NASA SBIR abstracts of 1990 phase 1 projects

The research objectives of the 280 projects placed under contract in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 1990 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 program are described. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses in response to NASA's 1990 SBIR Phase 1 Program Solicitation. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 280, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. The document also includes Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference in the 1990 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA field center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number

Space Station Freedom data management system growth and evolution report

The Information Sciences Division at the NASA Ames Research Center has completed a 6-month study of portions of the Space Station Freedom Data Management System (DMS). This study looked at the present capabilities and future growth potential of the DMS, and the results are documented in this report. Issues have been raised that were discussed with the appropriate Johnson Space Center (JSC) management and Work Package-2 contractor organizations. Areas requiring additional study have been identified and suggestions for long-term upgrades have been proposed. This activity has allowed the Ames personnel to develop a rapport with the JSC civil service and contractor teams that does permit an independent check and balance technique for the DMS

Development of a Physiologic In-Vitro Testing Methodology for Assessment of Cervical Spine Kinematics

In-vitro biomechanical testing has been critical in the design and evaluation of spinal surgical instrumentation, however determination of realistic physiologic loading levels has proven difficult outside of the in-vivo setting. Unconstrained pure moment testing combined with the hybrid testing method is currently the gold standard test protocol for evaluation of motion preservation technology and adjacent level effects. Pure moment testing is well suited for making relative comparisons between treatments, but is currently not based on or representative of in-vivo spine motion, bringing the clinical relevance into question. The human cervical spine supports substantial compressive load in-vivo arising from muscle forces and the weight of the head. However, traditional in-vitro testing methods rarely include compressive loads, especially in investigations of multi-segment cervical spine constructs. Therefore, a systematic comparison of standard pure moment testing without compressive loading versus published and novel compressive loading techniques (follower load, axial load, and combined load) was performed. To achieve a pure moment test, a robot/UFS testing system was programmed with hybrid control, which combined load and displacement control to overcome the limitations of either control methodology alone. A follower load system was developed with actively controlled linear actuators and integrated into the robot/UFS testing system’s control algorithm. Thorough investigation of the integrated system ensured that the pure moment assumption was upheld and enabled characterization of the kinetics resulting from the application of follower load. In contrast, axial load was applied perpendicular to superior most vertebral body using the robot end-effector; it did not maintain the pure moment assumption resulting in alterations of the segmental motion patterns. The pure moment testing protocol without compression or follower load was not able to replicate the typical in-vivo segmental motion patterns throughout the entire motion path. Axial load or a combination of axial and follower load was necessary to mimic the in-vivo segmental contributions at the extremes of the extension-flexion motion path. It is hypothesized that dynamically altering the compressive loading throughout the motion path is necessary to mimic the segmental contribution patterns exhibited in-vivo—a novel concept that will be explored in future investigations

Advancements and Breakthroughs in Ultrasound Imaging

Ultrasonic imaging is a powerful diagnostic tool available to medical practitioners, engineers and researchers today. Due to the relative safety, and the non-invasive nature, ultrasonic imaging has become one of the most rapidly advancing technologies. These rapid advances are directly related to the parallel advancements in electronics, computing, and transducer technology together with sophisticated signal processing techniques. This book focuses on state of the art developments in ultrasonic imaging applications and underlying technologies presented by leading practitioners and researchers from many parts of the world

A Method to Improve the Sustainment of Systems Based on Probability and Consequences

The FROST Method is presented which improves the efficiency of long-term sustainment of hardware systems. The FROST Method makes sustainment and scheduling decisions based on the minimization of the expected value of current and future costs. This differs from current methods which tend to base decisions not on the expected value of costs, but on the expected inventory demand found through projections using data which is often inaccurate. Distributions are used to account for randomness and inaccuracy in inputs such as failure rates and vendor-claimed dates for end of production. A Monte Carlo technique is then used to convert these distributions into a statistically relevant set of possible futures. Finally, these futures are analyzed to determine what combination of actions will result in the system being sustained for least cost. Simulations show that, for a realistic range of system parameters, the FROST Method can be expected to reduce the cost of sparing and sustainment engineering between 21.1% and 69.1% depending on the situation, with an average of 43.6%. Implementation involves a slightly increased burden over current methods in terms of the amount of data that must be collected and provided as inputs

NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, 1990, Volume 1

The 1990 Johnson Space Center (JSC) NASA/American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Summer Faculty Fellowship Program was conducted by the University of Houston-University Park and JSC. A compilation of the final reports on the research projects are presented. The topics covered include: the Space Station; the Space Shuttle; exobiology; cell biology; culture techniques; control systems design; laser induced fluorescence; spacecraft reliability analysis; reduced gravity; biotechnology; microgravity applications; regenerative life support systems; imaging techniques; cardiovascular system; physiological effects; extravehicular mobility units; mathematical models; bioreactors; computerized simulation; microgravity simulation; and dynamic structural analysis

Dimensionality reduction using parallel ICA and its implementation on FPGA in hyperspectral image analysis

Hyperspectral images, although providing abundant information of the object, also bring high computational burden to data processing. This thesis studies the challenging problem of dimensionality reduction in Hyperspectral Image (HSI) analysis. Currently, there are two methods to reduce the dimension: band selection and feature extraction. This thesis presents a band selection technique based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA), an unsupervised signal separation algorithm. Given only the observations of hyperspectral images, the ICA –based band selection picks the independent bands which contain most of the spectral information of the original images. Due to the high volume of hyperspectral images, ICA -based band selection is a time consuming process. This thesis develops a parallel ICA algorithm which divides the decorrelation process into internal decorrelation and external decorrelation such that computation burden can be distributed from single processor to multiple processors, and the ICA process can be run in a parallel mode. Hardware implementation is always a faster and real -time solution to HSI analysis. Until now, there are few hardware designs for ICA -related processes. This thesis synthesizes the parallel ICA -based band selection on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which is the best choice for moderate designs and fast implementations. Compared to other design syntheses, the synthesis present in this thesis develops three ICA re-configurable components for the purpose of reusability. In addition, this thesis demonstrates the relationship between the design and the capacity utilization of a single FPGA, then discusses the features of High Performance Reconfigurable Computing (HPRC) to accomodate large capacity and design requirements. Experiments are conducted on three data sets obtained from different sources. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed ICA -based band selection, parallel ICA and its synthesis on FPGA

Large space structures and systems in the space station era: A bibliography with indexes (supplement 03)

Bibliographies and abstracts are listed for 1221 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1, 1991 and June 30, 1991. Topics covered include large space structures and systems, space stations, extravehicular activity, thermal environments and control, tethering, spacecraft power supplies, structural concepts and control systems, electronics, advanced materials, propulsion, policies and international cooperation, vibration and dynamic controls, robotics and remote operations, data and communication systems, electric power generation, space commercialization, orbital transfer, and human factors engineering