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At least 1,153 records · Page 64
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

An ideal MHD δW stability analysis that bypasses the Newcomb equation

In the following work, we demonstrate the efficacy of a Riccati δW ideal MHD stability analysis that bypasses the numerically intractable integration of the Newcomb equation. By transforming the linear Newcomb equation into a quadratic Riccati equation, an accurate and equivalent δW analysis is performed that is shown to enjoy some numerical advantages. Additionally, we demonstrate that the Riccati approach is better conditioned than its Newcomb counterpart at the magnetic axis, and we apply dynamical systems insights to examine its behavior at singular points. We further discuss the constraints involved in solving for the extremal admissible perturbations of a δW analysis.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1997

Persistent Sub-Yearly Chromospheric Variations in Lower Main-Sequence Stars: Tau Booe and alpha Com

The recent discoveries of extrasolar planetary systems around lower main-sequence stars such as tau Booe (HD 120136) has prompted further investigation into their stellar activity. A cursory analysis of tau Booe for cyclic chromospheric activity, based on its 30-yr record of Ca 2 H and K fluxes obtained as part of the HK Project from Mount Wilson Observatory, finds an intermediate, sub-yearly period (approximately 117 d) in chromospheric activity in addition to, and separate from, both its rotation (3.3 d) and long-term variability. As a persistent subyearly period in surface magnetic activity is unprecedented, we investigate this apparent anomaly further by examining chromospheric activity levels of other stars with similar mass, searching for variability in chromospheric activity with periods of less than one year, but longer than measured or predicted rotation. An examination of the time series of 40 mid-to-late F dwarfs yielded one other star for further analysis: alpha Com (HD 114378, P approximately 132 d). The variations for these two stars were checked for persistence and coherence. Based on these determinations, we eliminate the possibilities of rotation, long-term activity cycle, and the evolution of active regions as the cause of this variation in both stars. In particular, for tau Booe we infer that the phenomenon may be chromospheric in origin; however, beyond this, it is difficult to identify anything further regarding the cause of the activity variations, or even whether the observed modulation in the two stars have the same origin.

Maulik, Davesh↗
NASA NTRS1978

Power train analysis for the DOE/NASA 100-kW wind turbine generator

Progress in explaining variations of power experienced in the on-line operation of a 100 kW experimental wind turbine-generator is reported. Data are presented that show the oscillations tend to be characteristic of a wind-driven synchronous generator because of low torsional damping in the power train, resonances of its large structure, and excitation by unsteady and nonuniform wind flow. The report includes dynamic analysis of the drive-train torsion, the generator, passive driveline damping, and active pitch control as well as correlation with experimental recordings. The analysis assumes one machine on an infinite bus with constant generator-field excitation.

Seidel, R. C.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Coherent fluctuations of extratropical geopotential height and tropical convection in intraseasonal time scales

Northern-Hemisphere twice-daily 500-mb-geopotential-height data for November-March 1975-1980 and November-December 1981 and NOAA satellite measurements of outgoing longwave radiation for the same period are processed to remove seasonal cycles and Fourier-decomposition bandpassed to study variations with 20-70-d periods. The results of analysis using correlation, complex EOF, and composite techniques are presented in extensive maps and graphs and characterized. Extratropical wavetrains are found to evolve systematically from Eurasia eastward to North America and the North Atlantic on 5-6-d time scales, while the intraseasonal variation in tropical convection is dominated by a dipolelike east-west feature propagating from the western Indian Ocean to the dateline with a quasi-period of 40-50 d. The possibility that normal modes coupled between the tropics and midlatitudes may be responsible for these phenomena is considered.

Lau, K.-M.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Fine structure and time variation of the quiet sun at 1.3 cm

The Hat Creek two-element interferometer has been used to study the quiet sun at 22 GHz. A statistical analysis of output of the interferometer clearly shows the existence of time variations on the quiet sun with time scales of approximately 180 s. The observations suggest that the fine structure on the quiet sun might consist of two components - one which varies with the time scales of approximately 3 min and the other being relatively stable. The average visibility amplitude indicates that the fine structure on the sun has a typical angular size of approximately 6 sec. The observation that the variance and the mean of the visibility amplitudes depend in the same way on the projected baseline suggests that the transient sources have angular size similar to the average size of the fine structure on the quiet sun. Power spectra of the output of the interferometer show no significant periodicity.

Rao, A. P.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Exposing structural variations in SARS-CoV-2 evolution

The mutation of SARS-CoV-2 influences viral function as residue replacements affect both physiochemical properties and folding conformations. Although a large amount of data on SARS-CoV-2 is available, the investigation of how viral functions change in response to mutations is hampered by a lack of effective structural analysis. Here, we exploit the advances of protein structure fingerprint technology to study the folding conformational changes induced by mutations. With integration of both protein sequences and folding conformations, the structures are aligned for SARS-CoV to SARS-CoV-2, including Alpha variant (lineage B.1.1.7) and Delta variant (lineage B.1.617.2). The results showed that the virus evolution with change in mutational positions and physicochemical properties increased the affinity between spike protein and ACE2, which plays a critical role in coronavirus entry into human cells. Additionally, these structural variations impact vaccine effectiveness and drug function over the course of SARS-CoV-2 evolution. The analysis of structural variations revealed how the coronavirus has gradually evolved in both structure and function and how the SARS-CoV-2 variants have contributed to more severe acute disease worldwide.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2001

Response of the Alliance 1 Proof-of-Concept Airplane Under Gust Loads

This report presents the work performed by Lockheed Martin's Langley Program Office in support of NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program. The primary purpose of this work was to develop and demonstrate a gust analysis method which accounts for the span-wise variation of gust velocity. This is important because these unmanned aircraft having high aspect ratios and low wing loading are very flexible, and fly at low speeds. The main focus of the work was therefore to perform a two-dimensional Power Spectrum Density (PSD) analysis of the Alliance 1 Proof-of-Concept Unmanned Aircraft, As of this writing, none of the aircraft described in this report have been constructed. They are concepts represented by analytical models. The process first involved the development of suitable structural and aeroelastic Finite Element Models (FEM). This was followed by development of a one-dimensional PSD gust analysis, and then the two-dimensional (PSD) analysis of the Alliance 1. For further validation and comparison, two additional analyses were performed. A two-dimensional PSD gust analysis was performed on a simplet MSC/NASTRAN example problem. Finally a one-dimensional discrete gust analysis was performed on Alliance 1. This report describes this process, shows the relevant comparisons between analytical methods, and discusses the physical meanings of the results.

Naser, A. S.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Uranium Oxide Synthetic Pathway Discernment through Unsupervised Morphological Analysis

We present a novel unsupervised machine learning method for quantitative representation of scanning electron micrographs and its applications and performance for nuclear forensic analysis of uranium ore concentrates. The method uses a vector quantizing variational autoencoder followed by a histogram operation to encode a micrograph into a single dimensional representation, called the latent vector. The method requires no extant labeling of the data and can be applied over large datasets of micrographs with minimal human interaction. The representations generated are broadly descriptive of each micrograph and the microstructure of the material imaged. In the case of uranium ore concentrate analysis, the representations were amenable to processing reagent and ore concentrate species classification with accuracy of 81:8%, which is competitive with state-of-the-art supervised networks. The representations were also used to classify previously unseen processing routes, were able to classify imaging parameters such as magnification (to 76:0% accuracy), were able to classify fine grained process parameters such as calcining temperature (to 74:4% accuracy), and their informatic properties indicate that they are generally descriptive of the image represented. This method can be applied across microstructure analysis fields to perform quantitative analysis without the need for labor intensive and possibly biased human analysis.

Scanning Electron Microscopy, Vector Quantizing Va↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Geometry-Driven Longitudal Topic Model

A simple and scalable framework for longitudinal analysis of Twitter data is developed that combines latent topic models with computational geometric methods. Dimensionality reduction tools from computational geometry are applied to learn the intrinsic manifold on which the latent, temporal topics reside. Then shortest path distances on the manifold are used to link together these topics. The proposed framework permits visualization of the low-dimensional embedding which provides clear interpretation of the complex, high-dimensional trajectories that may exist among latent topics. Practical application of the proposed framework is demonstrated through its ability to capture and effectively visualize natural progression of latent COVID-19 related topics learned from Twitter data. Interpretability of the trajectories is achieved by comparing to real-world events. In addition, the framework permits study of spatial variation in Twitter behavior for learned topics. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed framework is able to capture granular-level impact of COVID-19 on public discussions. We end by arguing that Twitter data, when analyzed within the proposed framework, can serve as a valuable supplementary data stream for COVID-related studies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2022

Multi-variate Factorisation of Numerical Simulations

Factorisation is widely used in the analysis of numerical simulations. It allows changes in properties of a system to be attributed to changes in multiple variables associated with that system. There are many possible factorisation methods; here we discuss three previously-proposed factorisations that have been applied in the field of climate modelling: the linear factorisation, the Stein and Alpert (1993) factorisation, and the Lunt et al (2012) factorisation. We show that, when more than two variables are being considered, none of these three methods possess all three properties of "uniqueness", "symmetry", and "completeness". Here, we extend each of these factorisations so that they do possess these properties for any number of variables, resulting in three factorisations – the "linear-sum" factorisation, the "shared-interaction" factorisation, and the "scaled-total" factorisation. We show that the linear-sum factorisation and the shared-interaction factorisation reduce to be identical. We present the results of the factorisations in the context of studies that used the previously-proposed factorisations. This reveals that only the linear-sum/shared-interaction factorisation possesses a fourth property – "boundedness", and as such we recommend the use of this factorisation in applications for which these properties are desirable.

Numerican simulations↗
NASA NTRS2000

Soil Moisture Memory in Climate Models

Water balance considerations at the soil surface lead to an equation that relates the autocorrelation of soil moisture in climate models to (1) seasonality in the statistics of the atmospheric forcing, (2) the variation of evaporation with soil moisture, (3) the variation of runoff with soil moisture, and (4) persistence in the atmospheric forcing, as perhaps induced by land atmosphere feedback. Geographical variations in the relative strengths of these factors, which can be established through analysis of model diagnostics and which can be validated to a certain extent against observations, lead to geographical variations in simulated soil moisture memory and thus, in effect, to geographical variations in seasonal precipitation predictability associated with soil moisture. The use of the equation to characterize controls on soil moisture memory is demonstrated with data from the modeling system of the NASA Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project.

Koster, Randal D.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Effects of cockpit lateral stick characteristics on handling qualities and pilot dynamics

This report presents the results of analysis of cockpit lateral control feel-system studies. Variations in feel-system natural frequency, damping, and command sensing reference (force and position) were investigated, in combination with variations in the aircraft response characteristics. The primary data for the report were obtained from a flight investigation conducted with a variable-stability airplane, with additional information taken from other flight experiments and ground-based simulations for both airplanes and helicopters . The study consisted of analysis of handling qualities ratings and extraction of open-loop, pilot-vehicle describing functions from sum-of-sines tracking data, including, for a limited subset of these data, the development of pilot models. The study confirms the findings of other investigators that the effects on pilot opinion of cockpit feel-system dynamics are not equivalent to a comparable level of added time delay, and until a more comprehensive set of criteria are developed, it is recommended that feel-system dynamics be considered a delay-inducing element in the aircraft response. The best correlation with time-delay requirements was found when the feel-system dynamics were included in the delay measurements, regardless of the command reference. This is a radical departure from past approaches.

Mitchell, David G.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Loran-C monitor correlation over a 92-mile baseline in Ohio

Two Loran C monitors, at Galion and Athens, Ohio, were operated over a one-year period, measuring chain 9960 Time Delay (TD) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Analysis of data concentrated on correlation of short term TD variations during the winter months of 1985 to 86, over the 92 nm baseline. Excellent correlation was found, with slight additional improvement possible if local temperature is also included in the analysis. Although SNR and TD effects were suspected during the presence of thunderstorms near the monitors, the scope of the study did not permit storm by storm analysis. A computer tape data base of all measurements was produced, with measurements at both sites included. Data recording and analysis concentrated on the fall and winter months of September 1985 to February 1986.

Lilley, Robert W.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quantum mixed state compiling

The task of learning a quantum circuit to prepare a given mixed state is a fundamental quantum subroutine. We present a variational quantum algorithm (VQA) to learn mixed states which is suitable for near-term hardware. Our algorithm represents a generalization of previous VQAs that aimed at learning preparation circuits for pure states. We consider two different ansätze for compiling the target state; the first is based on learning a purification of the state and the second on representing it as a convex combination of pure states. In both cases, the resources required to store and manipulate the compiled state grow with the rank of the approximation. Thus, by learning a lower rank approximation of the target state, our algorithm provides a means of compressing a state for more efficient processing. As a byproduct of our algorithm, one effectively learns the principal components of the target state, and hence our algorithm further provides a new method for principal component analysis. We investigate the efficacy of our algorithm through extensive numerical implementations, showing that typical random states and thermal states of many body systems may be learnt this way. Additionally, we demonstrate on quantum hardware how our algorithm can be used to study hardware noise-induced states.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
NASA NTRS2008

Stratospheric Semi-Decadal Oscillations in NCEP Data

An analysis of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) data is presented to provide a more complete description of the stratospheric 5-year semi-decadal (SD) oscillation (Mayr et al., 2007). The zonal-mean temperature and zonal wind data from the Atmospheric Research R-1 analysis are employed, covering the years from 1962 to 2002 in the altitude range from 10 to 30km. For diagnostic purposes, the data are separated into the hemispherically symmetric and anti-symmetric components, and spectral analysis is applied to identify the signatures of the SD oscillations. Through the synthesis or filtering of spectral features, the SD modulations of the annual oscillation (AO) and quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) are delineated. In agreement with the earlier findings, the magnitude of the SD oscillation is more pronounced when the 30-month QBO dominates during the years from 1975 to 1995. This is consistent with results from a numerical model, which shows that such a QBO generates the SD oscillation through interaction with the 12-month AO. In the zonal winds, the SD oscillation in the NCEP data is confined to equatorial latitudes, where it modulates the symmetric AO and QBO by about 5 m/s below 30 km. In the temperature data, the effect is also seen around the equator, but it is much larger at polar latitudes where the SD oscillation produces variations as large as 2 K. Our data analysis indicates that the SD oscillation is mainly hemispherically symmetric, and it appears to originate at equatorial latitudes where most of the energy resides.

Mayr, H. G.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Temperature and iron abundance variation of the gas in the Perseus cluster

We present the first two-dimensional map of the temperature and iron abundance in the Perseus cluster. Analysis of spectra obtained using the Gas Imaging Spectrometer on ASCA shows nonaxisymmetric variations in both the temperature and iron abundance. Traveling west from the cluster center, the temperature increases to 9 keV at 20 min and then decreases rapidly to 5 keV at 40 min. There is a hot (greater than 10 keV) region to the northwest of the cluster center. The abundance is approximately constant over much of the surveyed region, but there is evidence for an increased abundance in the northwest hot area and a gradual decrease in a westerly direction.

Arnaud, K. A.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Full Field Photoelastic Stress Analysis

A structural specimen coated with or constructed of photoelastic material, when illuminated with circularly polarized light will, when stressed: reflect or transmit elliptically polarized light, the direction of the axes of the ellipse and variation of the elliptically light from illuminating circular light will correspond to and indicate the direction and magnitude of the shear stresses for each illuminated point on the specimen. The principles of this invention allow for several embodiments of stress analyzing apparatus, ranging from those involving multiple rotating optical elements, to those which require no moving parts at all. A simple polariscope may be constructed having two polarizing filters with a single one-quarter waveplate placed between the polarizing filters. Light is projected through the first polarizing filter and the one-quarter waveplate and is reflected from a sub-fringe birefringent coating on a structure under load. Reflected light from the structure is analyzed with a polarizing filter. The two polarizing filters and the one-quarter waveplate may be rotated together or the analyzer alone may be rotated. Computer analysis of the variation in light intensity yields shear stress magnitude and direction.

Lesniak, Jon R.↗