Reducing the complexity of NASA's space communications infrastructure

This report describes the range of activities performed during the annual reporting period in support of the NASA Code O Success Team - Lifecycle Effectiveness for Strategic Success (COST LESS) team. The overall goal of the COST LESS team is to redefine success in a constrained fiscal environment and reduce the cost of success for end-to-end mission operations. This goal is more encompassing than the original proposal made to NASA for reducing complexity of NASA's Space Communications Infrastructure. The COST LESS team approach for reengineering the space operations infrastructure has a focus on reversing the trend of engineering special solutions to similar problems

The Effects of a Reading Comprehension Intervention Package on Increasing Third Grade Students\u27 Comprehension Skills

Increasing students\u27 reading comprehension involves the use of targeted strategies and effective instruction. Previous research has shown that instruction in individual skills such as vocabulary acquisition, reading fluency, writing, and story mapping help increases students\u27 reading comprehension. However, few studies have explored combining these skills and their cumulative effects, if any, on reading comprehension. The purpose of this quasi-experimental secondary analysis study was to examine the effects of adding a reading comprehension instruction package (RCIP), which includes vocabulary acquisition, reading fluency, and writing, to instruction in story mapping alone. Constructivist theory was used as the theoretical framework for this study. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 8 students with low reading achievement as indicated by their performances on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The single-case, multiple-probe design across subjects was used to intermittently collect data, which were the correct responses per 3 minutes using the Curriculum Based Measure-Reading Maze. The data were visually analyzed by looking at data points and trend lines directionality using the percentage nonoverlapping data along with the Cohen\u27s d effect size. Although this study showed mixed results and were not statistically significant, it could still contribute to positive social change. The findings have a small to medium effect size impact on students\u27 reading comprehension; 3 out of 4 students who completed the study surpassed their expected goal. The results from this study may provide teachers with tools for improving the foundational reading skills of struggling readers, thus enabling their students to succeed in school and become productive members of society

Flexible Integration and Efficient Analysis of Multidimensional Datasets from the Web

If numeric data from the Web are brought together, natural scientists can compare climate measurements with estimations, financial analysts can evaluate companies based on balance sheets and daily stock market values, and citizens can explore the GDP per capita from several data sources. However, heterogeneities and size of data remain a problem. This work presents methods to query a uniform view - the Global Cube - of available datasets from the Web and builds on Linked Data query approaches

Head Start Teacher Professional Development on Language Modeling and Children\u27s Language Development: A Sequential Mixed Methods Design

Poverty is known to affect many areas of life for poor children, particularly young children’s language development. To address language development issues as well as other educational needs, the Head Start Program was created. The purpose of this sequential mixed-methods study was to describe the professional development experiences of Head Start teachers on language modeling. In addition, this study sought to explore teachers’ views on language modeling and the activities they find most effective to support student learning. Analysis of the data revealed that teachers wanted more training and workshops, to be paired with a mentor/coach, pay raises for achieving higher education, strategies for working with children, and encouragement from administration to effectively achieve their professional development plans and goals. Additionally, teachers demonstrated an understanding of the importance of language modeling for children to build vocabulary, to improve school readiness goals, and to communicate and express their needs. Finally, teachers felt very strongly that they use frequent conversations, wait for student responses during conversations, use back and forth conversations, encourage peer conversations, use more than one word as well as a variety of words to support children’s language development. Findings from this study may be utilized to provide the necessary support teachers need to improve their language modeling skills and to help programs in their planning and evaluation of an ongoing professional development model. This study adds to the literature on bridging the gap between learning about practices and using them in the classroom to improve children’s language development by including teacher voices into their professional development and how to effectively implement coaching practices to promote teacher knowledge and skills

Software service adaptation based on interface localisation

The aim of Web services is the provision of software services to a range of different users in different locations. Service localisation in this context can facilitate the internationalisation and localisation of services by allowing their adaption to different locales. The authors investigate three dimensions: (i) lingual localisation by providing service-level language translation techniques to adopt services to different languages, (ii) regulatory localisation by providing standards-based mappings to achieve regulatory compliance with regionally varying laws, standards and regulations, and (iii) social localisation by taking into account preferences and customs for individuals and the groups or communities in which they participate. The objective is to support and implement an explicit modelling of aspects that are relevant to localisation and runtime support consisting of tools and middleware services to automating the deployment based on models of locales, driven by the two localisation dimensions. The authors focus here on an ontology-based conceptual information model that integrates locale specification into service architectures in a coherent way

The Operationalization of the Language Curriculum in Half-day and Full-day Kindergarten

This thesis describes a qualitative case study that examined the intended and operationalized kindergarten Language curriculum in one Ontario half-day kindergarten classroomandonefull-daykindergartenclassroom. Theresearchquestionswere:What are the components o f an operationalized curriculum in a half-day and full-day Ontario kindergarten program? How did each operationalized curriculum differ from the intended curriculum as outlined in the teacher’s day plans? How did curricula vary across program types? I also asked teachers to comment on challenges encountered as they operationalized their intended Language curriculum. The analysis drew on observational field notes, interviews with two kindergarten teachers, and day plans prepared by the teachers. Data were categorized using the research questions as expected themes and again using Schwab’s five curriculum commonplaces. Both classrooms were culturally and linguistically diverse, but the needs of English language learners were not explicitlyaddressedintheprogramdocumentsorthecurricula. Eachteacherfeltthatshe was able to address all the Language expectations in the two-year program, but the teacher in the half-day program felt challenged to provide support to individual children and was able to schedule little time for social interaction and child-initiated play-based learning. The data suggests that the full-day program afforded more time to address the Language expectations in authentic ways, but having an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) as a teaching partner made a more noticeable difference to the curriculum than having more time

Advancing automation and robotics technology for the Space Station Freedom and for the US economy

In April 1985, as required by Public Law 98-371, the NASA Advanced Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) reported to Congress the results of its studies on advanced automation and robotics technology for use on the Freedom space station. This material was documented in the initial report (NASA Technical Memorandum 87566). A further requirement of the law was that ATAC follow NASA's progress in this area and report to Congress semiannually. This report is the seventh in a series of progress updates and covers the period between April 1, 1988 and September 30, 1988. NASA has accepted the basic recommendations of ATAC for its Space Station Freedom efforts. ATAC and NASA agree that the thrust of Congress is to build an advanced automation and robotics technology base that will support an evolutionary Space Station Freedom program and serve as a highly visible stimulator, affecting the U.S. long-term economy. The progress report identifies the work of NASA and the Freedom study contractors. It also describes research in progress, and it makes assessments of the advancement of automation and robotics technology on the Freedom space station

Reusing dynamic data marts for query management in an on-demand ETL architecture

Data analysts working often have a requirement to integrate an in-house data warehouse with external datasets, especially web-based datasets. Doing so can give them important insights into their performance when compared with competitors, their industry in general on a global scale, and make predictions as to sales, providing important decision support services. The quality of these insights depends on the quality of the data imported into the analysis dataset. There is a wealth of data freely available from government sources online but little unity between data sources, leading to a requirement for a data processing layer wherein various types of quality issues and heterogeneities can be resolved. Traditionally, this is achieved with an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) series of processes which are performed on all of the available data, in advance, in a batch process typically run outside of business hours. While this is recognized as a powerful knowledge-based support, it is very expensive to build and maintain, and is very costly to update, in the event that new data sources become available. On-demand ETL offers a solution in that data is only acquired when needed and new sources can be added as they come online. However, this form of dynamic ETL is very difficult to deliver. In this research dissertation, we explore the possibilities of creating dynamic data marts which can be created using non-warehouse data to support the inclusion of new sources. We then examine how these dynamic structures can be used for query fulfillment andhow they can support an overall on-demand query mechanism. At each step of the research and development, we employ a robust validation using a real-world data warehouse from the agricultural domain with selected Agri web sources to test the dynamic elements of the proposed architecture

Investigation Of Tactile Displays For Robot To Human Communication

Improvements in autonomous systems technology and a growing demand within military operations are spurring a revolution in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). These mixed-initiative human-robot teams are enabled by Multi-Modal Communication (MMC), which supports redundancy and levels of communication that are more robust than single mode interaction. (Bischoff & Graefe, 2002; Partan & Marler, 1999). Tactile communication via vibrotactile displays is an emerging technology, potentially beneficial to advancing HRI. Incorporation of tactile displays within MMC requires developing messages equivalent in communication power to speech and visual signals used in the military. Toward that end, two experiments were performed to investigate the feasibility of a tactile language using a lexicon of standardized tactons (tactile icons) within a sentence structure for communication of messages for robot to human communication. Experiment one evaluated tactons from the literature with standardized parameters grouped into categories (directional, dynamic, and static) based on the nature and meaning of the patterns to inform design of a tactile syntax. Findings of this experiment revealed directional tactons showed better performance than non-directional tactons, therefore syntax for experiment two composed of a non-directional and a directional tacton was more likely to show performance better than chance. Experiment two tested the syntax structure of equally performing tactons identified from experiment one, revealing participants’ ability to interpret tactile sentences better than chance with or without the presence of an independent work imperative task. This finding advanced the state of the art in tactile displays from one to two word phrases facilitating inclusion of the tactile modality within MMC for HR