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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 109 records · Page 6

Streaming Analytics for Anomaly Detection in Large-Scale Data

Anomalous behavior poses serious risks to assured performance and reliability of complex, high-consequence systems. For spaceborne assets and their state-of-health (SOH) telemetry, the challenges of high-dimensional data of varying data types are compounded by computational limitations from size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints as well as data availability. Automated anomaly detection methods tend to perform poorly under these constraints, while current operational approaches can introduce delays in response time due to the manual, retrospective processes for understanding system failures. As a result, presently deployed space systems, and those deployed in the near future, face situations where mission operations might be delayed or only be able to operate under degraded capabilities. Here, we examine a near-term lightweight solution that provides real-time detection capabilities for rare events and assess state-of-the-art anomaly detection techniques against real SOH telemetry from space platforms. This report describes our methodology and research, which could support more automated capabilities for comprehensive space operations as well as for other resource-constrained edge applications.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Short Sleep Duration: Children’s Mental, Behavioral, and Developmental Disorders and Demographic, Neighborhood, and Family Context in a Nationally Representative Sample, 2016–2019

Many children and adolescents experience insufficient sleep, which poses risks for their short- and long-term health and development. This study examined the concurrent associations of contextual factors, including child, demographic, neighborhood, and family factors, with short sleep duration.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Impact of Tuned Lighting on Skilled Nursing Center Residents' Sleep

The Problem: Sleep disturbance is common among nursing center residents and places them at risk for poor health outcomes. Lighting that changes in color and intensity over the course of the day and night may improve sleep and other outcomes, like dementia behaviors, but has has not been rigorously evaluated under real-world conditions. The Resolution: This single-facility study establishes that facility-level tuned lighting is feasible to implement and evaluate in a nursing center. Researchers randomly-assigned three corridors to one of two lighting conditions, then the other. Residents experienced half as many sleep disturbances while exposed to tuned vs. static lighting. There was no effect on behaviors. Tips for Success: Tuned lighting is a low-risk intervention that could be employed in new construction or when retrofitting fixtures into existing buildings. Key Words: Nursing home, long-term care, lighting, sleep, behaviors

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Remediation of Temporary Storage Sites in Support of the Port Hope Area Initiative - 20295

The Port Hope Area Initiative is a community-based solution for the long-term management of historic low level radioactive waste (LLRW) resulting from 60 years of uranium and radium processing operations in the Town of Port Hope which is located in Ontario, Canada. The Eldorado refinery, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, began refining radium-226 from pitchblende ore, later transitioning to the refining of uranium. Through the history of the operation, LLRW was deposited throughout the town of Port Hope as a result of fugitive emissions from the plant and/or through the re-use of process residues as building material and backfill. Historical clean-up activities conducted in the late 1970's involved the remediation of approximately 400 properties and the relocation of 100,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil to a disposal facility in Chalk River operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). Owing to space limitations at that disposal facility, any LLRW identified through construction monitoring since that time has been stored in the community at three temporary storage sites located throughout the town. These include: the Centre Pier mound that contained approximately of 19,800 m{sup 3} of LLRW-impacted soil that originated from the construction of a new water treatment plant; two mounds located at a licensed storage facility containing LLRW obtained from residential clean-up activities (11,000 m{sup 3}); and a small pad adjacent to the municipal sewage treatment plant containing 2200 m{sup 3} of LLRW-containing sludge. With the construction of a new long-term waste management facility (LTWMF) that has been designed to house all of the LLRW identified within Port Hope, the three sites were early candidates for remediation. The clean-up of the three temporary storage sites was a significant milestone for the Port Hope Area Initiative. After a decade of planning and consultation, this work represents the first sites in the municipality to be remediated with the waste being safety removed and transferred to the newly constructed LTWMF. This paper discusses the challenges associated with the clean-up activities for these three sites and the strategies employed to address those challenges. These included weather-related challenges, owing to the seasons over which the work was conducted as well as those associated with working within a closely-knit community. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), working on behalf of the federal government, has worked diligently to develop a positive and trusting relationship with the community. Consequently, the successful execution of this project needed to be sensitive to, and respectful of the needs of the community. In addition to the usual Health, Safety and Environment training, project staff received community awareness training that spoke to the history of this community-based initiative and the expected behavior when working within the community. Transportation routes were defined based on safety and the need to minimize disruption to local traffic while haul-times where scheduled around school bus hours to enhance public safety. The successful completion of this first of many remediation projects to be completed under the Port Hope Area Initiative reflected years of careful planning. Nevertheless, there were a number of 'lessons learned' that have been applied on other ongoing projects be completed under the Port Hope Area Initiative. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Combining Agent Based Modeling and System Dynamics to Investigate the Circularity of Plastics

The United States currently produces about 1 million metric ton of ocean plastic pollution annually. One proposed solution to combat plastic waste is a circular economy (CE), which aims to transition from today's take-make-waste linear pattern of production and consumption to a system where the value of resources is maximized over time. Two key methods in industrial ecology are useful in assessing the viability of CE: (1) System Dynamics (SD) and (2) Agent Based Modeling (ABM). In prior work, the plastic life cycle was modeled with SD and ABM. The two models calculate recycling rates and costs in different ways, making it difficult to pinpoint necessary next steps. We integrate the ABM and SD models - linking the emergent patterns from micro-level human decisions to system level processes - which allows a more comprehensive understanding of feedbacks, costs, and environmental impacts. The integrated model is more accurate, and can be used to visualize recycling rates and human health and environmental impacts over time. The difference between the integrated and original SD model prompts a Sobol sensitivity analysis, which is used to understand which behavioral factors most affect plastic recycling patterns. We find that the habitual component is typically the most influential in promoting positive recycling behavior. Additionally, we utilize the combined model to understand and visualize how various behavioral intervention scenarios, like improved access to recycling programs and cart tagging, influence recycling patterns; these results can guide future policy-making.

agent-based modeling↗

Wireless Patch Antenna Characterization for Live Health Monitoring Using Machine Learning

Temperature monitoring in extreme environments, such as coal-fired power plants, was addressed by designing and testing wireless patch antennas for use in machine learning-aided temperature estimation. The sensors were designed to monitor the temperature and health of boiler systems. Wireless interrogation of the sensor was performed using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) and a pair of interrogation antennas to capture resonance behavior under varying thermal and spatial conditions with sensitivities ranging from 0.052 to 0.20 $\frac{𝑀𝐻𝑧}{°C}$. Sensor calibration was conducted using a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, which leveraged temporal patterns to account for hysteresis effects. The calibration method demonstrated improved performance when combined with an LSTM model, achieving up to a 76% improvement in temperature estimation error when compared with Linear Regression (LR). The experiments highlighted an innovative solution for patch antenna-based non-contact temperature measurement, which addresses limitations with conventional methods such as RFID-based systems, infrared, and thermocouples.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

Aging matrix visualizes complexity of battery aging across hundreds of cycling protocols

To reliably deploy lithium-ion batteries, a fundamental understanding of cycling aging behavior is critical. Battery aging consists of complex and highly coupled phenomena, making it challenging to develop a holistic interpretation. In this work, we generate a diverse battery cycling dataset with a broad range of degradation trajectories, consisting of 359 high energy density commercial Li(Ni,Co,Al)O 2 /graphite + SiO x cylindrical 21 700 cells cycled across 207 unique cycling protocols. We consolidate aging via 16 mechanistic state-of-health (SOH) metrics, including cell-level performance metrics, electrode-specific capacities/state-of-charges (SOCs), and aging trajectory metrics. We develop a framework using interpretable machine learning and explainable features to generate an aging matrix that visually deconvolutes the complex battery degradation behavior. This generalizable data-driven mechanistic framework simplifies the complex interplay between cycling conditions, degradation modes, and SOH, acting as a hypothesis-generation tool to aid battery users in identifying key degradation regimes for further study and experimentation.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Diagnostics, Prognostics, and Optimization for Lithium-Ion Battery Systems

Health management of lithium-ion battery systems presents a host of challenges due to their complex physics, large numbers of components, and a wide variety of degradation behaviors across different battery types. Dr. Paul Gasper will present on research from the Electrochemical Energy Storage Group on Lithium-ion battery diagnostics, prognostics, and optimization. Diagnostics research, including state-estimation via machine-learning from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and DC pulses as well as continuous state-estimation via Kalman filters, will highlight the ongoing challenges for accurately measuring the state of batteries without performing time-consuming characterization tests. NLR's industry-recognized battery prognostics work, which predicts real-world battery degradation by identifying degradation rate models from accelerated aging data using statistical modeling and machine-learning, will be used to demonstrate the critical impact of battery controls, thermal management, and operating strategy on durability and lifetime. Finally, the use of prognostic models for financial or lifetime optimization will be discussed.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

From Data to Knowledge: A Graph-Based Reliability Approach to Assess System Health

With the goal of maximizing plant reliability and availability, complex systems such as nuclear power plants continuously monitor and record the performance and the health status of many components, assets, and systems. Such data may take the form of online monitoring data, condition reports, and maintenance reports and it carries the potential to provide system engineers with insights into anomalous behaviors or degradation trends as well as the possible causes behind them and to predict their direct consequences. The analysis of such data poses however few challenges. While some of these challenges are technical in nature (i.e., data are often distributed over several physical servers or databases), others are conceptual in nature (i.e., data elements come in different formats, numeric or textual), and measured values have different scales (e.g., vibration spectra and oil temperature). This paper directly tackles these challenges, and it focuses on the integration of all these data elements in order to assist plant system engineers in analyzing component, assets, and systems performances and optimize maintenance activities. This is performed by 1) extracting knowledge from textual data via technical language processing methods, and 2) quantifying system, asset, and component health from numeric condition-based data. We rely on model-based system engineering (MBSE) models of systems and assets to identify their architecture and functional (i.e., cause and effect) relations. Numeric and textual data elements are then associated with an MBSE graph element, based on their nature. This bonding of MBSE models and data elements constitutes a first-of-its-kind knowledge graph of a nuclear power plants system, with data elements being organized in a structured manner that enables system engineers to identify cause-effect trends in data elements and carry out appropriate actions in response.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Assessing Indoor versus Outdoor PM 2.5 Concentrations during the 2025 Los Angeles Fires Using the PurpleAir Sensor Network

In January 2025, a series of fast-moving wildland-urban-interface (WUI) fires swept through the Los Angeles (LA) metropolitan area, causing severe air pollution. While the impacts of WUI fires on outdoor air quality have been extensively studied, indoor exposure remains less understood, despite most people sheltering indoors during WUI fires. Here, this study investigates the spatial and temporal patterns of indoor and outdoor PM 2.5 concentrations across the South Coast Air Basin, with a focus on LA County during the LA fires. Using high-resolution data from co-located indoor and outdoor PurpleAir (PA) sensors, we analyze hourly PM 2.5 levels and indoor/outdoor ratios. Outdoor PM 2.5 concentrations spiked sharply during the fires, reaching unhealthy levels exceeding 130 μg/m 3 , compared to the mean concentration (12 μg/m 3 ) during non-fire hours. Indoor concentrations also increased, though to a lesser extent, peaking around 60 μg/m 3 compared to a mean of 7 μg/m 3 during non-fire hours. This reflects the partial shielding that indoor environments provide from outdoor air pollution. The mean (0.42) and median (0.29) indoor/outdoor PM 2.5 ratios during LA fire hours were lower than the mean (0.93) and median (0.66) ratios during non-fire hours. Indoor/outdoor PM 2.5 ratios across sensors showed a wide distribution, reflecting differences in building characteristics and occupant behavior, such as indoor activities and the use of air purifiers. These findings emphasize the need for guidance and interventions to reduce indoor PM 2.5 exposure and protect public health during extreme WUI fire events.

2025 Los Angeles Fires↗

Feedback-Based Fault-Tolerant and Health-Adaptive Optimal Charging of Batteries

The key technology barriers that hinder the growth of Electric Vehicles (EVs) are long charging time, the shorter life-time of EV batteries, and battery safety. Specifically, EV charging protocols have significant effects on battery lifetime and safety. If not charged properly, the battery could end up with shorter life, and more importantly, improper charging can cause battery faults leading to catastrophic failures. To overcome these barriers, we propose a closed-loop feedback based approach, that enables real-time optimal fast charging protocol adaptation to battery health and possess active diagnostic capabilities in the sense that, during charging, it detects real-time faults and takes corrective action to mitigate such fault effects. We utilize battery electrical-thermal model, explicit battery capacity and power fade aging models, and thermal fault model to capture battery behavior. In conjunction with the models, we adopt linear quadratic optimal control techniques to realize the feedback-based control algorithm. Simulation studies are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

batteries↗

Activity Time-Use Patterns and Experienced Satisfaction: Travel Behavioral Dynamics from the 2010–2013 American Time-Use Survey Data

Central to the theory of activity-based approaches is the role of time-use and its impacts on various decision processes related to individual activity-travel patterns, thereby determining ones’ daily well-being. This research aims at quantifying and investigating the underlying correlation of time-use and happiness using the repeated cross-section data from the 2010-2013 American Time Use Survey Well-Being module. The survey specifically records reported levels of activity satisfaction as measured through – happiness, meaningfulness, tiredness, sadness and stress experienced from activity participation. Using these scores, we first construct a composite degree of activity satisfaction that a person experiences using latent class cluster analysis. A series of regression models are then estimated to jointly analyze episodic duration and satisfaction separately for each of years from 2010-2013, by controlling for socioeconomics, household lifecycle stages (29-groups based on age, gender, marital status and presence of children), activity characteristics and global life and health assessment measures. Overall, model estimation results reveal a strong negative correlation between episodic duration and happiness from individual activity engagement patterns. This correlation pattern is temporally stable for the years 2010-2013, with minor variations. Results also suggest that household lifecycle stage has a major impact on activity time-use and satisfaction behavior. Further, single parent and younger couples (25 years to 45 years) with children are more likely to engage in longer and less happy episodes due to family commitments. The model findings also show a strong correlation between health conditions and activity happiness.

Ravulaparthy, Srinath↗

Large Deviations Anomaly Detection (LAD) for collection of multivariate time series data: Applications to COVID-19 data

Time series anomaly detection is frequently used to identify extreme behaviors within a single time series. Identifying extreme trends in relation to a collection of other time series, on the other hand, is frequently of significant interest, such as in public health policy, social justice, and pandemic propagation. Using concepts from large deviations theory , we propose an algorithm that can scale to large collections of time series data. This paper expands on the LAD algorithm presented in Guggilam et al. (2022). The proposed algorithm is an online anomaly detection method for identifying anomalies in a collection of multivariate time series that takes advantage of the algorithm’s ability to scale to high-dimensional data. We show how the proposed Large Deviations Anomaly Detection (LAD) algorithm can be used to identify regions with anomalous trends in COVID-19 cases, deaths, biweekly growth rates, vaccinations, and fatality rates. Several of the observed anomalous trends are associated with regions that have demonstrated poor response to the COVID pandemic.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Microbiome Comparison and Pathogen Identification for Three Migrating Passerines Captured During Spring Season in Jordan Using 16S rRNA Sequencing

Jordan is located on an important spot along the Mediterranean and Black Sea Flyway. Hundreds of migratory bird species have been identified stopping over in Jordan during spring and autumn migratory seasons. Compared to mammals and economically important birds, the microbiomes of wild bird species are severely understudied. Gut microbial composition is a valuable source of information that reflects food preferences, foraging behavior, and the risk of pathogen transmission to humans and other animals. In this study, we assessed the microbiome composition of three species of migrating passerines (willow warblers, lesser whitethroats, and common reed warblers) captured during the spring migration stopover in Jordan in 2023. A total of 59 fecal samples were selected evenly from the three species and subjected to 16S sequencing and microbiome analysis. Our objectives were to determine the diversity of bacteria in these three species, assess the amount of intra- and inter-specific variation, and detect pathogenic genera and species that could pose health risks to humans, domestic animals, and wildlife. Bacteria mainly belonged to the phyla Proteobacteria (62%), Actinobacteriota (18%), Firmicutes (13%), Cyanobacteria (5%), and Bacteroidota (1%). The results reveal that lesser whitethroats had the greatest variation in bacterial genus richness, Shannon diversity, and microbial composition compared to willow warblers and common reed warblers. The three bird species harbored several pathogenic genera and species, including Campylobacter, Enterococcus, Escherichia-Shigella, Mycoplasma, Rickettsia, Clostridium perfringens, and Vibrio cholerae. We suggest further investigation to understand the relationship between migratory behavior and their gut microbiome. We advocate for the use of advanced molecular techniques to characterize the pathogens found in migratory birds that might have public and environmental health impacts in addition to economic loss.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

EPR Investigation of Temporal and Thermal Stability of Irradiated Sweeteners

Abstract Electron paramagnetic resonance was used to study the dosimetric properties of commercial sweeteners (sucrose, saccharin, and stevia). The results concluded that sugar has dosimetric properties of interest, which makes it suitable for dose reconstruction, emergency response, and nuclear forensics applications. The radiation dose response was investigated by irradiating samples up to 10 Gy and found to be linear. The post-irradiation stability of samples was observed to be useful for the intended applications. The results showed that the post-irradiation intensities vary from one sample to another, with the general trend demonstrating a small increase in intensities shortly after irradiation followed by an approximately constant leveling out. Finally, the effect of isochronal annealing was studied by heating samples to various temperatures. The results showed an overall stable behavior of the signal below melting temperature.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗

Breathe Well, Live Well: Implementing an Adult Asthma Self-Management Education Program

Asthma remains a significant health problem in the United States. Adults with poorly controlled asthma can affect their community in a number of ways, from lost productivity in the workplace to health care costs to premature death. Asthma self-management education helps individuals achieve better control of their asthma and is critical for the overall health and well-being of individuals with asthma. While there are numerous programs and initiatives targeting children with asthma, there is a lack of comparable focus on the needs of adults with asthma. The American Lung Association developed Breathe Well, Live Well, an adult asthma self-management education program, and launched it nationwide in 2007. The program for adults has a flexible delivery format for community-based implementation. This article describes the development, dissemination, and transformation of the program. Each stage of implementation showed positive changes in asthma self-management practices that contribute to better asthma control, and one local implementation additionally showed decreased reports of missed work and unscheduled health care visits among participants. The findings from the three evaluations support the use of Breathe Well, Live Well for broad community-based implementation to improve asthma self-management efficacy and behaviors.

Gardner, Emily A.↗

Bacterial vampirism mediated through taxis to serum

Bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae are associated with gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding and bacteremia and are a leading cause of death, from sepsis, for individuals with inflammatory bowel diseases. The bacterial behaviors and mechanisms underlying why these bacteria are prone to bloodstream entry remain poorly understood. Herein, we report that clinical isolates of non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica serovars, Escherichia coli , and Citrobacter koseri are rapidly attracted toward sources of human serum. To simulate GI bleeding, we utilized an injection-based microfluidics device and found that femtoliter volumes of human serum are sufficient to induce bacterial attraction to the serum source. This response is orchestrated through chemotaxis and the chemoattractant L-serine, an amino acid abundant in serum that is recognized through direct binding by the chemoreceptor Tsr. We report the first crystal structures of Salmonella Typhimurium Tsr in complex with L-serine and identify a conserved amino acid recognition motif for L-serine shared among Tsr orthologues. We find Tsr to be widely conserved among Enterobacteriaceae and numerous World Health Organization priority pathogens associated with bloodstream infections. Lastly, we find that Enterobacteriaceae use human serum as a source of nutrients for growth and that chemotaxis and the chemoreceptor Tsr provide a competitive advantage for migration into enterohemorrhagic lesions. We define this bacterial behavior of taxis toward serum, colonization of hemorrhagic lesions, and the consumption of serum nutrients as ‘bacterial vampirism’, which may relate to the proclivity of Enterobacteriaceae for bloodstream infections.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗