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NASA NTRS1994

Integrating human factors knowledge into certification: The point of view of the Internatioanal Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)

It is appropriate here to repeat the analogy described in the introduction to this paper which is that: The consideration of human factors requirements during the design stage of advanced, new technology systems may be seen as resting over a three-legged stool. The first leg, the equipment that a system will utilize to achieve its goals, has traditionally attracted ergonomic considerations associated with equipment design, usually centered around 'knobs and dials.' Lately, this view has expanded to include the so-called other important aspect of Human Factor's study which deals with the cognitive, behaviorial and social processes of the human operators. Study in this area must be furthered. The second leg of the stool, the procedures to operate the equipment, however, has been largely unaddressed. Procedures are not inherent to equipment, but must be developed. The importance of proper human factors consideration in the design of procedures can not be overstated. Lastly, the third leg of the stool, the certification of personnel who will operate the equipment, is very much underway, but far from being complete. The real quest now, however, is to integrate these three legs into an indivisible one. Finally, and most importantly, this workshop and its topic are extremely timely in that we are at the dawn of the most ambitious development ever undertaken in international civil aviation. This would allow us the rather unique opportunity to put theory into practice in the near future by ensuring that the concepts developed and furthered by this workshop and the follow-up are implemented in the design and certification of the ICAO future CNS/ATM systems described earlier in this paper. Now is the time to incorporate human factors requirements during the certification processes of these systems. This might act as a test to the feasibility of these ideas. Such endeavors represent a challenge for the research, engineering, training, operational and regulatory communities. But there is certainly more to be gained by attempting to meet the challenge rather than refraining from progress by decrying the difficulties involved.

Maurino, Daniel↗

NASA NTRS2018

Exploration Medical System Trade Study Tools Overview

ExMC is creating an ecosystem of tools to enable well-informed medical system trade studies. The suite of tools address important system implementation aspects of the space medical capabilities trade space and are being built using knowledge from the medical community regarding the unique aspects of space flight. Two integrating models, a systems engineering model and a medical risk analysis model, tie the tools together to produce an integrated assessment of the medical system and its ability to achieve medical system target requirements. This presentation will provide an overview of the various tools that are a part of the tool ecosystem. Initially, the presentation's focus will address the tools that supply the foundational information to the ecosystem. Specifically, the talk will describe how information that describes how medicine will be practiced is captured and categorized for efficient utilization in the tool suite. For example, the talk will include capturing what conditions will be planned for in-mission treatment, planned medical activities (e.g., periodic physical exam), required medical capabilities (e.g., provide imaging), and options to implement the capabilities (e.g., an ultrasound device). Database storage and configuration management will also be discussed. The presentation will include an overview of how these information tools will be tied to parameters in a Systems Modeling Language (SysML) model, allowing traceability to system behavioral, structural, and requirements content. The discussion will also describe an HRP-led enhanced risk assessment model developed to provide quantitative insight into each capability's contribution to mission success. Key outputs from these various tools, to be shared with the space medical and exploration mission development communities, will be assessments of medical system implementation option satisfaction of requirements and per-capability contributions toward achieving requirements.

Mindock, J.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Building a Formal Model of a Human-Interactive System: Insights into the Integration of Formal Methods and Human Factors Engineering

Both the human factors engineering (HFE) and formal methods communities are concerned with finding and eliminating problems with safety-critical systems. This work discusses a modeling effort that leveraged methods from both fields to use model checking with HFE practices to perform formal verification of a human-interactive system. Despite the use of a seemingly simple target system, a patient controlled analgesia pump, the initial model proved to be difficult for the model checker to verify in a reasonable amount of time. This resulted in a number of model revisions that affected the HFE architectural, representativeness, and understandability goals of the effort. If formal methods are to meet the needs of the HFE community, additional modeling tools and technological developments are necessary.

Bolton, Matthew L.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Asthma and Air Quality in the Presence of Fires - A Foundation for Public Health Policy in Florida

Outdoor air quality and its associated impacts on respiratory problems in Florida are of public health significance. Air quality in Florida can be poor during the extended wildfire season, threatening persons with compromised respiratory systems each year. Studies have demonstrated that particulate matter, which is generally elevated in the vicinity of wildfires, is associated with increases in hospital admissions and occurrences of acute asthma exacerbations. However, few studies have examined the modifying effect of socio-demographic characteristics of cities or regional areas on the relationship between air quality and health outcomes. In an ongoing university/multi-agency project, asthma hospital/emergency room (patient) data are being used to create a health outcome indicator of human response to environmental air quality. Environmental data are derived from satellite measurements, with special attention being given to the effect of wildfires and prescribed burns on air quality. This presentation will focus on the environmental data sets particulate matter, location of fires, smoke plumes that are being collected and processed for linkage with health data. After this linkage has been performed, space-time models of asthma rates as a function of air quality data and socio-demographic variables will be developed and validated. The Florida Department of Health (FDOH) will work with county health department staff and representatives from the medical community to establish a protocol with triggers for issuing public health advisories/alerts based on the developed and validated health outcome indicators. From this effort, a science-based policy for issuing public health advisories/alerts for asthma relating to air quality will be developed, giving FDOH the ability to (1) predict, with stated levels of uncertainty, case load of hospital admissions based on air quality, (2) reduce asthma exacerbations by forewarning asthmatics to limit outside activities on poor air quality days, (3) apply management practices on the rates of hospital/emergency room visits for asthma, and (4) provide information that would help translate interventions into policy decisions, thereby reducing the economic burden and increasing well being of asthmatics. Further, the results of the study will be incorporated into Florida s Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) program, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) EPHT network.

Crosson, William↗

NASA NTRS2016

Expanded Guidance for NASA Systems Engineering. Volume 1: Systems Engineering Practices

This document is intended to provide general guidance and information on systems engineering that will be useful to the NASA community. It provides a generic description of Systems Engineering (SE) as it should be applied throughout NASA. A goal of the expanded guidance is to increase awareness and consistency across the Agency and advance the practice of SE. This guidance provides perspectives relevant to NASA and data particular to NASA. This expanded guidance should be used as a companion for implementing NPR 7123.1, Systems Engineering Processes and Requirements, the Rev 2 version of SP-6105, and the Center-specific handbooks and directives developed for implementing systems engineering at NASA. It provides a companion reference book for the various systems engineering-related training being offered under NASA's auspices.

Steven R Hirshorn↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Cloud-Based Solutions for Monitoring Coastal Ecosystems and Prioritization of Restoration Efforts Across Belize

In recent years the availability of automated change detection algorithms in Google Earth Engine has permitted cloud-based processing of large time series of satellite imagery. Models such as the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC), CCDC-Spectral Mixture Analysis (CCDC-SMA), and Landsat-based Detection of Trends in Disturbance and Recovery (LandTrendr) allow users to exploit decades of Earth Observations (EO) , leveraging the Landsat archive and data from other sensors to detect disturbance in forest ecosystems. Despite the wide adoption of these methods, robust documentation and growing community of users, little research has explored their use in mangrove environments. Mangroves are dynamic environments subject to changes due to not only the natural migration of mudflats but also coastal erosion, urban expansion, aquaculture practices, etc. This work aims to identify best practices for the application of these models to identify and monitor changes in the Belizean mangroves, which experienced an estimated 5.4% decrease in extent between 1980 and 2017 (Cherrington et al. 2020). Partnering directly with the Belizean Forest Department, our team will develop a replicable, efficient methodology to annually update the country’s mangrove extent employing EO-based change detection. This collaboration supports Belize’s marine conservation and climate resilience efforts, such as its Blue Bond agreement with the Nature Conservancy, building on national processes to monitor these critical ecosystems.

Mangroves↗

NASA NTRS1994

A mission planning concept and mission planning system for future manned space missions

The international character of future manned space missions will compel the involvement of several international space agencies in mission planning tasks. Additionally, the community of users requires a higher degree of freedom for experiment planning. Both of these problems can be solved by a decentralized mission planning concept using the so-called 'envelope method,' by which resources are allocated to users by distributing resource profiles ('envelopes') which define resource availabilities at specified times. The users are essentially free to plan their activities independently of each other, provided that they stay within their envelopes. The new developments were aimed at refining the existing vague envelope concept into a practical method for decentralized planning. Selected critical functions were exercised by planning an example, founded on experience acquired by the MSCC during the Spacelab missions D-1 and D-2. The main activity regarding future mission planning tasks was to improve the existing MSCC mission planning system, using new techniques. An electronic interface was developed to collect all formalized user inputs more effectively, along with an 'envelope generator' for generation and manipulation of the resource envelopes. The existing scheduler and its data base were successfully replaced by an artificial intelligence scheduler. This scheduler is not only capable of handling resource envelopes, but also uses a new technology based on neuronal networks. Therefore, it is very well suited to solve the future scheduling problems more efficiently. This prototype mission planning system was used to gain new practical experience with decentralized mission planning, using the envelope method. In future steps, software tools will be optimized, and all data management planning activities will be embedded into the scheduler.

Wickler, Martin↗

NASA NTRS2016

Final Report of the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Agile Benchmarking Team

To ensure that the NASA Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) community remains in a position to perform reliable Software Assurance (SA) on NASAs critical software (SW) systems with the software industry rapidly transitioning from waterfall to Agile processes, Terry Wilcutt, Chief, Safety and Mission Assurance, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) established the Agile Benchmarking Team (ABT). The Team's tasks were: 1. Research background literature on current Agile processes, 2. Perform benchmark activities with other organizations that are involved in software Agile processes to determine best practices, 3. Collect information on Agile-developed systems to enable improvements to the current NASA standards and processes to enhance their ability to perform reliable software assurance on NASA Agile-developed systems, 4. Suggest additional guidance and recommendations for updates to those standards and processes, as needed. The ABT's findings and recommendations for software management, engineering and software assurance are addressed herein.

Software Assurance↗

NASA NTRS2017

Embracing Open Source for NASA's Earth Science Data Systems

The overarching purpose of NASAs Earth Science program is to develop a scientific understanding of Earth as a system. Scientific knowledge is most robust and actionable when resulting from transparent, traceable, and reproducible methods. Reproducibility includes open access to the data as well as the software used to arrive at results. Additionally, software that is custom-developed for NASA should be open to the greatest degree possible, to enable re-use across Federal agencies, reduce overall costs to the government, remove barriers to innovation, and promote consistency through the use of uniform standards. Finally, Open Source Software (OSS) practices facilitate collaboration between agencies and the private sector. To best meet these ends, NASAs Earth Science Division promotes the full and open sharing of not only all data, metadata, products, information, documentation, models, images, and research results but also the source code used to generate, manipulate and analyze them. This talk focuses on the challenges to open sourcing NASA developed software within ESD and the growing pains associated with establishing policies running the gamut of tracking issues, properly documenting build processes, engaging the open source community, maintaining internal compliance, and accepting contributions from external sources. This talk also covers the adoption of existing open source technologies and standards to enhance our custom solutions and our contributions back to the community. Finally, we will be introducing the most recent OSS contributions from NASA Earth Science program and promoting these projects for wider community review and adoption.

Earth Science↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessing the Viability of Using GEOS-Forecast Product for Landslides Forecasting: A Step Toward Early Warning System

Landslides across the globe are mostly triggered by extreme rainfall events affecting infrastructure, transportation and livelihoods. The risks are rarely quantified due to lack of data, analytical skills and limited modeling techniques. Knowledge of local to global scale landslide risks provides communities and national agencies the ability to adapt disaster management practices to mitigate and recover from these hazards. In order to minimize the risks and improve characterization of community resilience to landslides, it is vital to have reliable information about the factors triggering landslides such as rainfall, well ahead in time. Forecasting potential landslide activity and impacts can be achieved through reliable precipitation forecast models. However, it is challenging because of the temporal and spatial variability of precipitation, an important factor in triggering landslides. Evaluation of the precipitation field, associated errors, and sampling uncertainties is integral for development of efficient and reliable landslide forecasting and early warning system. This study develops a methodology to assess the viability of using a precipitation field provided by a global model and its potential integration in the landslide forecasting system. The study focuses on the comparison between the IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Mission) and GEOS (NASA Goddard Earth Observing System)-Forecast product over contiguous United States (CONUS). GEOS model assimilates new observations every 6 hours, at 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC. The framework is tested on the GEOS-Forecast Model initialized at 00 UTC using daily IMERG early product as reference using both categorical and continuous statistics. The categorical statistics includes the probability of detection (POD), success ratio (SR), critical success index (CSI), and the hit bias. Continuous statistics such as correlation, normalized standard deviation, and root-mean-square error are also evaluated. Overall, GEOS-Forecast precipitation field over the analysis period (~1 year) show underestimation with respect to IMERG early for the daily accumulated rainfall. However, the probability distribution function and cumulative distribution function of both show similar patterns. In terms of correlations, POD, SR, CSI, hit bias, the performance varies with respect to the rainfall threshold used.

Sana Khan↗

NASA NTRS2012

Advancing Data Assimilation in Operational Hydrologic Forecasting: Progresses, Challenges, and Emerging Opportunities

Data assimilation (DA) holds considerable potential for improving hydrologic predictions as demonstrated in numerous research studies. However, advances in hydrologic DA research have not been adequately or timely implemented in operational forecast systems to improve the skill of forecasts for better informed real-world decision making. This is due in part to a lack of mechanisms to properly quantify the uncertainty in observations and forecast models in real-time forecasting situations and to conduct the merging of data and models in a way that is adequately efficient and transparent to operational forecasters. The need for effective DA of useful hydrologic data into the forecast process has become increasingly recognized in recent years. This motivated a hydrologic DA workshop in Delft, the Netherlands in November 2010, which focused on advancing DA in operational hydrologic forecasting and water resources management. As an outcome of the workshop, this paper reviews, in relevant detail, the current status of DA applications in both hydrologic research and operational practices, and discusses the existing or potential hurdles and challenges in transitioning hydrologic DA research into cost-effective operational forecasting tools, as well as the potential pathways and newly emerging opportunities for overcoming these challenges. Several related aspects are discussed, including (1) theoretical or mathematical aspects in DA algorithms, (2) the estimation of different types of uncertainty, (3) new observations and their objective use in hydrologic DA, (4) the use of DA for real-time control of water resources systems, and (5) the development of community-based, generic DA tools for hydrologic applications. It is recommended that cost-effective transition of hydrologic DA from research to operations should be helped by developing community-based, generic modeling and DA tools or frameworks, and through fostering collaborative efforts among hydrologic modellers, DA developers, and operational forecasters.

forecasting↗

NASA NTRS2000

Software Released by LEWICE 2.0 Ice Accretion Software Development Project

Computational icing simulation methods are making the transition from the realm of research to commonplace use in design and certification. As such, standards of software management, design, validation, and documentation must be adjusted to accommodate the increased expectations of the user community with respect to accuracy, reliability, capability, and usability. With this in mind, in collaboration with Glenn's Engineering Design and Analysis Division, the Icing Branch of the NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field began a software improvement project focused on the two-dimensional ice accretion simulation tool LEWICE. This project is serving as an introduction to the concepts of software management and is intended to serve as a pilot project for future icing simulation code development. The LEWICE 2.0 Software Development Project consisted of two major elements: software management and software validation. The software management element consisted of identifying features of well-designed and well-managed software that are appropriate for an analytical prediction tool such as LEWICE and applying them to a revised version of the code. This element included tasks such as identification of software requirements, development and implementation of coding standards, and implementation of software revision control practices. With the application of these techniques, the LEWICE ice accretion code became a more stable and reliable software product. In addition, the lessons learned about software development and maintenance can be factored into future software projects at the outset. The software validation activity was an integral part of our effort to make LEWICE a more accurate and reliable analysis tool. Because of the efforts taken to extensively validate this software, LEWICE 2.0 is more robust than previous releases and can reproduce results accurately across several computing platforms. It also differs from previous versions in the extensive quantitative comparisons of its results with a data base of ice shapes that were generated in Glenn's Icing Research Tunnel. The results of the shape comparisons were analyzed to determine the range of meteorological conditions under which LEWICE 2.0 is within the repeatability found for ice shapes obtained from experiments. These comparisons show that the average variation of LEWICE 2.0 from experimental data is 7.2 percent, whereas the overall variability of the experimental data is 2.5 percent. The LEWICE 2.0 Software Development Project resulted in the release, at the recent Icing Branch LEWICE Workshop, of a more useful and robust analysis tool than was previously available to the icing community. The lessons learned from this project will be applied to the Icing Branch s future software development efforts.

Potapczuk, Mark G.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

New developments in space radiation research at NASA: Annotating data using a novel radiation biology ontology

Like many interdisciplinary sciences, data producers and consumers in the field of radiation biology often use a wide variety of terminology to describe their experiments and data. Furthermore, space systems and technologies are rapidly evolving, and a shared understanding and common terminology for these is also lacking. The efficiency of research organizations can be enhanced by standardizing metadata through the use of knowledge resources like ontologies. Employing a sophisticated model such as a formal ontology to standardize metadata enables automated data acquisition processes and supports more complete, accurate meta-analysis through more efficient and complete data discovery and retrieval, particularly when using multiple data sources. Thus, we developed the Radiation Biology Ontology (RBO) in order to improved radiation biology metadata uniformity and transparency. We used open-source software (the Ontology Development Kit, Protégé and WebProtégé) and worked within the OBO Foundry framework, which includes a set of ontology development principles and practices for ontology consistency, uniformity, and accountability. The RBO has now been incorporated into two radiation research data repositories, NASA’s GeneLab omics database (https://genelab.nasa.gov), and the European Commission STORE database (https://www.storedb.org/). Continuous build integration tools allowed our international RBO collaboration to be more efficient and focus its efforts on semantic model design. Currently, the RBO contains over 300 annotated classes and individuals specific to the study of radiation on biological systems, as well as imports of many additional classes from other OBO Foundry ontologies that relate to and/or provide context for these RBO entities. We publish the RBO through the OBO Foundry, so that it is available for browsing, download, and querying through NCBI Bioportal web site and application programming interface. The NASA Ames Life Science Data Archive (ALSDA) is also in the process of adopting use of the RBO, taking NASA one step closer to a knowledge-based system for space biology data. It is our hope that the global communities of radiation research Investigators, data curators and data analysts can similarly leverage the RBO and will contribute to its further development.

radiation↗

NASA NTRS2017

Revision to Global Persistent SAR Sampling with the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Mission

Abstract—The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are developing an Earth-orbiting science and applications mission that will exploit synthetic aperture radar to map Earth’s surface every 12 days, persistently on ascending and descending portions of the orbit, over all land and ice-covered surfaces. The mission’s primary objectives will be to study Earth land and ice deformation, and ecosystems, in areas of common interest to the US and Indian science communities. This single spacecraft solution with an L-band (24 cm wavelength) and S-band (10 cm wavelength) radar has a swath of over 240 km at fine resolution, using full polarimetry where needed, uses a reflector-feed system whereby the feed aperture elements are individually sampled to allow a scan-on-receive (“SweepSAR”) capability at both L-band and S-band. This design is in contrast to recent concepts towards large constellations of smaller radar satellites, and is driven by the science requirements for complete coverage over the 12-day repeat cycle, using repeat pass interferometry and polarimetry to measure deformation and surface properties. A single spacecraft with enough aperture, power, duty cycle, and downlink capacity was determined to be a more practical and implementable solution that multiple smaller spacecraft. The use of a single large aperture reflector for both the L- and Sband radars enables both to have comparable performance, leading to overall development and operational efficiencies.

Bhan, Rakesh↗

NASA NTRS1997

Microgravity Science and Applications: Program Tasks and Bibliography for Fiscal Year 1996

NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Division (MSAD) sponsors a program that expands the use of space as a laboratory for the study of important physical, chemical, and biochemical processes. The primary objective of the program is to broaden the value and capabilities of human presence in space by exploiting the unique characteristics of the space environment for research. However, since flight opportunities are rare and flight research development is expensive, a vigorous ground-based research program, from which only the best experiments evolve, is critical to the continuing strength of the program. The microgravity environment affords unique characteristics that allow the investigation of phenomena and processes that are difficult or impossible to study an Earth. The ability to control gravitational effects such as buoyancy driven convection, sedimentation, and hydrostatic pressures make it possible to isolate phenomena and make measurements that have significantly greater accuracy than can be achieved in normal gravity. Space flight gives scientists the opportunity to study the fundamental states of physical matter-solids, liquids and gasses-and the forces that affect those states. Because the orbital environment allows the treatment of gravity as a variable, research in microgravity leads to a greater fundamental understanding of the influence of gravity on the world around us. With appropriate emphasis, the results of space experiments lead to both knowledge and technological advances that have direct applications on Earth. Microgravity research also provides the practical knowledge essential to the development of future space systems. The Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications (OLMSA) is responsible for planning and executing research stimulated by the Agency's broad scientific goals. OLMSA's Microgravity Science and Applications Division (MSAD) is responsible for guiding and focusing a comprehensive program, and currently manages its research and development tasks through five major scientific areas: biotechnology, combustion science, fluid physics, fundamental physics, and materials science. FY 1996 was an important year for MSAD. NASA continued to build a solid research community for the coming space station era. During FY 1996, the NASA Microgravity Research Program continued investigations selected from the 1994 combustion science, fluid physics, and materials science NRAS. MSAD also released a NASA Research Announcement in microgravity biotechnology, with more than 130 proposals received in response. Selection of research for funding is expected in early 1997. The principal investigators chosen from these NRAs will form the core of the MSAD research program at the beginning of the space station era. The third United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3) and the Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) missions yielded a wealth of microgravity data in FY 1996. The USMP-3 mission included a fluids facility and three solidification furnaces, each designed to examine a different type of crystal growth.

Source record↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Community Radiative Transfer Model: Implementing A New Cloud Scattering Database and Developing the Forward Radar Module

The Mie theory is used by many fast RT models to estimate the optical properties of single particles. The Mie theory assumes spherical shapes for ice or snow particles with mixture of air and ice. However, hydrometeors scattering radiation at microwave frequencies have different shapes, sizes, and orientations. Therefore, using Mie theory to determine their optical properties leads to large uncertainties in all-sky radiative transfer calculations. The discrete dipole approximation (DDA) which approximates the optical properties of large objects in terms of discrete dipoles has shown promises in calculating the scattering properties of particles with different shapes in the microwave frequencies. The goal of the research was to enhance the CRTM scattering calculations for frozen hydrometeors in the microwave frequencies using the DDA technique. Given that such optical properties cannot be practically calculated on the fly, pre-computed look-up tables need to be implemented into the fast RT models to calculate the scattering properties of these particles using the DDA technique and the inputs provided by the users. Therefore, we implemented such pre-computed DDA databases into CRTM. In addition to using stand-alone CRTM calculations using collocated ATMS and reanalysis profiles, the data assimilation experiments conducted using the NOAA FV3GFS forecast system will be used to evaluate the scattering improvements. Additionally, we used the backscattering information from the DDA database to implement a radar simulator into CRTM. The radar operators takes advantage of CRTM different modules to calculate clouds absorption and scattering properties. In addition to the forward model both adjoint and tangent linear of the radar simulator are implemented and evaluated as well. The radar simulator is currently being tested within the JEDI/GEOS data assimilation framework to facilitate the assimilation of radar measurements such as CloudSat CPR and GPM DPR into the NASA GEOS model.

Isaac Moradi↗

NASA NTRS2004

The Art of Space Flight Exercise Hardware: Design and Implementation

The design of space flight exercise hardware depends on experience with crew health maintenance in a microgravity environment, history in development of flight-quality exercise hardware, and a foundation for certifying proper project management and design methodology. Developed over the past 40 years, the expertise in designing exercise countermeasures hardware at the Johnson Space Center stems from these three aspects of design. The medical community has steadily pursued an understanding of physiological changes in humans in a weightless environment and methods of counteracting negative effects on the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal system. The effects of weightlessness extend to the pulmonary and neurovestibular system as well with conditions ranging from motion sickness to loss of bone density. Results have shown losses in water weight and muscle mass in antigravity muscle groups. With the support of university-based research groups and partner space agencies, NASA has identified exercise to be the primary countermeasure for long-duration space flight. The history of exercise hardware began during the Apollo Era and leads directly to the present hardware on the International Space Station. Under the classifications of aerobic and resistive exercise, there is a clear line of development from the early devices to the countermeasures hardware used today. In support of all engineering projects, the engineering directorate has created a structured framework for project management. Engineers have identified standards and "best practices" to promote efficient and elegant design of space exercise hardware. The quality of space exercise hardware depends on how well hardware requirements are justified by exercise performance guidelines and crew health indicators. When considering the microgravity environment of the device, designers must consider performance of hardware separately from the combined human-in-hardware system. Astronauts are the caretakers of the hardware while it is deployed and conduct all sanitization, calibration, and maintenance for the devices. Thus, hardware designs must account for these issues with a goal of minimizing crew time on orbit required to complete these tasks. In the future, humans will venture to Mars and exercise countermeasures will play a critical role in allowing us to continue in our spirit of exploration. NASA will benefit from further experimentation on Earth, through the International Space Station, and with advanced biomechanical models to quantify how each device counteracts specific symptoms of weightlessness. With the continued support of international space agencies and the academic research community, we will usher the next frontier in human space exploration.

Beyene, Nahom M.↗

NASA NTRS2021

Uneven Consequences: Gendered Impacts of Shrimp Aquaculture Development on Mangrove Dependent Communities

Shrimp aquaculture is a primary driver of mangrove deforestation globally. The decline of these forests not only threatens the integrity of valuable ecosystems but can also produce detrimental impacts on mangrove-dependent communities. Ecuador is the largest producer of farmed Pacific white leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) in South America. This industry’s growth and success have come at the expense of the country’s mangrove forests. This paper analyzes the impacts of shrimp aquaculture development on a mangrove-dependent community in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. Furthermore, this research highlights how gender and gendered norms inform the strategies adopted by different actors in response to these processes. Drawing from ethnographic and Global Positioning System data collected in situ, this study shows that women are disproportionately affected by the loss of mangrove forests. Mangrove forests have historically provided women sustenance, opportunities for income generation, and the ability to pass on cultural traditions. The establishment of the aquaculture sector also created a collapse of local livelihoods. Losing access to traditional livelihood practices pushed men into the mangroves to gather cockles, a productive activity customarily only practiced by women. This livelihood shift for men further contributes to the displacement of women from the mangrove forests. The introduction of industrial shrimp farming increased the community’s reliance on mangrove resources. The overuse of these resources is leading to a depletion of mangrove cockle populations, putting the community in a vulnerable position as both men and women are increasingly dependent on this fishery to subsist.

Gender Mangrove fisheries↗