Strategies of development and maintenance in supervision, control, synchronization, data acquisition and processing in light sources

Programa Oficial de Doutoramento en Tecnoloxías da Información e as Comunicacións. 5032V01[Resumo] Os aceleradores de partículas e fontes de luz sincrotrón, evolucionan constantemente para estar na vangarda da tecnoloxía, levando os límites cada vez mais lonxe para explorar novos dominios e universos. Os sistemas de control son unha parte crucial desas instalacións científicas e buscan logra-la flexibilidade de manobra para poder facer experimentos moi variados, con configuracións diferentes que engloban moitos tipos de detectores, procedementos, mostras a estudar e contornas. As propostas de experimento son cada vez máis ambiciosas e van sempre un paso por diante do establecido. Precísanse detectores cada volta máis rápidos e eficientes, con máis ancho de banda e con máis resolución. Tamén é importante a operación simultánea de varios detectores tanto escalares como mono ou bidimensionáis, con mecanismos de sincronización de precisión que integren as singularidades de cada un. Este traballo estuda as solucións existentes no campo dos sistemas de control e adquisición de datos nos aceleradores de partículas e fontes de luz e raios X, ó tempo que explora novos requisitos e retos no que respecta á sincronización e velocidade de adquisición de datos para novos experimentos, a optimización do deseño, soporte, xestión de servizos e custos de operación. Tamén se estudan diferentes solucións adaptadas a cada contorna.[Resumen] Los aceleradores de partículas y fuentes de luz sincrotrón, evolucionan constantemente para estar en la vanguardia de la tecnología, y poder explorar nuevos dominios. Los sistemas de control son una parte fundamental de esas instalaciones científicas y buscan lograr la máxima flexibilidad para poder llevar a cabo experimentos más variados, con configuraciones diferentes que engloban varios tipos de detectores, procedimientos, muestras a estudiar y entornos. Los experimentos se proponen cada vez más ambiciosos y en ocasiones más allá de los límites establecidos. Se necesitan detectores cada vez más rápidos y eficientes, con más resolución y ancho de banda, que puedan sincronizarse simultáneamente con otros detectores tanto escalares como mono y bidimensionales, integrando las singularidades de cada uno y homogeneizando la adquisición de datos. Este trabajo estudia los sistemas de control y adquisición de datos de aceleradores de partículas y fuentes de luz y rayos X, y explora nuevos requisitos y retos en lo que respecta a la sincronización y velocidad de adquisición de datos, optimización y costo-eficiencia en el diseño, operación soporte, mantenimiento y gestión de servicios. También se estudian diferentes soluciones adaptadas a cada entorno.[Abstract] Particle accelerators and photon sources are constantly evolving, attaining the cutting-edge technologies to push the limits forward and explore new domains. The control systems are a crucial part of these installations and are required to provide flexible solutions to the new challenging experiments, with different kinds of detectors, setups, sample environments and procedures. Experiment proposals are more and more ambitious at each call and go often a step beyond the capabilities of the instrumentation. Detectors shall be faster, with higher efficiency, more resolution, more bandwidth and able to synchronize with other detectors of all kinds; scalars, one or two-dimensional, taking into account their singularities and homogenizing the data acquisition. This work examines the control and data acquisition systems for particle accelerators and X- ray / light sources and explores new requirements and challenges regarding synchronization and data acquisition bandwidth, optimization and cost-efficiency in the design / operation / support. It also studies different solutions depending on the environment

Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence for Applications in Electric Power Distribution Systems

As modern electric power distribution systems (MEPDS) continue to grow in complexity, largely due to the ever-increasing penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), particularly solar photovoltaics (PVs) at the distribution level, there is a need to facilitate advanced operational and management tasks in the system driven by this complexity, especially in systems with high renewable penetration dependent on complex weather phenomena. Digital twins (DTs), or virtual replicas of the system and its assets, enhanced with AI paradigms can add enormous value to tasks performed by regulators, distribution system operators and energy market analysts, thereby providing cognition to the system. DTs of MEPDS assets and the system can be utilized for real-time and faster-than-real-time operational and management task support, planning studies, scenario analysis, data analytics and other distribution system studies. This study leverages DT and AI to enhance DER integration in an MEPDS as well as operational and management (O&M) tasks and distribution system studies based on a system with high PV penetration. DTs have been used to both estimate and predict the behavior of an existing 1 MW plant in Clemson University by developing asset digital twins of the physical system. Solar irradiance, temperature and wind-speed variations in the area have been modeled using physical weather stations located in and around the Clemson region to develop ten virtual weather stations. Finally, DTs of the system along with virtual and physical weather stations are used to both estimate and predict, in short time intervals, the real-time behavior of potential PV plant installations over the region. Ten virtual PV plants and three hybrid PV plants are studied, for enhanced cognition in the system. These physical, hybrid and virtual PV sources enable situational awareness and situational intelligence of real-time PV production in a distribution system

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1991 phase 1 projects

The objectives of 301 projects placed under contract by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are described. These projects were selected competitively from among proposals submitted to NASA in response to the 1991 SBIR Program Solicitation. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses. 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 301, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference of the 1991 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA Field Center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number are included

Grid Analysis of Radiological Data

IGI-Global Medical Information Science Discoveries Research Award 2009International audienceGrid technologies and infrastructures can contribute to harnessing the full power of computer-aided image analysis into clinical research and practice. Given the volume of data, the sensitivity of medical information, and the joint complexity of medical datasets and computations expected in clinical practice, the challenge is to fill the gap between the grid middleware and the requirements of clinical applications. This chapter reports on the goals, achievements and lessons learned from the AGIR (Grid Analysis of Radiological Data) project. AGIR addresses this challenge through a combined approach. On one hand, leveraging the grid middleware through core grid medical services (data management, responsiveness, compression, and workflows) targets the requirements of medical data processing applications. On the other hand, grid-enabling a panel of applications ranging from algorithmic research to clinical use cases both exploits and drives the development of the services

NASA space station automation: AI-based technology review

Research and Development projects in automation for the Space Station are discussed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automation technologies are planned to enhance crew safety through reduced need for EVA, increase crew productivity through the reduction of routine operations, increase space station autonomy, and augment space station capability through the use of teleoperation and robotics. AI technology will also be developed for the servicing of satellites at the Space Station, system monitoring and diagnosis, space manufacturing, and the assembly of large space structures

Technology assessment of advanced automation for space missions

Six general classes of technology requirements derived during the mission definition phase of the study were identified as having maximum importance and urgency, including autonomous world model based information systems, learning and hypothesis formation, natural language and other man-machine communication, space manufacturing, teleoperators and robot systems, and computer science and technology

A formal architecture-centric and model driven approach for the engineering of science gateways

From n-Tier client/server applications, to more complex academic Grids, or even the most recent and promising industrial Clouds, the last decade has witnessed significant developments in distributed computing. In spite of this conceptual heterogeneity, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) seems to have emerged as the common and underlying abstraction paradigm, even though different standards and technologies are applied across application domains. Suitable access to data and algorithms resident in SOAs via so-called ‘Science Gateways’ has thus become a pressing need in order to realize the benefits of distributed computing infrastructures.In an attempt to inform service-oriented systems design and developments in Grid-based biomedical research infrastructures, the applicant has consolidated work from three complementary experiences in European projects, which have developed and deployed large-scale production quality infrastructures and more recently Science Gateways to support research in breast cancer, pediatric diseases and neurodegenerative pathologies respectively. In analyzing the requirements from these biomedical applications the applicant was able to elaborate on commonly faced issues in Grid development and deployment, while proposing an adapted and extensible engineering framework. Grids implement a number of protocols, applications, standards and attempt to virtualize and harmonize accesses to them. Most Grid implementations therefore are instantiated as superposed software layers, often resulting in a low quality of services and quality of applications, thus making design and development increasingly complex, and rendering classical software engineering approaches unsuitable for Grid developments.The applicant proposes the application of a formal Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach to service-oriented developments, making it possible to define Grid-based architectures and Science Gateways that satisfy quality of service requirements, execution platform and distribution criteria at design time. An novel investigation is thus presented on the applicability of the resulting grid MDE (gMDE) to specific examples and conclusions are drawn on the benefits of this approach and its possible application to other areas, in particular that of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI) interoperability, Science Gateways and Cloud architectures developments

1997 Graduate Student Researchers Program

In 1980, NASA initiated the Graduate Student Research Program (GSRP) to cultivate additional research ties to the academic community and to support a culturally diverse group of students pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering. Eligibility requirements for this program are described, and program administrators are listed. Research areas are detailed for NASA Headquarters and all Research and Flight Centers