The 1990 Johnson Space Center bibliography of scientific and technical papers

Abstracts are presented of scientific and technical papers written and/or presented by L. B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) authors, including civil servants, contractors, and grantees, during the calendar year of 1990. Citations include conference and symposium presentations, papers published in proceedings or other collective works, seminars, and workshop results, NASA formal report series (including contractually required final reports), and articles published in professional journals

Communications technology in the land grant university setting: a focus on computer-based innovations for information dissemination to external audiences

Various kinds of computer-based communications systems are being implemented on the campuses of land grant universities to assist in the task of communicating with external audiences. Systems within the information and publications office primarily involve computerized news transmission, typesetting, office management functions, and text processing and editing. Another type of system is the information utility, which provides a variety of services such as problem-solving and educational programs, general news information, electronic mail services, and computational assistance to end users, such as farmers or agri-businessmen. Twelve computer-based communications systems operating at eight land grant universities are analyzed in terms of five general areas of concern: standards and quality, technological limitations, man-machine interface, financial and economic considerations, and information proprietorship considerations;The findings reveal no serious problems in any of the areas but do point out some cautions that should be carefully monitored as these systems develop and operate. No great cost savings can be accrued with computerized news systems although they do save some keystroke operations within the communications office. These systems are justified more on the basis that they increase the likelihood of news release use by newspapers. In the cases examined, newspapers sought more news from the information office because electronic processing saved the newspaper considerable time compared to processing the traditional printed news release forms. A surprising discovery was that only in one instance was there capability in the information office to process text and edit electronically from the initial writing to the final product, thereby completely eliminating pencil and hard copy. Yet, this type of integrated operation is where considerable time and cost efficiencies could be achieved;With regard to the information utilities, there is concern about the quality of the software (programs) that are produced for such systems. Surprisingly, little peer review is practiced in the selection of such programs with final selection sometimes the responsibility of computer technicians rather than subject matter specialists or educators

Disturbance indicators for time series reconstruction and marine ecosystem health impact assessment

A systematic reconstruction of Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbances (MMEDs) involving disease occurrence, morbidity and mortality events has been undertaken so that a taxonomy of globally distributed marine disturbance types can be better quantified and common forcing factors identified. Combined disturbance data include indices of morbidity, mortality and disease events affecting humans, marine invertebrates, flora and wildlife populations. In the search for the best disturbance indicators of ecosystem change, the unifying solution for joining data from disparate fields is to organize data into space/time/topic hierarchies that permit convergence of data due to shared and appropriate scaling. The scale of the data selects for compatible methodologies, leading to better data integration, dine series reconstruction and the discovery of new relationships. Information technology approaches designed to assist this process include bibliographic keyword searches, data-mining, data-modeling and geographic information system design. Expert consensus, spatial, temporal, categorical and statistical data reduction methods are used to reclassify thousands of independent anomaly observations into eight functional impact groups representing anoxic-hypoxic, biotoxin-exposure, disease, keystone-chronic, mass-lethal, new-novel-invasive, physically forced and trophic-magnification disturbances. Data extracted from the relational database and Internet (http://www.heedmd.org) geographic information system demonstrate non-random patterns relative to expected dependencies. When data are combined they better reflect response to exogenous forcing factors at larger scales (e.g. North Atlantic and Southern Ocean Oscillation index scales) than is apparent without grouping. New hypotheses have been generated linking MMEDs to climate system forcing , variability and changes within the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. A more general global survey known collectively as the Health Ecological and Economic Dimensions (HEED) project demonstrates the potential application of the methodology to the Baltic Sea and other large marine ecosystems. The rescue of multi-decadal climatic, oceanographic, fisheries economic, and public health anomaly data combined with MMED data provides a tool to help researchers create regional disturbance regimes to illustrate disturbance impact. A recommendation for a central data repository is proposed to better coordinate the many data observers, resource managers, and agencies collecting pieces of marine disturbance information needed for monitoring ecosystem condition

NASA Tech Briefs, November 2002

Topics include: a technology focus on engineering materials, electronic components and systems, software, mechanics, machinery/automation, manufacturing, bio-medical, physical sciences, information sciences book and reports, and a special section of Photonics Tech Briefs

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity