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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 1,099 records · Page 61

Morphological evidence for parallel processing of information in rat macula

Study of montages, tracings and reconstructions prepared from a series of 570 consecutive ultrathin sections shows that rat maculas are morphologically organized for parallel processing of linear acceleratory information. Type II cells of one terminal field distribute information to neighboring terminals as well. The findings are examined in light of physiological data which indicate that macular receptor fields have a preferred directional vector, and are interpreted by analogy to a computer technology known as an information network.

Saccule and Utricle/ultrastructure↗

Ares I Static Tests Design

Probabilistic engineering design enhances safety and reduces costs by incorporating risk assessment directly into the design process. In this paper, we assess the format of the quantitative metrics for the vehicle which will replace the Space Shuttle, the Ares I rocket. Specifically, we address the metrics for in-flight measurement error in the vector position of the motor nozzle, dictated by limits on guidance, navigation, and control systems. Analyses include the propagation of error from measured to derived parameters, the time-series of dwell points for the duty cycle during static tests, and commanded versus achieved yaw angle during tests. Based on these analyses, we recommend a probabilistic template for specifying the maximum error in angular displacement and radial offset for the nozzle-position vector. Criteria for evaluating individual tests and risky decisions also are developed.

Carson, William↗

General Pressurization Model in Simscape

System integration is an essential part of the engineering design process. The Ares I Upper Stage (US) is a complex system which is made up of thousands of components assembled into subsystems including a J2-X engine, liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2) tanks, avionics, thrust vector control, motors, etc. System integration is the task of connecting together all of the subsystems into one large system. To ensure that all the components will "fit together" as well as safety and, quality, integration analysis is required. Integration analysis verifies that, as an integrated system, the system will behave as designed. Models that represent the actual subsystems are built for more comprehensive analysis. Matlab has been an instrument widely use by engineers to construct mathematical models of systems. Simulink, one of the tools offered by Matlab, provides multi-domain graphical environment to simulate and design time-varying systems. Simulink is a powerful tool to analyze the dynamic behavior of systems over time. Furthermore, Simscape, a tool provided by Simulink, allows users to model physical (such as mechanical, thermal and hydraulic) systems using physical networks. Using Simscape, a model representing an inflow of gas to a pressurized tank was created where the temperature and pressure of the tank are measured over time to show the behavior of the gas. By further incorporation of Simscape into model building, the full potential of this software can be discovered and it hopefully can become a more utilized tool.

Servin, Mario↗

Navigation Doppler Lidar Sensor for Precision Altitude and Vector Velocity Measurements Flight Test Results

An all fiber Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL) system is under development at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) for precision descent and landing applications on planetary bodies. The sensor produces high resolution line of sight range, altitude above ground, ground relative attitude, and high precision velocity vector measurements. Previous helicopter flight test results demonstrated the NDL measurement concepts, including measurement precision, accuracies, and operational range. This paper discusses the results obtained from a recent campaign to test the improved sensor hardware, and various signal processing algorithms applicable to real-time processing. The NDL was mounted in an instrumentation pod aboard an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter and flown over vegetation free terrain. The sensor was one of several sensors tested in this field test by NASA?s Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) project.

Pierrottet, Diego F.↗

Rotaing Systems Used as Microgravity Simulators for Studies of Cartilage Differentiation

Just as Studies of abnormal chondrogenesis produced by mutation or teratogen add to our understanding of the normal chondrogenic process, studying chondrogenesis in space may assist in 1 g studies of chondrogenic defects. Opportunities to study cartilage differentiation in space, however, are limited, so systems have been developed which can be used at 1 g to simulate microgravity. One model used to mimic effects of microgravity is the clinostat a rotating system which converts gravity from a vector quantity to a scalar quantity. In slow rotating clitiostat systems, cells are attached to a substrate as at 1 g, and rotated with the plane of the culture perpendicular to the gravitational field. Another rotating system used as a microgravity simulator is the Slow Turning Lateral Vessel (STLV) which uses a rotating cylindrical vessel, completely filled with medium to culture cells in suspension without subjecting them to damaging shear forces. Embronic limb cells cultured in the slow rotating clinostat, the STLV, and in space exhibit changes in chondrogenesis related to the stage at which the cells are exposed. Clinorotation decreases the number of nodules in micromass cultures, showing an effect on the condensation process. In micromass cultures flown in space, condensation occurred preflight, so the primary effect of microgravity exposure was on matrix production. In chondrocytes in the STLV, as in growth plates of spaceflown rats, hypertrophy was decreased. Future clinostat and spaceflight experiments will examine the effect on adhesive molecules and on cytoskeletal organization because of their involvement in the processes that are affected. The mechanisms by which micro-gravity alters phenotype modulation, matrix production and aggregation, and chondrocyte hypertrophy after the cartilage phenotype is established must also be elucidated. The mechanisms resulting in cartilage defects are to a large extent unknown, and microgravitv may provide a way to identify them.

Duke, Pauline Jackie↗

A Computational Theory for the Emergence of Grammatical Categories in Cortical Dynamics

A general agreement in psycholinguistics claims that syntax and meaning are unified precisely and very quickly during online sentence processing. Although several theories have advanced arguments regarding the neurocomputational bases of this phenomenon, we argue that these theories could potentially benefit by including neurophysiological data concerning cortical dynamics constraints in brain tissue. In addition, some theories promote the integration of complex optimization methods in neural tissue. In this paper we attempt to fill these gaps introducing a computational model inspired in the dynamics of cortical tissue. In our modeling approach, proximal afferent dendrites produce stochastic cellular activations, while distal dendritic branches–on the other hand–contribute independently to somatic depolarization by means of dendritic spikes, and finally, prediction failures produce massive firing events preventing formation of sparse distributed representations. The model presented in this paper combines semantic and coarse-grained syntactic constraints for each word in a sentence context until grammatically related word function discrimination emerges spontaneously by the sole correlation of lexical information from different sources without applying complex optimization methods. By means of support vector machine techniques, we show that the sparse activation features returned by our approach are well suited—bootstrapping from the features returned by Word Embedding mechanisms—to accomplish grammatical function classification of individual words in a sentence. In this way we develop a biologically guided computational explanation for linguistically relevant unification processes in cortex which connects psycholinguistics to neurobiological accounts of language. We also claim that the computational hypotheses established in this research could foster future work on biologically-inspired learning algorithms for natural language processing applications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Jet-veto resummation at N 3 LL p + NNLO in boson production processes

Vetoing energetic jet activity is a crucial tool for suppressing backgrounds and enabling new physics searches at the LHC, but the introduction of a veto scale can introduce large logarithms that may need to be resummed. We present an implementation of jet-veto resummation for color-singlet processes at the level of N 3 LL p matched to fixed-order NNLO predictions. Our public code MCFM allows for predictions of a single boson, such as Z/γ*, W ± or H, or with a pair of vector bosons, such as W + W – , W ± Z or ZZ. The implementation relies on recent calculations of the soft and beam functions in the presence of a jet veto over all rapidities, with jets defined using a sequential recombination algorithm with jet radius R. However one of the ingredients that is required to reach full N 3 LL accuracy is only known approximately, hence N 3 LL p . We describe in detail our formalism and compare with previous public codes that operate at the level of NNLL. Our higher-order predictions improve significantly upon NNLL calculations by reducing theoretical uncertainties. We demonstrate this by comparing our predictions with ATLAS and CMS results.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Photoproduction of three jets in the CGC: gluon TMDs and dilute limit

We study the process γA → \( q\overline{q}g \) + X in the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective theory. After obtaining the cross section, we consider two kinematic limits which are encompassed in our result. In the so-called correlation limit, the vector sum of the transverse momenta of the three outgoing particles is small with respect to the individual transverse momenta; the cross section then simplifies considerably and can be written in a factorized form, sensitive to both the unpolarized and linearly-polarized Weizsäcker-Williams transverse momentum dependent gluon distribution function (gluon TMD). The second limit of the CGC cross section that we consider is the dilute limit, which we obtain after performing a weak-field expansion; we recover a typical linear-regime expression, involving a single unintegrated gluon distribution function. Using numerical simulations of the small-x QCD evolution of the TMDs, we investigate the rapidity dependence of the cross section in the correlation limit.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

First measurement of coherent ρ 0 photoproduction in ultra-peripheral Xe–Xe collisions at s NN = 5.44 TeV

The first measurement of the coherent photoproduction of ρ 0 vector mesons in ultra-peripheral Xe–Xe collisions at s NN = 5.44 TeV is presented. This result, together with previous HERA γ p data and γ –Pb measurements from ALICE, describes the atomic number ( A ) dependence of this process, which is particularly sensitive to nuclear shadowing effects and to the approach to the black-disc limit of QCD at a semi-hard scale. The cross section of the Xe + Xe → ρ 0 + Xe + Xe process, measured at midrapidity through the decay channel ρ 0 → π + π – , is found to be d σ / d y = 131.5 ± 5.6 ( stat . ) – 16.9 + 17.5 ( syst . ) mb. The ratio of the continuum to resonant contributions for the production of pion pairs is also measured. In addition, the fraction of events accompanied by electromagnetic dissociation of either one or both colliding nuclei is reported. The dependence on A of cross section for the coherent ρ 0 photoproduction at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon of the γA system of W γ A , n = 65 GeV is found to be consistent with a power-law behaviour σ ( γ A → ρ 0 A ) ∝ A α with a slope α = 0.96 ± 0.02 ( syst . ) . This slope signals important shadowing effects, but it is still far from the behaviour expected in the black-disc limit.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Automated thematic mapping and change detection of ERTS-A images

The author has identified the following significant results. A diffraction pattern analysis of MSS images led to the development of spatial signatures for farm land, urban areas and mountains. Four spatial features are employed to describe the spatial characteristics of image cells in the digital data. Three spectral features are combined with the spatial features to form a seven dimensional vector describing each cell. Then, the classification of the feature vectors is accomplished by using the maximum likelihood criterion. It was determined that the recognition accuracy with the maximum likelihood criterion depends on the statistics of the feature vectors. It was also determined that for a given geographic area the statistics of the classes remain invariable for a period of a month, but vary substantially between seasons. Three ERTS-1 images from the Phoenix, Arizona area were processed, and recognition rates between 85% and 100% were obtained for the terrain classes of desert, farms, mountains, and urban areas. To eliminate the need for training data, a new clustering algorithm has been developed. Seven ERTS-1 images from four test sites have been processed through the clustering algorithm, and high recognition rates have been achieved for all terrain classes.

Gramenopoulos, N.↗

Information extraction from multivariate images

An overview of several multivariate image processing techniques is presented, with emphasis on techniques based upon the principal component transformation (PCT). Multiimages in various formats have a multivariate pixel value, associated with each pixel location, which has been scaled and quantized into a gray level vector, and the bivariate of the extent to which two images are correlated. The PCT of a multiimage decorrelates the multiimage to reduce its dimensionality and reveal its intercomponent dependencies if some off-diagonal elements are not small, and for the purposes of display the principal component images must be postprocessed into multiimage format. The principal component analysis of a multiimage is a statistical analysis based upon the PCT whose primary application is to determine the intrinsic component dimensionality of the multiimage. Computational considerations are also discussed.

Park, S. K.↗

A database/knowledge structure for a robotics vision system

Desirable properties of robotics vision database systems are given, and structures which possess properties appropriate for some aspects of such database systems are examined. Included in the structures discussed is a family of networks in which link membership is determined by measures of proximity between pairs of the entities stored in the database. This type of network is shown to have properties which guarantee that the search for a matching feature vector is monotonic. That is, the database can be searched with no backtracking, if there is a feature vector in the database which matches the feature vector of the external entity which is to be identified. The construction of the database is discussed, and the search procedure is presented. A section on the support provided by the database for description of the decision-making processes and the search path is also included.

Dearholt, D. W.↗

Solar flares and avalanches in driven dissipative systems

The contention of Lu and Hamilton (1991) that the energy release process in solar flares can be understood as avalanches of many small reconnection events is further developed. The dynamics of the complex magnetized plasma of solar active regions is modeled with a simple driven dissipative system, consisting of a vector field with local instabilities that cause rapid diffusion of the field. It is argued that the avalanches in this model are analogous to solar flares. The distributions of avalanches in this model are compared with the solar flare frequency distributions obtained from ISEE 3/ICE satellite observations. Quantitative agreement is found with the energy, peak luminosity, and duration distributions over four orders of magnitude in flare energy, from the largest flares down to the completeness limit of the observations. It is predicted that the power-law solar flare frequency distributions will be found to continue downward with the same logarithmic slopes to an energy of about 3 x 10 exp 25 ergs and duration of about 0.3 s, with deviations from power-law behavior below these values.

Lu, Edward T.↗

From following edges to pursuing objects

Primates can generate accurate, smooth eye-movement responses to moving target objects of arbitrary shape and size, even in the presence of complex backgrounds and/or the extraneous motion of non-target objects. Most previous studies of pursuit have simply used a spot moving over a featureless background as the target and have thus neglected critical issues associated with the general problem of recovering object motion. Visual psychophysicists and theoreticians have shown that, for arbitrary objects with multiple features at multiple orientations, object-motion estimation for perception is a complex, multi-staged, time-consuming process. To examine the temporal evolution of the motion signal driving pursuit, we recorded the tracking eye movements of human observers to moving line-figure diamonds. We found that pursuit is initially biased in the direction of the vector average of the motions of the diamond's line segments and gradually converges to the true object-motion direction with a time constant of approximately 90 ms. Furthermore, transient blanking of the target during steady-state pursuit induces a decrease in tracking speed, which, unlike pursuit initiation, is subsequently corrected without an initial direction bias. These results are inconsistent with current models in which pursuit is driven by retinal-slip error correction. They demonstrate that pursuit models must be revised to include a more complete visual afferent pathway, which computes, and to some extent latches on to, an accurate estimate of object direction over the first hundred milliseconds or so of motion.

NASA Discipline Neuroscience↗

A High-Fidelity Batch Simulation Environment for Integrated Batch and Piloted Air Combat Simulation Analysis

A batch air combat simulation environment known as the Tactical Maneuvering Simulator (TMS) is presented. The TMS serves as a tool for developing and evaluating tactical maneuvering logics. The environment can also be used to evaluate the tactical implications of perturbations to aircraft performance or supporting systems. The TMS is capable of simulating air combat between any number of engagement participants, with practical limits imposed by computer memory and processing power. Aircraft are modeled using equations of motion, control laws, aerodynamics and propulsive characteristics equivalent to those used in high-fidelity piloted simulation. Databases representative of a modern high-performance aircraft with and without thrust-vectoring capability are included. To simplify the task of developing and implementing maneuvering logics in the TMS, an outer-loop control system known as the Tactical Autopilot (TA) is implemented in the aircraft simulation model. The TA converts guidance commands issued by computerized maneuvering logics in the form of desired angle-of-attack and wind axis-bank angle into inputs to the inner-loop control augmentation system of the aircraft. This report describes the capabilities and operation of the TMS.

Goodrich, Kenneth H.↗

Technique for Solving Electrically Small to Large Structures for Broadband Applications

Fast iterative algorithms are often used for solving Method of Moments (MoM) systems, having a large number of unknowns, to determine current distribution and other parameters. The most commonly used fast methods include the fast multipole method (FMM), the precorrected fast Fourier transform (PFFT), and low-rank QR compression methods. These methods reduce the O(N) memory and time requirements to O(N log N) by compressing the dense MoM system so as to exploit the physics of Green s Function interactions. FFT-based techniques for solving such problems are efficient for spacefilling and uniform structures, but their performance substantially degrades for non-uniformly distributed structures due to the inherent need to employ a uniform global grid. FMM or QR techniques are better suited than FFT techniques; however, neither the FMM nor the QR technique can be used at all frequencies. This method has been developed to efficiently solve for a desired parameter of a system or device that can include both electrically large FMM elements, and electrically small QR elements. The system or device is set up as an oct-tree structure that can include regions of both the FMM type and the QR type. The system is enclosed with a cube at a 0- th level, splitting the cube at the 0-th level into eight child cubes. This forms cubes at a 1st level, recursively repeating the splitting process for cubes at successive levels until a desired number of levels is created. For each cube that is thus formed, neighbor lists and interaction lists are maintained. An iterative solver is then used to determine a first matrix vector product for any electrically large elements as well as a second matrix vector product for any electrically small elements that are included in the structure. These matrix vector products for the electrically large and small elements are combined, and a net delta for a combination of the matrix vector products is determined. The iteration continues until a net delta is obtained that is within the predefined limits. The matrix vector products that were last obtained are used to solve for the desired parameter. The solution for the desired parameter is then presented to a user in a tangible form; for example, on a display.

Jandhyala, Vikram↗

Data-Driven Cyber-Attack Detection for PV Farms via Time-Frequency Domain Features

The internetworking of grid-connected power electronics converters (PECs) in photovoltaic (PV) farms has inevitably expanded the cyber-attack surfaces. Here this paper presents a comprehensive study on cyber-attack detection and diagnosis for PEC-enabled PV farms via single waveform sensor to distinguish between normal conditions, open-circuit faults, short-circuit faults, and cyber-attacks. To our knowledge, this has not been attempted before. Firstly, we propose frequency-domain magnitude-based residuals to identify short-circuit faults and a time-domain mean current vector-based feature to distinguish open-circuit faults from other threats. These features can fully reflect the specific physical characteristics of PV farms during threat duration. Secondly, unlike micro phasor measurement units (µPMU) and raw electric waveform-based methods, the proposed innovative features can address novel cyber-attacks that are excluded from the training process. Thirdly, an online hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed using the OPAL-RT real-time digital simulator has verified the effectiveness. The monitoring system runs in real-time while using HIL as an operational solar farm and a National Instruments (NI) data acquisition card as the electric waveform sensor at the point of coupling.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Simulant Development of Potential 200 West Area Waste Feeds

Preliminary planning for retrieval, qualification, and pretreatment of waste in Hanford’s 200 West Area (200W) has begun as part of the West Area Risk Management project. Experimental studies to technically mature pretreatment process operations will likely be needed because of the uniqueness of 200W waste. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory formulated five simulants to represent 200W-qualified feed based on the preliminary flowsheet provided by Washington River Protection Solutions, LLC. The simulant recipes were devised using applicable historical information as a reference point to support the use of the flowsheet waste vectors, which were combined into five distinct groups. These five groups formed the basis for the liquid composition targets that were adapted into recipes using charged-balanced salt species. The liquid phase recipes were batched in 1-L quantities and analyzed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Once confirmed to be stable, the liquid solutions were tested for compatibility with candidate solid components. Specific solid components were recommended based on cross-examining the proposed solid phases in the flowsheet with relevant data from the literature. Mixtures of solid components were added to aliquots of the liquid batches and sub-sampled to measure particle size distribution. The measured distribution was compared to independently created benchmark distributions appropriate for each simulant. This process was iterated until a solid phase composition that resulted in a representative particle size distribution was found. After the final compositions were confirmed, a suite of chemical and physical characterization data was collected. This report describes the simulant basis, formulation methodology, laboratory measurements, and data collected for the recipes recommended to represent 200W waste feeds.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗