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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 343 records · Page 19

Solar Total Irradiance Variability Measurements by the SMM/ACRIM I Experiment

Convincing evidence of solar total irradiance variability and its relationships with solar activity was provided by the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor I (ACRIM I) experiment on the NASA Solar Maximum Mission (SMM). SMM/ACRIM I, the first flight experiment dedicated to the task of solar irradiance monitoring, has produced a multiyear solar total irradiance data base with + or - 0.02% or better long term precision since its launch in February, 1980. While the climatological significance of the results will not be apparent until many more years of continuous data are acquired, the discovery of variability on solar active region time scales has provided new insight into the physics of solar activity in the early years of the mission.

Willson, R. C.↗

The Structure of the Uranian Rings and the Search for Rings Around Neptune

The nine narrow rings of Uranus, presently the only confirmed features of this system, have been observed with the diffraction-limited resolution (3.5 km) of ground-based occultations since their discovery in 1977. These data have been used to establish an orbit model, from which the five Keplerian orbit parameters for each ring, the pole of the mean ring plane, and the gravitational harmonic coefficients J sub 2 and J sub 4 have been determined. The rings are typically a few kilometers wide with eccentricities of about 0.001 and inclinations of a few hundredths of a degree, although a few have no measurable eccentricity or inclination. Interesting Voyager investigations would include probing the structure of the rings at higher spatial resolution, searching for new rings in the system (including inter-ring material), locating the postulated shepherd satellites, and searching for satellites inside the orbit of Miranda that might have dynamical influence on the rings. The high precision (approx 2 km) of the ring orbits might prove useful for spacecraft navigation. For Neptune, occultation searches have revealed no rings to a limit of a few hundreths optical depth, within a few hundred kilometers from the top of the planet's atmosphere (for equatorial rings).

Elliot, J. L.↗

Exploratory geological analysis of AVIRIS data

The size and complexity of AVIRIS data sets makes analysis difficult. We present a technique that allows the researcher to rapidly scan the full data set in image form in order to empirically find significant spatial patterns anywhere across the spectrum. Our approach takes advantage of the speed and power of computer graphics workstations to allow real-time, interactive data manipulation and display. Empirical data selection avoids the bias inherent in theoretical selection criteria, and allows discovery of unexpected relationships within the data set. Link Winds, a prototype data analysis system under development, provides the visualization tools used in this study. We are applying this approach to geological studies in the eastern Mojave Desert.

Beratan, K. K.↗

Voyager's Last Encounter

This video describes Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune. Computer animation and actual data convey Voyager's discoveries such as turbulent storms and dark spots in Neptune's atmosphere, six new moons, Neptune's three rings, and the presence of frozen methane on Triton, as researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory describe Voyager's achievements.

Source record↗

An application of miniscale experiments on Earth to refine microgravity analysis of adiabatic multiphase flow in space

Adiabatic two-phase flow is of interest to the design of multiphase fluid and thermal management systems for spacecraft. This paper presents original data and unifies existing data for capillary tubes as a step toward assessing existing multiphase flow analysis and engineering software. Comparisons of theory with these data once again confirm the broad accuracy of the theory. Due to the simplicity and low cost of the capillary tube experiments, which were performed on earth, we were able to closely examine for the first time a flow situation that had not previously been examined appreciably by aircraft tests. This is the situation of a slug flow at high quality, near transition to annular flow. Our comparison of software calculations with these data revealed overprediction of pipeline pressure drop by up to a factor of three. In turn, this finding motivated a reexamination of the existing theory, and then development of a new analytical and is in far better agreement with the data. This sequence of discovery illustrates the role of inexpensive miniscale modeling on earth to anticipate microgravity behavior in space and to complete and help define needs for aircraft tests.

Rothe, Paul H.↗

Correlated studies at activity maximum: The Sun and the solar wind

The breadth and power of the set of solar and heliospheric observatories presently in space is unprecedented. Their observations generally began at solar minimum or in the declining phase of the past maximum, but it is anticipated that most of the instruments will be able to observe the rise to the next maximum and that the events will happen then. The second orbit of Ulysses will be especially interesting and the Yokhoh orbital decay is not projected until 2002. New spacecraft, including TRACE, HESSI, and SOLAR-B, may also become available. The current remote sensing and in situ measurements are characterized by a much stronger understanding of how the solar and interplanetary phenomena match. The novel discoveries from the current data are reviewed, and speculations are expressed on how to take advantage of the future data, emphasizing the use of heliospheric observations to help probe the connectivity of the corona/solar wind interface region. It is suggested that there now exists a possibility of understanding the heliospheric structure empirically in new ways: by using particles as tracers of the field, and by correlating multi-point measurements of structures in the solar wind with solar images.

Hudson, H. S.↗

The Results of Dynamic Data Acquisition During Mars Pathfinder Prototype Airbag Drop Testing

The Mars Pathfinder mission, scheduled for launch in December 1996, will use an airbag system to safely deliver a lander to the Martian surface.The airbag landing system has undergone a comprehensive test program during its evolution from initial design phase to final qualification and acceptance testing. This paper outlines the test approach used in the airbag development program, describes the data acquisition system used to obtain and evaluate airbag performance data, and presents test results.

airbags Mars Mars Pathfinder Mars lander data acqu↗

Serving Fisheries and Ocean Metadata to Communities Around the World

NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) assists the oceanographic community in the discovery, access, and sharing of scientific data by serving on-line fisheries and ocean metadata to users around the globe. As of January 2006, the directory holds more than 16,300 Earth Science data descriptions and over 1,300 services descriptions. Of these, nearly 4,000 unique ocean-related metadata records are available to the public, with many having direct links to the data. In 2005, the GCMD averaged over 5 million hits a month, with nearly a half million unique hosts for the year. Through the GCMD portal (http://gcmd.nasa.gov/), users can search vast and growing quantities of data and services using controlled keywords, free-text searches, or a combination of both. Users may now refine a search based on topic, location, instrument, platform, project, data center, spatial and temporal coverage, and data resolution for selected datasets. The directory also offers data holders a means to advertise and search their data through customized portals, which are subset views of the directory. The discovery metadata standard used is the Directory Interchange Format (DIF), adopted in 1988. This format has evolved to accommodate other national and international standards such as FGDC and IS019115. Users can submit metadata through easy-to-use online and offline authoring tools. The directory, which also serves as the International Directory Network (IDN), has been providing its services and sharing its experience and knowledge of metadata at the international, national, regional, and local level for many years. Active partners include the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), federal agencies (such as NASA, NOAA, and USGS), international agencies (such as IOC/IODE, UN, and JAXA) and organizations (such as ESIP, IOOS/DMAC, GOSIC, GLOBEC, OBIS, and GoMODP).

Meaux, Melanie F.↗

Automated Knowledge Discovery From Simulators

A computational method, SimLearn, has been devised to facilitate efficient knowledge discovery from simulators. Simulators are complex computer programs used in science and engineering to model diverse phenomena such as fluid flow, gravitational interactions, coupled mechanical systems, and nuclear, chemical, and biological processes. SimLearn uses active-learning techniques to efficiently address the "landscape characterization problem." In particular, SimLearn tries to determine which regions in "input space" lead to a given output from the simulator, where "input space" refers to an abstraction of all the variables going into the simulator, e.g., initial conditions, parameters, and interaction equations. Landscape characterization can be viewed as an attempt to invert the forward mapping of the simulator and recover the inputs that produce a particular output. Given that a single simulation run can take days or weeks to complete even on a large computing cluster, SimLearn attempts to reduce costs by reducing the number of simulations needed to effect discoveries. Unlike conventional data-mining methods that are applied to static predefined datasets, SimLearn involves an iterative process in which a most informative dataset is constructed dynamically by using the simulator as an oracle. On each iteration, the algorithm models the knowledge it has gained through previous simulation trials and then chooses which simulation trials to run next. Running these trials through the simulator produces new data in the form of input-output pairs. The overall process is embodied in an algorithm that combines support vector machines (SVMs) with active learning. SVMs use learning from examples (the examples are the input-output pairs generated by running the simulator) and a principle called maximum margin to derive predictors that generalize well to new inputs. In SimLearn, the SVM plays the role of modeling the knowledge that has been gained through previous simulation trials. Active learning is used to determine which new input points would be most informative if their output were known. The selected input points are run through the simulator to generate new information that can be used to refine the SVM. The process is then repeated. SimLearn carefully balances exploration (semi-randomly searching around the input space) versus exploitation (using the current state of knowledge to conduct a tightly focused search). During each iteration, SimLearn uses not one, but an ensemble of SVMs. Each SVM in the ensemble is characterized by different hyper-parameters that control various aspects of the learned predictor - for example, whether the predictor is constrained to be very smooth (nearby points in input space lead to similar output predictions) or whether the predictor is allowed to be "bumpy." The various SVMs will have different preferences about which input points they would like to run through the simulator next. SimLearn includes a formal mechanism for balancing the ensemble SVM preferences so that a single choice can be made for the next set of trials.

Burl, Michael↗

Namibia Dashboard Enhancements

The purpose of this presentation is for a Technical Interchange Meeting with the Namibia Hydrological Services (NHS) in Namibia. The meeting serves as a capacity building exercise. This presentation goes over existing software functionality developed in collaboration with NHS over the past five years called the Namibia Flood Dashboard. Furthermore, it outlines new functionality developed over the past year and future functionality that will be developed. The main purpose of the Dashboard is to assist in decision support for flood warning. The Namibia Flood Dashboard already exists online in a cloud environment and has been used in prototype mode for the past few years.Functionality in the Dashboard includes river gauge hydrographs, TRMM estimate rainfall, EO-1 flood maps, infrastructure maps and other related functions. Future functionality includes attempting to integrate interoperability standards and crowd-sourcing capability. To this end, we are adding OpenStreetMap compatibility and an Applications Program Interface (API) called a GeoSocial API to enable discovery and sharing of data products useful for decision support via social media.

Disaster Decision Support↗

An Evolutionary System of Mineralogy: Proposal for A Classification of Planetary Materials Based on Natural Kind Clustering

Minerals reveal the nature of the co-evolving geosphere and biosphere through billions of years of Earth history. Mineral classification systems have the potential to elucidate this rich evolutionary story; however, the present mineral taxonomy, based as it is on idealized major element chemistry and crystal structure, lacks a temporal aspect, and thus cannot reflect planetary evolution. A complementary evolutionary system of mineralogy based on the quantitative recognition of “natural kind clustering” for a wide range of condensed planetary materials with different paragenetic origins has the potential to amplify, though not supersede, the present classification system.

Philosophy of mineralogy↗

Intelligent Pixel Detectors: Towards a Radiation Hard ASIC with On-Chip Machine Learning in 28 nm CMOS

Detectors at future high energy colliders will face enormous technical challenges. Disentangling the unprecedented numbers of particles expected in each event will require highly granular silicon pixel detectors with billions of readout channels. With event rates as high as 40 MHz, these detectors will generate petabytes of data per second. To enable discovery within strict bandwidth and latency constraints, future trackers must be capable of fast, power efficient, and radiation hard data-reduction at the source. We are developing a radiation hard readout integrated circuit (ROIC) in 28nm CMOS with on-chip machine learning (ML) for future intelligent pixel detectors. We will show track parameter predictions using a neural network within a single layer of silicon and hardware tests on the first tape-outs produced with TSMC. Preliminary results indicate that reading out featurized clusters from particles above a modest momentum threshold could enable using pixel information at 40 MHz.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Scientific computing

Our research generates a vast amount of data that scientists must gather, store, analyze and interpret. These activities require expertise and the right tools. Fermilab is home to one of the largest tape robotic systems available today, providing more than 800 petabytes of storage capability. The lab is growing the tape facilities to meet expected demands of over 1,000 petabytes of additional data per year by the end of the decade. Fermilab also has the technology and computing power to efficiently pr ocess these data to facilitate scientific discoveries. Our computation al experts work closely with experimenters and the scientific commu - nity at large to provide and facilitate the use of the cutting-edge computing tools necessary for these discoveries.

Fermilab, Fermilab↗

Application of NASA Giovanni to Coastal Zone Remote Sensing Search

The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni) provides rapid access to, and enables effective utilization of, remotely-sensed data that are applicable to investigations of coastal environmental processes. Data sets in Giovanni include precipitation data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), particularly useful for coastal storm investigations; ocean color radiometry data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWIFS) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), useful for water quality evaluation, phytoplankton blooms, and terrestrial-marine interactions; and atmospheric data from MODIS and the Advanced Infrared Sounder (AIRS), providing the capability to characterize atmospheric variables. Giovanni provides a simple interface allowing discovery and analysis of environmental data sets with accompanying graphic visualizations. Examples of Giovanni investigations of the coastal zone include hurricane and storm impacts, hydrologically-induced phytoplankton blooms, chlorophyll trend analysis, and dust storm characterization. New and near-future capabilities of Giovanni will be described.

Acker, James↗

Application of NASA Giovanni to Coastal Zone Remote Sensing Research

The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure (Giovanni) provides rapid access to, and enables effective utilization of, remotely-sensed data that are applicable to investigations of coastal environmental processes. Data sets in Giovanni include precipitation data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), particularly useful for coastal storm investigations; ocean color radiometry data from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWIFS) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), useful for water quality evaluation, phytoplankton blooms, and terrestrial-marine interactions; and atmospheric data from MODIS and the Advanced Infrared Sounder (AIRS), providing the capability to characterize atmospheric variables. Giovanni provides a simple interface allowing discovery and analysis of environmental data sets with accompanying graphic visualizations. Examples of Giovanni investigations of the coastal zone include hurricane and storm impacts, hydrologically-induced phytoplankton blooms, chlorophyll trend analysis, and dust storm characterization. New and near-future capabilities of Giovanni will be described.

Acker, James↗