Diablo Canyon power plant site ecological study Quarterly Report no. 17: July 1 - September 30, 1977

During the quarter a total of 38 random 30-m2 and 152 random 1/4-m2 subtidal stations were surveyed. Red abalone, Haliotis rufescens, densities remained very low. There was a continued decline in densities of giant red sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus franciscanus, in Diablo Cove as well as the North Control area. The annual shore census of bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, revealed the lowest number of plants in the surface canopy in Diablo Cove since 1973. The subtidal station data supported this observation. Sea otter, Enhydra lutris, observations were continued. A small group of otters continued to raft in the Cove east of Lion Rock. Some of these otters probably forage as far south as South Cove. The survey of 11 random intertidal stations completed our Upwelling sampling effort. (16pp.

Ascent and descent abort flight corridors for orbital transport vehicles

Ascent and descent abort flight corridors for orbital transport vehicles - two dimensional equations of motion for point mass vehicle derived in circular earth coordinate syste

Neural-inspired sensors enable sparse, efficient classification of spatiotemporal data

Sparse sensor placement is a central challenge in the efficient characterization of complex systems when the cost of acquiring and processing data is high. Leading sparse sensing methods typically exploit either spatial or temporal correlations, but rarely both. This work introduces a new sparse sensor optimization that is designed to leverage the rich spatiotemporal coherence exhibited by many systems. Our approach is inspired by the remarkable performance of flying insects, which use a few embedded strain-sensitive neurons to achieve rapid and robust flight control despite large gust disturbances. Specifically, we draw on nature to identify targeted neural-inspired sensors on a flapping wing to detect body rotation. This task is particularly challenging as the rotational twisting mode is three orders-of-magnitude smaller than the flapping modes. We show that nonlinear filtering in time, built to mimic strain-sensitive neurons, is essential to detect rotation, whereas instantaneous measurements fail. Optimized sparse sensor placement results in efficient classification with approximately ten sensors, achieving the same accuracy and noise robustness as full measurements consisting of hundreds of sensors. Sparse sensing with neural inspired encoding establishes a new paradigm in hyper-efficient, embodied sensing of spatiotemporal data and sheds light on principles of biological sensing for agile flight control.Comment: 21 pages, 19 figure

A spatial disorientation predictor device to enhance pilot situational awareness regarding aircraft attitude

An effort was initiated at the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory (AAMRL) to investigate the improvement of the situational awareness of a pilot with respect to his aircraft's spatial orientation. The end product of this study is a device to alert a pilot to potentially disorienting situations. Much like a ground collision avoidance system (GCAS) is used in fighter aircraft to alert the pilot to 'pull up' when dangerous flight paths are predicted, this device warns the pilot to put a higher priority on attention to the orientation instrument. A Kalman filter was developed which estimates the pilot's perceived position and orientation. The input to the Kalman filter consists of two classes of data. The first class of data consists of noise parameters (indicating parameter uncertainty), conflict signals (e.g. vestibular and kinesthetic signal disagreement), and some nonlinear effects. The Kalman filter's perceived estimates are now the sum of both Class 1 data (good information) and Class 2 data (distorted information). When the estimated perceived position or orientation is significantly different from the actual position or orientation, the pilot is alerted

Diablo Canyon power plant site ecological study Annual Report July 1, 1976 - June 30, 1977 and Quarterly Report no. 16 April 1, 1977 - June 30, 1977

More stations were surveyed during this report period than during any previous period. A total of 818 mandays was spent surveying 18 permanent and 67 random subtidal stations, 19 permanent and 50 random intertidal stations, and 64 sportfish catch-per-unit-of-effort stations, as well as conducting corollary laboratory work. In the subtidal areas, Laminaria dentigera and Pterygophora californica, both important subsurface kelp species, increased in their combined total numbers from the 1976 survey. However, Nereocystis luetkeana, the bull kelp, declined substantially in all study areas. Population trends of many of the dominant subtidal macro-invertebrates have varied depending on the species and on the type of method utilized. Regression analyses have been performed on selected species for numbers versus depth. Red algal abundance and diversity appear to have increased in both subtidal study areas. Of the three observation areas, sea otters were observed least frequently in Diablo Cove. However, there continues to be fresh evidence of otter foraging within Diablo Cove. Several seasons' data for intertidal algae and invertebrates have been summarized for one study area. While the algae biomass shows a fairly clear seasonality of abundance, the trends in numbers of the six invertebrate species considered are not as well defined. Because of high variability in the data, the sportfish catch-per-unit-of-effort and hook-and-line study was cancelled in December. Populations of intertidal red and black abalones, Haliotis rufescens and H. cracherodii, respectively, appear to have remained fairly stable during the 1976-77 period. Two other ancillary studies were also terminated during this period: interviews of commercial abalone and urchin fishermen, and observations of foam in Diablo Cove. (107pp.

A study of the effects of varying the sampling for a simplified version of the Saturn V/S-1C Final report, 15 May 1968 - 31 Aug. 1969

Bending frequency filtering through adaptive sampling for Saturn 5 stage 1C desig

Diablo Canyon power plant site ecological study Quarterly Report no. 7; January 1 - March 31, 1975

During the period January 1 - March 31, 1975 we relocated and remarked five permanent subtidal stations and surveyed 28 random and two permanent intertidal stations. We failed to find a single giant red sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus franciscanus, around station 16 during a dive in March. Abalone, Haliotis spp., numbers decreased at random intertidal stations in North Diablo Cove and the North Control Area. The commerical sea urchin fishery was inactive, while the commerical red abalone, H. rufescens, fishery continued to operate around Pecho Rock. Counts of sea otters south of Point Buchon increased significantly, 20 to 30 otters are now feeding just north of Pecho Rock. Eight random fishery stations in Diablo Cove, Lion Rock Cove and the North Control Area yielded a substantial increase in catch-per-unit-of-effort. (15pp.