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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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NASA NTRS1995

Photographing the Earth G324: The Can Do GeoCam payload

The flight of the Charleston County School District Can Do Project GeoCam payload on STS-57 was the climax of a decade long endeavor to bring the promise and excitement of the space program directly into the classroom. The payload carried four cameras designed to take high resolution photographs of the Earth under the direction of children operating the first ever student control room. During the course of the flight, the students followed the Shuttle's orbital tract, satellite weather images and selected a target list that was sent up to the crew each night as part of the execute package. Targets from this list, as well as ones chosen by the crew visually, resulted in the successful collection of photographic runs at many interesting sites on three on three continents.

Nicholson, James H.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Development of Distant Learning Laboratory and Creation of Educational Materials

The Office of Education's fundamental goal is to disseminate information, mostly that which relates to science and technology. In this attempt, as I have observed, the office has many programs bringing both students and teachers to NASA Langley to expose them to the facilities and to teach them some about the scientific theory and about available modern technology. As a way of expanding the audience that can be reached, as the expense of bringing people in is limiting, Marchelle Canright has proposed establishing a center dedicated to researching and producing distant learning videos. Although distant learning through telecommunications is not a new concept, as many universities, colleges, and precollege level schools offer televised courses, the research in this field has been limited. Many of the standing distant learning broadcasts are simply recordings of teachers in classrooms giving lectures to their own students; they are not aimed at the television audience. In some cases the videos are produced without a Live-lecture atmosphere, but are still only classroom lectures. In either case, however, the full range of capabilities of video production are not being fully utilized. Methods for best relaying educational material have not been explored. Possibilities for including computerized images and video clips for the purpose of showing diagrams and processes, as well as examples in fitting cases, may add considerably to the educational value of these videos. Also, through Internet and satellite links, it is possible for remote students to interact with the teachers during televised sessions. These possibilities might, also, add to the effectiveness of distant learning programs. Ms. Canright's proposed center will be dedicated to researching these possibilities and eventually spreading the results to distant learning program managers. This is the project I was involved in over the summer. As implied, the center is still at the foundation stages. Ms. Canright has proposed four or five possible series that could be developed, each one aimed at a specific age group of students, or group of teachers. I was involved in the design of the series aimed at the youngest children, the Picture Book Science series. My involvement included proposing and researching topics, writing a lesson for the first show, writing the latter portion of the picture book story (the part including the scientific lesson), and illustrating the story. I also designed and collected the materials for the Learning Center's television studio set as well as finished the painting of the main backdrop panels.

Considine, Michelle↗
NASA NTRS1997

CERES and the S'COOL Project

The first Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument will be launched on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft from a Japanese launch site in November 1997. This instrument is a follow-on to the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) begun in the 1980's. The instrument will measure the radiation budget - incoming and outgoing radiant energy - of the Earth. It will establish a baseline and look for climatic trends. The major feature of interest is clouds, which play a very strong role in regulating our climate. CERES will identify clear and cloudy regions and determine cloud physical and microphysical properties using imager data from a companion instrument. Validation efforts for the remote sensing algorithms will be intensive. As one component of the validation, the S'COOL (Students' Cloud Observations On-Line) project will involve school children from around the globe in making ground truth measurements at the time of a CERES overpass. Their observations will be collected at the NASA Langley Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) and made available over the Internet for educational purposes as well as for use by the CERES Science Team in validation efforts. Pilot testing of the S'COOL project began in January 1997 with two local schools in Southeastern Virginia and one remote site in Montana. This experience is helping guide the development of the S'COOL project. National testing is planned for April 1997, international testing for July 1997, and global testing for October 1997. In 1998, when the CERES instrument is operational, a global observer network should be in place providing useful information to the scientists and learning opportunities to the students.

Chambers, Lin H.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Emergence of Relations and the Essence of Learning: A Review of Sidman's Equivalence Relations and Behavior: A Research Story

Sidman addresses two very important questions in Equivalence Relations and Behavior: A Research Story: What are the bases of behavioral competence? And how do units of learning become related? The book recounts the story of how an understanding of emergent relations and competencies was achieved through studies in his teaching-research program with mentally retarded subjects. Although children normally accrue vast networks of relations between stimuli and events, those with mental retardation typically do not. Consequently, by learning how to establish those networks, Sidman and his students contribute richly both to the cultivation of competencies by their subjects and, more generally, to an understanding of real-world human behavior. The basic equivalence paradigm affords the subject feedback and reinforcement for very specific choices during training, but the test is not for those choices! Rather, tests for equivalence look for new choices, ones seemingly quite foreign to the training regimen. The tests for equivalence relations entail presentations of stimuli that were the options for conditional choice during reinforced training. In tests of equivalence, correct choices are novel; hence, they have never been reinforced during training. The study of equivalence relations can encourage the emergence of new perspectives that are more symbiotic than competitive. In full acknowledgment of the important role and contributions made by those who identify themselves as experimental analysts of behavior, it is timely that rapprochements be worked toward, as indeed they are, to meld that perspective with others of our time. Both our research methods and our expectations about the nature of the learning process and the abilities of our subjects can delimit what they might learn and what we, in turn, learn about their learning. The text will be of great value for instruction at the upper-division and graduate levels. Its impact will be substantial, for it defines an important advance in our efforts to understand the richness of behavior in both humans and nonhuman animals. Although not presented to that end, the book might also serve to bridge communications with other groups of animal researchers whose interests lie more in a comparative or ethological framework.

Rumbaugh, Duane M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

The CERES S'COOL Project: Development and Operational Phases

As part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, the first Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument will be launched on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft from the Tanegashima launch site in Japan in November 1997. The instrument will measure the radiation budget incoming and outgoing radiant energy - of the Earth. The major feature of interest is clouds, which play a very strong role in regulating our climate. CERES will identify clear and cloudy regions and determine cloud physical and microphysical properties using imager data from a companion instrument. Validation efforts for the remote sensing algorithms will be intensive. As one component of the validation, the S'COOL (Students' Cloud Observations On-Line) project will involve school children around the globe in making ground truth measurements at the time of a CERES overpass. They will report cloud type, height, fraction, and opacity, as well as the local surface conditions. Their observations will be collected at the NASA Langley Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) and made available over the Internet for educational purposes as well as for use by the CERES Science Team in validation efforts. Pilot testing of the S'COOL project began in January 1997 with two local schools in Southeastern Virginia and one remote site in Montana. National testing in April 1997 involved 8 schools (grades 3 to high school) across the United States. Global testing will be carried out in October 1997. Details of the S'COOL project, which is mainly Internet-based, are being developed in each of these phases according to feedback received from participants. In 1998, when the CERES instrument is operational, a global observer network should be in place providing useful information to the scientists and learning opportunities to the students. Broad participation in the S'COOL project is planned, both to obtain data from a wide range of geographic areas, and to involve as many students as possible in learning about clouds and atmospheric science. This paper reports on the development phase of the S'COOL project, including the reaction of the teachers and students who have been involved. It describes the operational state of the S'COOL network, and identifies opportunities for additional participants.

Chambers, Lin H.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Educational Applications on the World Wide Web: An Example Using Amphion

There is a great deal of excitement about using the internet and the World Wide Web in education. There are such exciting possibilities and there is a wealth and variety of material up on the web. There are however many problems, problems of access and resources, problems of quality -- for every excellent resource there are many poor ones, and there are insufficiently explored problems of teacher training and motivation. For example, Wiesenmayer and Meadows report on a study of 347 West Virginia science teachers. These teachers were enrolled in a week-long summer workshop to introduce them to the internet and its educational potential. The teachers were asked to review science sites as to overall quality and then about their usefulness in their own classrooms. The teachers were enthusiastic about the web, and gave two-thirds of the sites high ratings, and essentially all the rest average ratings. But alarmingly, over 80% of these sites were viewed as having no direct applicability in the teacher's own classroom. This summer I was assigned to work on the Amphion project in the Automated Software Engineering Group under the leadership of Michael Lowry. I wished to find educational applications of the Amphion system, which in its current implementation can be used to create fortran programs and animations using the SPICE libraries created by the NAIF group at JPL. I wished to find an application which provided real added educational value, which was in line with educational curriculum standards and which would serve a documented need of the educational community. The application selected was teaching about the causes of the seasons -- at the approximately the fourth, fifth, sixth grade level. This topic was chosen because it is in line with national curriculum standards. The fourth, fifth, sixth grade level was selected to coincide with the grade level served by the Ames Aerospace Encounter, which services 10,000 children a year on field trips. The hope is that eventually the Ames Aerospace Encounter could be used as a test bed for the lessons developed. The topic is one which is difficult to teach and the necessity for new methods is documented in the educational literature. Current educational standards indicate that seasons should be part of the elementary school curriculum.

Friedman, Jane↗
NASA NTRS1997

Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy

This is an annual report on the Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Aerospace Academy (SEMAA), which is run as a collaborative effort of NASA Lewis Research Center, and Cuyahgoga Community College. The purpose of SEMA is to increase the percentage of African Americans, and Hispanics in the fields of science and technology. The SEMAA program reaches from kindergarden, to grade 12, involving the family of under-served minorities in the education of the children. The year being reported (i.e., 1996-1997) saw considerable achievement. The program served over 1,939 students, and 120 parents were involved in various seminars. The report goes on to review the program and its implementation for each grade level. It also summarizes the participation, by gender and ethnicity.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1999

The Ceres S'Cool Project: Operational but not Routine

The first Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument has been returning useful data on Earth's radiation budget from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft since late 1997. Validation of the initial data is now intensively underway. As one component of this validation, the CERES Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) project has been operational since April 1998 - the 2nd CERES validation month. S'COOL involves school children in over 140 schools in 15 countries on 5 continents in making and reporting observations and measurements which they and CERES scientists can then compare to the satellite retrievals. The project is planned to continue through the life of the CERES Project (nominally 15 years), and new participants are invited to join on a continuous basis. This paper will report on the first year of the operational phase of the project, during which a number of exciting events occurred (a demonstration of the project to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and visits by CERES personnel to participating schools, among others). It will further report on some of the noteworthy observations and comparisons which have been made possible by this project. We have found that schools are often located in interesting places, in terms of the clouds found there and the satellite's ability to observe these clouds. The paper will also report on the learning opportunities delivered by this project, and on new questions about the planet and its climate which arise in the students' minds as a result of their active participation.

Chambers, Lin H.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Technology Development, Implementation and Assessment: K-16 Pre-Service, In-Service and Distance Learning Initiatives

The technologies associated with distance learning are evolving rapidly, giving to educators a potential tool for enhancing the educational experiences of large numbers of students simultaneously. This enhancement, in order to be effective, must take into account the various agendas of teachers, administrators, state systems, and of course students. It must also make use of the latest research on effective pedagogy. This combination, effective pedagogy and robust information technology, is a powerful vehicle for communicating, to a large audience of school children the excitement of mathematics and science--an excitement that for the most part is now well-hidden. This project,"Technology Development, Implementation and Assessment," proposed to bring to bear on the education of learners in grades 3 - 8 in science and mathematics both advances in information technology and in effective pedagogy. Specifically, the project developed components NASA CONNECT video series--problem-based learning modules that focus on the scientific method and that incorporate problem-based learning scenarios tied to national mathematics and science standards. These videos serve two purposes; they engage students in the excitement of hands-on learning and they model for the teachers of these students the problem-based learning practices that are proving to be excellent ways to teach science and mathematics to school students. Another component of NASA CONNECT is the accompanying web-site.

Williams, William B., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Comets: Very Eccentric Characters

Astronomical distances, even within our own solar system, are very difficult for anyone, let alone children, to imagine. In this month's space-program-related activity, students have the opportunity to create a visual and kinesthetic model of the solar system on a scale that may begin to inspire an awed comprehension of how big space is and how small Earth is. In addition, they will learn a little basic geometry in demonstrating for themselves the difference between a circular planetary orbit and an elongated elliptical cometary orbit. As a space exploration first the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is planning to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with and land on a comet. The Space Technology 4/Champollion mission is part of NASA's New Millennium Program, the primary goal of which is to test new technologies for use in 21st century planetary and earth observing missions.

Kwok, Enoch↗
NASA NTRS2000

A Computer Learning Center for Environmental Sciences

In the fall of 1998, MacMillan Hall opened at Brown University to students. In MacMillan Hall was the new Computer Learning Center, since named the EarthLab which was outfitted with high-end workstations and peripherals primarily focused on the use of remotely sensed and other spatial data in the environmental sciences. The NASA grant we received as part of the "Centers of Excellence in Applications of Remote Sensing to Regional and Global Integrated Environmental Assessments" was the primary source of funds to outfit this learning and research center. Since opening, we have expanded the range of learning and research opportunities and integrated a cross-campus network of disciplines who have come together to learn and use spatial data of all kinds. The EarthLab also forms a core of undergraduate, graduate, and faculty research on environmental problems that draw upon the unique perspective of remotely sensed data. Over the last two years, the Earthlab has been a center for research on the environmental impact of water resource use in and regions, impact of the green revolution on forest cover in India, the design of forest preserves in Vietnam, and detailed assessments of the utility of thermal and hyperspectral data for water quality analysis. It has also been used extensively for local environmental activities, in particular studies on the impact of lead on the health of urban children in Rhode Island. Finally, the EarthLab has also served as a key educational and analysis center for activities related to the Brown University Affiliated Research Center that is devoted to transferring university research to the private sector.

Mustard, John F.↗
NASA NTRS1997

The PACES Summer Science Trek: A Pre-College Science

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) received five-year funding to form the Pan American Center for Earth and Environmental Studies (PACES) in July 1995. PACES has as its goals to conduct research contributing to NASA's Mission to Planet Earth and to develop skilled scientists and engineers. PACES seeks to gain a more comprehensive understanding of geological, ecological and environmental processes and changes taking place in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico region. The PACES center has collaborative ties with two NASA field center (Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The original proposal contained no provision for outreach programs. However, at a meeting in the fall of 1995, Dan Goldin, NASA Administrator, issued the challenge that in order to accomplish NASA's goals to educate more of the citizenry in science and engineering, the Centers should take a broader perspective aimed at younger children.

Smith, Michelle B.↗
NASA NTRS2001

A Bell-Curved Based Algorithm for Mixed Continuous and Discrete Structural Optimization

An evolutionary based strategy utilizing two normal distributions to generate children is developed to solve mixed integer nonlinear programming problems. This Bell-Curve Based (BCB) evolutionary algorithm is similar in spirit to (mu + mu) evolutionary strategies and evolutionary programs but with fewer parameters to adjust and no mechanism for self adaptation. First, a new version of BCB to solve purely discrete optimization problems is described and its performance tested against a tabu search code for an actuator placement problem. Next, the performance of a combined version of discrete and continuous BCB is tested on 2-dimensional shape problems and on a minimum weight hub design problem. In the latter case the discrete portion is the choice of the underlying beam shape (I, triangular, circular, rectangular, or U).

Kincaid, Rex K.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Dino Fest

This document and video represent the proceedings of the first Dino Fest conference, which was unprecedented in bringing together exhibits of dinosaurs and other fossils and attracting many of the world's leading paleontologists and science educators, students and the public. This first Dino Fest consisted of scores of exhibits that included live and fossil plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. Lasting three weeks, the event concluded with a three-day symposium, providing dinosaur experts from around the country a forum to discuss their research and ideas with the public and other scientists. The document presents the talks of many of the scientists. The video is from an interactive television broadcast relayed by a NASA satellite that enabled children at remote locations to ask questions of a panel of dinosaur experts, literally reaching an audience around the world.

Rosenberg, Gary D.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Can Distributed Volunteers Accomplish Massive Data Analysis Tasks?

The science community is accustomed to interacting with the public for two main purposes: outreach to adults (since they are the patrons upon whose good will future funding will depend), and education for children (since they are the reservoir from which the next generation's talent must be drawn). We suggest that a third relationship can now be fruitful, one that has been little used until now - with the notable exception of the astronomy community. Astronomy has a long history of relying on non-professionals for some observations. Important contributions have been made by amateur astronomers in several areas of research including monitoring dust storms on Mars, timing asteroid occultations, and discovering comets. Note that three distinct contributions are being made by amateur astronomers: they supply their own instrumentation, provide access to observing sites around the Globe, and contribute their innate powers of perception.

Kanefsky, Bob↗
NASA NTRS2001

Healthy People 2010

Major Healthy People (HP) 2000 goals closely tied to prevention were not met nationally: physical activity did not improve; evidence that it actually decreased; obesity did not decrease but instead increased in all groups, actually doubling in children; and incidence of type 2 diabetes did not decrease, but instead evidence showed that it increased in all age groups.

Angotti, Catherine M.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Global Systems Science: A New World View

Global systems science is a new field of study about the interactions between Earth's natural systems and human activities. The people who study global systems science draw on methods and theories of many different fields from chemistry and biology to economics and politics-in order to predict how today's actions are likely to affect the world of tomorrow - our world and our children's world.

Sneider, Cary↗
NASA NTRS2001

A Planet Detection Tutorial and Simulator

Detection of extra-solar planets has been a very popular topic with the general public for years. Considerable media coverage of recent detections (currently at about 50) has only heightened the interest in the topic. School children are particularly interested in learning about recent astronomical discoveries. Scientists have the knowledge and responsibility to present this information in both an understandable and interesting format. Most classrooms and homes are now connected to the internet, which can be utilized to provide more than a traditional 'flat' presentation. An interactive software package on planet detection has been developed. The major topics include: "1996 - The Break Through Year In Planet Detection"; "What Determines If A Planet Is Habitable?"; "How Can We Find Other Planets (Search Methods)"; "All About the Kepler Mission: How To Find Terrestrial Planets"; and "A Planet Detection Simulator". Using the simulator, the student records simulated observations and then analyzes and interprets the data within the program. One can determine the orbit and planet size, the planet's temperature and surface gravity, and finally determine if the planet is habitable. Originally developed for the Macintosh, a web based browser version is being developed.

Knoch, David↗