Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS”

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 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1991

Challenges in aeronautical research for the 1990's

Three areas of the specific NASA aeronautical research are discussed: (1) advanced subsonic transport airplanes; (2) next generation high speed civil transport aircraft (SST's); and (3) next century hypersonic vehicles. The research planning reflects an awareness of and sensitivity to modern, stringent environmental constraints, changing marketplace demands, and advanced technology driven opportunities. The technical foundations of those future systems are described.

Holmes, Bruce↗
DOE OSTI2023

Cloud Atlas: An Interactive Apparatus for Air Quality Awareness

This paper introduces a research project of a kinetic apparatus that translates collected air quality data to users. The kinetic mechanical skeleton is embedded with processors and electronics, and constantly changes its form according to air quality data collected online via a web crawler. By translating invisible environmental conditions, such as air quality data into morphological, colorful, and acoustic changes for the device, the participants can be aware of the phenomenon of air pollution in real time. The interac- tions between participants' movements and the changes of the device imply how human behaviors can affect the state of the atmosphere. As a result, the device evokes public awareness and participation in environmental issues through tangible experiences. This research aims to explore a new kind of responsive architecture that acts as a medium between invisible environments and inhabitants.

Zhao, Xiaoxiao↗
DOE OSTI2022

Triton Initiative: FY22 Communications, Outreach, and Engagement End-of-Year Report

The Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) Triton Initiative supports the advancement of the marine energy (ME) industry through environmental monitoring research and technology development. This report presents the results and analysis of the Triton Initiative’s communications, outreach, and engagement (TCOE) efforts in fiscal year 2022. The primary TCOE goals were to: (1) educate and raise awareness of ME and the role of Triton's environmental monitoring research in supporting the industry; (2) build trust with audiences through transparent communications and outreach; and (3) evaluate and refine TCOE tactics based on feedback and metrics. To support these goals, the TCOE team used multiple platforms and approaches. Notable achievements include: (1) 12 newsletter issues sent to 185 subscribers with an average open rate of 56.4%. (2) 10 Triton Stories, resulting in 2,871 collective views contributing to 46% of all Triton website views. (3) 78 Triton-specific social media posts, which generated a total of 81,896 impressions, 1,037 post-clicks, and 7,814 video views. (4) 6,320 Triton website views with increased search engine optimization ranking in several categories. (5) 3 Triton researchers interviewed as guests on two different podcasts, Water Women and Big Deep: An Ocean Podcast. (6) A Triton special issue of the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE) featuring 10 peer reviewed publications. All articles ranked in the top 25%, and two in the top 5%, for digital attention of all research outputs scored by Altmetric. (7) A seven-part webinar series called Triton Talks to share and discuss research and results from the research published in the JMSE special issue. Triton leveraged unique opportunities, particularly the JMSE special issue, to disseminate research results to end users, educate stakeholders, and gain valuable feedback. These concerted communication efforts increased exposure across platforms ultimately resulting in greater reach and access across audiences. Based on audience analyses of webinar attendees and newsletter subscribers, the TCOE team was able to successfully engage with general audiences, research partners, and ME stakeholders, including subject matter experts from government agencies, research organizations, and the regulatory community. The TCOE task established channels to gather input and create opportunities for two-way communication with people engaged with Triton’s outreach efforts. The feedback received will enable the TCOE team to support its goals for ongoing evaluation of outreach and engagement tools while continuing to build trust in the ME community and educate diverse audiences about the impactful research conducted by the Triton Initiative. This report is a Triton Initiative Fiscal Year 2022 Quarter 4 Milestone Deliverable due to the DOE WPTO Sponsor on 9/30/2022. An updated version to include data through 9/30/2022 will be delivered in October 2022.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

Triton Initiative: FY 2024 Communications, Outreach, and Engagement End-of-Year Report

The Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) Triton Initiative works to reduce barriers to permitting of marine energy testing and installation through environmental monitoring research that can help inform decision-makers on potential environmental effects associated with these systems. Communications, outreach, and engagement efforts are critical to Triton's success, which involves facilitating the effective communication and dissemination of environmental monitoring research information and results to end-users and fostering collaborations between researchers and industry partners to address the most pressing needs of this emerging industry. The Triton Initiative's communications, outreach, and engagement (TCOE) foundational goals are to educate and raise awareness of ME and the role of Triton's environmental monitoring research in supporting the industry, build trust with audiences through transparent communications and outreach, and evaluate and refine TCOE tactics based on feedback and metrics. The TCOE FY 2024-specific objectives were to (1) refine and grow Triton's audience network by reaching new individuals and communities within Triton's target audience base, and (2) improve the strategy and evaluation of TCOE efforts to demonstrate the value of communications and outreach for the ME community. This report presents the results and analysis of communications activities from September 1, 2023 through August 31, 2024. We assess the TCOE target audiences, highlight notable successes and lessons learned from FY2024, and identify the most effective channels and activities used to connect with those audiences to achieve the TCOE goals.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2022

Pollution in the Press: Employing Text Analytics to Understand Regional Water Quality Narratives

Drinking water has and will continue to be at the foundation of our nation’s well-being and there is a growing interest in United States (US) drinking water quality. Nearly 30% of the United States population obtained their water from community water systems that did not meet federal regulations in 2019. Given the heavy interactions between society and drinking water quality, this study integrates social constructionism, environmental injustice, and sociohydrological systems to evaluate local awareness of drinking water quality issues. By employing text analytics, we explore potential drivers of regional water quality narratives within 25 local news sources across the United States. Specifically, we assess the relationship between printed local newspapers and water quality violations in communities as well as the influence of social, political, and economic factors on the coverage of drinking water quality issues. Results suggest that the volume and/or frequency of local drinking water violations is not directly reflected in local news coverage. Additionally, news coverage varied across sociodemographic features, with a negative relationship between Hispanic populations and news coverage of Lead and Copper Rule, and a positive relationship among non-Hispanic white populations. These findings extend current understanding of variations in local narratives to consider nuances of water quality issues and indicate opportunities for increasing equity in environmental risk communication.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Blowing Snow at McMurdo Station, Antarctica During the AWARE Field Campaign: Surface and Ceilometer Observations

Blowing snow (BLSN) is an impactful process in cold climates, affecting regional thermodynamics, radiation properties, and the surface mass balance of snow. Though it has significant climatic impacts, the process is still poorly understood and not widely included in weather and climate models. In 2016, the AWARE Field Campaign saw the deployment of a large suite of in situ and remote sensing instruments to McMurdo Station, Antarctica allowing for investigation of BLSN. A ceilometer–based BLSN detection algorithm used elsewhere in Antarctica is applied to data from AWARE, yielding a BLSN frequency of 14.1% compared to 8.2% as detected by human observers. To increase confidence in detections, the algorithm is updated to have shorter temporal averaging and to include a variety of meteorological thresholds to limit false detections due to fog. Efforts to incorporate a laser disdrometer into the algorithm were unsuccessful. An unphysical dependence of particle size distributions on wind speed is found suggesting observations are problematic at wind speeds greater than 10 m s –1 . The revised algorithm detected a BLSN frequency of 7.4%, increasing agreement with human observations and confidence that the process is actively occurring at the observation site. Furthermore, these observations are put into context of a climatology of human observations of BLSN at McMurdo station from 2002–2018. An annual average of 8.0%–14.0% is estimated, with a total annual range of 3.4%–21.3%. Regardless of whether BLSN is observed by humans or instrument, the majority of cases at this location are associated with ongoing precipitation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

National serosurvey and risk mapping reveal widespread distribution of Coxiella burnetii in Kenya

Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of Q fever, is an emerging pathogen that has the potential to cause severe chronic infections in animals and humans worldwide. The detrimental impact on public health is projected to be higher in the low- and middle-income countries given their lower capacity to sustain effective surveillance and response measures. We implemented a national serosurvey of cattle in Kenya to map the spatial distribution of the pathogen. The study used serum samples that were collected from randomly selected cattle in different ago-ecological zones across the country. These samples were screened for the pathogen using PrioCHECK Ruminant Q Fever AB Plate ELISA kit. The laboratory findings were analyzed using INLA package to identify risk factors for C. burnetii exposure from herd- and animal-level factors, area, and bioclimatic datasets accessed from online databases. A total of 6,593 cattle were recruited for the study; of these, 7.9% (95% CI; 7.2–8.5) were seropositive. Outputs from the multivariable analysis revealed that the animal age and some of the geographical variables including wind speed, area under shrubs and “petric calcisols” type of soil were significantly associated with C. burnetii seropositivity. Being a calf, weaner or subadult was associated with lower odds of exposure compared to being an adult by 0.24 (credibility interval: 2.5% and 97.5%), 0.41 (0.30–0.55) and 0.51 (0.38–0.69), respectively. In addition, a unit increase in the wind speed increased the odds of C. burnetii seropositivity by 1.27 (1.05–1.52) while an increase on the land area under shrubs was associated with lower odds of exposure (0.67 [0.47–0.69]). The effect of petric calcisols was non-linear; an increase of the land area with this soil type was associated with an exponential increase in C. burnetii seropositivity. This study provides new data on C. burnetii seroprevalence, information of its risk factors and a prevalence map that can be used for C. burnetii risk surveillance and control. The identification of environmental risk factors for C. burnetii exposure, and the increasing awareness of the zoonotic potential of the pathogen, calls for the need to enhance the existing collaborations for the surveillance and control of C. burnetii in line with the One Health framework. The evidence generated on the potential role of environmental factors can also be used to design nature-based interventions, such as replacement of vegetation in denuded areas, to reduce potential for the aerosolization of the pathogen. Livestock vaccination in the hotspots would also reduce animal infections and hence the contamination of the environment.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2012

GOES-R: Satellite Insight

GOES-R: Satellite Insight seeks to bring awareness of the GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite -- R Series) satellite currently in development to an audience of all ages on the emerging medium of mobile games. The iPhone app (Satellite Insight) was created for the GOES-R Program. The app describes in simple terms the types of data products that can be produced from GOES-R measurements. The game is easy to learn, yet challenging for all audiences. It includes educational content and a path to further information about GOESR, its technology, and the benefits of the data it collects. The game features action-puzzle game play in which the player must prevent an overflow of data by matching falling blocks that represent different types of GOES-R data. The game adds more different types of data blocks over time, as long as the player can prevent a data overflow condition. Points are awarded for matches, and players can compete with themselves to beat their highest score.

Fitzpatrick, Austin J.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Helicopter external noise requirements: FAA perspective

Enactment of helicopter noise certification standards for the control of noise impact contributing to community annoyance is considered in terms of the development of helicopters as an environmentally compatible air transportation mode. Increased use of helicopters for commercial applications and public awareness of aircraft noise are cited as factors making development of helicopter noise standards necessary both for the protection of the environmental interest of the community and to ensure the orderly growth of the helicopter industry itself. Noise sources, technology trends in helicopter design, and design concepts to control helicopter noise are discussed along with the regulatory background and specific helicopter regulatory concepts.

Foster, C. R.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hydrogen Sustainable Infrastructure Guidelines (H2SIG)

Infrastructure interacts with major global challenges inclusive of climate change, resilience, equity and social justice, environmental protection and biodiversity, public health, and economic recovery. This effort directly addresses how to apply sustainability assessments to the unique aspects of hydrogen (H2) infrastructure projects using the Envision® sustainability framework developed by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI). Envision is a flexible system of criteria and performance objectives to aid decision makers and help project teams identify sustainable approaches during planning, design and construction of infrastructure projects that will continue throughout the project’s operations, maintenance, and end-of-life phases. The goal of this work is to support those interested in conducting sustainability assessments for hydrogen infrastructure projects. Through this work the team has developed hydrogen-specific guidelines and best practices to assist project developers, investors and regulators in straightforward application of the Envision framework to systematically enhance clarity and increase objectivity across hydrogen projects. Subject matter experts from 20 different organizations (industry, non-profits, municipalities, emissions regulators, national labs) were engaged through 7 focus groups to discuss the H2-prioritized Envision requirements and elements to be included in the guidelines. In addition to these guidelines, the team conducted case studies as a way of demonstrating and informing the guidelines and providing examples or ideas for implementing sustainability in future projects. Through this study, the authors found that hydrogen infrastructure projects can incorporate many sustainable practices including reducing GHG emissions affecting climate change, reducing air pollutant emissions affecting the health of communities, synergistically handling waste byproducts, integrating into existing infrastructure, incorporating renewable energy, and addressing equity and environmental justice. Additionally, hydrogen infrastructure projects could benefit from 2-way communication engagement and collaborative planning with stakeholders, educational awareness of hydrogen technology, tracking and reporting on water use and water quality, and including monetized environmental and social benefits in life-cycle cost estimates. This document is the final technical report for the Hydrogen Sustainability Assessment Methods for Project Development project. While the main focus of the report is to provide guidelines for applying sustainability to hydrogen infrastructure, there are sections within the appendix providing completed project tasks and methodology.

08 HYDROGEN↗
NASA NTRS2021

Ultra Long-Lived, Self-Surveying Autonomous Air Quality Sensing - Executive Summary

We set out to evolve ultra-low power air quality sensing technologies developed at JSC to add a highly accurate positioning sensor based on SBIR technology to give a self-surveying air quality monitoring platform with years-long lifetime on a small, disposable coin cell battery. Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for data transport, the system can take advantage of RFID-based inventory management systems in place on lunar exploration assets to provide this capability with extremely small SWAP impacts. Years-long operational lifetimes enable flexible, autonomous environmental monitoring during lengthy intervals between and unprecedented situational awareness during crewed missions. Software integration of the localization system into the JSC RFID sensing platform was advanced, but the COVID-19 pandemic complicated and slowed maturation of the localization system SBIR product, and center closure indefinitely deferred a final hardware integration and system demonstration. In the meantime, progress was made to mature the air-quality sensing platform for flight, including hardware, software, antenna, and mechanical improvements. The underlying RFID sensing capability was also adapted to a drawer motion sensing system, which is currently (FY21) being taken toward an ISS flight demonstration as part of the RFID Enhanced Autonomous Logistics Management (REALM)-3 experiment.

Raymond Summers Wagner↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data System Platform Project Updates

Future human exploration missions introduce a new paradigm as crews move further from the resupply and near real-time ground support typical of Low Earth Orbit missions today. Without immediate support from ground-based personnel, exploration crews will be more reliant on inflight data and technology to respond to emergencies and anomalies. Today, in-flight data is often siloed, unsynchronized, and largely inaccessible in real time. Many data sets require manual entry and/or data transfer between vehicles and the ground. These issues contribute to risks in supporting crew autonomy for future exploration missions. An integrated data system platform is needed to mitigate these risks by supporting a new generation of technologies and employing advanced analytical and predictive modeling techniques to enable crew autonomy for future exploration missions. The Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data System Platform (CHP-IDSP) project is laying a foundation for future in-flight informatics by providing a back-end architecture for collecting, storing, and integrating multiple sources of data generated by and around the crew. This cohesive integration point will streamline the management of CHP data (e.g., environmental, exercise, medical, sleep, performance, etc.) and facilitate situation awareness and decision support required by the crew and remote support of exploration missions. This presentation will describe the ongoing development effort of the path-to-flight CHP-IDSP software and the demonstration of its core capabilities. This includes a brief history of the project, the human-centered process used to identify data needs and workflows feeding the development of scenarios and requirements, and current subsystem development status. Current integrations, including the Chiron exploration electronic health record application, will be discussed. Future work includes collaboration with additional CHP domains and a flight technology demonstration.

Data integration↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Service Platform (CHP-IDSP): Project Updates

Future human exploration missions introduce a new paradigm as crews move further from the resupply and near real-time ground support typical of Low Earth Orbit missions today. Without immediate support from ground-based personnel, exploration crews will be more reliant on inflight data and technology to respond to emergencies and anomalies. Today, in-flight data is often siloed, unsynchronized, and largely inaccessible in real time. Many data sets require manual entry and/or data transfer between vehicles and the ground. These issues contribute to risks in supporting crew autonomy for future exploration missions. An integrated data services platform is needed to mitigate these risks by supporting a new generation of technologies and employing advanced analytical and predictive modeling techniques to enable crew autonomy for future exploration missions. The Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data System Platform (CHP-IDSP) project is laying a foundation for future in-flight informatics by providing a back-end architecture for collecting, storing, and integrating multiple sources of data generated by and around the crew. This cohesive integration point will streamline the management of CHP data (e.g., environmental, exercise, medical, sleep, performance, etc.) and facilitate situation awareness and decision support required by the crew and remote support of exploration missions. This presentation will describe the ongoing development effort of the path-to-flight CHP-IDSP software and the demonstration of its core capabilities. This includes a brief history of the project, the human-centered process used to identify data needs and workflows feeding the development of scenarios and requirements, and current subsystem development status. Current integrations, including the Chiron exploration electronic health record application, will be discussed. Future work includes collaboration with additional CHP domains and a flight technology demonstration.

Software↗
DOE OSTI2022

American-Made Challenges: FLoating Offshore Wind ReadINess (FLOWIN) Prize

The goal of this prize is to establish a pathway to cost-effective domestic manufacture and deployment of gigawatt-scale floating wind farms in U.S. waters. Toward realization of that goal, the prize will: (1) incentivize and support further development of technically and economically viable floating wind platform structures that can support 12-MW-rated or larger wind turbines in water depths over 40 meters. (2) incentivize the creation of a supply chain that will enable domestic on-site manufacturing of floating offshore wind farm components utilizing a skilled and trained workforce. (3) promote awareness of the importance and principles of inclusion and environmental justice.

American-Made Challenges↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evaluating and Improving Scale–Awareness of a Convective Parameterization Closure Using Cloud–Resolving Model Simulations of Convection

This study aims to evaluate a revised closure of the Zhang-McFarlane (ZM) scheme for deep convection and to further improve its scale awareness. Output from two cloud-resolving model (CRM) simulations of both midlatitude organized (MC3E) and tropical unorganized (TWP-ICE) convection are used for the evaluation. By averaging the CRM output over different subdomain sizes from 64 km to 4 km, convection-associated fields are obtained to represent the fields at different horizontal resolutions of global climate models (GCMs). The convection parameterization closure is then tested using these fields. Results show that the cloud base mass flux M b determined from the closure has a relatively good relationship with CRM-simulated convection at coarse resolutions for both MC3E and TWP-ICE, but their correlation degrades at higher resolutions, especially when approaching the gray zone scale under 10 km. The fluctuation of CAPE consumption rate per unit cloud base mass flux for different convective events is found to be an important factor affecting the correlation. When averaged over the base domain, the cloud base mass flux determined by the closure is found to increase with decreasing subdomain size, implying that the closure is not scale-aware. To improve its scale-awareness, a modified closure is designed to alleviate the overprediction of convection at high GCM resolutions. Furthermore, results show that the modified closure has the scale-aware ability to suppress the overprediction problem at high GCM resolutions for both MC3E and TWP-ICE.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2020

Shedding Light on Microbial Dark Matter with A Universal Language of Life

The majority of microbial genomes have yet to be cultured, and most proteins predicted from microbial genomes or sequenced from the environment cannot be functionally annotated. As a result, current computational approaches to describe microbial systems rely on incomplete reference databases that cannot adequately capture the full functional diversity of the microbial tree of life, limiting our ability to model high-level features of biological sequences. The scientific community needs a means to capture the functionally and evolutionarily relevant features underlying biology, independent of our incomplete reference databases. Such a model can form the basis for transfer learning tasks, enabling downstream applications in environmental microbiology, medicine, and bioengineering. Here we present LookingGlass, a deep learning model capturing a “universal language of life”. LookingGlass encodes contextually-aware, functionally and evolutionarily relevant representations of short DNA reads, distinguishing reads of disparate function, homology, and environmental origin. We demonstrate the ability of LookingGlass to be fine-tuned to perform a range of diverse tasks: to identify novel oxidoreductases, to predict enzyme optimal temperature, and to recognize the reading frames of DNA sequence fragments. LookingGlass is the first contextually-aware, general purpose pre-trained “biological language” representation model for short-read DNA sequences. LookingGlass enables functionally relevant representations of otherwise unknown and unannotated sequences, shedding light on the microbial dark matter that dominates life on Earth.

A Hoarfrost↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Integrating Earth Observations and Socioeconomic Data to Address Health, Equity, and Environmental Justice

Access to reliable data about the characteristics of populations is a crucial component of decision making, policy development, and the assessment of progress towards strategic goals. Social determinants of health provide insight into the status of social and economic conditions within populations that have profound effects on public health, equity, and vulnerability. International frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) fundamentally focus on equality, but to efficiently address targets and indicators, socioeconomic data and Earth observations must be integrated to help identify populations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, natural disasters, health disparities, and poor policy planning. The ability to identify vulnerable populations with data analysis has the potential to empower community stakeholders with spatial awareness needed to inform decision-making that addresses equity and environmental justice issues within their communities. The EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.” NASA’s Earth Science Division (ESD) recognizes the benefits that Earth observations with NASA satellites create by equipping individuals with the knowledge to address community challenges. NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) supports the integration of socioeconomic and Earth science data as an “informational gateway.” This integration of data is advancing health, equity, and environmental justice initiatives.

Natasha Johnson-Griffin↗