter-element relationships between trace elements in primitive carbonaceous and unequilibrated ordinary chondrites.

The results of a search for significant interelement relationships among 13 trace elements in carbonaceous chondrites and 26 elements and the disequilibrium parameter for silicate phases in unequilibrated ordinary chondrites (UOC) indicate pronounced differences in the formation processes of these two sorts of primitive chondrites. Twenty-six pairs of elements are correlated in carbonaceous chondrites and these correlations lend support to a model involving mixing in different ratios of material differing in thermal history. Comparison of the 26 elements in UOC shows that 39 pairs of elements are significantly related and only very volatile elements are correlated with the disequilibrium parameter. Each of the interelement relationships can be specifically ascribed to a metal-silicate fractionation in the solar nebula or to a thermal fractionation.

Kurimoto, R. K.↗

Relationships among classes of self-oscillating transistor parallel inverters

It recently has been shown in the literature that many dc-to-square-wave parallel inverters which are widely used in power-conditioning applications can be grouped into one of two families. Each family is characterized by an equivalent RLC network. Based on this approach, a classification procedure is presented for self-oscillating parallel inverters which makes evident natural relationships which exist between various inverter configurations. By utilizing concepts from the basic theory of negative resistance oscillators and the principle of duality as applied to nonlinear networks, a chain of relationships is established which enables a methodical transfer of knowledge gained about one family of inverters to any of the other families in the classification array.

Wilson, T. G.↗

Remote sensing of land use and water quality relationships - Wisconsin shore, Lake Michigan

This investigation assessed the utility of remote sensing techniques in the study of land use-water quality relationships in an east central Wisconsin test area. The following types of aerial imagery were evaluated: high altitude (60,000 ft) color, color infrared, multispectral black and white, and thermal; low altitude (less than 5000 ft) color infrared, multispectral black and white, thermal, and passive microwave. A non-imaging hand-held four-band radiometer was evaluated for utility in providing data on suspended sediment concentrations. Land use analysis includes the development of mapping and quantification methods to obtain baseline data for comparison to water quality variables. Suspended sediment loads in streams, determined from water samples, were related to land use differences and soil types in three major watersheds. A multiple correlation coefficient R of 0.85 was obtained for the relationship between the 0.6-0.7 micrometer incident and reflected radiation data from the hand-held radiometer and concurrent ground measurements of suspended solids in streams. Applications of the methods and baseline data developed in this investigation include: mapping and quantification of land use; input to watershed runoff models; estimation of effects of land use changes on stream sedimentation; and remote sensing of suspended sediment content of streams. High altitude color infrared imagery was found to be the most acceptable remote sensing technique for the mapping and measurement of land use types.

Haugen, R. K.↗

Phase relationship in three-phase composites which include a void phase

The paper shows the relationship among polymer, particles, and voids in a three-phase composite and how some of the properties of a composite may be changed by changing the proportions of the phases. The three-phase composite is an aggregate of microspheres bonded together with a small amount of polymer which may not form a continuous matrix. The void space (third phase) is obtained by limiting the amount of polymer which is mixed with the microspheres. A ternary phase diagram is used to show the proportional relationship among the three phases, with each apex representing a volume fraction of unity for a constituent while the side opposite the apex represents a volume fraction of zero for that constituent. The vertical dimension represents some composite property such as density or strength. The effect of composition on composite properties is shown by plotting them on a binary phase diagram which represents a perpendicular plane coincident with the 0.60 volume fraction microsphere line.

Price, H. L.↗

Report on cost/pricing relationships for the space shuttle

The operations cost for the shuttle is the basis for developing the user charge policy for the system. The policy contains several elements that are significant to the user and to NASA. It will encourage the full use of the system to the benefits of the U.S. The charge policy will encourage early transition from the expendable launch vehicles to the shuttle and this will result in lower user costs for government as well as commercial users. The relationship between the charge policy and the utilization of the shuttle is critical to the economic efficiency of the system. NASA recognizes the challenging a relationship between pricing the cost of using a reusable space system, and the need to make sure it is re-used often.

Source record↗

Scaling relationships for mercury and gaseous propellant ion thrusters

A model describing the doubly charged ion densities in argon and xenon ion thrusters is presented. Doubly charged ions are shown to be produced in significant numbers from both the neutral and singly ionized states. Doubly-to-singly charged ion density ratios calculated using this model are compared to experimental values of this ratio measured in the 15 cm multipole thruster using both propellants. Agreement between theory and experiment is shown to be good. Using this doubly charged ion model, and a similar one obtained previously for mercury, together with the constant neutral loss rate theory, Child's current density law and accelerator grid fabrication limitations, a set of scaling relationships are developed. These relationships show the propellant utilizations, thrust densities and discharge power levels that can be expected as thruster diameter and/or specific impulse are increased and doubly charged ion densities are held at acceptably low values.

Wilbur, P. J.↗

A transform-pair relationship between incident and scattered fields from an arbitrary reflector

It is shown that a transform-pair relationship exists between incident and scattered fields from an infinite, perfectly conducting reflector of arbitrary shape, when the physical optics approximation is applied. As an example of potential applications, this relationship is used to synthesize a reflector feed pattern required to produce a desired far-field pattern from a given paraboloidal reflector.

Ludwig, A. C.↗

Petrogenetic relationship between Allan Hills 77005 and other achondrites

The paper presents chemical and petrologic data relating the Allan Hills (ALHA) 77005 achondrite from Antarctica and explores their petrogenetic relationship with the shergottites. Petrologic similarities with the latter in terms of mineralogy, oxidation state, inferred source region composition, and shock ages suggest a genetic relationship, also indicated by volatile to involatile element ratios and abundances of other trace elements. ALHA 77005 may be a cumulate crystallized from a liquid parental to materials from which the shergottites crystallized or a sample of peridotite from which shergottite parent liquids were derived. Chemical similarities with terrestrial ultramafic rocks suggest that it provides an additional sample of the only other solar system body with basalt source origins chemically similar to the upper earth mantle.

Mcsween, H. Y., Jr.↗