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At least 109 records · Page 6

Metal abundances at z = 3.4

Echelle spectroscopy data were taken of the quasar 0000-263 on the 4m telescope at CTIO in Chile. Three nights of red and three nights of blue data were obtained (about four hours data per night). The resolution is typically 0.4 A at 5000 A (lamda/d(lamda) = 12500) and has good signal-to-noise over the wavelength range 4600 A to 8000 A. To keep the statistics manageable the data were not rebinned, although the instrument was stable enough for each night's data on the object to be co-added. Arc spectra taken between each exposure were also co-added within the nights. During profile fitting the model was convolved with a Gaussian whose width was equal to nearby arc lines, so any broadening generated by the co-adding of data will not affect the final results. Since OI and HI have the same ionization potential (13.6 eV), (O/H) is approximately (OI/HI). Unfortunately, in this data only the 1302 A OI transition is visible, and it is blended with HI in the Lyman Alpha forest. However, OI and NI coexist (the ionization potential for NI is 14.5 eV) and so the NI triplet can constrain the redshift and turbulent width of the OI. When a fit was made to the regions containing OI and NI absorption three systems were apparent with similar redshifts and velocity widths. These three systems were fitted with tied redshifts and turbulent widths, while the other lines in the region were fitted as Lyman-Alpha. The saturated Lyman-Alpha profile was then fitted with three components at the same redshifts as these observed lines, with the line widths tied. Finally, metallicity ratios for the individual lines and their totals were calculated and compared to solar values. The results for the separate clouds from low to high redshift and for the total are presented.

Cooke, Andrew↗

Estimating Temperature Retrieval Accuracy Associated With Thermal Band Spatial Resolution Requirements for Center Pivot Irrigation Monitoring and Management

This study explores the use of synthetic thermal center pivot irrigation scenes to estimate temperature retrieval accuracy for thermal remote sensed data, such as data acquired from current and proposed Landsat-like thermal systems. Center pivot irrigation is a common practice in the western United States and in other parts of the world where water resources are scarce. Wide-area ET (evapotranspiration) estimates and reliable water management decisions depend on accurate temperature information retrieval from remotely sensed data. Spatial resolution, sensor noise, and the temperature step between a field and its surrounding area impose limits on the ability to retrieve temperature information. Spatial resolution is an interrelationship between GSD (ground sample distance) and a measure of image sharpness, such as edge response or edge slope. Edge response and edge slope are intuitive, and direct measures of spatial resolution are easier to visualize and estimate than the more common Modulation Transfer Function or Point Spread Function. For these reasons, recent data specifications, such as those for the LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission), have used GSD and edge response to specify spatial resolution. For this study, we have defined a 400-800 m diameter center pivot irrigation area with a large 25 K temperature step associated with a 300 K well-watered field surrounded by an infinite 325 K dry area. In this context, we defined the benchmark problem as an easily modeled, highly common stressing case. By parametrically varying GSD (30-240 m) and edge slope, we determined the number of pixels and field area fraction that meet a given temperature accuracy estimate for 400-m, 600-m, and 800-m diameter field sizes. Results of this project will help assess the utility of proposed specifications for the LDCM and other future thermal remote sensing missions and for water resource management.

Ryan, Robert E.↗

Course #2430: Hearing Conservation [Slides]

Occupational hearing loss is one of the most common work-related illnesses in the United States (US). According to OSHA, 22 million US workers are exposed to hazardous noise levels at work, and 25% of these workers will develop permanent hearing loss. Hearing loss from noise is slow and painless, and you can have a disability before you notice it. This course presents the hazards associated with workplace noise, the purpose and elements of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Hearing Conservation Program (HCP), and controls that are available to reduce your exposure to hazardous levels of noise.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

STS-1 medical report

The report includes a review of the health of the crew before, during and immediately after the first Shuttle orbital flight (April 12-14, 1981). Areas reviewed include: health evaluation, medical debriefing of crewmembers, health stabilization program, medical training, medical kit carried inflight; tests and countermeasures for space motion sickness, cardiovascular profile, biochemistry and endocrinology results; hematology and immunology analyses; medical microbiology; food and nutrition; potable water; shuttle toxicology; radiological health; cabin acoustical noise. Also included is information on: environmental effects of Shuttle launch and landing, medical information management; and management, planning and implementation of the medical program.

Pool, S. L.↗

Long-Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) Quantum Dot Infrared Photodetector (QDIP) Focal Plane Array

We have exploited the artificial atomlike properties of epitaxially self-assembled quantum dots for the development of high operating temperature long wavelength infrared (LWIR) focal plane arrays. Quantum dots are nanometer-scale islands that form spontaneously on a semiconductor substrate due to lattice mismatch. QDIPs are expected to outperform quantum well infrared detectors (QWIPs) and are expected to offer significant advantages over II-VI material based focal plane arrays. QDIPs are fabricated using robust wide bandgap III-V materials which are well suited to the production of highly uniform LWIR arrays. We have used molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technology to grow multi-layer LWIR quantum dot structures based on the InAs/InGaAs/GaAs material system. JPL is building on its significant QWIP experience and is basically building a Dot-in-the-Well (DWELL) device design by embedding InAs quantum dots in a QWIP structure. This hybrid quantum dot/quantum well device offers additional control in wavelength tuning via control of dot-size and/or quantum well sizes. In addition the quantum wells can trap electrons and aide in ground state refilling. Recent measurements have shown a 10 times higher photoconductive gain than the typical QWIP device, which indirectly confirms the lower relaxation rate of excited electrons (photon bottleneck) in QDPs. Subsequent material and device improvements have demonstrated an absorption quantum efficiency (QE) of approx. 3%. Dot-in-the-well (DWELL) QDIPs were also experimentally shown to absorb both 45 deg. and normally incident light. Thus we have employed a reflection grating structure to further enhance the quantum efficiency. JPL has demonstrated wavelength control by progressively growing material and fabricating devices structures that have continuously increased in LWIR response. The most recent devices exhibit peak responsivity out to 8.1 microns. Peak detectivity of the 8.1 micrometer devices has reached approx. 1 x 10(exp 10) Jones at 77 K. Furthermore, we have fabricated the first long-wavelength 640x512 pixels QDP focal plane array. This QDIP focal plane may has produced excellent infrared imagery with noise equivalent temperature difference of 40 mK at 60K operating temperature. In addition, we have managed to increase the quantum efficiency of these devices from 0.1% (according to the data published in literature) to 20% in discrete devices. This is a factor of 200 increase in quantum efficiency. With these excellent results, for the first time QDIP performance has surpassed the QWIP performance. Our goal is to operate these long-wavelength detectors at much higher operating temperature than 77K which can be passively achieved in space. This will be a huge leap in high performance infrared detectors specifically applicable to space science instruments.

infrared imaging↗

Noise Mitigation Controller Tools

During the past decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been developing and evaluating a suite of decision support tools (DSTs) to aid the air traffic controller in the management of traffic. These tools are known collectively as the Center/TRACON Automation System (CTAS). The primary focus of CTAS is increased capacity. As part of a new NASA program called Quiet Aircraft Technology (QAT), the following question is being addressed: Can CTAS technology also support the noise mitigation requirements imposed by the community? Controllers currently support a variety of low noise procedures in low traffic densities but, as traffic increases, these must be abandoned due to excessive spacing requirements for vectoring or inter-arrival spacing requirements needed to handle a spectrum of low noise procedures. NASA is currently investigating how to provide controllers with noise-mitigation-based advisories which address these issues without negatively impacting capacity. These issues are of global concern which must be addressed as the demand for air travel continues to increase.

Tobias, Leonard↗

Improve Learning from Crowds via Generative Augmentation

Crowdsourcing provides an efficient label collection schema for supervised machine learning. However, to control annotation cost, each instance in the crowdsourced data is typically annotated by a small number of annotators. This creates a sparsity issue and limits the quality of machine learning models trained on such data. In this paper, we study how to handle sparsity in crowdsourced data using data augmentation. Specifically, we propose to directly learn a classifier by augmenting the raw sparse annotations. We implement two principles of high-quality augmentation using Generative Adversarial Networks: 1) the generated annotations should follow the distribution of authentic ones, which is measured by a discriminator; 2) the generated annotations should have high mutual information with the ground-truth labels, which is measured by an auxiliary network. Extensive experiments and comparisons against an array of state-of-the-art learning from crowds methods on three real-world datasets proved the effectiveness of our data augmentation framework. It shows the potential of our algorithm for low-budget crowdsourcing in general.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Phase fluctuation spectra: New radio science information to become available in the DSN tracking system Mark III-77

An algorithm was developed for the continuous and automatic computation of Doppler noise concurrently at four sample rate intervals, evenly spanning three orders of magnitude. Average temporal Doppler phase fluctuation spectra will be routinely available in the DSN tracking system Mark III-77 and require little additional processing. The basic (noise) data will be extracted from the archival tracking data file (ATDF) of the tracking data management system.

Berman, A. L.↗

Mapping Ungulate Habitats in Yellowstone National Park with Airborne Hyperspectral Data

Mapping vegetation habitats of ungulates (e.g., bison, elk, and deer) is critical to the development of efficient wildlife management and monitoring practices in Yellowstone National Park. Image endmembers were chosen using the ENVI minimum noise fraction, pixel purity index, N-dimensional visualizer approach. The spectral angle mapper algorithm was used to classify the image. This process was applied to low altitude AVIRIS and Probe-1 hyperspectral imagery of the Lamar River/Soda Butte Creek confluence to map several ungulate habitats (e.g., grasses, sedge, sage, aspen, willow, and cottonwood. The results are being compared to field measurements and large-scale color infrared aerial photography to assess mapping accuracy. The use of AVIRIS and Probe-1 data enabled the examination of hyperspectral data collected at different spatial and spectral resolutions.

Terrie, Gregory↗

Free-Flying Magnetometer Data System

The Free-Flying Magnetometer (FFM) is an autonomous "sensorcraft" developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the Enstrophy sounding rocket mission. This mission was a collaborative project between the University of New Hampshire, Cornell University and JPL. The science goal of the mission was the study of current filamentation phenomena in the northern auroral region through multipoint measurements of magnetic field. The technical objective of the mission was the proof of concept of the JPL FFM design and the demonstration of an in-situ multipoint measurement technique employing many free-flying spacecraft. Four FFMs were successfully deployed from a sounding rocket launched from Poker Flats, Alaska on February 11, 1999. These hockey-puck-sized (80 mm diameter, 38 mm. height, 250 gram mass) free flyers each carry a miniature 3-axis flux-gate magnetometer that output +/- 2 V signals corresponding to a +/- 60,000 nT measurement range for each axis. The FFM uses a synchronized four-channel Sigma(Delta) Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) having a dynamic range of +/- 2.5V and converting at a rate of 279 samples/second/channel. Three channels are used to digitize the magnetometer signals to 17-bit (1.144 nT/bit) resolution. The fourth ADC channel is multiplexed for system monitoring of four temperature sensors and two battery voltages. The FFM also contains two sun sensors, a laser diode which emits a fan-shaped beam, a miniature S-band transmitter for direct communication to the ground station antennas, an ultra-stable Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator (TCXO) clock, an integrated data subsystem implemented in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), a 4 Mbit Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) for data storage and Lithium Thionyl Chloride batteries for power. Communicating commands to the FFM prior to deployment is achieved with an infrared (IR) link. The FFM IR receiver responds to 9-bit pulse coded signals that are generated by an IR Light Emitting Diode (LED) in the payload for turning FFM power on or off and placing the FFM in a test mode or flight mode. The IR links are also used to synchronize (zero) the clocks onboard all the FFMs through a reset pulse originating from the payload GPS receiver that is issued when the FFMs are in flight mode. The FPGA based data subsystem manages continuous data collection from the four ADC channels and sun sensors, formatting and storing the data to SRAM, and controlling downlink transmission. The transmitter is powered only after a 2547 frame SRAM buffer has been filled (approx. 5 minutes of data). The data is Viterbi encoded and sent to the S-band transmitter via a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) buffer who's output is clocked at 100 bits/second. After the 26-second transmission, the transmitter is turned off to reduce noise coupling to the sensitive magnetometer. The data subsystem control consists of a master state machine that performs data flow management and is interfaced through a prioritized interrupt scheme to state machines that service the ADC, sun sensors and transmitter FIFO. Continuous data collection prevents the missing of data during transmission and provides implicit time tagging of the data acquired by the ADC because of synchronization with the TCXO clock.

Blaes, B.↗

Learning from Crowds by Modeling Common Confusions

Crowdsourcing provides a practical way to obtain large amounts of labeled data at a low cost. However, the annotation quality of annotators varies considerably, which imposes new challenges in learning a high-quality model from the crowdsourced annotations. In this work, we provide a new perspective to decompose annotation noise into common noise and individual noise and differentiate the source of confusion based on instance difficulty and annotator expertise on a per-instance-annotator basis. We realize this new crowdsourcing model by an end-to-end learning solution with two types of noise adaptation layers: one is shared across annotators to capture their commonly shared confusions, and the other one is pertaining to each annotator to realize individual confusion. To recognize the source of noise in each annotation, we use an auxiliary network to choose from the two noise adaptation layers with respect to both instances and annotators. Extensive experiments on both synthesized and real-world benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed common noise adaptation solution.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Agenda toward the development of a rational noise descriptor system relevant to human annoyance by en route aircraft noise

A rational, internationally consistent, noise descriptor system is needed to express existing and predicted en route aircraft noise levels in terms closely correlated to the annoyance perceived by people and physiologically identifiable in people, to provide guidance for aircraft and powerplant design, flight management, land-use planning, and building codes. Expanding on previous discussions, a new comprehensive statement of the specific questions that must be resolved by needed research, and the nature and quality of proof that must be adduced to justify further steps toward the drafting and adoption of new international en route aircraft-noise standards is sought. The single noise-descriptor system envisioned must be valid for widely varying aircraft-noise frequency spectra, including time-variant components and agreeable and disagreeable discrete tones and combinations of tones. The measures and criteria established by the system must be valid at high and low immission levels, at high and low ambient noise levels, for great and small number of noise events, and outdoors and indoors.

Garbell, Maurice A.↗

Denoising Autoencoder for Reconstructing Sensor Observation Data and Predicting Evapotranspiration: Noisy and Missing Values Repair and Uncertainty Quantification

Abstract Machine learning (ML) methods applied in scientific research often deal with interrelated features in high‐dimensional data. Reducing data noise and redundancy is needed to increase prediction accuracy and efficiency especially when dealing with data from field sensors. We explored an unsupervised learning method, the denoising autoencoder (DAE), to extract the underlying data structure from noisy raw data in the context of predicting hydrologic quantities from multiple field sensors. These sensors have intrinsic instrumental noise and occasional malfunctions that cause missing values. Our DAE neural network reconstructed meteorological sensor data containing noise and missing values to predict evapotranspiration in a mountainous watershed. The DAE reconstructed the sensor variables with a mean coefficient of determination value of 0.77 across 15 dimensions representing individual sensors. It reduced variance and bias uncertainties compared to a classical autoencoder model. The reconstruction quality varied across dimensions depending on their cross‐correlation and alignment with the underlying data structure. Uncertainties arising from the model structure were overall higher than those resulting from data corruption. We attached the DAE structure to a downstream ET‐prediction neural network in three formats and achieved reasonably accurate ET predictions . The use of the DAE notably reduced variance uncertainty in ET prediction. However, excessive variance reduction may be accompanied by an increase in bias due to the intrinsic bias‐variance tradeoff. Our method of evaluating and reducing uncertainties in aggregated data from different sources can be used to improve predictive models, process understanding, and uncertainty quantification for better water resource management. Plain Language Summary We present a machine learning method, namely the denoising autoencoder, which reduces the effects of data noise and missing values typically present in scientific data sets collected through sensor measurements. This method selects the most relevant information from noisy raw data collected by the instruments and fills in missing values. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, we applied it to predict evapotranspiration, a hydrologic variable that represents the water moved from the land surface to the atmosphere through a combination of evaporation and plant water use (transpiration). We also used a random sampling technique (the Monte Carlo method) to compare the uncertainty in the predictions when using the raw and noisy data versus the reconstructed data. The denoising process produced more accurate predictions of evapotranspiration with less uncertainty. Improved predictions of evapotranspiration can lead to a better understanding and accounting of water budgets. This ML approach is broadly suitable for a wide variety of applications that involve noisy sensor data with missing values. Key Points We used a denoising autoencoder (DAE) neural network to reduce noise in meteorological and soil sensor observations by on average We used Monte Carlo sampling to estimate the bias and variance of all model outputs, including uncertainty sources from data and the model We attached the DAE component to a downstream neural network to predict ET with the variance reduced by , compared to that without the DAE

denoising autoencoder↗

IRSN Work in Support of NCSP: FY2021 and Plan for Future [Slides]

IRSN and NCSP collaboration has been very fruitful. Despite challenges presented by COVID-19, work has been performed regularly and successfully by video conference. This includes monthly basis meeting with LLNL and LANL and specifics meetings with ORNL and SNL when needed. After two years without any IRSN participation to experiments, ISRN is looking forward to fully participating in the three proposed integral experiments scheduled in 2022. IRSN is working on several new projects including TEX-MOX and TEX-low temperatures.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Communal Sensor Network for Adaptive Noise Reduction in Aircraft Engine Nacelles

Emergent behavior, a subject of much research in biology, sociology, and economics, is a foundational element of Complex Systems Science and is apropos in the design of sensor network systems. To demonstrate engineering for emergent behavior, a novel approach in the design of a sensor/actuator network is presented maintaining optimal noise attenuation as an adaptation to changing acoustic conditions. Rather than use the conventional approach where sensors are managed by a central controller, this new paradigm uses a biomimetic model where sensor/actuators cooperate as a community of autonomous organisms, sharing with neighbors to control impedance based on local information. From the combination of all individual actions, an optimal attenuation emerges for the global system.

Jones, Kennie H.↗

Symmetry-violation-driven hysteresis loops as measurands for noise-resilient sensors

Sublinear resonant deviations from an exceptional point degeneracy (EPD) has been recently promoted as a sensing scheme. However, there is still an ongoing debate whether the sensitivity advantage is negated by an increase in fundamental noise – especially when active elements induce self-oscillations. In this case, nonlinearities are crucial in stabilizing amplifying modes and mitigating noise effects. A drawback is the formation of hysteresis loops that signal a transition to unstable modes. This can only be alleviated by precise cavity symmetry management. Here, utilizing two coupled nonlinear (RLC) tanks with balanced amplification and attenuation, we demonstrate that an explicit symmetry violation, induced by sweeping the resonant detuning of the (RLC) tanks, reveals a hysteresis loop near the EPD whose width scales sublinearly with the inter-tank coupling. Furthermore, our proposal re-envisions this disadvantageous feature as a sensing protocol with diverging sensitivity, enhanced signal-to-noise ratio, and self-calibration without requiring delicate symmetry control. As such, it opens new avenues in metrology as well as for optical/RF switching and triggering.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Sensor System and Observer Algorithm Co-Design For Modern Internal Combustion Engine Air Management Based on H2 Optimization

This paper outlines a novel sensor selection and observer design algorithm for linear time-invariant systems with both process and measurement noise based on H 2 optimization to optimize the tradeoff between the observer error and the number of required sensors. The optimization problem is relaxed to a sequence of convex optimization problems that minimize the cost function consisting of the H 2 norm of the observer error and the weighted l 1 norm of the observer gain. An LMI formulation allows for efficient solution via semi-definite programing. The approach is applied here, for the first time, to a turbo-charged spark-ignited engine using exhaust gas circulation to determine the optimal sensor sets for real-time intake manifold burnt gas mass fraction estimation. Simulation with the candidate estimator embedded in a high fidelity engine GT-Power model demonstrates that the optimal sensor sets selected using this algorithm have the best H 2 estimation performance. Sensor redundancy is also analyzed based on the algorithm results. This algorithm is applicable for any type of modern internal combustion engines to reduce system design time and experimental efforts typically required for selecting optimal sensor sets.

Zhang, Xu↗

Fiber-Optic Silicon Fabry-Perot Interferometric Bolometer: The Influence of Mechanical Vibration and Magnetic Field

Plasma radiation plays an important role in the operation and control of magnetic confinement fusion and is typically measured by bolometers. Here, we study the influence of mechanical vibration and magnetic field, which are typically present in magnetic confinement fusion devices, on the performance of a fiber-optic bolometer (FOB) based on silicon Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) demodulated by a scanning diode laser. It is found that both the vibration and magnetic field could cause large noise due to the birefringence of the silicon FPI. To mitigate the birefringence effects, we demonstrated two effective methods: polarization maintaining FOB and polarization scrambling. We show that two methods can be effective in mitigating the effect caused by the sensor birefringence: (1) replacing the regular single-mode fiber in the FOB system with polarization-maintaining fiber and (2) using a polarization scrambler after the laser source. For both methods, no significant increase in the noise was observed in the vibration and magnetic field tests. Finally, our research highlights the importance of the polarization management for the FOB systems toward their practical applications in magnetic-confinement fusion systems.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗