Design of In-Flight Instrumentation to Characterize a Hybrid Thruster

The NASA Undergraduate Student Instrument Project (USIP) is a program with the goal to provide hands-on flight project experience to undergraduate programs, and to fly new technology in space to improve Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Hybrid and Intelligent Energy Storage Systems in Standalone Photovoltaic Applications.

Remote systems such as communication relays or irrigation control installations cannot usually be powered by the electrical grid. One of the alternatives is to power these systems through solar panels, in what is known as standalone photovoltaic applications.Most of these systems need a continuous operation, but a standalone photovoltaic installation cannot be powered during the night. For this reason, they use batteries to store excess energy during the day. These storage systems have been traditionally based on Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) batteries, but some effects can alter their performance in terms of reliability, operation cost and maintenance. One of the key issues that alter the energy behavior of the photovoltaic off-grid systems is the Partial State of Charge (PSoC) effect: Batteries cannot be completely charged as manufacturers indicate due to the day-night cycle. This gets the battery into an intermediate state of charge that effectively reduces its capacity, even halving it in some cases. To mitigate the impact of these effects on the installation, batteries tend to be oversized with some security margins. These oversizing factors can be incredibly high and have a huge impact on the deployment and maintenance cost of the facility.The first part of this thesis highlights some of these key concepts, analyzing which of them are critical in specific design cases, modeling them into a simulation tool, and as an outcome, establishing optimal sizing regions for the installations. After the analysis, different ways of improving the performance of the installations are proposed. One idea to mitigate PSoC is to combine different storage technologies in a Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESS). HESSs have traditionally combined high energy density elements as batteries with high power density elements as ultracapacitors. An iteration of this idea is carried out throughout this thesis, where different types of batteries are combined. Each of them is best fitted to different power patterns in the application, such as daily cycles or emergency periods. It is possible to further increase the performance by using intelligent algorithms to improve the functionalities of the Battery Management Systems embedded in these applications. To this end, failure prediction and health estimation algorithms are proposed as contributions of this work. These new algorithms endow the HESS with tools to predict possible energy disruption events and to anticipate aging, and thus, act accordingly.<br /

HYBRID EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT New tools are needed to reach high goals for uptime and availability in industrial processes. Early warning of developing faults is one part of the strategy to reach these goals. A single method rarely meets all requirements, but combining methods and techniques in a hybrid system offers advantages and can overcome limitations in the individual approaches. Methods considered are physical models, artificial neural networks, and case-based reasoning. The paper discusses the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses of the three methods and three combinations of hybrid solutions in order to assist in select a suitable combination for a specific early warning challenge ahead

Heterosis in Early Maize Ear Inflorescence Development: A Genome-Wide Transcription Analysis for Two Maize Inbred Lines and Their Hybrid

Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, contributes to superior agronomic performance of hybrids compared to their inbred parents. Despite its importance, little is known about the genetic and molecular basis of heterosis. Early maize ear inflorescences formation affects grain yield, and are thus an excellent model for molecular mechanisms involved in heterosis. To determine the parental contributions and their regulation during maize ear-development-genesis, we analyzed genome-wide digital gene expression profiles in two maize elite inbred lines (B73 and Mo17) and their F1hybrid using deep sequencing technology. Our analysis revealed 17,128 genes expressed in these three genotypes and 22,789 genes expressed collectively in the present study. Approximately 38% of the genes were differentially expressed in early maize ear inflorescences from heterotic cross, including many transcription factor genes and some presence/absence variations (PAVs) genes, and exhibited multiple modes of gene action. These different genes showing differential expression patterns were mainly enriched in five cellular component categories (organelle, cell, cell part, organelle part and macromolecular complex), five molecular function categories (structural molecule activity, binding, transporter activity, nucleic acid binding transcription factor activity and catalytic activity), and eight biological process categories (cellular process, metabolic process, biological regulation, regulation of biological process, establishment of localization, cellular component organization or biogenesis, response to stimulus and localization). Additionally, a significant number of genes were expressed in only one inbred line or absent in both inbred lines. Comparison of the differences of modes of gene action between previous studies and the present study revealed only a small number of different genes had the same modes of gene action in both maize seedlings and ear inflorescences. This might be an indication that in different tissues or developmental stages, different global expression patterns prevail, which might nevertheless be related to heterosis. Our results support the hypotheses that multiple molecular mechanisms (dominance and overdominance modes) contribute to heterosis

Recommendations for Online Teaching

This is a collection of recommendations drawn from a variety of sources, including our colleagues, students, webinars, books, articles, podcasts, and our own experimentation. It is not our expectation that any individual professor would adopt all of these suggestions and indeed no one of us intends to. Instead, we hope that some of these are helpful to you. Some suggestions deal with the nuts and bolts of teaching online while others with how to accomplish broader goals. The general recommendations are broadly applicable to all courses taught online, while the individual class-type recommendations are intended to complement and augment the general recommendations. Additionally, these recommendations will be revised as we continue to learn from our experiences in online instruction

The palynological characterization and the pollen germination process of lily hybrid STAR GAZER

This paper presents the morphological characteristics of pollen of lily, hybrid Star Gazer: shape of pollen grains, exine ornamentation, size of pollen grain and number of germinative pores/pollen grain. Also on presents the characteristics of pollen germination process of the lily, hybrid Star Gazer. In this regard were carried pollen germination tests "in vitro" in wet rooms "van Tieghem." The nutrient medium that were used for inoculation of the pollen grains had different concentrations of sucrose, resulting several experimental variants. The pollen germination capacity was determined from time to time, thereby establishing the dynamics of this process for four days. Surprising was the fact that the highest values of germination potential were realized on medium without sugar. On the nutrient mediums with a moderate concentration in sucrose, the germination capacity of the hybrid lily was inhibited. During the first 24 hours after inoculation of the medium pollen occurs a significantly improved the pollen germination rate. In parallel with the determination of pollen germination capacity was analyzed and increasing the length of pollen tubes. This dynamic was also analyzed for four days. The longest pollen tubes were formed on the medium without sugar. As in the case of the germinating potential, after 24 hours from the inoculation of the pollen on medium has achieved a significant elongation of pollen tubes. Also, there is a direct and close corelation between the pollen tube length and the flower style length of the of which that they have to traverse in order to reach the ovul. The length of Lilium Star Gazer pollen tubes is positively correlated also with germination rat

Pseudosmooth Tribrid Inflation

We explore a new class of supersymmetric models of inflation where the inflaton is realised as a combination of a Higgs field and (gauge non-singlet) matter fields, using a "tribrid" structure of the superpotential. Inflation is associated with a phase transition around GUT scale energies. The inflationary trajectory already preselects the later vacuum after inflation, which has the advantage of automatically avoiding the production of dangerous topological defects at the end of inflation. While at first sight the models look similar to smooth inflation, they feature a waterfall and are therefore only pseudosmooth. The new class of models offers novel possibilities for realising inflation in close contact with particle physics, for instance with supersymmetric GUTs or with supersymmetric flavour models based on family symmetries.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. v2 matches publication in JCA