Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Community Science”

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 1,189 records · Page 66
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Reproducibility Practice in High-Performance Computing: Community Survey Results

The integrity of science and engineering research is grounded in assumptions of rigor and transparency on the part of those engaging in such research. HPC community effort to strengthen rigor and transparency take the form of reproducibility efforts. In a recent survey of the SC conference community, we collected information about the SC Reproducibility Initiative activities. Here, we present the survey results in this paper. Results show that the reproducibility initiative activities have contributed to higher levels of awareness on the part of SC conference technical program participants, and hint at contributing to greater scientific impact for the published papers of the SC conference series. Stringent point-of-manuscript-submission verification is problematic for reasons we point out, as are inherent difficulties of computational reproducibility in HPC. Future efforts should better decouple the community educational goals from goals that specifically strengthen a research work's potential for long-term impact through reuse 5-10 years down the road.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Blast from the Past: ASDC Curation for NASA Suborbital Legacy Missions to Promote Data Discovery and Accessibility

NASA has an extensive history of conducting suborbital field campaigns to further advances in atmospheric sciences. Beginning with the Chemical Instrument Test and Evaluation (CITE) conducted in 1983-1984, NASA has completed many suborbital campaigns over the past three decades. Since the early 2010s, suborbital missions are typically assigned to a NASA Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) prior to the mission for long-term archival and distribution. Efforts are being made by NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project and the Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG) to assign legacy missions to DAACs for permanent archival and distribution, so that these valuable datasets remain to be available to the scientific community. NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) has been named the assigned DAAC for nearly 20 atmospheric composition legacy missions, including missions conducted as part of the Global Tropospheric Experiment (GTE) and expects to be named the assigned DAAC for more of these missions over the next few years. The primary goal of the ASDC is to provide access to the datasets as they are currently formatted to the broad user community and enhance their findability and accessibility. However, data reporting standards have evolved significantly since 1983 and the datasets span a wide variety of file formats, including text, Ames, GTE, and ICARTT (International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation), and the amount of metadata and relevant information included in the files also varies greatly and can not be readily extracted without subject matter knowledge. This has caused challenges for the ASDC’s suborbital metadata extraction pipeline in ensuring that accurate and necessary metadata is being provided for the missions by all the ASDC’s existing search mechanisms. To make the data more findable and accessible, the ASDC has begun researching ways to further enhance the datasets, including distributing value-added products (i.e. consistent file format such as ICARTT or netCDF), adding standard names from the ESDIS Standards Coordination Office (ESCO)-approved Atmospheric Composition Variable Standard Names Convention (ACVSNC), and creating outreach materials such as ArcGIS StoryMaps, User Guides, and Micro Articles, providing overviews of the missions and what type of data was collected during the missions. These efforts also help support NASA’s Open-Source Science by enhancing the FAIRness of the legacy data products. This presentation will review the ASDC’s ongoing efforts, progress made, and future plans for legacy missions.

Megan Buzanowicz↗
DOE OSTI2024

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi equalize differences in plant fitness and facilitate plant species coexistence through niche differentiation

Mycorrhizal fungi are essential to the establishment of the vast majority of plant species but are often conceptualized with contradictory roles in plant community assembly. On the one hand, host-specific mycorrhizal fungi may allow a plant to be competitively dominant by enhancing growth. On the other hand, host-specific mycorrhizal fungi with different functional capabilities may increase nutrient niche partitioning, allowing plant species to coexist. Here, to resolve the balance of these two contradictory forces, we used a controlled greenhouse study to manipulate the presence of two main types of mycorrhizal fungus, ectomycorrhizal fungi and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and used a range of conspecific and heterospecific competitor densities to investigate the role of mycorrhizal fungi in plant competition and coexistence. We find that the presence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi equalizes fitness differences between plants and stabilizes competition to create conditions for host species coexistence. Furthermore, our results show how below-ground mutualisms can shift outcomes of plant competition and that a holistic view of plant communities that incorporates their mycorrhizal partners is important in predicting plant community dynamics.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Good practices for documenting AI-based studies on energy and buildings

Artificial intelligence has transformed building science research over the past decade, with applications spanning energy modeling, energy prediction, HVAC optimization and controls, fault detection, and occupancy modeling. However, many studies lack adequate documentation of datasets, algorithms, training procedures, and validation methods. Building science research faces additional challenges including inconsistent evaluation metrics, limited generalizability across building types, climates, and significant gaps between experimental studies and deployed systems. This communication provides practical guidance for good practices in documenting and publishing AI-based research following established standards from the computer science and machine learning communities. By adopting frameworks such as Datasheets for Datasets, Model Cards, and standardized reproducibility checklists, researchers can ensure their work meets the rigorous documentation standards necessary for reproducible, comparable, and impactful building science research.

Hong, Tianzhen [Lawrence Berkeley National Laborat↗
DOE OSTI2020

The role of peer review and science for advancing public understanding

We live in a time of rapid change. The Covid-19 pandemic has united the world to understand and develop solutions to protect the health and wellbeing of society. At the same time, access to information on the internet and social media has exploded. People are exposed to information with many claims. Some of the information is relevant and accurate. A significant fraction may be inaccurate, biased, and potentially dangerous. With Covid-19, the information might point to cures that are toxic or risks that are not relevant. The scientific community has developed a process to develop and convey knowledge. The validation of results and their interpretation is critical to advancing knowledge. The core of the scientific process is based on developing a hypothesis-driven concept, designing and executing an experimental approach to prove or disprove the hypothesis, conducting a statistical analysis of the results to confirm their validity, and interpreting their meaning and impact. When their work is completed the scientist prepares to publish the work. Publication requires peer review. Hypotheses, experimental approaches, results, and interpretation of results are independently and anonymously reviewed by a scientific peer. The reviewers are selected based on their expertise in the field. The peer review process is essential for the integrity of the scientific process. Without a robust scientific process, society cannot discriminate between validated results and interpretations and biased, inaccurate, and potentially dangerous conjecture. With inaccurate science society and policy makers may make poor decisions that could hurt people and the world around them. While scientists should not censor information available to the public, scientists have a responsibility to inform the public. We must articulate what the scientific process is and why it is essential when considering the validity of information. Scientist are responsible for pointing out when public information has not been vetted through a scientific process and therefore cannot be considered conclusive. Scientists are responsible for highlighting information that has been generated and vetted with the scientific process. Over time, our goal is for the public to value the scientific process based on peer review. The public could become enlightened to the necessity for peer review to support decisions and action. Scientists need to contribute to advancing public knowledge. When invited to serve as a peer reviewer, scientists have a responsibility to contribute to the process. We all are extremely busy making peer review a distraction. While peer review does not directly benefit our own work and career, it benefits our chosen field of science. This is very important for the research area that our journal, Water-Energy Nexus, is focusing on. We cover the convergence of science and technology integrating across large spatial ranges (micro to global) in environmental pollution and the balance of remediation issues with energy use. Water-Energy Nexus wants to provide scientists with a platform for scientific debate and discussion on this rich and complicated topic. With the manuscripts submitted to WEN cover integrated research topics across a broad range of subjects from environment sciences through energy engineering, the role of peer review is essential. Peer review on a new submission to WEN should not be biased towards a specific science field. It should be done considering the complex nature of issues in the water-energy nexus. Scientists need to contribute to the public dialog. To accomplish these goals, we need to be honest, accurate, articulate, and use understandable language. The impact of WEN is very diverse affecting society in many ways. The scientific audience for WEN is diverse and readers may not fully understand the content of the papers outside their research expertise. Therefore, scientists, especially those who want to contribute to WEN, should work with communications specialists to convey message to benefit society. The audience includes the general public and researchers outside the author’s core specialty. While the peer-reviewed journal article is the cornerstone of our careers and critical for advancing scientific knowledge, a general interest story could benefit society even more. The author cannot lose sight that our work has two audiences, the science community, and more importantly, our family, friends, neighbors, and policy makers.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2006

Data Integration Support for Data Served in the OPeNDAP and OGC Environments

NASA is coordinating a technology development project to construct a gateway between system components built upon the Open-source Project for a Network Data AcceSs Protocol (OPeNDAP) and those made available made available via interfaces specified by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This project is funded though the Advanced Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science (ACCESS) Program and is a NASA contribution to the Committee on Earth Satellites (CEOS) Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS). The motivation for the project is the set of data integration needs that have been expressed by the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP), an international program that is addressing the study of the global water cycle. CEOP is assembling a large collection in situ and satellite data and mode1 results from a wide variety of sources covering 35 sites around the globe. The data are provided by systems based on either the OPeNDAP or OGC protocols but the research community desires access to the full range of data and associated services from a single client. This presentation will discuss the current status of the OPeNDAP/OGC Gateway Project. The project is building upon an early prototype that illustrated the feasibility of such a gateway and which was demonstrated to the CEOP science community. In its first year as an ACCESS project, the effort has been has focused on the design of the catalog and data services that will be provided by the gateway and the mappings between the metadata and services provided in the two environments.

McDonald, Kenneth R.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Transcriptomics Processing Pipelines for Space Biology: An Open Source and Consensus-Driven Approach

Transcriptomics holds significant value in elucidating the relationship between gene expression, experimental factors, biological factors, and various types of omics data. Enhancing our understanding of these connections is paramount for foundational biology, which plays a pivotal role in devising solutions for challenges pertinent to both space travel and terrestrial life. The NASA GeneLab project, part of the Open Science Data Repository (OSDR.nasa.gov), seeks to accelerate space biology research through cataloging and democratizing ‘omics data, including transcriptomics. Since raw omics data are largely inaccessible to non-bioinformaticians, GeneLab works with the scientific community via the Open Science Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) to develop standard processing pipelines to generate and publish processed data. Unlike raw data, processed data have greater immediate value to diverse users with varying technical backgrounds and computational capabilities. Standardizing processing workflows is essential to match the pace of raw data generation, ensure reproducibility, and enable standardized processed data for comparison across datasets. As of June 2023, transcriptomics studies comprise over half of GeneLab datasets hosted on the OSDR, including data from bulk RNA-seq and Affymetrix or Agilent 1-Channel DNA microarray assays. In collaboration with the AWGs, GeneLab developed consensus processing pipelines for these transcriptomics data types that includes quality control, background correction (microarray only), data normalization and quantification, culminating in the detection and annotation of differentially expressed genes. The work presented here describes Nextflow implementations of GeneLab’s consensus transcriptomics pipelines that automates and accelerates processing of these datasets. In addition to the core data processing, these workflows also include raw data staging and a robust verification and validation program to identify errors in real-time, stop additional downstream computation, and preserve computational resources. These workflows are used to generate GeneLab processed data hosted on the OSDR, and are publicly available as open source software for others to use at: https://github.com/nasa/GeneLab_Data_Processing.

Jonathan Oribello↗
NASA NTRS2009

The Scientific Capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope

The scientific capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope fall into four themes. The End of the Dark Ages: First Light and Reionization theme seeks to identify the first luminous sources to form and to determine the ionization history of the universe. The Assembly of Galaxies theme seeks to determine how galaxies and dark matter, gas, stars, metals morphological structures, and active nuclei within them evolved from the epoch of reionization to the present. The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems and the Origins of Life theme seeks to determine the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems around nearby stars and of our own, and investigate the potential for life in those systems. A comprehensive, top-level review of JWST sciences was published in the journal Space Science Reviews (Gardner et al. 2006, SSR, 123, 485). That paper gives details of the 4 JWST science themes, and describes the design of the observatory and ground system. Since that paper was published, the JWST Science Working Group, working with members of the astronomical community, has continued to develop the science case for JWST, giving more details in a series of white papers. In this poster, the main science themes and white papers are reviewed.

Gardner, Jonathan P.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Request for the establishment of quantum information foundries

Quantum information science still requires basic science research to achieve its full potential. However, scientists require access to fabricated device samples if we are to utilize the full toolset for solving the pressing issues in the field such as materials, device layout, or optimal error correction methods.Currently, access to samples is either prohibitively expensive, or requires close collaboration with one of the few groups in the world developing these systems. A dedicated quantum foundry could,in principle,provide affordable samples designed with current best practices to a host of scientists who otherwise do not have access. We detail several different foundry models which we believe will assist the community in developing the science for both the underlying processes, as well as the more advanced chip layout and circuit design. Opening access to the broader community has the potential to significantly lower the barrier to entry and vastly improve the ability for researchers in fields ranging from condensed matter to materials characterization to systems engineering to contribute to accelerating the advance of quantum information science and technology.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
NASA NTRS1993

Science Information Systems Newsletter, issue 28

The purpose of the Information Systems Newsletter is to inform the space science and applications research community about information systems development and to promote coordination and collaboration by providing a forum for communication. This quarterly publication focuses on programs sponsored by the Information Systems Branch in support of NASA's Office of Space Science. Articles of interest for other programs and agencies are presented as well. The April 1993 issue is presented.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2022

Soil pH influences the structure of virus communities at local and global scales

The influence of biotic and abiotic factors on viral communities across environmental gradients in soil is relatively unknown. While soil pH strongly influences microbial community structure, it is unclear whether there is a similar influence on soil viruses. In this study, prokaryotic and viral communities were characterized in soils from a long-term pH-manipulated soil gradient (pH 4.5 and 7.5), and viral populations also compared to those of other soils ranging in pH (4.0–7.5). Viral communities were significantly influenced by pH at the local scale with 99% of viral operational taxonomic units restricted to pH 4.5 or 7.5 soil only. Analysis of viromes from six other European and North American soil systems demonstrated that a selection of viral clusters from acidic and neutral pH soils were more associated with those from the local gradient pH 4.5 or 7.5 soils, respectively. While direct pH effects on virion integrity and indirect selection via host composition were not distinguished, the results reveal that soil pH is a factor in structuring viral communities at local and global scales.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Functional Traits Resolve Mechanisms Governing the Assembly and Distribution of Nitrogen-Cycling Microbial Communities in the Global Ocean

Microorganisms drive much of the marine nitrogen (N) cycle, which jointly controls the primary production in the global ocean. However, our understanding of the microbial communities driving the global ocean N cycle remains fragmented. Focusing on “who is doing what, where, and how?”, this study draws a clear picture describing the global biogeography of marine N-cycling microbial communities by utilizing the Tara Oceans shotgun metagenomes. The marine N-cycling communities are highly variable taxonomically but relatively even at the functional trait level, showing clear functional redundancy properties. The functional traits and taxonomic groups are shaped by the same set of geo-environmental factors, among which, depth is the major factor impacting marine N-cycling communities, differentiating mesopelagic from epipelagic communities. Latitudinal diversity gradients and distance-decay relationships are observed for taxonomic groups, but rarely or weakly for functional traits. The composition of functional traits is strongly deterministic as revealed by null model analysis, while a higher degree of stochasticity is observed for taxonomic composition. Integrating multiple lines of evidence, in addition to drawing a biogeographic picture of marine N-cycling communities, this study also demonstrated an essential microbial ecological theory—determinism governs the assembly of microbial communities performing essential biogeochemical processes; the environment selects functional traits rather than taxonomic groups; functional redundancy underlies stochastic taxonomic community assembly.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

First Plant Cell Atlas symposium report

The Plant Cell Atlas (PCA) community hosted a virtual symposium on December 9 and 10, 2021 on single cell and spatial omics technologies. The conference gathered almost 500 academic, industry, and government leaders to identify the needs and directions of the PCA community and to explore how establishing a data synthesis center would address these needs and accelerate progress. This report details the presentations and discussions focused on the possibility of a data synthesis center for a PCA and the expected impacts of such a center on advancing science and technology globally. Community discussions focused on topics such as data analysis tools and annotation standards; computational expertise and cyber-infrastructure; modes of community organization and engagement; methods for ensuring a broad reach in the PCA community; recruitment, training, and nurturing of new talent; and the overall impact of the PCA initiative. These targeted discussions facilitated dialogue among the participants to gauge whether PCA might be a vehicle for formulating a data synthesis center. The conversations also explored how online tools can be leveraged to help broaden the reach of the PCA (i.e., online contests, virtual networking, and social media stakeholder engagement) and decrease costs of conducting research (e.g., virtual REU opportunities). Major recommendations for the future of the PCA included establishing standards, creating dashboards for easy and intuitive access to data, and engaging with a broad community of stakeholders. The discussions also identified the following as being essential to the PCA's success: identifying homologous cell-type markers and their biocuration, publishing datasets and computational pipelines, utilizing online tools for communication (such as Slack), and user-friendly data visualization and data sharing. In conclusion, the development of a data synthesis center will help the PCA community achieve these goals by providing a centralized repository for existing and new data, a platform for sharing tools, and new analytical approaches through collaborative, multidisciplinary efforts. A data synthesis center will help the PCA reach milestones, such as community-supported data evaluation metrics, accelerating plant research necessary for human and environmental health.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2012

The Potential for Hosted Payloads at NASA

The 2010 National Space Policy encourages federal agencies to actively explore the use of inventive, nontraditional arrangements for acquiring commercial space goods and services to meet United States Government requirements, including...hosting government capabilities on commercial spacecraft. NASA's Science Mission Directorate has taken an important step towards this goal by adding an option for hosted payload responses to its recent Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for Earth Venture-2 missions. Since NASA selects a significant portion of its science missions through a competitive process, it is useful to understand the implications that this process has on the feasibility of successfully proposing a commercially hosted payload mission. This paper describes some of the impediments associated with proposing a hosted payload mission to NASA, and offers suggestions on how these impediments might be addressed. Commercially hosted payloads provide a novel way to serve the needs of the science and technology demonstration communities at a fraction of the cost of a traditional Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) mission. The commercial communications industry launches over 20 satellites to GEO each year. By exercising this repeatable commercial paradigm of privately financed access to space with proven vendors, NASA can achieve science goals at a significantly lower cost than the current dedicated spacecraft and launch vehicle approach affords. Commercial hosting could open up a new realm of opportunities for NASA science missions to make measurements from GEO. This paper also briefly describes two GEO missions recommended by the National Academies of Science Earth Science Decadal Survey, the Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission and the Precipitation and All-weather Temperature and Humidity (PATH) mission. Hosted payload missions recently selected for implementation by the Office of the Chief Technologist are also discussed. Finally, there are technical differences specific to hosted payloads and the GEO environment that must be considered when planning and developing a hosted payload mission. This paper addresses some of payload accommodation differences from the typical NASA LEO mission, including spacecraft interfaces, attitude control and knowledge, communications, data handling, mission operations, ground systems, and the thermal, radiation, and electromagnetic environment. The paper also discusses technical and programmatic differences such as limits to NASA's involvement with commercial quality assurance processes to conform to the commercial schedule and minimizing the price that makes hosted payloads an attractive option.

Andraschko, Mark↗
NASA NTRS1998

Solar System Studies with the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF)

SIRTF (Space Infrared Telescope Facility) is the final element in NASA's 'Great Observatories' program. It consists of an 85-cm cryogenically-cooled observatory for infrared astronomy from space. SIRTF is scheduled for launch in late 2001 or early 2002 on a Delta rocket into a heliocentric orbit trailing the Earth. Data from SIRTF will be processed and disseminated to the community through the SIRTF Science Center (SSC) located at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. Some 80/% of the total observing time (estimated at a minimum of 7500 hours of integration time per year for the mission lifetime of about 4 years) will be available to the scientific community at large through a system of refereed proposals. Three basic instruments are located in the SIRTF focal plane. The Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS), the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), and the Infrared Spectrometer (IRS), taken together, provide imaging and spectroscopy from 3.5 to 160 microns. Among the solar system studies suited to SIRTF are the following: 1) spectroscopy and radiometry of small bodies from the asteroid main belt, through the Trojan clouds, to the Kuiper Disk; 2) dust distribution in the zodiacal cloud and the Earth's heliocentric dust ring; 3) spectroscopy and radiometry of comets; and 4) spectroscopy and radiometry of planets and their satellites. Searches for, and studies of dust disks around other stars, brown dwarfs, and superplanets will also be conducted with SIRTF. The SORTIE web site (http://ssc.ipac.caltech.edu/sirtf) contains important details and documentation on the project, the spacecraft, the telescope, instruments, and observing procedures. A community-wide workshop for solar system studies with SIRTF is in the planning stages by the author and Martha S. Hanner for the summer of 1999.

Cruikshank, Dale P.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Organic amendments change soil organic C structure and microbial community but not total organic matter on sub-decadal scales

Organic C has many benefits for soil, but it is depleted by tillage and crop harvest, and especially so for biofuel crops. Accordingly, strategies such as partially retaining stover or planting a cover crop can help ameliorate the negative effect of C removal. We used a long-term field experiment to study the impacts of stover retention and planting cover crop on soil organic matter (SOM), its extractable components and the soil microbial community. SOM chemical composition characterization was determined by electrospray ionization (ESI) coupled with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) in sequential water, methanol (MeOH), and chloroform (CHCl3) extracts. The characteristics of the soil bacterial community were measured by phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA), real-time quantitative PCR, and 16S rRNA gene sequence. The variations in total SOM content, total microbial biomass, and bacterial population were slight among treatments, but SOM chemical compounds, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) biomass, and bacterial structure changed significantly, and especially so in the coupled application of stover retention and cover crop. Specifically, stover retention enriched more lignin-like compounds in soil, whereas cover crop enriched more condensed hydrocarbons, and had more compounds with an aromaticity index (AI) >0.5. The bacterial community was not altered by the cover crop, but the corn stover retention increased the relative abundances of Myxococcales (Deltaproteobacteria) and decreased that of Actinobacteria. Redundancy analysis (RDA) further unveiled that the bacterial community in the stover treatments had significantly positive association with CHCl3-extracted chemical classes, i.e. unsaturated hydrocarbon and lipid with the coupled application (stover and cover crop), and lignin and protein with the single corn stover treatment. Taken together, our study shows how different C addition practices influence the molecular composition of SOM and the structure of soil microbial communities.

Xu, Jiangbin↗