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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 91 records · Page 5

The Potential of AI Techniques for Remote Sensing

The current status of artificial intelligence AI technology is discussed along with imagery data management, database interrogation, and decision making. Techniques adapted from the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have significant, wide ranging impacts upon computer-assisted remote sensing analysis. AI based techniques offer a powerful and fundamentally different approach to many remote sensing tasks. In addition to computer assisted analysis, AI techniques can also aid onboard spacecraft data processing and analysis and database access and query.

J E Estes↗

Intelligent data management

Intelligent data management is the concept of interfacing a user to a database management system with a value added service that will allow a full range of data management operations at a high level of abstraction using human written language. The development of such a system will be based on expert systems and related artificial intelligence technologies, and will allow the capturing of procedural and relational knowledge about data management operations and the support of a user with such knowledge in an on-line, interactive manner. Such a system will have the following capabilities: (1) the ability to construct a model of the users view of the database, based on the query syntax; (2) the ability to transform English queries and commands into database instructions and processes; (3) the ability to use heuristic knowledge to rapidly prune the data space in search processes; and (4) the ability to use an on-line explanation system to allow the user to understand what the system is doing and why it is doing it. Additional information is given in outline form.

Campbell, William J.↗

Space transportation nodes assumptions and requirements: Lunar base systems study task 2.1

The Space Transportation Nodes Assumptions and Requirements task was performed as part of the Advanced Space Transportation Support Contract, a NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) study intended to provide planning for a Lunar Base near the year 2000. The original task statement has been revised to satisfy the following queries: (1) What vehicles are to be processed at the transportation node; (2) What is the flow of activities involved in a vehicle passing through the node; and (3) What node support resources are necessary to support a lunar scenario traffic model composed of a mix of vehicles in an active flight schedule. The Lunar Base Systems Study is concentrating on the initial years of the Phase 2 Lunar Base Scenario. The study will develop the first five years of that phase in order to define the transportation and surface systems (including mass, volumes, power requirements, and designs).

Kahn, Taher Ali↗

Secure Naming and Addressing Operations for Store, Carry and Forward Networks

This paper describes concepts for secure naming and addressing directed at Store, Carry and Forward (SCF) distributed applications, where disconnection and intermittent connectivity between forwarding systems is the norm. The paper provides a brief overview of store, carry and forward distributed applications followed by an in depth discussion of how to securely: create a namespace; allocate names within the namespace; query for names known within a local processing system or connected subnetwork; validate ownership of a given name; authenticate data from a given name; and, encrypt data to a given name. Critical issues such as revocation of names, mobility and the ability to use various namespaces to secure operations or for Quality-of-Service are also presented. Although the concepts presented for naming and addressing have been developed for SCF, they are directly applicable to fully connected systems.

computer security↗

Efficient Active Learning for Gaussian Process Classification by Error Reduction

Active learning sequentially selects the best instance for labeling by optimizing an acquisition function to enhance data/label efficiency. The selection can be either from a discrete instance set (pool-based scenario) or a continuous instance space (query synthesis scenario). In this work, we study both active learning scenarios for Gaussian Process Classification (GPC). The existing active learning strategies that maximize the Estimated Error Reduction (EER) aim at reducing the classification error after training with the new acquired instance in a onestep-look-ahead manner. The computation of EER-based acquisition functions is typically prohibitive as it requires retraining the GPC with every new query. Moreover, as the EER is not smooth, it can not be combined with gradient-based optimization techniques to efficiently explore the continuous instance space for query synthesis. To overcome these critical limitations, we develop computationally efficient algorithms for EER-based active learning with GPC. Further, we derive the joint predictive distribution of label pairs as a one-dimensional integral, as a result of which the computation of the acquisition function avoids retraining the GPC for each query, remarkably reducing the computational overhead. We also derive the gradient chain rule to efficiently calculate the gradient of the acquisition function, which leads to the first query synthesis active learning algorithm implementing EER-based strategies. Our experiments clearly demonstrate the computational efficiency of the proposed algorithms. We also benchmark our algorithms on both synthetic and real-world datasets, which show superior performance in terms of sampling efficiency compared to the existing state-of-the-art algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

PIMS-Universal Payload Information Management

As the overall manager and integrator of International Space Station (ISS) science payloads and experiments, the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center had a critical need to provide an information management system for exchange and management of ISS payload files as well as to coordinate ISS payload related operational changes. The POIC's information management system has a fundamental requirement to provide secure operational access not only to users physically located at the POIC, but also to provide collaborative access to remote experimenters and International Partners. The Payload Information Management System (PIMS) is a ground based electronic document configuration management and workflow system that was built to service that need. Functionally, PIMS provides the following document management related capabilities: 1. File access control, storage and retrieval from a central repository vault. 2. Collect supplemental data about files in the vault. 3. File exchange with a PMS GUI client, or any FTP connection. 4. Files placement into an FTP accessible dropbox for pickup by interfacing facilities, included files transmitted for spacecraft uplink. 5. Transmission of email messages to users notifying them of new version availability. 6. Polling of intermediate facility dropboxes for files that will automatically be processed by PIMS. 7. Provide an API that allows other POIC applications to access PIMS information. Functionally, PIMS provides the following Change Request processing capabilities: 1. Ability to create, view, manipulate, and query information about Operations Change Requests (OCRs). 2. Provides an adaptable workflow approval of OCRs with routing through developers, facility leads, POIC leads, reviewers, and implementers. Email messages can be sent to users either involving them in the workflow process or simply notifying them of OCR approval progress. All PIMS document management and OCR workflow controls are coordinated through and routed to individual user's "to do" list tasks. A user is given a task when it is their turn to perform some action relating to the approval of the Document or OCR. The user's available actions are restricted to only functions available for the assigned task. Certain actions, such as review or action implementation by non-PIMS users, can also be coordinated through automated emails.

Elmore, Ralph↗

A new programming metaphor for image processing procedures

Most image processing systems, besides an Application Program Interface (API) which lets users write their own image processing programs, also feature a higher level of programmability. Traditionally, this is a command or macro language, which can be used to build large procedures (scripts) out of simple programs or commands. This approach, a legacy of the teletypewriter has serious drawbacks. A command language is clumsy when (and if! it attempts to utilize the capabilities of a multitasking or multiprocessor environment, it is but adequate for real-time data acquisition and processing, it has a fairly steep learning curve, and the user interface is very inefficient,. especially when compared to a graphical user interface (GUI) that systems running under Xll or Windows should otherwise be able to provide. ll these difficulties stem from one basic problem: a command language is not a natural metaphor for an image processing procedure. A more natural metaphor - an image processing factory is described in detail. A factory is a set of programs (applications) that execute separate operations on images, connected by pipes that carry data (images and parameters) between them. The programs function concurrently, processing images as they arrive along pipes, and querying the user for whatever other input they need. From the user's point of view, programming (constructing) factories is a lot like playing with LEGO blocks - much more intuitive than writing scripts. Focus is on some of the difficulties of implementing factory support, most notably the design of an appropriate API. It also shows that factories retain all the functionality of a command language (including loops and conditional branches), while suffering from none of the drawbacks outlined above. Other benefits of factory programming include self-tuning factories and the process of encapsulation, which lets a factory take the shape of a standard application both from the system and the user's point of view, and thus be used as a component of other factories. A bare-bones prototype of factory programming was implemented under the PcIPS image processing system, and a complete version (on a multitasking platform) is under development.

Smirnov, O. M.↗

Complete Decoding and Reporting of Aviation Routine Weather Reports (METARs)

Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) provides surface weather information at and around observation stations, including airport terminals. These weather observations are used by pilots for flight planning and by air traffic service providers for managing departure and arrival flights. The METARs are also an important source of weather data for Air Traffic Management (ATM) analysts and researchers at NASA and elsewhere. These researchers use METAR to correlate severe weather events with local or national air traffic actions that restrict air traffic, as one example. A METAR is made up of multiple groups of coded text, each with a specific standard coding format. These groups of coded text are located in two sections of a report: Body and Remarks. The coded text groups in a U.S. METAR are intended to follow the coding standards set by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, manual data entry and edits made by a human report observer may result in coded text elements that do not follow the standards, especially in the Remarks section. And contrary to the standards, some significant weather observations are noted only in the Remarks section and not in the Body section of the reports. While human readers can infer the intended meaning of non-standard coding of weather conditions, doing so with a computer program is far more challenging. However such programmatic pre-processing is necessary to enable efficient and faster database query when researchers need to perform any significant historical weather analysis. Therefore, to support such analysis, a computer algorithm was developed to identify groups of coded text anywhere in a report and to perform subsequent decoding in software. The algorithm considers common deviations from the standards and data entry mistakes made by observers. The implemented software code was tested to decode 12 million reports and the decoding process was able to completely interpret 99.93 of the reports. This document presents the deviations from the standards and the decoding algorithm. Storing all decoded data in a database allows users to quickly query a large amount of data and to perform data mining on the data. Users can specify complex query criteria not only on date or airport but also on weather condition. This document also describes the design of a database schema for storing the decoded data, and a Data Warehouse web application that allows users to perform reporting and analysis on the decoded data. Finally, this document presents a case study correlating dust storms reported in METARs from the Phoenix International airport with Ground Stops issued by Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ATCSCC). Blowing widespread dust is one of the weather conditions when dust storm occurs. By querying the database, 294 METARs were found to report blowing widespread dust at the Phoenix airport and 41 of them reported such condition only in the Remarks section of the reports. When METAR is a data source for an ATM research, it is important to include weather conditions not only from the Body section but also from the Remarks section of METARs.

METAR Decoder/Parser↗

Optimization on Manifolds via Graph Gaussian Processes

This paper integrates manifold learning techniques within a Gaussian process upper confidence bound algorithm to optimize an objective function on a manifold. Our approach is motivated by applications where a full representation of the manifold is not available and querying the objective is expensive. We rely on a point cloud of manifold samples to define a graph Gaussian process surrogate model for the objective. Query points are sequentially chosen using the posterior distribution of the surrogate model given all previous queries. We establish regret bounds in terms of the number of queries and the size of the point cloud. Several numerical examples complement the theory and illustrate the performance of our method.

Bayesian optimization↗

Hierarchical Gaussian process-based Bayesian optimization for materials discovery in high entropy alloy spaces

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a powerful and data-efficient method for iterative materials discovery and design, particularly valuable when prior knowledge is limited, underlying functional relationships are complex or unknown, and the cost of querying the materials space is significant. Traditional BO methodologies typically utilize conventional Gaussian Processes (cGPs) to model the relationships between material inputs and properties, as well as correlations within the input space. However, cGP-BO approaches often fall short in multi-objective optimization scenarios, where they are unable to fully exploit correlations between distinct material properties. Leveraging these correlations can significantly enhance the discovery process, as information about one property can inform and improve predictions about others. Here, this study addresses this limitation by employing advanced kernel structures to capture and model multi-dimensional property correlations through multi-task (MTGPs) or deep Gaussian Processes (DGPs), thus accelerating the discovery process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of MTGP-BO and DGP-BO in rapidly and robustly solving complex materials design challenges that occur within the context of complex multi-objective optimization over FCC FeCrNiCoCu high entropy alloy (HEA) spaces, where traditional cGP-BO approaches fail. Furthermore, we highlight how the differential costs associated with querying various material properties can be strategically leveraged to make the materials discovery process more cost-efficient.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Modeling Active Region Evolution - A New LWS TR and T Strategic Capability Model Suite

In 2006 the LWS TR&T Program funded us to develop a strategic capability model of slowly evolving coronal active regions. In this poster we report on the overall design, and status of our new modeling suite. Our design features two coronal field models, a non-linear force free field model and a global 3D MHD code. The suite includes supporting tools and a user friendly GUI which will enable users to query the web for relevant magnetograms, download them, process them to synthesize a sequence of photospheric magnetograms and associated photospheric flow field which can then be applied to drive the coronal model innner boundary, run the coronal models and finally visualize the results.

MacNeice, Peter↗

Threat Reduction Research Networks: Fostering Sustainable Collaborations Through Trainings for Genomics for Biosurveillance

Scientific research communities can be represented as heterogeneous or multidimensional networks encompassing multiple types of entities and relationships. These networks might include researchers, institutions, meetings, and publications, connected by relationships like authorship, employment, and attendance. We describe a method for efficiently and flexibly capturing, storing, and extracting information from multidimensional scientific networks using a graph database. The database structure is based on an ontology that captures allowable types of entities and relationships. This allows us to construct a variety of projections of the underlying multidimensional graph through database queries to answer specific research questions. We demonstrate this process through a study of the U.S. Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP), which seeks to develop Threat Reduction Networks to build and strengthen a sustainable international community of biosecurity, biosafety, and biosurveillance experts to address shared biological threat reduction challenges. Networks like these create connectional intelligence among researchers and institutions around the world, and are central to the concept of cooperative threat reduction. Our analysis focuses on a series of seven BTRP genome sequencing training workshops, showing how they created a growing network of participants and countries over time, which is also reflected in coauthorship relationships among attendees. By capturing concept and relationship hierarchies, our ontology-based approach allows us to pose general or specific questions about networks within the same framework. This approach can be applied to other research communities or multidimensional social networks to capture, analyze, and visualize different types of interactions and how they change over time.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Do-It-Yourself: A Special Library's Approach to Creating Dynamic Web Pages Using Commercial Off-The-Shelf Applications

Many librarians may feel that dynamic Web pages are out of their reach, financially and technically. Yet we are reminded in library and Web design literature that static home pages are a thing of the past. This paper describes how librarians at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) library developed a database-driven, dynamic intranet site using commercial off-the-shelf applications. Administrative issues include surveying a library users group for interest and needs evaluation; outlining metadata elements; and, committing resources from managing time to populate the database and training in Microsoft FrontPage and Web-to-database design. Technical issues covered include Microsoft Access database fundamentals, lessons learned in the Web-to-database process (including setting up Database Source Names (DSNs), redesigning queries to accommodate the Web interface, and understanding Access 97 query language vs. Standard Query Language (SQL)). This paper also offers tips on editing Active Server Pages (ASP) scripting to create desired results. A how-to annotated resource list closes out the paper.

Relational databases↗

Toward a Multimodal-Deep Learning Retrieval System for Monitoring Nuclear Proliferation Activities

As the amount of available data increases, the human ability to locate, process, and analyze it is strained and eventually overwhelmed. To address this challenge for nonproliferation analysts, the authors have been creating a large-scale multimodal retrieval system to help analysts triage and search open source science, technology, and news data for indicators of nuclear proliferation capabilities and activities. The system relies on a set of deep neural networks (DNNs) trained to evaluate conceptual similarities across data modalities, such as text, image, and video. These DNNs can be used to search and prioritize data, according to a nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) process template, that are conceptually closest to the seed query items regardless of data modality. The DNNs have been trained to map conceptually related words, sentences, and images to nearby points in a multimodal feature space, enabling intra- and intermodal retrieval via nearest-neighbor calculations to seed query points. The authors evaluate the system’s ability to retrieve NFC-related data that have been purposely hidden in collections of unrelated background data. They demonstrate quantitative and qualitative results for text-to-image, image-to-image, and image-to-video retrievals. This paper discusses data challenges confronting nonproliferation analysts, describes the DNNs designed to retrieve multimodal data that are proximal in the semantic space, and demonstrates their effectiveness by applying the DNNs to nonproliferation-specific multimodal data sets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Component-Level Inverse Design of Transmon Qubits Using Neural Networks

Designing a superconducting qubit to realize specific Hamiltonian parameters typically requires iterating through a time and compute-intensive forward loop in which the designer chooses a layout geometry, simulates it, extracts circuit parameters such as capacitances, and refines the geometry. We study the inverse version of this task using a neural-network workflow that maps target Hamiltonian parameters directly to component-level layout parameters, which we subsequently demonstrate on a planar transmon layout. During training, we pair the inverse model with a frozen forward surrogate model and evaluate the loss in Hamiltonian space rather than in layout-parameter space. In validation against a conventional EM solver, 97% of generated designs produce usable geometries, and the inverse-plus-surrogate pipeline reaches mean percent errors of 0.73% for qubit frequency and 1.58% for anharmonicity, comparable to or below the fabrication and simulation-to-measurement uncertainty expected for academic-process transmon devices of this type. A single pipeline query takes ~60 ms on CPU, versus ~2 min for a conventional EM capacitance extraction on the same hardware, a speedup of approximately 2,000x. Batching minimizes the AI model inference overhead, reducing the runtime to 3.1 microseconds per sample on CPU and 2.6 microseconds per sample on GPU at a batch size of 2048, resulting in speedups of 3.9 x 10^7 and 4.6 x 10^7, respectively, relative to a single conventional CPU EM extraction. Our results indicate that component-level inverse design usefully extends and complements conventional EM simulation, including for small datasets on the order of 1,000 samples.

Seidel, Olivia [Fermilab; Texas U., Arlington]↗

Performance and usability enhancements for continuous subgraph matching queries on graph-structured data

A query graph, which includes vertices and edges, represents a query on graph-structured data. The query graph is decomposed into query subgraphs. A network analysis tool performs continuous subgraph matching queries to facilitate analysis of computer network traffic, social media events, or other streams of data represented as a dynamic data graph (graph-structured data). This can help identify emerging trends in the data. Some features of the network analysis tool enhance performance by effectively utilizing distributed computing resources (including processing cores and memory at different nodes of a cluster) to speed up the process of updating the dynamic data graph and detecting matches of query subgraphs. Features of a query graph building tool enhance usability by providing intuitive ways to specify query graphs and their subgraphs. Features of a results visualization tool enhance usability by providing an intuitive way to present the results of continuous subgraph matching queries.

Choudhury, Sutanay↗

The NIST Internet time service

We will describe the NIST Network Time Service which provides time and frequency information over the Internet. Our first time server is located in Boulder, Colorado, a second backup server is under construction there, and we plan to install a third server on the East Coast later this year. The servers are synchronized to UTC(NIST) with an uncertainty of about 0.8 ms RMS and they will respond to time requests from any client on the Internet in several different formats including the DAYTIME, TIME and NTP protocols. The DAYTIME and TIME protocols are the easiest to use and are suitable for providing time to PC's and other small computers. In addition to UTC(NIST), the DAYTIME message provides advance notice of leap seconds and of the transitions to and from Daylight Saving Time. The Daylight Saving Time notice is based on the US transition dates of the first Sunday in April and the last one in October. The NTP is a more complex protocol that is suitable for larger machines; it is normally run as a 'daemon' process in the background and can keep the time of the client to within a few milliseconds of UTC(NIST). We will describe the operating principles of various kinds of client software ranging from a simple program that queries the server once and sets the local clock to more complex 'daemon' processes (such as NTP) that continuously correct the time of the local clock based on periodic calibrations.

Levine, Judah↗