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At least 955 records · Page 53

Plastids and gravitropic sensing

Data and theories about the identity of the mass that acts in gravitropic sensing are reviewed. Gravity sensing may have evolved several times in plants and algae in processes such as gravitropism of organs and tip-growing cells, gravimorphism, gravitaxis, and the regulation of cytoplasmic streaming in internodal cells of Chara. In the latter and in gravitaxis, the mass of the entire cell may function in sensing. But gravitropic sensing appears to rely upon the mass of amyloplasts that sediment since (i) the location of cells with sedimentation is highly regulated, (ii) such cells contain other morphological specializations favoring sedimentation, (iii) sedimentation always correlates with gravitropic competence in wild-type plants, (iv) magnetophoretic movement of rootcap amyloplasts mimics gravitropism, and (v) starchless and intermediate starch mutants show reduced gravitropic sensitivity. The simplest interpretation of these data is that gravitropic sensing is plastid-based.

Review, Tutorial↗

Rod internal pressure quantification and distribution analysis using Frapcon

This report documents work performed supporting the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) Fuel Cycle Technologies Used Fuel Disposition Campaign (UFDC) under work breakdown structure element 1.02.08.10, ST Analysis. In particular, this report fulfills the M4 milestone M4FT- 15OR0810036, Quantify effects of power uncertainty on fuel assembly characteristics, within work package FT-15OR081003 ST Analysis-ORNL. This research was also supported by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (http://www.casl.gov), an Energy Innovation Hub (http://www.energy.gov/hubs) for Modeling and Simulation of Nuclear Reactors under U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. The discharge rod internal pressure (RIP) and cladding hoop stress (CHS) distributions are quantified for Watts Bar Nuclear Unit 1 (WBN1) fuel rods by modeling core cycle design data, operation data (including modeling significant trips and downpowers), and as-built fuel enrichments and densities of each fuel rod in FRAPCON-3.5. A methodology is developed which tracks inter-cycle assembly movements and assembly batch fabrication information to build individual FRAPCON inputs for each evaluated WBN1 fuel rod. An alternate model for the amount of helium released from the zirconium diboride (ZrB2) integral fuel burnable absorber (IFBA) layer is derived and applied to FRAPCON output data to quantify the RIP and CHS for these types of fuel rods. SCALE/Polaris is used to quantify fuel rodspecific spectral quantities and the amount of gaseous fission products produced in the fuel for use in FRAPCON inputs. Fuel rods with ZrB2 IFBA layers (i.e., IFBA rods) are determined to have RIP predictions that are elevated when compared to fuel rod without IFBA layers (i.e., standard rods) despite the fact that IFBA rods often have reduced fill pressures and annular fuel pellets. The primary contributor to elevated RIP predictions at burnups less than and greater than 30 GWd/MTU is determined to be the total fuel rod void volume and the amount of released fission gas in the fuel rod, respectively. Cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) are prepared from the distribution of RIP and CHS predictions for all standard and IFBA rods. The provided CDFs allow for the determination of the portion of WBN1 fuel rods that exceed a specified RIP or CHS limit. Results are separated into IFBA and standard rods so that the two groups may be analyzed individually. FRAPCON results are provided in sufficient detail to enable the recalculation of the RIP while considering any desired plenum gas temperature, total void volume, or total amount of gas present in the void volume. A method to predict the CHS from a determined or assumed RIP is also proposed, which is based on the approximately linear relationship between the CHS and the RIP. Finally, improvements to the computational methodology of FRAPCON are proposed.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

The Internet of Animals: How to Use NASA's Assets and Computing for Biodiversity and Conservation Needs

There are many internal and external drivers of animal movement. For example, where might an animal go if it’s hungry, or how will it move if it’s really windy? The Internet of Animals project aims to combine animal telemetry data with earth observations to better support applied ecological management, architect a next-generation space-based animal tracking system and develop technology that can link to biodiversity and habitats via remote sensing. In this talk, Morgan Gilmour will provide an overview of movement ecology, remote sensing, and how earth observations with NASA’s assets can help inform biodiversity and conservation. Morgan is a Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. Her research focuses on marine animal movement ecology. Some recent projects include investigating animal movement in relation to marine protected areas in the central Pacific and quantifying at-sea habitat use by albatrosses.

animal telemetry↗

A dual-Kinect approach to determine torso surface motion for respiratory motion correction in PET

Purpose: Respiratory gating is commonly used to reduce blurring effects and attenuation correction artifacts in positron emission tomography (PET). Established clinically available methods that employ body-attached hardware for acquiring respiration signals rely on the assumption that external surface motion and internal organ motion are well correlated. In this paper, the authors present a markerless method comprising two Microsoft Kinects for determining the motion on the whole torso surface and aim to demonstrate its validity and usefulness—including the potential to study the external/internal correlation and to provide useful information for more advanced correction approaches. Methods: The data of two Kinects are used to calculate 3D representations of a patient’s torso surface with high spatial coverage. Motion signals can be obtained for any position by tracking the mean distance to a virtual camera with a view perpendicular to the surrounding surface. The authors have conducted validation experiments including volunteers and a moving high-precision platform to verify the method’s suitability for providing meaningful data. In addition, the authors employed it during clinical {sup 18}F-FDG-PET scans and exemplarily analyzed the acquired data of ten cancer patients. External signals of abdominal and thoracic regions as well as data-driven signals were used for gating and compared with respect to detected displacement of present lesions. Additionally, the authors quantified signal similarities and time shifts by analyzing cross-correlation sequences. Results: The authors’ results suggest a Kinect depth resolution of approximately 1 mm at 75 cm distance. Accordingly, valid signals could be obtained for surface movements with small amplitudes in the range of only few millimeters. In this small sample of ten patients, the abdominal signals were better suited for gating the PET data than the thoracic signals and the correlation of data-driven signals was found to be stronger with abdominal signals than with thoracic signals (average Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.74 ± 0.17 and 0.45 ± 0.23, respectively). In all cases, except one, the abdominal respiratory motion preceded the thoracic motion—a maximum delay of approximately 600 ms was detected. Conclusions: The method provides motion information with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolution. Thus, it enables meaningful analysis in the form of comparisons between amplitudes and phase shifts of signals from different regions. In combination with a large field-of-view, as given by combining the data of two Kinect cameras, it yields surface representations that might be useful in the context of motion correction and motion modeling.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Phenomenological Model of Nonlinear Dynamics and Deterministic Chaotic Gas Migration in Bentonite: Experimental Evidence and Diagnostic Parameters

Understanding gas migration in compacted clay materials, e.g., bentonite and claystone, is important for the design and performance assessment of an engineered barrier system of a radioactive waste repository system, as well as many practical applications. Existing field and laboratory data on gas migration processes in low-permeability clay materials demonstrate the complexity of flow and transport processes, including various types of instabilities, caused by nonlinear dynamics of coupled processes of liquid–gas exchange, dilation, fracturing, fracture healing, etc., which cannot be described by classical models of fluid dynamics in porous media. We here show that the complexity of gas migration processes can be explained using a phenomenological concept of nonlinear dynamics and deterministic chaos theory. To do so, we analyzed gas pressure and gas influx (i.e., input) and outflux (i.e., output), recorded during the gas injection experiment in the compact Mx80-D bentonite sample, and calculated a set of the diagnostic parameters of nonlinear dynamics and chaos, such a global embedding dimension, a correlation dimension, an information dimension, and a spectrum of Lyapunov exponents, as well as plotted 2D and 3D pseudo-phase-space strange attractors, based on the univariate influx and outflux time series data. These results indicate the presence of phenomena of low-dimensional deterministic chaotic behavior of gas migration in bentonite. In particular, during the onset of gas influx in the bentonite core, before the breakthrough, the development of gas flow pathways is characterized by the process of chaotic gas diffusion. After the breakthrough, with inlet-to-outlet movement of gas, the prevailing process is chaotic advection. During the final phase of the experiment, with no influx to the sample, the relaxation pattern of gas outflux is resumed back to a process of chaotic diffusion. The types of data analysis and a proposed phenomenological model can be used to establish the basic principles of experimental data-gathering, modeling predictions, and a research design.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Time-lapse seismic data inversion for estimating reservoir parameters using deep learning

Geologic carbon sequestration involves the injection of captured carbon dioxide ([Formula: see text]) into subsurface formations for long-term storage. The movement and fate of the injected [Formula: see text] plume is of great concern to regulators because monitoring helps to identify potential leakage zones and determines the possibility of safe long-term storage. To address this concern, we design a deep-learning framework for [Formula: see text] saturation monitoring to determine the geologic controls on the storage of the injected [Formula: see text]. We use different combinations of porosities and permeabilities for a given reservoir to generate saturation and velocity models. We train the deep-learning model with a few time-lapse seismic images and their corresponding changes in saturation values for a particular [Formula: see text] injection site. The deep-learning model learns the mapping from the change in the time-lapse seismic response to the change in [Formula: see text] saturation during the training phase. We then apply the trained model to data sets comprising different time-lapse seismic image slices (corresponding to different time instances) generated using different porosity and permeability distributions that are not part of the training to estimate the [Formula: see text] saturation values along with the plume extent. Our algorithm provides a deep-learning assisted framework for the direct estimation of [Formula: see text] saturation values and plume migration in heterogeneous formations using the time-lapse seismic data. Our method improves the efficiency of time-lapse inversion by streamlining the large number of intermediate steps in the conventional time-lapse inversion workflow. This method also helps to incorporate the geologic uncertainty for a given reservoir by accounting for the statistical distribution of porosity and permeability during the training phase. Tests on different examples verify the effectiveness of our approach.

Geochemistry & Geophysics↗

Assimilation and transport of organic bound tritium in an irrigated pine forest

The speciation of radioactive tritium (T) in a naturally-established subtropical loblolly pine forest that has been irrigated with highly-contaminated pond water for the last 20 years is reported. This irrigation project was created to limit the underground transport of a tritium-rich plume which also contains low levels of toxic organics, metals and radionuclides such as carbon-14 ( 14 C) from a nearby low-level waste burial ground. The levels of tritiated water (HTO) in the wood cores were not influenced by recent irrigation activities. However, the tritium levels in the last 20 years of tree growth were more than 3-fold higher than that of tritium in the older growth. This was due to recent irrigation with organic-bound tritium (OBT)-rich water and subsequent accumulation of high levels tritium as OBT relative to tissue HTO. High levels of pond irrigation water OBT resulted from biogenic processes that converted HTO to OBT. Data for 14 C that were acquired for some of the forest materials indicated that the processes controlling the movement and accumulation of 14 C in this system are somewhat different than that of tritium. Spectroscopic characterization of tree core tissue of <20 years in age found no explanation for the unusually wide dark growth rings. Here, it was concluded that the trees were over-irrigated based on results from other published studies with wood from severely-flooded areas. Although HTO is indeed toxic to biota, OBT represents a relatively greater hazard to biota because it can be bioaccumulated and retained for long periods of time in living tissues.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Recognition of the β-lactam carboxylate triggers acylation of Neisseria gonorrhoeae penicillin-binding protein 2

Resistance of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to extended-spectrum cephalosporins (ESCs) has become a major threat to human health. The primary mechanism by which N. gonorrhoeae becomes resistant to ESCs is by acquiring a mosaic penA allele, encoding penicillin-binding protein 2 (PBP2) variants containing up to 62 mutations compared with WT, of which a subset contribute to resistance. To interpret molecular mechanisms underpinning cephalosporin resistance, it is necessary to know how PBP2 is acylated by ESCs. In this work, we report the crystal structures of the transpeptidase domain of WT PBP2 in complex with cefixime and ceftriaxone, along with structures of PBP2 in the apo form and with a phosphate ion bound in the active site at resolutions of 1–7-1.9 Å. These structures reveal that acylation of PBP2 by ESCs is accompanied by rotation of the Thr-498 side chain in the KTG motif to contact the cephalosporin carboxylate, twisting of the β3 strand to form the oxyanion hole, and rolling of the β3–β4 loop toward the active site. Recognition of the cephalosporin carboxylate appears to be the key trigger for formation of an acylation-competent state of PBP2. The structures also begin to explain the impact of mutations implicated in ESC resistance. In particular, a G545S mutation may hinder twisting of β3 because its side chain hydroxyl forms a hydrogen bond with Thr-498. Overall, our data suggest that acylation is initiated by conformational changes elicited or trapped by binding of ESCs and that these movements are restricted by mutations associated with resistance against ESCs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Evaluation of survival estimates generated from tracking downstream migrating juvenile sea lamprey ( Petromyzon marinus ) with a miniature acoustic telemetry tag

Fish that undertake juvenile migration pass through habitats that vary in mortality risk. The ability to identify regions of persistently low survival would improve fishery management. We conducted a field study combined with predictive modeling of survival in downstream migrating juvenile sea lamprey using a new micro-acoustic telemetry tag designed for implantation into small, slender-bodied fishes. Detection data were collected from eight receivers placed across a coastal riverine–wetland–lake complex. Juvenile sea lamprey initiated downstream movement near nautical twilight, stopped frequently, and were more likely to move during high river discharge. Estimated survival was highest in the riverine reach, declined through the river–wetland complex, and dropped precipitously in the drowned rivermouth lake. However, the high transmission rate and resulting short battery life of the microtransmitters (as configured) likely resulted in missed detections in the lower reaches. Simulation analyses suggested survival estimation could be improved by increasing the number of tagged lamprey and staggering release locations. We offer practical recommendations for the use of this new transmitter in field studies with small anguilliform fish.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Ventilation in Residential Care Environments

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of ventilation rate, directional airflow (e.g. pressure relationships) and airflow barriers on bioaerosol concentration and movement within assisted-living and residential care environments. Included within this report is a comprehensive literature review, field data collection test plan and, an evaluation of commercially available mitigation technologies related to the transmission of COVID-19 in LTC environments. Additionally, this report includes aerosol testing in an actual LTC facility using the test plan developed herein. Nearly 1.5 million people live in 16,000 nursing homes in the U.S. As of December 20, 2020 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) identified a total of 662,549 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in these and other long-term care (LTC) facilities resulting in 92,373 deaths. At this time, COVID-19 cases in LTC facilities accounted for only 3% of the U.S. total of 21M confirmed cases yet nearly a third of the 350,000 total U.S. deaths. Preliminary studies have found little correlation between the quality of care and transmission of COVID-19 in these facilities, suggesting that even the best infection control practices may not be effective in containing the spread of this potentially airborne disease. As a result, many LTC facilities have implemented quarantine procedures and other measures to isolate infectious residents from the general population. Unfortunately, most LTC facilities were not designed for airborne infection control and guidance for retrofitting existing LTC spaces for airborne isolation is limited.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Ventilation in Residential Care Environments

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of ventilation rate, directional airflow (e.g. pressure relationships) and airflow barriers on bioaerosol concentration and movement within assisted-living and residential care environments. Included within this report is a comprehensive literature review, field data collection test plan and, an evaluation of commercially available mitigation technologies related to the transmission of COVID-19 in LTC environments. Additionally, this report includes aerosol testing in an actual LTC facility using the test plan developed herein. Nearly 1.5 million people live in 16,000 nursing homes in the U.S. As of December 20, 2020 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) identified a total of 662,549 confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in these and other long-term care (LTC) facilities resulting in 92,373 deaths. At this time, COVID-19 cases in LTC facilities accounted for only 3% of the U.S. total of 21M confirmed cases yet nearly a third of the 350,000 total U.S. deaths. Preliminary studies have found little correlation between the quality of care and transmission of COVID-19 in these facilities, suggesting that even the best infection control practices may not be effective in containing the spread of this potentially airborne disease. As a result, many LTC facilities have implemented quarantine procedures and other measures to isolate infectious residents from the general population. Unfortunately, most LTC facilities were not designed for airborne infection control and guidance for retrofitting existing LTC spaces for airborne isolation is limited.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Trends in repeated loads on transport airplanes

Statistical repeated loads data on piston and turbine powered transport aircraft resulting from atmospheric turbulence, maneuvers, landing contact, oscillatory motion, and ground movement

ATMOSPHERIC TURBULENCE↗

Remote sensing of snow and ice

This paper reviews remote sensing of snow and ice, techniques for improved monitoring, and incorporation of the new data into forecasting and management systems. The snowcover interpretation of visible and infrared data from satellites, automated digital methods, radiative transfer modeling to calculate the solar reflectance of snow, and models using snowcover input data and elevation zones for calculating snowmelt are discussed. The use of visible and near infrared techniques for inferring snow properties, microwave monitoring of snowpack characteristics, use of Landsat images for collecting glacier data, monitoring of river ice with visible imagery from NOAA satellites, use of sequential imagery for tracking ice flow movement, and microwave studies of sea ice are described. Applications of snow and ice research to commercial use are examined, and it is concluded that a major problem to be solved is characterization of snow and ice in nature, since assigning of the correct properties to a real system to be modeled has been difficult.

Rango, A.↗

NASA selects scientific investigations for Earth dynamics studies

Forty two domestic investigators affiliated with U.S. universities, governmental agencies, or private concerns and 14 investigators from France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and Canada were selected to use precise geodetic data obtained by laser ranging and very long base interferometry in a study of the Earth's tectonic plate movement, crustal deformation, and rotational dynamics. The studies to be made and the principal investigators for each are listed.

Source record↗

Mapping small elevation changes over large areas - Differential radar interferometry

A technique is described, based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry, which uses SAR images for measuring very small (1 cm or less) surface motions with good resolution (10 m) over swaths of up to 50 km. The method was applied to a Seasat data set of an imaging site in Imperial Valley, California, where motion effects were observed that were identified with movements due to the expansion of water-absorbing clays. The technique can be used for accurate measurements of many geophysical phenomena, including swelling and buckling in fault zones, residual displacements from seismic events, and prevolcanic swelling.

Gabriel, Andrew K.↗

Voluntary presetting of the vestibular ocular reflex permits gaze stabilization despite perturbation of fast head movements

Normal subjects are able to change voluntarily and continuously their head-eye latency together with their compensatory eye movement gain. A continuous spectrum of intent-latency modes of the subject's coordinated gaze through verbal feedback could be demonstrated. It was also demonstrated that the intent to counteract any perturbation of head-eye movement, i.e., the mental set, permitted the subjects to manipulate consciously their vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) gain. From the data, it is inferred that the VOR is always on. It may be, however, variably suppressed by higher cortical control. With appropriate training, head-mounted displays should permit an easy VOR presetting that leads to image stabilization, perhaps together with a decrease of possible misjudgements.

Zangemeister, Wolfgang H.↗

A Unified Air-Sea Visualization System: Survey on Gridding Structures

The goal is to develop a Unified Air-Sea Visualization System (UASVS) to enable the rapid fusion of observational, archival, and model data for verification and analysis. To design and develop UASVS, modelers were polled to determine the gridding structures and visualization systems used, and their needs with respect to visual analysis. A basic UASVS requirement is to allow a modeler to explore multiple data sets within a single environment, or to interpolate multiple datasets onto one unified grid. From this survey, the UASVS should be able to visualize 3D scalar/vector fields; render isosurfaces; visualize arbitrary slices of the 3D data; visualize data defined on spectral element grids with the minimum number of interpolation stages; render contours; produce 3D vector plots and streamlines; provide unified visualization of satellite images, observations and model output overlays; display the visualization on a projection of the users choice; implement functions so the user can derive diagnostic values; animate the data to see the time-evolution; animate ocean and atmosphere at different rates; store the record of cursor movement, smooth the path, and animate a window around the moving path; repeatedly start and stop the visual time-stepping; generate VHS tape animations; work on a variety of workstations; and allow visualization across clusters of workstations and scalable high performance computer systems.

Anand, Harsh↗

Automated Guided-Wave Scanning Developed to Characterize Materials and Detect Defects

The Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Group of the Optical Instrumentation Technology Branch at the NASA Glenn Research Center has developed a scanning system that uses guided waves to characterize materials and detect defects. The technique uses two ultrasonic transducers to interrogate the condition of a material. The sending transducer introduces an ultrasonic pulse at a point on the surface of the specimen, and the receiving transducer detects the signal after it has passed through the material. The aim of the method is to correlate certain parameters in both the time and frequency domains of the detected waveform to characteristics of the material between the two transducers. The scanning system is shown. The waveform parameters of interest include the attenuation due to internal damping, waveform shape parameters, and frequency shifts due to material changes. For the most part, guided waves are used to gauge the damage state and defect growth of materials subjected to various mechanical or environmental loads. The technique has been applied to polymer matrix composites, ceramic matrix composites, and metal matrix composites as well as metallic alloys. Historically, guided wave analysis has been a point-by-point, manual technique with waveforms collected at discrete locations and postprocessed. Data collection and analysis of this type limits the amount of detail that can be obtained. Also, the manual movement of the sensors is prone to user error and is time consuming. The development of an automated guided-wave scanning system has allowed the method to be applied to a wide variety of materials in a consistent, repeatable manner. Experimental studies have been conducted to determine the repeatability of the system as well as compare the results obtained using more traditional NDE methods. The following screen capture shows guided-wave scan results for a ceramic matrix composite plate, including images for each of nine calculated parameters. The system can display up to 18 different wave parameters. Multiple scans of the test specimen demonstrated excellent repeatability in the measurement of all the guided-wave parameters, far exceeding the traditional point-by-point technique. In addition, the scan was able to detect a subsurface defect that was confirmed using flash thermography This technology is being further refined to provide a more robust and efficient software environment. Future hardware upgrades will allow for multiple receiving transducers and the ability to scan more complex surfaces. This work supports composite materials development and testing under the Ultra-Efficient Engine Technology (UEET) Project, but it also will be applied to other material systems under development for a wide range of applications.

Martin, Richard E.↗