Enzyme conversion of lignocellulosic plant materials for resource recovery in a Controlled Ecological Life Support System.

A large amount of inedible plant material composed primarily of the carbohydrate materials cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin is generated as a result of plant growth in a Controlled Ecological Life-Support System (CELSS). Cellulose is a linear homopolymer of glucose, which when properly processed will yield glucose, a valuable sugar because it can be added directly to human diets. Hemicellulose is a heteropolymer of hexoses and pentoses that can be treated to give a sugar mixture that is potentially a valuable fermentable carbon source. Such fermentations yield desirable supplements to the edible products from hydroponically-grown plants such as rapeseed, soybean, cowpea, or rice. Lignin is a three-dimensionally branched aromatic polymer, composed of phenyl propane units, which is susceptible to bioconversion through the growth of the white rot fungus, Pluerotus ostreatus. Processing conditions, that include both a hot water pretreatment and fungal growth and that lead to the facile conversion of plant polysaccharides to glucose, are presented.     

AFIT neural network research

A brief summary of research done at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in the area of neural networks is provided. It has been shown that backpropagation, used for feedforward artificial neural networks, is just a degenerate version of an extended Kalman filter, and that networks can do about as well as the optimum statistical classification technique. A method of finding the importance of features for use by a neural network classifier has been determined. Techniques for using neural networks for image segmentation have been developed. In optical pattern recognition, techniques that allow the processing of real FLIR (forward-looking infrared) images with existing binary spatial light modulators have been devised. An optical direction of arrival detector applicable to laser illumination direction determination has been designed and tested; the design is similar to a fly's eye. Coated mirrors for the optical confocal Fabry-Perot interferometer have been designed, specified, fabricated, and installed. Significant progress has been made in the use of neural networks for processing multiple-feature sets for speech recognition     

Airborne radar: its beginnings in World War II

Although not realized at the time, the defeat of the German Air Force in the summer of 1940 was one of the crucial battles of World War II. The narrow margin of victory can be ascribed to Britain's air-warning radar, Chain Home (CH), consisting of the 15-meter CH and the 1.5-meter CHL. The skillful use of this equipment by the Royal Air Force made daylight bombing unsustainable; the Luftwaffe then turned to night attacks, generally called "The Blitz." These were not effective in destroying military and industrial targets and depended on the hope of reducing the population's will to fight. Chain Home was of little use except to observe the attackers arrival, as it had almost no ability to follow the attackers as they proceeded inland. This eventuality was reckoned with before the outbreak of hostilities and had called for radars mounted in night fighters capable of guiding the pilot close enough to the target for him to open fire visually. The electronic techniques used at 1.5-meters were adapted to planes capable of carrying the radar and its operator. But there were three important design constraints: 1) the antennas had to be restricted to sizes that were practical for installation on aircraft, which for meter waves gave them low gain and large side lobes; 2) the set's maximum range was limited by the fighter's altitude as a result of the huge ground returns from the side lobes. British antiaircraft artillery, the stepchild of their arms, was too ineffective to drive the bombers to extreme altitudes; and 3) a minimum range had to be held until the flier could see his target, which strained the pulse techniques of the time.     

Automotive-grade MEMS sensors used for general aviation

The attitude heading reference system (AHRS) provides data for primary flight instruments, head-up displays, autopilots, and moving map navigation systems. Advances in solid-state MEMS rate sensors, coupled with Kalman filter algorithms designed to mitigate high drift rates, provide the basis for low-cost, high-performance AHRS for general aviation. This paper describes the performance of a low cost, miniaturized AHRS using automotive-grade MEMS sensors. The performance of the system is detailed. The implications for certification of this class of system and fault tolerance are discussed.     

Microdosimetric measurements of heavy ion tracks.

The biological effectiveness of radiations depends on the spatial pattern of ionizations and excitations produced by the charged particle tracks involved. Ionizations produced by both the primary ion and by energetic delta rays may contribute to the production of biologically relevant damage and to the concentration of damage which may effect the probability of repair. Although average energy concentration (dose) can be calculated using homogeneous track models, the energy is actually concentrated in small volumes containing segments of the ion and delta ray tracks. These local concentrations are studied experimentally using low pressure proportional counters, and theoretically, using Monte Carlo methods. Small volumes near an ion track may be traversed by a delta ray. If they are, the energy deposited will be similar to that produced by a single electron track in a low-energy x-ray irradiation. The probability of a delta ray interaction occurring decreases with the square of the radial distance from the track. The average energy deposited is the product of this probability and the energy deposited in an interaction. Average energy deposited calculated from measured interaction probability is in good agreement with the results of homogeneous track models.     

An experiment with an S-band radar using pulse compression andrange sidelobe suppression for meteorological measurements

A major technology barrier to the application of pulse compression for the meteorological functions required by a next generation ATC radar is range/time sidelobes which mask and corrupt observations of weak phenomena occurring near areas of strong extended meteorological scatterers. Techniques for suppressing range sidelobes are well known but without prior knowledge of the scattering medium's velocity distribution their performance degrades rapidly in the presence of Doppler. Recent investigations have presented a “doppler tolerant” range sidelobe suppression technique. The thrust of the work described herein is the extension of previous simulations to actual transmitted dispersed/coded waveforms using the S-band surveillance radar located at Rome Laboratory Surveillance Facility. The objectives of the experiment are: 1) to extend the verification of the simulation of the Doppler tolerant technique; and 2) to demonstrate that the radar transmitter, waveform generator, and receiver imperfections do not significantly degrade resolution, performance or reliability of meteorological spectral moment estimates     

Automated video protection, monitoring & detection

The latest generation of computer vision technology is revolutionizing concepts, applications, and products in video surveillance and CCTV. This is of prime relevance to security for large outdoor facilities such as commercial airfields, refineries, power plants, and office/industrial campuses. Most airfields, for example, have open (unfenced) perimeters, high volume heterogeneous traffic, are easily accessed on foot or by water, and exist in areas where regulations providing a safety buffer are difficult to legislate or enforce. And all airfields require 24/7 outdoor monitoring - snow, fog, rain, or shine. Likewise, most high-value facilities appealing to criminals and terrorists are in close proximity to public areas (roads, residences, city, etc.). The appeal of automated real-time surveillance is obvious $maximizing efficiency and effectiveness of security personnel and resources while increasing the probability of preventing a serious security breach. Computer vision based solutions have the potential for very discriminating detection and very low false alarms. The bottom line is that applied computer vision has the potential for the greatest return on investment (ROI), both short-term and long-term.     

Monte Carlo transport model comparison with 1A GeV accelerated iron experiment: heavy-ion shielding evaluation of NASA space flight-crew foodstuff.

Deep-space manned flight as a reality depends on a viable solution to the radiation problem. Both acute and chronic radiation health threats are known to exist, with solar particle events as an example of the former and galactic cosmic rays (GCR) of the latter. In this experiment Iron ions of 1A GeV are used to simulate GCR and to determine the secondary radiation field created as the GCR-like particles interact with a thick target. A NASA prepared food pantry locker was subjected to the iron beam and the secondary fluence recorded. A modified version of the Monte Carlo heavy ion transport code developed by Zeitlin at LBNL is compared with experimental fluence. The foodstuff is modeled as mixed nuts as defined by the 71st edition of the Chemical Rubber Company (CRC) Handbook of Physics and Chemistry. The results indicate a good agreement between the experimental data and the model. The agreement between model and experiment is determined using a linear fit to ordered pairs of data. The intercept is forced to zero. The slope fit is 0.825 and the R2 value is 0.429 over the resolved fluence region. The removal of an outlier, Z=14, gives values of 0.888 and 0.705 for slope and R2 respectively.     

Satellite mobile communications spread-spectrum receiver

Since 1999, ESA has conducted a number of system studies and technological developments to support the European and Canadian industry in the definition of a Satellite UMTS (S-UMTS) component development strategy, identifying critical technological areas and promoting S-UMTS demonstrations. In particular, the MUSIC project has successfully demonstrated advanced digital signal processing techniques to mitigate CDMA interference in spread-spectrum receivers, thus increasing the capacity and/or quality of service of a wireless communication network. The low-complexity solution for interference mitigation investigated and developed in the project is particularly suited for being implemented in mobile terminals.