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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 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1986

ECUT (Energy Conversion and Utilization Technologies Program). Biocatalysis Project

Presented are the FY 1985 accomplishments, activities, and planned research efforts of the Biocatalysis Project of the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Conversion and Utilization Technologies (ECUT) Program. The Project's technical activities were organized as follows: In the Molecular Modeling and Applied Genetics work element, research focused on (1) modeling and simulation studies to establish the physiological basis of high temperature tolerance in a selected enzyme and the catalytic mechanisms of three species of another enzyme, and (2) determining the degree of plasmid amplification and stability of several DNA bacterial strains. In the Bioprocess Engineering work element, research focused on (1) studies of plasmid propagation and the generation of models, (2) developing methods for preparing immobilized biocatalyst beads, and (3) developing an enzyme encapsulation method. In the Process Design and Analysis work element, research focused on (1) further refinement of a test case simulation of the economics and energy efficiency of alternative biocatalyzed production processes, (2) developing a candidate bioprocess to determine the potential for reduced energy consumption and facility/operating costs, and (3) a techno-economic assessment of potential advancements in microbial ammonia production.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1997

The First National Student Conference: NASA University Research Centers at Minority Institutions

The conference includes contributions from 13 minority universities with NASA University Research Centers. Topics discussed include: leadership, survival strategies, life support systems, food systems, simulated hypergravity, chromium diffusion doping, radiation effects on dc-dc converters, metal oxide glasses, crystal growth of Bil3, science and communication on wheels, semiconductor thin films, numerical solution of random algebraic equations, fuzzy logic control, spatial resolution of satellite images, programming language development, nitric oxide in the thermosphere and mesosphere, high performance polyimides, crossover control in genetic algorithms, hyperthermal ion scattering, etc.

Daso, Endwell O.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Multidisciplinary Techniques and Novel Aircraft Control Systems

The Aircraft Morphing Program at NASA Langley Research Center explores opportunities to improve airframe designs with smart technologies. Two elements of this basic research program are multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and advanced flow control. This paper describes examples where MDO techniques such as sensitivity analysis, automatic differentiation, and genetic algorithms contribute to the design of novel control systems. In the test case, the design and use of distributed shapechange devices to provide low-rate maneuvering capability for a tailless aircraft is considered. The ability of MDO to add value to control system development is illustrated using results from several years of research funded by the Aircraft Morphing Program.

Padula, Sharon L.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Multidisciplinary Techniques and Novel Aircraft Control Systems

The Aircraft Morphing Program at NASA Langley Research Center explores opportunities to improve airframe designs with smart technologies. Two elements of this basic research program are multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and advanced flow control. This paper describes examples where MDO techniques such as sensitivity analysis, automatic differentiation, and genetic algorithms contribute to the design of novel control systems. In the test case, the design and use of distributed shape-change devices to provide low-rate maneuvering capability for a tailless aircraft is considered. The ability of MDO to add value to control system development is illustrated using results from several years of research funded by the Aircraft Morphing Program.

Padula, Sharon L.↗
NASA NTRS1996

APS Conference on Understanding the Biological Clock: From Genetics to Physiology

The Conference was designed to take advantage of the fusion of two intellectually dominant but heretofore separate lines of clock research, vertebrate physiology and invertebrate and microbial genetics. The APS Conference attracted 251 scientists, 68 of whom were students. In addition to the excellent speaker program organized by Dunlap and Loros, the attendees also submitted 93 volunteer abstracts that were programmed in poster sessions. Thirty-four percent of the submitted abstracts were first authorized by a female student or scientist.

Frank, Martin↗
NASA NTRS2001

Transgenics in crops

With rapid world population growth and declining availability of fresh water and arable land, a new technology is urgently needed to enhance agricultural productivity. Recent discoveries in the field of crop transgenics clearly demonstrate the great potential of this technology for increasing food production and improving food quality while preserving the environment for future generations. In this review, we briefly discuss some of the recent achievements in crop improvement that have been made using gene transfer technology.

Review↗
DOE OSTI2025

Activation Domain Hunter (ADhunter) v2.0

ADhunter is a software program that enables accurate identification and quantification of transcriptional activation domains. Unlike previous software, ADhunter uses protein representations from a pre-trained protein language model, model ensembling, and a training dataset from a diverse sampling of protein sequence space for state-of-the-art performance. These advantages enable improved perception of transcriptional activation domains across sequence space that can be used for mapping natural genetic circuits and engineering synthetic genetic circuits. In particular, ADhunter enables fine-tuned control of gene expression through synthetic transcription factors that can be used for complex control of cellular programs.

Waldburger, Lucas [Lawrence Berkeley National Labo↗
NASA NTRS2001

Bell-Curve Based Evolutionary Strategies for Structural Optimization

Evolutionary methods are exceedingly popular with practitioners of many fields; more so than perhaps any optimization tool in existence. Historically Genetic Algorithms (GAs) led the way in practitioner popularity. However, in the last ten years Evolutionary Strategies (ESs) and Evolutionary Programs (EPS) have gained a significant foothold. One partial explanation for this shift is the interest in using GAs to solve continuous optimization problems. The typical GA relies upon a cumbersome binary representation of the design variables. An ES or EP, however, works directly with the real-valued design variables. For detailed references on evolutionary methods in general and ES or EP in specific see Back and Dasgupta and Michalesicz. We call our evolutionary algorithm BCB (bell curve based) since it is based upon two normal distributions.

Kincaid, Rex K.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Conservation of Endo16 expression in sea urchins despite evolutionary divergence in both cis and trans-acting components of transcriptional regulation

Evolutionary changes in transcriptional regulation undoubtedly play an important role in creating morphological diversity. However, there is little information about the evolutionary dynamics of cis-regulatory sequences. This study examines the functional consequence of evolutionary changes in the Endo16 promoter of sea urchins. The Endo16 gene encodes a large extracellular protein that is expressed in the endoderm and may play a role in cell adhesion. Its promoter has been characterized in exceptional detail in the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. We have characterized the structure and function of the Endo16 promoter from a second sea urchin species, Lytechinus variegatus. The Endo16 promoter sequences have evolved in a strongly mosaic manner since these species diverged approximately 35 million years ago: the most proximal region (module A) is conserved, but the remaining modules (B-G) are unalignable. Despite extensive divergence in promoter sequences, the pattern of Endo16 transcription is largely conserved during embryonic and larval development. Transient expression assays demonstrate that 2.2 kb of upstream sequence in either species is sufficient to drive GFP reporter expression that correctly mimics this pattern of Endo16 transcription. Reciprocal cross-species transient expression assays imply that changes have also evolved in the set of transcription factors that interact with the Endo16 promoter. Taken together, these results suggest that stabilizing selection on the transcriptional output may have operated to maintain a similar pattern of Endo16 expression in S. purpuratus and L. variegatus, despite dramatic divergence in promoter sequence and mechanisms of transcriptional regulation.

NASA Discipline Evolutionary Biology↗
DOE OSTI2026

SAIGE-GPU: accelerating genome- and phenome-wide association studies using GPUs

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) at biobank scale are computationally intensive, especially for admixed populations requiring robust statistical models. SAIGE is a widely used method for generalized linear mixed-model GWAS but is limited by its CPU-based implementation, making phenome-wide association studies impractical for many research groups. We developed SAIGE-GPU, a GPU-accelerated version of SAIGE that replaces CPU-intensive matrix operations with GPU-optimized kernels. The core innovation is distributing genetic relationship matrix calculations across GPUs and communication layers. Applied to 2068 phenotypes from 635 969 participants in the Million Veteran Program, including diverse and admixed populations, SAIGE-GPU achieved a 5-fold speedup in mixed model fitting on supercomputing infrastructure and cloud platforms. We further optimized the variant association testing step through multi-core and multi-trait parallelization. Deployed on Google Cloud Platform and Azure, the method provided substantial cost and time savings. Source code and binaries are available for download at https://github.com/saigegit/SAIGE/tree/SAIGE-GPU-1.3.3. A code snapshot is archived at Zenodo for reproducibility (DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.17642591]). SAIGE-GPU is available in a containerized format for use across HPC and cloud environments and is implemented in R/C++ and runs on Linux systems.

Rodriguez, Alex [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)↗
NASA NTRS2007

Solutions Network Formulation Report. Using NASA Sensors to Perform Crop Type Assessment for Monitoring Insect Resistance in Corn

The EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) is tasked to monitor for insect pest resistance to transgenic crops. Several models have been developed to understand the resistance properties of insects. The Population Genetics Simulator model is used in the EPA PIRDSS (Pest Infestation and Resistance Decision Support System). The EPA Office of Pesticide Programs uses the DSS to help understand the potential for insect pest resistance development and the likelihood that insect pest resistance will negatively affect transgenic corn. Once the DSS identifies areas of concern, crews are deployed to collect insect pest samples, which are tested to identify whether they have developed resistance to the toxins in transgenic corn pesticides. In this candidate solution, VIIRS (Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite) vegetation index products will be used to build hypertemporal layerstacks for crop type and phenology assessment. The current phenology attribute is determined by using the current time of year to index the expected growth stage of the crop. VIIRS might provide more accurate crop type assessment and also might give a better estimate on the crop growth stage.

Lewis, David↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

RadBREAD: Radiation Biology Research at an Elevated Altitude through Dosimetry – A student-designed payload

NASA uses extreme environment platforms (ground testing facilities, high-altitude balloons and aircraft, and CubeSats) to provide greater understanding of the conditions and limitations of extra-terrestrial environments. As part of a two-week flight planned for summer 2021, RadBREAD (Radiation Biology Research at an Elevated Altitude through Dosimetry) will fly as a secondary payload consisting of a M-42C (German Aerospace Center, DLR) ionizing radiation dosimeter, UV micro-logger, and multiple desiccated yeast samples. The platform is a novel high-altitude solar-powered aircraft: the Swift Engineering High-Altitude samples. The platform is a novel high-altitude solar-powered aircraft: the Swift Engineering High-Altitude Long-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft System (HALE UAS), which offers significantly longer flight durations than other high-altitude platforms. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae will provide meaningful biological correlation for the sensor readings, due to its resistance to extremely low temperature and pressure when desiccated, ease of genetic manipulation, and homology to human genes. The RadBREAD team comprises the 2020 cohort of NASA’s Space Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP) research associates as well as NASA scientists, engineers and radiation experts from NASA and the DLR. Yeast survival, metabolic, and transcriptomic changes will be correlated with environmental data collected during long-term exposure to the upper atmosphere. Additionally, the team will evaluate the upper atmospheric environment (radiation, pressure, and temperature) provided by the HALE UAS platform as a Mars surface analog for biological payloads. We hypothesize that exposure to upper atmospheric conditions during the HALE UAS flight will alter the survival, metabolism, and transcriptome of desiccated wild-type S. cerevisiae upon rehydration compared to sensitive and tolerant yeast strains exposed to the same conditions, and between the flight samples compared to asynchronous ground controls.

radiation exposure↗
DOE OSTI2025

Variation in Flooding Tolerance in Populus deltoides ‘D-124’ and P. trichocarpa x P. deltoides Hybrid ‘52–225’

Flooding poses a substantial challenge to plant survival and productivity, particularly in riparian genus like Populus. This study examines the physiological, morphological, metabolic, and molecular responses of Populus deltoides ‘D-124’ and P. trichocarpa x P. deltoides hybrid clone ‘52–225’ under control and inundated conditions to identify differences in flooding tolerance. Under flooding conditions, physiological and cellular stress was more pronounced in P. deltoides ‘D-124’ than in the hybrid clone ‘52–225,’ as evidenced by lower transpiration (E), photosynthesis (A), and chlorophyll content. In contrast, ‘52–225’ showed reduced ROS accumulation suggesting better cellular function under stress. Morphologically, ‘52–225’ produced more shoot-born roots, which likely enhance oxygen transport and metabolic activity during flooding. Metabolite profiling revealed both overlapping and distinct patterns of sugar and amino acid accumulation between genotypes. Gene expression analysis revealed that flooding-responsive genes, including ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE 1 and HYPOXIA RESPONSIVE ERF 2, were activated in both genotypes, with a more pronounced response noted in ‘52–225.’ These findings extend our understanding of flooding tolerance mechanisms in Populus by connecting physiological traits, stress responses, and genetic regulation. This research contributes to the development of more flooding-resilient poplar varieties, with potential applications in breeding and restoration programs for flooding-prone environments.

Flooding stress↗
NASA NTRS1991

Catalysis and biocatalysis program

The annual report presents the fiscal year (FY) 1990 research activities and accomplishments for the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program of the Advanced Industrial Concepts Division (AICD), Office of Industrial Technologies of the Department of Energy (DOE). The mission of the AICD is to create a balanced program of high risk, long term, directed interdisciplinary research and development that will improve energy efficiency and enhance fuel flexibility in the industrial sector. The Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program's technical activities were organized into five work elements: the Molecular Modeling and Catalysis by Design element; the Applied Microbiology and Genetics element; the Bioprocess Engineering element; the Separations and Novel Chemical Processes element; and the Process Design and Analysis element.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2000

Bell-Curve Based Evolutionary Strategies for Structural Optimization

Evolutionary methods are exceedingly popular with practitioners of many fields; more so than perhaps any optimization tool in existence. Historically Genetic Algorithms (GAs) led the way in practitioner popularity (Reeves 1997). However, in the last ten years Evolutionary Strategies (ESs) and Evolutionary Programs (EPS) have gained a significant foothold (Glover 1998). One partial explanation for this shift is the interest in using GAs to solve continuous optimization problems. The typical GA relies upon a cumber-some binary representation of the design variables. An ES or EP, however, works directly with the real-valued design variables. For detailed references on evolutionary methods in general and ES or EP in specific see Back (1996) and Dasgupta and Michalesicz (1997). We call our evolutionary algorithm BCB (bell curve based) since it is based upon two normal distributions.

Kincaid, Rex K.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Planetary Biology and Microbial Ecology: Molecular Ecology and the Global Nitrogen cycle

This report summarizes the results of the Planetary Biology and Molecular Ecology's summer 1991 program, which was held at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The purpose of the interdisciplinary PBME program is to integrate, via lectures and laboratory work, the contributions of university and NASA scientists and student interns. The goals of the 1991 program were to examine several aspects of the biogeochemistry of the nitrogen cycle and to teach the application of modern methods of molecular genetics to field studies of organisms. Descriptions of the laboratory projects and protocols and abstracts and references of the lectures are presented.

Nealson, Molly Stone↗
NASA NTRS2006

Development of Standardized Lunar Regolith Simulant Materials

Lunar exploration requires scientific and engineering studies using standardized testing procedures that ultimately support flight certification of technologies and hardware. It is necessary to anticipate the range of source materials and environmental constraints that are expected on the Moon and Mars, and to evaluate in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) coupled with testing and development. We describe here the development of standardized lunar regolith simulant (SLRS) materials that are traceable inter-laboratory standards for testing and technology development. These SLRS materials must simulate the lunar regolith in terms of physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties. A summary of these issues is contained in the 2005 Workshop on Lunar Regolith Simulant Materials [l]. Lunar mare basalt simulants MLS-1 and JSC-1 were developed in the late 1980s. MLS-1 approximates an Apollo 11 high-Ti basalt, and was produced by milling of a holocrystalline, coarse-grained intrusive gabbro (Fig. 1). JSC-1 approximates an Apollo 14 basalt with a relatively low-Ti content, and was obtained from a glassy volcanic ash (Fig. 2). Supplies of MLS-1 and JSC-1 have been exhausted and these materials are no longer available. No highland anorthosite simulant was previously developed. Upcoming lunar polar missions thus require the identification, assessment, and development of both mare and highland simulants. A lunar regolith simulant is manufactured from terrestrial components for the purpose of simulating the physical and chemical properties of the lunar regolith. Significant challenges exist in the identification of appropriate terrestrial source materials. Lunar materials formed under comparatively reducing conditions in the absence of water, and were modified by meteorite impact events. Terrestrial materials formed under more oxidizing conditions with significantly greater access to water, and were modified by a wide range of weathering processes. The composition space of lunar materials can be modeled by mixing programs utilizing a low-Ti basalt, ilmenite, KREEP component, high-Ca anorthosite, and meteoritic components. This approach has been used for genetic studies of lunar samples via chemical and modal analysis. A reduced composition space may be appropriate for simulant development, but it is necessary to determine the controlling properties that affect the physical, chemical and mineralogical components of the simulant.

Carpenter, P.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Physiological and genetic characterization of plant growth and gravitropism in LED light sources

Among the many problems of growing plants in completely controlled environments, such as those anticipated for the space station and the CELSS program, is the need to provide light that is both adequate for photosynthesis and of proper quality for normal growth and development. NASA scientists and engineers have recently become interested in the possibility of utilizing densely packed, solid state, light emitting diodes (LED's) as a source for this light. Unlike more conventional incandescent or electrical discharge lamps, these sources are highly monochromatic and lack energy in spectral regions thought to be important for normal plant development. In addition, a recent observation by NASA scientist has suggested that infra-red LED's, that are routinely used as photographic safelights for plants grown in darkness, may interact with the ability of plants to detect gravity. In order to establish how plants respond to light from these LED light sources we carried out a series of experiments with known pigment mutants of the model mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, growing in either a gravity field or on a clinostat to simulate a micro-gravity environment. Results indicate that only red light from the 665 nm LED's disrupts the ability of normal wildtype seedlings to detect a gravity stimulus. There was no consistent effect found for the far-red (735 nm) LED's or either of the infrared (880 nm or 935 nm) LED sources but both showed some effect in one or more of the genotypes tested. Of these five members of the phytochrome multigene family in Arabidopsis, only the phytochrome B pigment mutant (hy3) lacked the ability to detect gravity under all conditions. There was no effect of either micro-gravity (clinostat) or the infra-red LED's on the light induced inhibition of hypocotyl elongation. Measurements of the pigment phytochrome in oats also showed no photoconversion by 15 min irradiations with the infra-red LED's. We conclude that phytochrome B is required for the perception of gravity and that only red light is able to disrupt this perception. The infra-red LED's also do not appear to interact with gravity perception in Arabidopsis, but caution should be exercised if infra-red LED's are to be used as photographic safelights for these types of experiments.

Deitzer, Gerald F.↗