Digital Commons Network^™

Stand-Off Molecular Composition Analysis, Gary B. Hughes, Philip Lubin, Peter Meinhold, Hugh O'Neill, Travis Brashears, Qicheng Zhang, Janelle Griswold, Jordan Riley, Caio Motta

Statistics

Composition of distant stars can be explored by observing absorption spectra. Stars produce nearly blackbody radiation that passes through the cloud of vaporized material surrounding the star. Characteristic absorption lines are discernible with a spectrometer, and atomic composition is investigated by comparing spectral observations with known material profiles. Most objects in the solar system—asteroids, comets, planets, moons—are too cold to be interrogated in this manner. Material clouds around cold objects consist primarily of volatiles, so bulk composition cannot be probed. Additionally, low volatile density does not produce discernible absorption lines in the faint signal generated by cold objects. We propose …

Enhancing The Chemical Mixture Methodology: Incorporating 20 Health Code Numbers, Lauren Fletcher, Juan Yao, Cliff Glantz, Xiao-Ying Yu

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Chemical Mixture Methodology (CMM) is used by the Department of Energy (DOE), its contractors, and other private and public organizations for emergency response planning. CMM assesses the potential health impacts on individuals that would result from exposure to an airborne mixture of hazardous chemicals. Health Code Numbers (HCNs) are assigned to each chemical based on the human organs targeted by exposure. In the current CMM, only the top 10 HCNs ranked by severity are included in each CMM analysis. This project focuses on assessing what happens when doubling the potential number of HCNs for each chemical that could be …

Chemical Mixture Methodology (Cmm): Using 15 Health Code Numbers, Kolyne S. De Jesus, Juan Yao, Clifford Glantz, Xiao-Ying Yu

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Chemical Mixture Methodology (CMM) is used for an emergency response and safety planning for chemical mixtures that cause irreversible or serious health effects. There are three major components of the CMM: Health Code Numbers (HCNs), the Hazard Index, and the Protective Action Criteria values. The HCNs are akin to medical diagnostic codes; they categorize the adverse health outcome that could be induced by exposure to an individual hazardous chemical. Currently, 60 HCNs are used in the CMM to characterize potential health effects for over 3,000 chemicals. Chemicals may have one or more HCNs; however, a maximum of 10 HCNs …

Comparison Of Beta Backscatter And X-Ray Fluorescence Methods To Measure Coating Thickness, Sergio Palomo, Bernice Mills

STAR Program Research Presentations

This work compares and assesses the effectiveness of beta backscatter (BB) and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) for measuring the thickness of gold coatings on two substrates: silicon and an iron-nickel alloy. A set of samples of known gold coating thickness, ranging from 0.5 – 4.0 microns, was measured in each case along with the substrate alone. In BB the number of electrons (beta particles from a very small radioactive source, Pm-147 in this case) backscattered from a sample in a fixed time period is counted. The XRF method uses x-rays generated in the sample from a primary x-ray beam of higher …

The Effect Of Environmental Selection Pressure On The Rate Of Recombination To An Advantageous Receptor Mutation In Bovine Coronavirus, Gavin Schroter, Sally Hall, Mona Hwang, Monica Borucki

STAR Program Research Presentations

Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) is an important analogue in understanding the effectiveness of zoonotic, single-stranded, positive sense RNA viruses. Many of the most recent viral outbreaks have been attributed to RNA viruses that have one, or more, animal reservoirs [1]. BCoV is such a great candidate for studying these types of viruses because they are from the family Coronaviridae, which also contains the viruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The goal of this study was to observe changes in genetic makeup of the virus’ outer membrane Spike protein via recombination between two …

Using Data Visualization Software To Aid In The Analysis Of Geographical Data, Matthew R. Evers, Inzamam Rahaman

STAR Program Research Presentations

NASA Web World Wind (Web WW) is designed to visualize and manage geographical data. As a first implementation of visualization and analysis, we designed an application to map earthquake data onto the globe. Portions of this code were merged with application monitoring magnetic field anomalies possibly associated with earthquake precursor activity. Web WW enabled the visualization of the directional vectors from this data to point to the source location of the earthquake. We also developed a prototype urban management application which utilizes OpenStreetMaps to provide simple features such as route navigation, geographical and services information in an area of interest. …

Design And Fabrication Of Liquid Scintillator Counter, Andrea Calderon Saucedo, John L. Orrell

STAR Program Research Presentations

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is currently developing an ultra-low background liquid scintillator counter (ULB LSC) in the shallow underground laboratory. At a depth of 35-meters water-equivalent, the underground laboratory has a multi-layered shielding to keep out cosmic-ray induced background. The ULB LSC, which is located in a clean room facility, is a multi-layered design made up of various materials, including plastic scintillator veto panels, borated polyethylene, lead and copper. These layers help lower the contributions of the terrestrial background and intrinsic background, resulting from the impurities present in the materials, to the overall background count rate observed by the …

Impacts Of Kelp Forest Restoration On Species Richness And Carbon Sequestration, Lisa Calhoun, Jamie Kneitel

STAR Program Research Presentations

Kelp forests are a very productive marine ecosystem with high species diversity found in many parts of the world, including off the coast of California. As a consequence, they are a major contributor to atmospheric carbon sequestration (storage) on the North American Pacific Coast. However, many kelp forests have been destroyed by the overpopulation of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (purple sea urchin), which reduce kelp growth, productivity, and species diversity (urchin barrens). The rocky reefs along the southern end of the Santa Monica Bay contain 61.5 hectares of urchin barrens. Organizations are working to remove the urchins and restore kelp forests and …

Sediment Loss Of Santa Rosa Island Slopes: An Erosional Study, Michael Perez

STAR Program Research Presentations

Ranching began on Santa Rosa Island in the 1840’s, consequently introducing nonnative megafauna that put novel selective grazing pressures on endemic plant species. Their movement patterns also altered sediment integrity as the land was denuded of any stabilizing vegetation. Dense groves of island oak (Q. tomentella) are known to aid in sediment deposition and retention. The groves also function to collect water during periods of intense fog that are common to the island. This experiment sought to quantify the volume of sediment that has been lost on a south facing slope in the middle of the island that …

Chemical Oxygen Demand Reduction Using The Algae Dunaliella Primolecta And Chlorella Vulgaris, Angeles L. Mora, Alejandro Hernandez, Alejandro Calderón-Urrea

STAR Program Research Presentations

Farm industry wastewater is characterized by high organic materials and by high chemical oxygen demand (COD). Farms with large livestock and poultry operations can be a major source of wastewater thus a major concern for effective environmental and industrial management. Effective environmental and industrial management are high in cost therefor biofuels produced from plants have a potential of replacing a portion of fossil fuel consumption with a renewable efficient alternative. Due to California’s water crisis in the recent years, it is questioned if a biological treatment system that uses algal growth to create renewable energy in the form of biodiesel …

Mapping Open Water Bodeis With Optical Remote Sensing, Mary Ellen O'Donnell, Erika Podest

STAR Program Research Presentations

There is interest in mapping open water bodies using remote sensing data. Coverage and persistence of open water is currently a poorly measured variable due to its spatial and temporal variability across landscapes, especially in remote areas. The presence and persistence of open water is one of the primary indicators of conditions suitable for mosquito breeding habitats. Predicting the risk of mosquito caused disease outbreaks is a required step towards their control and eradication. Satellite observations can provide needed data to support agency decisions for deployment of preventative measures and control resources. This study, which will try to map open …

Fatty Acid Recovery And Identification In Mars Analogue Soil Samples, Kimberly E. Lykens

STAR Program Research Presentations

A primary goal of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is to gather and store samples of Mars soil that could possibly be returned to Earth in a future mission for investigations into past or present life. In years leading up to a potential sample return mission on Mars and potentially other worlds, samples taken from Chile’s Atacama Desert, the most arid, biologically limited desert in the world, are valuable in developing a capacity for biosignature detection, specifically when exploring fatty acid abundance. Eighteen samples were collected from two sites in the Atacama characterized by biological soil crusts (BSC). BSCs are areas …

Radiographic Density Of Selected Materials At Different Thicknesses, Thien Quang Vu-Nguyen, Bernice Mills

STAR Program Research Presentations

X-rays are widely used in medicine and materials science to identify impurities or fractures within the target object. In material science, x-rays can be used to identify the thickness of samples with different material densities. The current method is to collect a radiograph using estimated conditions, evaluate the results, then make changes to the conditions. The residual image can be rescanned making it possible to obtain an image of lower radiographic density. By tabulating or graphing the effects of energy changes and rescans, a more informed choice of conditions is possible.

For this study, six materials were chosen with a …

Do Marine Protected Areas Affect Emerging Fisheries Population Density?, Jennifer Greene, Katherine O. Grady, Crow White, Danielle Zacherl

STAR Program Research Presentations

Kellet’s whelk, Kelletia kelletii, were observed at sample sites throughout their range from Baja California, Mexico, to Monterey, CA to determine patterns of population density. Sample sites in each region were either located within California marine protected areas where take of the Kellet’s whelk in prohibited, or in non-protected areas where the whelks can be fished both commercially and recreationally. Kellet’s whelk population density was compared between all MPA and non-MPA sample sites. These mean densities were also found for sites in Santa Barbara and San Diego near active fishing ports and compared to data from the same sites collected …

Using High Throughput Genomic Sequencing To Predict Ecological Impacts On Sea Turtle Populations, Lesley Anderson

STAR Program Research Presentations

Marine turtles are long-lived, migratory vertebrates that encounter a variety of human and natural stressors throughout their lives. Understanding the biology and threats of these animals is challenging because they are hard to observe, and can migrate across whole ocean basins. Minimally invasive sampling techniques (e.g., blood samples) allow us to learn about their physiology, genetics, and the environmental conditions they have experienced. In this project, we developed a novel method to extract the RNA from whole green and loggerhead turtle blood from animals inhabiting a variety of sites across the Pacific Ocean. Some habitats are more pristine, while others …

Calculating The Energy Barriers Required To Join Metal-Organic Framework Synthesis Intermediates With Non-Equilibrium Molecular Simulation, Marcus A. Tubbs, David Cantu, Roger Rousseau, Vassiliki-Alexandra Glezakou

STAR Program Research Presentations

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are synthetic materials made of a cage-like lattice of metal nodes connected by organic linkers. The pores between the nodes define the characteristics of the material. A MOF, MIL-101, has shown great capacity in the adsorption of carbon dioxide and methane, as well as in hydrogenation catalysis with palladium. While there has been success in synthesizing MIL-101 and other MOFs, the mechanistic details behind their assembly remain unknown. Understanding the synthesis mechanism is necessary to understand the kinetics involved and be able to produce this useful material on an industrial scale. Using MIL-101 as a prototypical …

The Effect Of Drought On Stomatal Conductance In The Biosphere 2 Rainforest, Justin Gay, Joost Van Haren

STAR Program Research Presentations

Drought is a major climate change concern for the Earth’s rainforests; however little is currently known about how these forests and individual plants will respond to water stress. At the individual level, the ability of plants to regulate their stomatal conductance is an important preservation mechanism that helps to cool leaves, regulate water loss, and uptake carbon dioxide. At the ecosystem level, transpiration in rain forests is a major contributor to the feedback loop that returns moisture to the atmosphere for continued rains. Nearly 60% of atmospheric moisture in the Amazon rain forests has been traced back to origins of …

Effect Of Surface Omniphobicity On Drying By Forced Convection, Madani A. Khan, Jeffrey Alston, Andrew Guenthner

STAR Program Research Presentations

Low energy surfaces can strongly repel both oil and water. Recently these surfaces have been fabricated on various substrates including fabric, aluminum, stainless steel and many other materials. In this experiment we explore the use of low energy surface deposition on aluminum alloy, stainless steel and silicon substrates, to enhance the drying rate of liquids removed from the surface by forced convection. We control surface roughness by substrate abrasion and by the growth of Al₂O₃ nanograss to enhance liquid repellence by use of a hierarchical texture. Liquid repellence of the substrates is measured by contact angles of …

An Interactive User Interface Improves Data Visualization In R, Nathan Sweem

STAR Program Research Presentations

An interactive user interface application was created using the R statistical computing environment and the Shiny package to visualize historical data on the performance of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Historical data for these funds is scraped from the Yahoo! Finance webpage. The application allows the user to analyze this historical data by category and fund family, which are also scraped from Yahoo! Finance. The application generates interactive plots to compare the performance of selected mutual funds and ETFs given the baseline and center determined by the user. The application has been modified to attentively match the data with …

Evaluation Of Anthropogenic Marine Debris And Sargassum Fluitans And Its Potential Impact On Sea Turtle Hatchlings At Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, Christina Macmillan

STAR Program Research Presentations

Anthropogenic debris, particularly plastic, has become a significant threat for marine species with the increased use of plastics over the years. Marine birds and sea turtles, mostly green, loggerhead and leatherback turtles, are especially vulnerable to mistaking plastic debris for food and ingesting it. There has been a rise in the incidence of turtles having plastic fragments in their GI tracts; even small amounts of plastic may have major long-term health and reproductive effects. On the nesting beaches, both adults and hatchlings may become entangled in debris or have trouble navigating around beach debris during their crawl to the sea. …

Performance Variation In Leptasterias Spp. Among Populations And Habitats, Caleb Shaw, Laura Melroy, Janet Bair, Sarah Cohen

STAR Program Research Presentations

Leptasterias spp. are six rayed sea stars that are found in rocky intertidal habitats ranging from the California coast to Alaska. In central California, Leptasterias spp. can be found in a variety of intertidal habitats in mixed populations. There are multiple clades that represent these populations and it is thought that they may vary behaviorally, including habitat preference. To investigate this individuals were collected from Pigeon Point, San Mateo, CA and characterized into two habitat categories according to where they were found: rocky habitat and pool habitat. To test for behavioral variation among habitats, righting response was used as a …

Determining Antimicrobial Activity In Hydrolysates Obtained From Buttermilk Substrates By Trypsin And Pepsin, Deborah Kim, Karen Ramun, Stephanie Carpintero, Suyapa Padillo, Antonio-Jose Trujillo, Rafael Jimenez-Flores

STAR Program Research Presentations

Milk proteins within their structure and sequence, contain peptides that exhibit antithrombotic, immunomodulatory, antimicrobial, antihypertensive, and other bioactivities. These peptides are released as the enzymes cleave milk proteins at certain locations of the amino acid chains. In this research, four different substrates were hydrolyzed with the gastrointestinal enzymes, pepsin and trypsin. The substrates were buttermilk (BM) and whey buttermilk (WBM), which are waste products of butter and cheese production, and supercritical CO₂ fluid (SFE) treated buttermilk (S-BM) and whey buttermilk (S-WBM). SFE acts as a solvent which removes triglycerides from the substrates and changes the overall composition of samples. …

Monitoring Abundance Of Carcinus Maenas Developmental Stages In Seadrift Lagoon, Andrea M. Fieber

STAR Program Research Presentations

Able to tolerate a wide range of habitats, temperatures, and salinities, Carcinus maenas thrives in much of its non-native range, out-competing native crabs for resources while diminishing food supplies for a variety of marine and estuarine organisms. In Seadrift Lagoon, a manmade inlet of Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County, California, green crabs comprise a significant portion of benthic fauna, and trapping efforts began in 2009 to eradicate them. We analyzed several years of trapping data to monitor demographic changes for this closed population, performed larvae and megalopae sampling with pot scrubbers, and counted eggs on ovigerous females captured in Seadrift …

Mathematically Modeling Synchrotron Radiation, Amy B. Knowles, Jeff Corbett

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source accelerates electrons to relativistic speeds, creating an electron beam which emits radiation as it bends around the storage ring. The synchrotron radiation produced is valued by scientists for the high powered x-rays it gives off which allow them to study samples at the atomic and molecular level.

This project focuses on the mathematical modeling of synchrotron radiation using visible light. The current model used to characterize beam size at SSRL uses a Gaussian approximation for the radiation distribution, which is similar to but distinct from the Schwinger equations that are the theoretical model for …

Smooth Representation Of Functions On Non-Periodic Domains By Means Of The Fourier Continuation Method, Nicholas Rubel, David Bilyeu, Justin Koo

STAR Program Research Presentations

This report examines a new methodology in solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) numerically. The report also studies the accuracy of this new method as a PDE solver. This new Fourier Continuation (FC) method is one of a few that avoids the well-known Gibbs Phenomenon, which is the overestimation or underestimation of a function. These estimations are oscillations around a “jump” when a non-periodic function is expressed in terms of sines and cosines. Instead, the FC algorithm creates a smooth, periodic extension of a function over a general domain, as demonstrated by the many examples presented here. The FC algorithm was …

Performance Variation In Leptasterias Spp. Among Populations And Habitats, Caleb Shaw, Sarah Cohen

STAR Program Research Presentations

Leptasterias spp. are six rayed sea stars that are found in rocky intertidal habitats ranging from the California coast to Alaska. In central California, Leptasterias spp. can be found in a variety of intertidal habitats in mixed populations. There are multiple clades that represent these populations and it is thought that they may vary behaviorally, including habitat preference. To investigate this individuals were collected from Pigeon Point, San Mateo, CA and characterized into two habitat categories according to where they were found: rocky habitat and pool habitat. To test for behavioral variation among habitats, righting response was used as a …

Characterization Of Putative Wnt3a-Inducible Enhancers, Katelynn C. Lee, Nicholas Hum, Aimy Sebastian, Gabriela Loots

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Wnt signaling pathway has been previously shown to play a major role in regulating bone metabolism and it is emerging as a target for the therapeutic intervention of bone thinning disorders such as osteoporosis. Several Wnt proteins have been shown to be expressed in bone and mutations in Wnt pathway members such as Wnt co-receptor Lrp5 and Wnt inhibitor Sost have been shown to be associated with low or high bone mass disorders, however, very little is known about specific roles played by different Wnt ligands in bone development, repair and remodeling. To identify downstream targets of Wnt signaling …

Identifying Glacial Movement Through Fluvial Sediment Analysis, Alexis D. Freeman

STAR Program Research Presentations

The primary purpose of this study is to better understand how climate affects river dynamics. It is also important to understand the relationship between glaciers and the transportation of sediments, as this allows us to study changes in transport through time. The studied sediments were gathered from outcrops located in Fresno Ca, off of Friant road. The origin of these sediments are the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mesozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic sediments are derived from the foothills, while the granitic sediments are derived from higher up in the mountains. The sediments are characterized by both their degree of rounding, and their …

Using Bromide Tracer To Measure Uranium Diffusivity In Ground Water Sediments, Francis Michael Tee, Morris E. Jones, Megan K. Dustin, Sharon Bone, John Bargar

STAR Program Research Presentations

More than 129 million liters of groundwater are contaminated with uranium at Old Rifle, Colorado – a former uranium-processing site that operated until 1958. The original Department of Energy (DOE) strategy for remediation, involving natural flushing of U from the groundwater through mixing with surface water, has not proven successful. Thin pockets of silt-, clay-, and organic-rich sediments referred to as naturally reduced zones (NRZs) act both as sinks and sources of U to the aquifer, contribute to plume persistence, and appear to be diffusion limited controlled.

To better understand how the NRZs are diffusion limited controlled, a bromide tracer …

Broadband Photometry Of Pluto, David M. Dombroski, Bonnie Buratti, Heath Rhoades

STAR Program Research Presentations

Broadband Photometry was obtained to provide data on Pluto, discovered on January 23, 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Our data was collected over a series of four nights of time-resolved Bessel BVRI photometry using the 0.6-m telescope at the JPL Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) located in Wrightwood, California. Our collected data will complement the data obtained by the New Horizons mission to calculate Pluto’s solar phase curve at opposition. The primary objective of our work will be to analyze the solar phase curve of Pluto while it is at opposition. Our work will help …