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At least 397 records · Page 22

Translational Approaches for Studying Neurodevelopmental Disorders Utilizing in Vivo Proton (+H) Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging in Rats

Intrauterine complications have been implicated in the etiology of neuripsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, autism and ADHD. This presentation will describe new translational studies derived from in vivo magnetic resonance imaging of developing and adult brain following perinatal asphyxia (PA). Our findings reveal significant effects of PA on neurometabolic profiles at one week of age, and significant relationships between early metabolites and later life phenotypes including behavior and brain morphometry

Utilizing In Vivo Proton↗

Vestibulo-Ocular Responses to Vertical Translation using a Hand-Operated Chair as a Field Measure of Otolith Function

The translational Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex (tVOR) is an important otolith-mediated response to stabilize gaze during natural locomotion. One goal of this study was to develop a measure of the tVOR using a simple hand-operated chair that provided passive vertical motion. Binocular eye movements were recorded with a tight-fitting video mask in ten healthy subjects. Vertical motion was provided by a modified spring-powered chair (swopper.com) at approximately 2 Hz (+/- 2 cm displacement) to approximate the head motion during walking. Linear acceleration was measured with wireless inertial sensors (Xsens) mounted on the head and torso. Eye movements were recorded while subjects viewed near (0.5m) and far (approximately 4m) targets, and then imagined these targets in darkness. Subjects also provided perceptual estimates of target distances. Consistent with the kinematic properties shown in previous studies, the tVOR gain was greater with near targets, and greater with vision than in darkness. We conclude that this portable chair system can provide a field measure of otolith-ocular function at frequencies sufficient to elicit a robust tVOR.

Wood, S. J.↗

Usable Translational Hand Controllers for NASA's Habitability Design Center

This summer I was given the opportunity to work at the Habitability Design Center (HDC). NASA Johnson Space Center's HDC is currently developing Cislunar and Mars spacecraft mockups. I contributed to this effort by designing from scratch low cost, functional translational hand controllers (THCs) that will be used in spacecraft mission simulation in low to medium fidelity exploration spacecraft mockups. This project fell under the category of mechatronics, a combination of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. Being an aerospace engineering student, I was out of my comfort zone. And that was a wonderful thing. The autonomy that my mentor, Dr. Robert Howard, allowed me gave me the opportunity to learn by trying, failing, and trying again. This project was not only a professional success for me, but a significant learning experience. I appreciated the freedom that I had to take the time to learn new things for myself rather than blindly follow instructions. I was the sole person working on this project, and was required to work independently to solve the many hardware and software challenges that the project entailed. I researched THCs that have been used on the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and the Orion MPVC and based my design off of these. I worked through many redesigns before finding an optimal configuration of the necessary mechanisms and electrical components for the THC. Once I had a functional hardware design, I dove into the challenge of getting an Arduino Uno, an extremely low cost and easily programmable microcontroller, to behave as a human interface device. The THCs I built needed to be able to integrate to a mission simulation designed by NASA's Graphics and Visualization Lab. This proved to be the most challenging aspect of the project. To accomplish this I learned how to change the firmware of the USB serial converter microcontroller. The process was very complicated as it involved multiple software programs and manual flashing of pins on the Arduino itself. When I successfully achieved the goal I wrote an instructions manual for the process so that the HDC will be able to do this easily in the future for any human interface device they may want to create. I also created a detailed CAD model of my THC design with construction instructions. My THC utilizes three ultrasonic sensors, one for each axis of motion. I wrote a code that stimulates these sensors continuously and feeds back values from each axis ranging from -%100 to %100 of the min/max position in relation to the neutral position of each axis. This was the data that the Graphics and Visualization Lab required to interface with their simulation. I truly enjoyed working in the HDC surrounded by passionate, proactive, and brilliantly creative people. I felt valued and respected as a part of their team. I was given the time and support of my mentor whenever I asked for it. Beyond my positive project experience, I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of many of the extra activities that JSC has to offer. I took Russian Phase One during my lunch break every day and can now read Russian and accomplish basic verbal communication. I was heavily involved with the co-tern music video, which led to numerous incredible experiences and friendships. I saw every facility, attended every lecture, and met everyone that I could. I had coffee with Lauri Hansen. I played on an intern volleyball team at the Gilruth. I traveled to Michoud, Stennis, NOLA, and Big Bend National Park. I had the time of my life and I fell in love with JSC. In the next month I will return to Maryland and start my senior year of my undergraduate degree. As I work through it I will remember that all of the studying I do, all of the concentration I give, and all of the sacrifices that I make for school are so that I can work at a place like JSC where I am proud and excited to go into work every day. This internship was an invaluable experience for me, both professionally and personally.

Westbrook, Kimberly↗

Advancing Translational Space Research Through Biospecimen Sharing: Amplified Impact of Studies Utilizing Analogue Space Platforms

Biospecimen Sharing Programs (BSPs) have been organized by NASA Ames Research Center since the 1960s with the goal of maximizing utilization and scientific return from rare, complex and costly spaceflight experiments. BSPs involve acquiring otherwise unused biological specimens from primary space research experiments for distribution to secondary experiments. Here we describe a collaboration leveraging Ames expertise in biospecimen sharing to magnify the scientific impact of research informing astronaut health funded by the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Human Health Countermeasures (HHC) Element. The concept expands biospecimen sharing to one-off ground-based studies utilizing analogue space platforms (e.g., Hindlimb Unloading (HLU), Artificial Gravity) for rodent experiments, thereby significantly broadening the range of research opportunities with translational relevance for protecting human health in space and on Earth.

Biospecimen Sharing↗

Advancing Translational Space Research Through Biospecimen Sharing: Amplifying the Impact of Ground-Based Studies

Biospecimen Sharing Programs (BSPs) have been organized by NASA Ames Research Center since the 1960s with the goal of maximizing utilization and scientific return from rare, complex and costly spaceflight experiments. BSPs involve acquiring otherwise unused biological specimens from primary space research experiments for distribution to secondary experiments. Here we describe a collaboration leveraging Ames expertise in biospecimen sharing to magnify the scientific impact of research informing astronaut health funded by the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Human Health Countermeasures (HHC) Element. The concept expands biospecimen sharing to one-off ground-based studies utilizing analogue space platforms (e.g., Hind limb Unloading (HLU), Artificial Gravity) for rodent experiments, thereby significantly broadening the range of research opportunities with translational relevance for protecting human health in space and on Earth. In this presentation, we will report on biospecimens currently being acquired from HHC Award Head-Down Tilt as a Model for Intracranial and Intraocular Pressures, and Retinal Changes during Spaceflight, and their availability. The BSP add-on to the project described herein has already yielded for HHC-funded investigators more than 4,700 additional tissues that would otherwise have been discarded as waste, with additional tissues available for analysis. Young (3-mo old) male and female rats and Older (9-mo old) male rats are being exposed to HLU for either 7, 14, 28, or 90 days. Additional groups are exposed to 90 days of unloading followed by either 7, 14, 28 days or 90 days of recovery (normal loading). Comparisons are made with non-suspended controls. Unused tissues are: Skin, Lungs, Thymus, Adrenals, Kidneys, Spleen, Hindlimb Muscles (Soleus, Extensor Digitorum Longus, Tibialis Anterior, Plantaris Gastrocnemius), Fat Pads, Reproductive Organs, and Intestines. Tissues are harvested, weighed, preserved then archived (with metadata) using a sample tracking system (CryoTrack). Preservation techniques include snap-freezing and RNALatersnap-freezing. Specimens were weighed at the time of dissection, and organ mass: body mass ratios analyzed to determine unloading effects across conditions and durations. The results corroborate previously reported effects of short-term exposure to microgravity or unloading exposure on various organs, and provide new insights into adaptation to long-duration unloading relevant to sustained spaceflight exposures on ISS. Supported by the Human Research Program (HRP) Human Health Countermeasures (HHC) Element and NASA Grant NNX13AD94G (CAF).

rodent↗

Airplane Capabilities: Translating Non-Normal Information for Operational Decision-Making

We consider how a jet transport airplane interface supports the flight crew in managing airplane system failures (or non-normals) for continued safe flight and landing. The existing state of the art starts with a list of airplane system component failures and asks the flight crew to determine, with the help of non-normal procedures, the operational consequences of those failures. As airplane systems become more complex and interconnected, the flight crew's ability to determine operational consequences will become inadequate. We describe an approach that attempts to translate airplane system failures directly into airplane "capabilities," which is a set of basic airplane functions, such as the ability to stop after landing. This paper describes the overall framework for supporting flight crews in operational decision making and the initial efforts to develop a language and display concepts.

managing airplane system non-normals↗

Advancing Translational Space Research Through Biospecimen Sharing: Amplified Impact of Studies Utilizing Analogue Space Platforms

Biospecimen Sharing Programs (BSPs) have been organized by NASA Ames Research Center since the 1960s with the goal of maximizing utilization and scientific return from rare, complex and costly spaceflight experiments. BSPs involve acquiring otherwise unused biological specimens from primary space research experiments for distribution to secondary experiments. Here we describe a collaboration leveraging Ames expertise in biospecimen sharing to magnify the scientific impact of research informing astronaut health funded by the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Human Health Countermeasures (HHC) Element. The concept expands biospecimen sharing to one-off ground-based studies utilizing analogue space platforms (e.g., Hindlimb Unloading (HLU), Artificial Gravity) for rodent experiments, thereby significantly broadening the range of research opportunities with translational relevance for protecting human health in space and on Earth. In this presentation, we will report on biospecimens currently being acquired from HHC Award Head-Down Tilt as a Model for Intracranial and Intraocular Pressures, and Retinal Changes during Spaceflight, and their availability. The BSP add-on to the project described herein has already yielded for HHC-funded investigators more than 4,700 additional tissues that would otherwise have been discarded as waste, with additional tissues available for analysis. Young (3-mo old) male and female rats and Older (9-mo old) male rats are being exposed to HLU for either 7, 14, 28, or 90 days. Additional groups are exposed to 90 days of unloading followed by either 7, 14, 28 days or 90 days of recovery (normal loading). Comparisons are made with non-suspended controls. Unused tissues are: Skin, Lungs, Thymus, Adrenals, Kidneys, Spleen, Hindlimb Muscles (Soleus, Extensor Digitorum Longus, Tibialis Anterior, Plantaris Gastrocnemius), Fat Pads, Reproductive Organs, and Intestines. Tissues are harvested, weighed, preserved then archived (with metadata) using a sample tracking system (CryoTrack). Preservation techniques include snap-freezing and RNALatersnap-freezing. Specimens were weighed at the time of dissection, and organ mass:body mass ratios analyzed to determine unloading effects across conditions and durations. The results corroborate previously reported effects of short-term exposure to microgravity or unloading exposure on various organs, and provide new insights into adaptation to long-duration unloading relevant to sustained spaceflight exposures on ISS.

biospecimen sharing↗

Translational Cell & Animal Research in Space 1965-2011

Translational Cell and Animal Research (TCAR). For nearly 50 years, the NASA Space Biology Program has funded, and Ames Research Center (ARC) has managed, a robust program of fundamental research including studies using a wide range of animal cells, tissues and organisms. Much of this research was conducted on spacecraft in microgravity environments including diverse platforms such as: Gemini Spacecraft, US Biosatellites, Apollo Command Modules, Skylabs, Russian Biosatellites, NASA Space Shuttles, NASA/Mir, and most recently, the International Space Station (ISS). During the Space Shuttle Era (1981–2011), the science of space biology took an enormous step forward with 45 missions that afforded researchers with new opportunities to conduct systematic and complex experiments aimed at a deeper understanding of how life adapts to the space environment. Beginning in the 1990s, the products of these experiments, comprised of research summaries and rare, unused biospecimens, were collected and catalogued within the ARC Life Sciences Data Archiving Office, a branch of NASA’s Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA) managed from the NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center.

Ronca, April E.↗

NASA’s Mid-Atlantic Communities and Areas at Intensive Risk Demonstration: Translating Compounding Hazards to Societal Risk

Remote sensing provides a unique perspective on our dynamic planet, tracking changes and revealing the course of complex interactions. Long term monitoring and targeted observation combine with modeling and mapping to provide increased awareness of hydro-meteorological and geological hazards. Disasters often follow hazards and the goal of NASA’s Disasters Program is to look at the earth as a highly coupled system to reduce risk and enable resilience. Remote sensing and geospatial science are used as tools to help answer critical questions that inform decisions. Data is not the same as information, nor does understanding of processes necessarily translate into decision support for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Accordingly, NASA is engaging the scientific and decision-support communities to apply remote sensing, modeling, and related applications in Communities and Areas at Intensive Risk (CAIR). In 2017, NASA’s Applied Sciences Disasters Program hosted a regional workshop to explore these issues with particular focus on coastal Virginia and North Carolina. The workshop brought together partners in academia, emergency management, and scientists from NASA and partnering federal agencies to explore capabilities among the team that could improve understanding of the physical processes related to these hazards, their potential impact to changing communities, and to identify methodologies for supporting emergency response and risk mitigation. The resulting initiative, the mid-Atlantic CAIR project, demonstrates the ability to integrate satellite derived earth observations and physical models into actionable, trusted knowledge. Severe storms and associated storm surge, sea level rise, and land subsidence coupled with increasing populations and densely populated, aging critical infrastructure often leave coastal regions and their communities extremely vulnerable. The integration of observations and models allow for a comprehensive understanding of the compounding risk experienced in coastal regions and enables individuals in all positions make risk-informed decisions. This initiative uses a representative storm surge case as a baseline to produce flood inundation maps. These maps predict building level impacts at current day and for sea level rise (SLR) and subsidence scenarios of the future in order to inform critical decisions at both the tactical and strategic levels. To accomplish this analysis, the mid-Atlantic CAIR project brings together Federal research activities with academia to examine coastal hazards in multiple ways: 1) reanalysis of impacts from 2011 Hurricane Irene, using numerical weather modeling in combination with coastal surge and hydrodynamic, urban inundation modeling to evaluate combined impact scenarios considering SLR and subsidence, 2) remote sensing of flood extent from available optical imagery, 3) adding value to remotely sensed flood maps through depth predictions, and 4) examining coastal subsidence as measured through time-series analysis of synthetic aperture radar observations. Efforts and results are published via ArcGIS story maps to communicate neighborhoods and infrastructure most vulnerable to changing conditions. Story map features enable time-aware flood mapping using hydrodynamic models, photographic comparison of flooding following Hurricane Irene, as well as visualization of heightened risk in the future due to SLR and land subsidence.

Rogers, Laura↗

Virtual Sensing with Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation

Earth observing satellites carrying multi-spectral sensors are widely used to monitor the physical and biological states of the atmosphere, land, and oceans. These satellites have different vantage points above the earth and different spectral imaging bands resulting in inconsistent imagery from one to another. This presents challenges in building downstream applications. What if we could generate synthetic bands for existing satellites from the union of all domains? We tackle the problem of generating synthetic spectral imagery for multispectral sensors as an unsupervised image-to-image translation problem with partial labels and introduce a novel shared spectral reconstruction loss. Simulated experiments performed by dropping one or more spectral bands show that cross-domain reconstruction outperforms measurements obtained from a second vantage point. On a downstream cloud detection task, we show that generating synthetic bands with our model improves segmentation performance beyond our baseline. Our proposed approach enables synchronization of multispectral data and provides a basis for more homogeneous remote sensing datasets.

Geostationary satellites↗

A Flexible Statechart-to-model-checker Translator

Many current-day software design tools offer some variant of statechart notation for system specification. We, like others, have built an automatic translator from (a subset of) statecharts to a model checker, for use to validate behavioral requirements.

statecharts↗

Spectral Synthesis for Geostationary Satellite-to-Satellite Translation

Earth-observing satellites carrying multispectral sensors are widely used to monitor the physical and biological states of the atmosphere, land, and oceans. These satellites have different vantage points above the Earth and different spectral imaging bands resulting in inconsistent imagery from one to another. This presents challenges in building downstream applications. What if we could generate synthetic bands for existing satellites from the union of all domains? We tackle the problem of generating synthetic spectral imagery for multispectral sensors as an unsupervised image-to-image translation problem modeled with a variational autoencoder (VAE) and generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture. Our approach introduces a novel shared spectral reconstruction loss to constrain the high-dimensional feature space of multispectral images. Simulated experiments performed by dropping one or more spectral bands show that cross-domain reconstruction outperforms measurements obtained from a second vantage point. Our proposed approach enables the synchronization of multispectral data and provides a basis for more homogeneous remote sensing datasets.

Geostationary satellites↗

Topical: Reverse Translation Strategies to Support Cognitive and Behavioral Risk Characterization

A coordinated suite of measurements to assess humans and animals needs to be established to support the translation and harmonization of animal research data to the astronaut corps due to the necessity of using animal subjects for radiation testing. The identification of POLs and PELs for spaceflight stressors (i.e. space radiation, altered gravity, isolation and confinement, sleep disruption) individually and combined will depend on defining scaling factors or transfer functions that can be used to relate human and animal outcomes.

Gregory Nelson↗

Baseline Medical System Translation for the Impact Medical Database

NASA has developed a new evidence-based data-driven probabilistic risk assessment and tradespace analysis tool as a successor to the Integrated Medical Model (IMM). This updated decision support tool is known as IMPACT (Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces). Whereas IMM focuses on the resources and risks associated with International Space Station (ISS) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions, IMPACT estimates the frequency and consequences of medical conditions that might arise during exploration missions. One of the services offered by IMM is a series of generic or baseline medical systems associated with typical mission types or DRMs (Design Reference Missions), such that requestors may prioritize questions pertaining to the mission itself over the medical supplies indicated by the model outputs for that DRM. In a mission focused request, the appropriate baseline medical system is used in place of a prepared or optimized medical kit. In preparation, an effort was undertaken to create baseline systems of medical resources within IMPACT suitable for typical DRMs. Using an existing baseline medical system within IMM’s Integrated Medical Evidence Database (iMED) as a starting point, the resources found within the medical kit were compared to and substituted for equivalent resources available within the IMPACT MD (Medical Database). In consultation with clinicians with knowledge of IMPACT’s MD, each resource was matched as closely as possible to a similarly purposed resource in IMPACT, seeking to preserve the treatment capabilities and procedures offered by the IMM medical system while reconciling the differences in modeled resources and medical conditions between the models. To demonstrate the efficacy of this work, a prototype ISS medical system in IMPACT was translated from the baseline used in the IMM. The appropriate medical system was then run through its associated medical model to compare and validate the resultant risks and risk mitigation provided by each baseline ISS medical kit.

S Schwartz↗

Apparatus and method for neighborhood-aware virtual to physical address translations

An apparatus and method performs neighborhood-aware virtual to physical address translations. A coalescing opportunity for a first virtual address is determined, based on completing a memory access corresponding to a page walk for a second virtual address. Metadata corresponding to the first virtual address is provided to a page table walk buffer based on the coalescing opportunity and a page walk for the first virtual address is performed based on the metadata corresponding to the first virtual address.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

CCAMP: An Integrated Translation and Optimization Framework for OpenACC and OpenMP

Heterogeneous computing and exploration into specialized accelerators are inevitable in current and future supercomputers. Although this diversity of devices is promising for performance, the array of architectures presents programming challenges. High-level programming strategies have emerged to face these challenges, such as the OpenMP offloading model and OpenACC. The varying levels of support for these standards, however, within vendor-specific and open-source tools, as well as the lack of performance portability across devices, have prevented the standards from achieving their goals. To address these shortcomings, we present CCAMP, an OpenMP and OpenACC interoperable framework. CCAMP provides two primary facilities: language translation between the two standards and device-specific directive optimization within each standard. We show that by using the CCAMP framework, programmers can easily transplant non-portable code into new ecosystems for new architectures. Additionally, by using CCAMP device-specific directive optimizations, users can achieve optimized performance across architectures using a single source code.

Lambert, Jacob↗

Beam Loss Monitoring with Fixed and Translating Scintillation Detectors Along the Fermilab Drift-tube Linac

The Fermilab Linac is a roughly 145 meter linear accelerator that accelerates H- beam from 750 keV to 400 MeV and provides beam for the Booster and the rest of the accelerator chain. The first section of the Linac is a Drift-Tube Linac (DTL), which in its current state, suffers from a lack of instrumentation along its length. As a result, operational staff do not have access to the diagnostic information needed to tune the critical components of this accelerator, such as the quadrupole magnets within the drift tubes. This work presents an effort to utilize both fixed and translating scintillation detectors to investigate beam loss along the first two cavities of the DTL.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

At a Glance: Electric Vehicles (French Translation)

Electric vehicles (EVs) include all-electric vehicles - also referred to as battery electric vehicles (BEVs) - and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). This is the French translation of NREL/FS-5400-87123 (https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/87123.pdf).

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗