Evaluation of aerosolized medications during parabolic flight maneuvers

The goal was to visually evaluate the effect gravity has on delivery of medications by the use of various aerosol devices. During parabolic flight the same four aerosols were retested as performed in studio ground tests. It appears that the Cetacaine spray and the Ventolin inhaler function without failure during all test. The pump spray (Nostril) appeared to function normally when the container was full, however it appeared to begin to fail to deliver a full mist with larger droplet size when the container was nearly empty. The simple hand spray bottle appeared to work when the container was full and performed progressively worse as the container was emptied. During Apollo flights, it was reported that standard spray bottles did not work well, however, they did not indicate why. It appears that we would also conclude that standard spray bottles do not function as well in zero gravity by failing to produce a normal mist spray. The standard spray bottle allowed the fluid to come out in a narrow fluid stream when held with the nozzle either level or slightly tilted upward

The Hydrogeology and Water Supply Problems in North-Central Chile

The north-central zone of Chile is described with respect to groundwater supply problems. In this region, groundwater is almost exclusively obtained from the thin alluvium in the main transverse valleys, which descend from the Andes in those sections where the valleys cross the northerly trending "central valley." Because of the steep groundwater gradients prevailing, the groundwater resources are closely related to seasonal recharge. As the area is arid to semiarid and has been showing indications of increasing aridity over the past few years, water supply problems are proving to be a serious development constraint. Throughout the area, many examples of insufficient water supply may be encountered, and the problems of water use management and the utilization for industrial purposes of supplies such as seawater, brines, and sewage are now being considered

ATLS-stowage and deployment testing of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals

The objective is to evaluate stowage and deployment methods for the Health Maintenance Facility (HMF) during microgravity. The specific objectives of this experiment are: (1) to evaluate the stowage and deployment mechanisms for the medical supplies; and (2) to evaluate the procedures for performing medical scenarios. To accomplish these objectives, the HMF test mini-racks will contain medical equipment mounted in the racks; and self-contained drawers with various mechanisms for stowing and deploying items. The medical supplies and pharmaceuticals will be destowed, handled, and restowed. The in-flight test procedures and other aspects of the KC-135 parabolic flight test to simulate weightlessness are presented

Probabilities on Sentences in an Expressive Logic

Automated reasoning about uncertain knowledge has many applications. One difficulty when developing such systems is the lack of a completely satisfactory integration of logic and probability. We address this problem directly. Expressive languages like higher-order logic are ideally suited for representing and reasoning about structured knowledge. Uncertain knowledge can be modeled by using graded probabilities rather than binary truth-values. The main technical problem studied in this paper is the following: Given a set of sentences, each having some probability of being true, what probability should be ascribed to other (query) sentences? A natural wish-list, among others, is that the probability distribution (i) is consistent with the knowledge base, (ii) allows for a consistent inference procedure and in particular (iii) reduces to deductive logic in the limit of probabilities being 0 and 1, (iv) allows (Bayesian) inductive reasoning and (v) learning in the limit and in particular (vi) allows confirmation of universally quantified hypotheses/sentences. We translate this wish-list into technical requirements for a prior probability and show that probabilities satisfying all our criteria exist. We also give explicit constructions and several general characterizations of probabilities that satisfy some or all of the criteria and various (counter) examples. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions for extending beliefs about finitely many sentences to suitable probabilities over all sentences, and in particular least dogmatic or least biased ones. We conclude with a brief outlook on how the developed theory might be used and approximated in autonomous reasoning agents. Our theory is a step towards a globally consistent and empirically satisfactory unification of probability and logic.Comment: 52 LaTeX pages, 64 definiton/theorems/etc, presented at conference Progic 2011 in New Yor

Health maintenance facility system effectiveness testing

The Medical Simulations Working Group conducted a series of medical simulations to evaluate the proposed Health Maintenance Facility (HMF) Preliminary Design Review (PDR) configuration. The goal of these simulations was to test the system effectiveness of the HMF PDR configurations. The objectives of the medical simulations are to (1) ensure fulfillment of requirements with this HMF design, (2) demonstrate the conformance of the system to human engineering design criteria, and (3) determine whether undesirable design or procedural features were introduced into the design. The simulations consisted of performing 6 different medical scenarios with the HMF mockup in the KRUG laboratory. The scenarios included representative medical procedures and used a broad spectrum of HMF equipment and supplies. Scripts were written and simulations performed by medical simulations working group members under observation from others. Data were collected by means of questionnaires, debriefings, and videotapes. Results were extracted and listed in the individual reports. Specific issues and recommendations from each simulation were compiled into the individual reports. General issues regarding the PDR design of the HMF are outlined in the summary report

Permian climate change recorded in palynomorph assemblages of Mozambique (Moatize Basin, eastern Tete Province)

Abstract Knowledge of Late Permian biodiversity patterns, following the end-Guadalupian crisis, is still in its infancy, since most recent studies have focused on the end-Permian biotic crisis. The palynological record of southern Africa, however, reveals major climatic changes during the Late Permian. Here we report new palynological data from eastern Tete Province of Mozambique, documenting the change from cool to warm temperate climates during the Lopingian. This prominent climate signal was also detected recently in other depositional environments elsewhere in southern Africa, and thus enables interregional temporal correlations.</jats:p

Robustness of adiabatic quantum computation

We study the fault tolerance of quantum computation by adiabatic evolution, a quantum algorithm for solving various combinatorial search problems. We describe an inherent robustness of adiabatic computation against two kinds of errors, unitary control errors and decoherence, and we study this robustness using numerical simulations of the algorithm.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, REVTe

Reusable, set-based selection algorithm for matched control groups

ABSTRACT Aims The wealth of data available in linked administrative datasets offers great potential for research, but researchers face methodological and computational challenges in data preparation, due to the size and complexity of the data. The creation of matched control groups in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank illustrates this point: SAIL contains multiple health datasets describing millions of individuals in Wales. The volume of data creates the potential for more precise matching, but only if an appropriate algorithm can be applied. We aimed to create such an algorithm for reuse by many research projects. Methods We developed set-based code in SQL that efficiently selects matches from millions of potential combinations in a relational database environment. It is parameterized to allow different matching criteria to be employed as needed, including follow-up time around an index event. A combinatorial optimisation problem occurs when a potential control could match more than one subject, which we solved by ranking potential match pairs first by subject with the fewest potential matches, then by closeness of the match. Results One example of the algorithm’s use was the Suicide Information Database Cymru, an electronic case-control study on suicide in Wales between 2003 and 2011. Subjects who had a cause of death recorded as self-harm were each matched to twenty controls who were alive at the subject’s date of death and had the same gender and similar birth week. The rate of matching success was >99.9%, with all subjects but one matching the full twenty controls. >99.99% of the matched controls had a week of birth that was identical to the subject. The second example was a matched cohort study looking at hospital admissions and type 1 diabetes, using the Brecon register of childhood diabetes in Wales, with matching based on week of birth within two weeks, gender, county of residence, deprivation quintile, and residence in Wales at time of diagnosis. This study had a matching rate of 98.9%; 97.5% of subjects matched to five controls, and 69.8% of matches had the same week of birth. Conclusions This algorithm provides good matching performance while executing efficiently and scalably on large datasets. Its implementation as reusable code will facilitate more efficient, high-quality research in SAIL. Instead of spending many hours developing a custom solution, analysts can execute parameterized code in a few minutes. We hope it to be useful more widely beyond SAIL as well