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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1990

A comparison of surface biophysical properties and remotely sensed variables from FIFE

A method for calculating surface energy balances is investigated which incorporates the vegetation index and/or other indicators of surface conductance at visible and near-IR channels. Data from the Konza Prairie are employed to confirm the hypothesized relationship between maximum canopy conductance and the observed simple-ratio vegetation index. The relationship is established, but more data regarding soil-surface contributions are required to estimate the total surface conductance to evapotranspiration.

Sellers, Piers↗
NASA NTRS1992

Testing a detailed biophysical parameterization for land-air exchange in a high-resolution boundary-layer model

This study modifies the 1D PBL model of Zhang and Anthes (1982) to account more explicitly for the effects of a vegetation layer. New equations for the latent, sensible, and ground heat fluxes, reformulated in terms of vegetation parameters are substituted into the model. The model produces good agreement with observations over a wide range of conditions: for wet, high-vegetation conditions, and for dry, low-vegetation conditions in both the winter and the summer.

Argentini, S.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Biophysical properties affecting vegetative canopy reflectance and absorbed photosynthetically active radiation at the FIFE site

Leaves of the dominant grass species of the ISCLP FIFE site reflect and transmit radiation in a like manner to other healthy green leaves. Visible reflectance factors (RFs) and transmittance factors (TFs) were less for older leaves than younger leaves except during senescence, when RF and TF values were greater. NIR-RF values increased and TF values decreased with leaf age, with the reverse occurring as the leaf went through senescence.

Walter-Shea, E. A.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Multi-Decadal Pathfinder Data Sets of Global Land Biophysical Variables from AVHRR and MODIS and their Use in GCM Studies of Biogeophysics and Biogeochemistry

The problem of how the scale, or spatial resolution, of reflectance data impacts retrievals of vegetation leaf area index (LAI) and fraction absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) has been investigated. We define the goal of scaling as the process by which it is established that LAI and FPAR values derived from coarse resolution sensor data equal the arithmetic average of values derived independently from fine resolution sensor data. The increasing probability of land cover mixtures with decreasing resolution is defined as heterogeneity, which is a key concept in scaling studies. The effect of pixel heterogeneity on spectral reflectances and LAI/FPAR retrievals is investigated with 1 km Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data aggregated to different coarse spatial resolutions. It is shown that LAI retrieval errors at coarse resolution are inversely related to the proportion of the dominant land cover in such pixel. Further, large errors in LAI retrievals are incurred when forests are minority biomes in non-forest pixels compared to when forest biomes are mixed with one another, and vice-versa. A physically based technique for scaling with explicit spatial resolution dependent radiative transfer formulation is developed. The successful application of this theory to scaling LAI retrievals from AVHRR data of different resolutions is demonstrated

Myneni, Ranga↗
NASA NTRS2003

Farming in space: environmental and biophysical concerns

The colonization of space will depend on our ability to routinely provide for the metabolic needs (oxygen, water, and food) of a crew with minimal re-supply from Earth. On Earth, these functions are facilitated by the cultivation of plant crops, thus it is important to develop plant-based food production systems to sustain the presence of mankind in space. Farming practices on earth have evolved for thousands of years to meet both the demands of an ever-increasing population and the availability of scarce resources, and now these practices must adapt to accommodate the effects of global warming. Similar challenges are expected when earth-based agricultural practices are adapted for space-based agriculture. A key variable in space is gravity; planets (e.g. Mars, 1/3 g) and moons (e.g. Earth's moon, 1/6 g) differ from spacecraft orbiting the Earth (e.g. Space stations) or orbital transfer vehicles that are subject to microgravity. The movement of heat, water vapor, CO2 and O2 between plant surfaces and their environment is also affected by gravity. In microgravity, these processes may also be affected by reduced mass transport and thicker boundary layers around plant organs caused by the absence of buoyancy dependent convective transport. Future space farmers will have to adapt their practices to accommodate microgravity, high and low extremes in ambient temperatures, reduced atmospheric pressures, atmospheres containing high volatile organic carbon contents, and elevated to super-elevated CO2 concentrations. Farming in space must also be carried out within power-, volume-, and mass-limited life support systems and must share resources with manned crews. Improved lighting and sensor technologies will have to be developed and tested for use in space. These developments should also help make crop production in terrestrial controlled environments (plant growth chambers and greenhouses) more efficient and, therefore, make these alternative agricultural systems more economically feasible food production systems. c2002 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Review↗
NASA NTRS2004

Circular Permutation of a Chaperonin Protein: Biophysics and Application to Nanotechnology

We have designed five circular permutants of a chaperonin protein derived from the hyperthermophilic organism Sulfolobus shibatae. These permuted proteins were expressed in E. coli and are well-folded. Furthermore, all the permutants assemble into 18-mer double rings of the same form as the wild-type protein. We characterized the thermodynamics of folding for each permutant by both guanidine denaturation and differential scanning calorimetry. We also examined the assembly of chaperonin rings into higher order structures that may be used as nanoscale templates. The results show that circular permutation can be used to tune the thermodynamic properties of a protein template as well as facilitating the fusion of peptides, binding proteins or enzymes onto nanostructured templates.

Paavola, Chad↗
NASA NTRS2002

Verification of satellite radar remote sensing based estimates of boreal and subalpine growing seasons using an ecosystem process model and surface biophysical measurement network information

We employ daily surface Radar backscatter data from the SeaWinds Ku-band Scatterometer onboard Quikscat to estimate landscape freeze-thaw state and associated length of the seasonal non-frozen period as a surrogate for determining the annual growing season across boreal and subalpine regions of North America for 2000 and 2001.

boreal growing season radar monitoring boreal ecol↗
NASA NTRS2009

Biophysics Representation of the Two-Hit Model of Alzheimer's Disease for the Exploration of Late CNS Risks from Space Radiation

A concern for long-term space travel outside the Earth s magnetic field is the late effects to the central nervous system (CNS) from galactic cosmic ray (GCR) or solar particle events (SPE). Human epidemiology data is severely limited for making CNS risk estimates and it is not clear such effects occur following low LET exposures. We are developing systems biology models based on biological information on specific diseases, and experimental data for proton and heavy ion radiation. A two-hit model of Alzheimer s disease (AD) has been proposed by Zhu et al.(1), which is the framework of our model. Of importance is that over 50% of the US population over the age of 75-y have mild to severe forms of AD. Therefore we recommend that risk assessment for a potential AD risk from space radiation should focus on the projection of an earlier age of onset of AD and the prevention of this possible acceleration through countermeasures. In the two-hit model, oxidative stress and aberrant cell cycle-related abnormalities leading to amyloid-beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are necessary and invariant steps in AD. We have formulated a stochastic cell kinetics model of the two-hit AD model. In our model a population of neuronal cells is allowed to undergo renewal through neurogenesis and is susceptible to oxidative stress or cell cycle abnormalities with age-specific accumulation of damage. Baseline rates are fitted to AD population data for specific ages, gender, and for persons with an apolipoprotein 4 allele. We then explore how low LET or heavy ions may increase either of the two-hits or neurogenesis either through persistent oxidative stress, direct mutation, or through changes to the micro-environment, and suggest possible ways to develop accurate quantitative estimates of these processes for predicting AD risks following long-term space travel.

Cucinotta, Francis A.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Incorporating Plant Phenology Dynamics in a Biophysical Canopy Model

The Multi-Layer Canopy Model (MLCan) is a vegetation model created to capture plant responses to environmental change. Themodel vertically resolves carbon uptake, water vapor and energy exchange at each canopy level by coupling photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and leaf energy balance. The model is forced by incoming shortwave and longwave radiation, as well as near-surface meteorological conditions. The original formulation of MLCan utilized canopy structural traits derived from observations. This project aims to incorporate a plant phenology scheme within MLCan allowing these structural traits to vary dynamically. In the plant phenology scheme implemented here, plant growth is dependent on environmental conditions such as air temperature and soil moisture. The scheme includes functionality that models plant germination, growth, and senescence. These growth stages dictate the variation in six different vegetative carbon pools: storage, leaves, stem, coarse roots, fine roots, and reproductive. The magnitudes of these carbon pools determine land surface parameters such as leaf area index, canopy height, rooting depth and root water uptake capacity. Coupling this phenology scheme with MLCan allows for a more flexible representation of the structure and function of vegetation as it responds to changing environmental conditions.

environmental changes↗
NASA NTRS2016

Using Landsat, MODIS, and a Biophysical Model to Evaluate LST in Urban Centers

In this paper, we assessed and compared land surface temperature (LST) in urban centers using data from Landsat, MODIS, and the Simple Biosphere model (SiB2). We also evaluated the sensitivity of the models LST to different land cover types, fractions (percentages), and emissivities compared to reference points derived from Landsat thermal data. This was demonstrated in three climatologically- and morphologically-different cities of Atlanta, GA, New York, NY, and Washington, DC. Our results showed that in these cities SiB2 was sensitive to both the emissivity and the land cover type and fraction, but much more sensitive to the latter. The practical implications of these results are rather significant since they imply that the SiB2 model can be used to run different scenarios for evaluating urban heat island (UHI) mitigation strategies. This study also showed that using detailed emissivities per land cover type and fractions from Landsat-derived data caused a convergence of the model results towards the Landsat-derived LST for most of the studied cases. This study also showed that SiB2 LSTs are closer in magnitude to Landsat-derived LSTs than MODIS-derived LSTs. It is important, however, to emphasize that both Landsat and MODIS LSTs are not direct observations and, as such, do not represent a ground truth. More studies will be needed to compare these results to in situ LST data and provide further validation.

Al-Hamdan, Mohammad Z.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Using the Light Microscopy Module (LMM) on the International Space Station (ISS), The Advanced Colloids Experiment (ACE) and MacroMolecular Biophysics (MMB)

The Light Microscopy Module (LMM) was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2009 and began science operations in 2010. It continues to support Physical and Biological scientific research on ISS. During 2016, if all goes as planned, three experiments will be completed: [1] Advanced Colloids Experiments with Heated base-2 (ACE-H2) and [2] Advanced Colloids Experiments with Temperature control (ACE-T1). Preliminary results, along with an overview of present and future LMM capabilities will be presented; this includes details on the planned data imaging processing and storage system, along with the confocal upgrade to the core microscope. [1] a consortium of universities from the State of Kentucky working through the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR): Stuart Williams, Gerold Willing, Hemali Rathnayake, et al. and [2] from Chungnam National University, Daejeon, S. Korea: Chang-Soo Lee, et al.

Microgravity Biology Research↗