NASA scientific and technical information program multimedia initiative

This paper relates the experiences of the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program in introducing multimedia within the STI Program framework. A discussion of multimedia technology is included to provide context for the STI Program effort. The STI Program's Multimedia Initiative is discussed in detail. Parallels and differences between multimedia and traditional information systems project development are highlighted. Challenges faced by the program in initiating its multimedia project are summarized along with lessons learned. The paper concludes with a synopsis of the benefits the program hopes to provide its users through the introduction of multimedia illustrated by examples of successful multimedia projects

Comparison of NASTRAN analysis with ground vibration results of UH-60A NASA/AEFA test configuration

Preceding program flight tests, a ground vibration test and modal test analysis of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter was conducted by Sikorsky Aircraft to complement the UH-60A test plan and NASA/ARMY Modern Technology Rotor Airloads Program. The 'NASA/AEFA' shake test configuration was tested for modal frequencies and shapes and compared with its NASTRAN finite element model counterpart to give correlative results. Based upon previous findings, significant differences in modal data existed and were attributed to assumptions regarding the influence of secondary structure contributions in the preliminary NASTRAN modeling. An analysis of an updated finite element model including several secondary structural additions has confirmed that the inclusion of specific secondary components produces a significant effect on modal frequency and free-response shapes and improves correlations at lower frequencies with shake test data

Kinesthetic Memory

This paper attempts to elucidate the nature of kinesthetic memory, demonstrate its centrality to everyday human movement, and thereby promote fresh cognitive and phenomenological understandings of movement in everyday life. Prominent topics in this undertaking include kinesthesia, dynamics, and habit. The endeavor has both a critical and constructive dimension. The constructive dimension is anchored in Luria’s seminal notion of a kinetic melody and in related phenomenological analyses of movement. The dual anchorage stems from the general fact that kinesthetic memory is based on kinesthetic experience, hence on the bodily felt dynamics of movement, and on the particular fact that any movement creates a distinctive kinetic dynamics in virtue of its spatio-temporal-energic qualities. The critical dimension focuses on constructs that commonly anchor discussions of movement but bypass the reality of a kinetic dynamics, notably, Merleau-Ponty’s “motor intentionality,” and the notions of a body schema and body image. The pointillist conception of movement and the Western metaphysics that undergird these constructs is examined in the concluding section of the paper

Healing violence in South Africa: A textual reading of Kentridge\u27s \u27Drawings for Projection\u27

While the literature appears to understand trauma and violence as experienced singularly, and as effecting intrapsychic changes or reactions, latterly there has been a recognition that this understanding of the term \u27trauma\u27 may not be adequate to describe violence suffered over a prolonged period of time. Further, psychology tends to avert our attention from healing by attending to symptomatology. In South Africa, during the apartheid years (1948-1994), violence was constituted by an extraordinary threat to ongoing being and was informed by a totalitarian prejudice. Creative texts, unlike traumatic texts, show how many artists have worked with South African traumas in an effort to understand, and come to terms with them. This dissertation is a textual reading of \u27Drawings for Projection\u27 (1989-1994) by William Kentridge (1955-), an acclaimed South African artist. The approach of this study is broadly hermeneutic, phenomenological, and semiological. The reading suggests that the healing of violence is circular and continuous, and includes our re-membering the past, and our humanity as ethical beings on both personal and collective levels. Additionally, the recognition of the Face, and the breath of the Other, contribute to the reconstitution of our ethics; conversely the counter pull to erasure, reconstitutes violence

Puppets between human, animal and machine: towards the modes of movement contesting the anthropocentric view of life in animation

In this PhD thesis, I challenge animation studies’ conventional notion that animation can bring something inanimate to “life”. This emphasis on animation’s capacity to make a figure appear to move on screen has led to the problematic notion that movement has a synonymous relationship with life. Contesting these discourses, I show in this thesis that not every animated figure suggests the impression of life. In order to prove this, I put forward as a critical focus the puppet-as-puppet figure, that is, the figure of a puppet depicted as a puppet per se in the film diegesis, which problematises the impression of life even if appearing to move on screen. A related focus in my thesis is the mode of movement which functions as a visual and physical parameter in order to analyse what an animated (or static) figure is intended to look like, instead of reducing it to a question of life. Through case studies of these puppet-as-puppet figures, which I classify into four groups, I examine the varying ways in which they are depicted as inanimate or sub/nonhuman, even when in human form, in contrast to human or (anthropomorphic) animal figures, both in terms of their mode of movement as well as their appearance. Examining how these depictions demonstrate anthropocentric views of puppets, I consider religio-philosophical, scientific and aesthetic discourses on puppets and human/animal simulacra. Further, I explore a selection of puppet-as-puppet figures as alternatives to these anthropocentric conventions, examining their defamiliarisation of the animating human subject’s mastery over the animated non/subhuman object, and the non-anthropocentric sensations which their movements arouse on screen in the relationship between humanity and materiality

Visualization Techniques in Space and Atmospheric Sciences

Unprecedented volumes of data will be generated by research programs that investigate the Earth as a system and the origin of the universe, which will in turn require analysis and interpretation that will lead to meaningful scientific insight. Providing a widely distributed research community with the ability to access, manipulate, analyze, and visualize these complex, multidimensional data sets depends on a wide range of computer science and technology topics. Data storage and compression, data base management, computational methods and algorithms, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and high-resolution display are just a few of the topics addressed. A unifying theme throughout the papers with regards to advanced data handling and visualization is the need for interactivity, speed, user-friendliness, and extensibility

Multi-Layer Evolution of Acoustic-Gravity Waves and Ionospheric Disturbances Over the United States After the 2022 Hunga Tonga Volcano Eruption

e Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha\u27apai volcano underwent a series of large-magnitude eruptions that generated in the atmosphere. We investigate the spatial and temporal evolutions of fluctuations driven by atmospheric acoustic-gravity waves (AGWs) and, in particular, the Lamb wave modes in high spatial resolution data sets measured over the Continental United States (CONUS), complemented with data over the Americas and the Pacific. Along with \u3e800 barometer sites, tropospheric observations, and Total Electron Content data from \u3e3,000 receivers, we report detections of volcano-induced AGWs in mesopause and ionosphere-thermosphere airglow imagery and Fabry-Perot interferometry. We also report unique AGW signatures in the ionospheric D-region, measured using Long-Range Navigation pulsed low-frequency transmitter signals. Although we observed fluctuations over a wide range of periods and speeds, we identify Lamb wave modes exhibiting 295–345 m s−1 phase front velocities with correlated spatial variability of their amplitudes from the Earth\u27s surface to the ionosphere. Results suggest that the Lamb wave modes, tracked by our ray-tracing modeling results, were accompanied by deep fluctuation fields coupled throughout the atmosphere, and were all largely consistent in arrival times with the sequence of eruptions over 8 hr. The ray results also highlight the importance of winds in reducing wave amplitudes at CONUS midlatitudes. The ability to identify and interpret Lamb wave modes and accompanying fluctuations on the basis of arrival times and speeds, despite complexity in their spectra and modulations by the inhomogeneous here, suggests opportunities for analysis and modeling to understand their signals to constrain features of azardous events

Data display programming

Computer programming for control of complex data processing operations involved in analysis and interpretation of large volumes of sensor data from scientific satellite

\u27Man Has Always Danced\u27: Forays into the Origins of an Art Largely Forgotten by Philosophers

Philosophers have had comparatively little to say of the art of dance, a surprising fact given the range of people both inside and outside of dance who have claimed that \u27man has always danced.\u27 This essay attempts to substantiate this claim by an inquiry into the origins of dance, its focal attention being on the word always and any linkage to males deriving from that focal point of attention. It begins with evolutionary considerations in the form of courtship displays, behaviors finely and extensively described by Darwin, and goes on to consider displays by chimpanzees in particular. These considerations point toward pan-cultural as well as evolutionary origins. The essay proceeds to show how bipedality, a qualitative kinetics, rhythm, and play enter into and affirm evolutionary continuities and the pan-culturality of dance