Ergometer

An ergometer is described that has a pedal driven direct current motor as a load and includes a frame for supporting the body of a person in either a sitting or a prone position. The pedals may be operated by either the feet or the hands. The electrical circuitry of the ergometer includes means for limiting the load applied to the pedals as a function of work being performed, heart rate, and increases in heart rate

Mobile automatic metabolic analyzer

Two flexible pipes, attached to face mask, are connected to spirometers in mobile cart. Inhaled air volume is measured as it is drawn from one spirometer, and exhaled air volume is measured as it is breathed into second spirometer. Sensor is used to monitor heartbeat rate

Multimode ergometer system

System overcomes previous ergometer design and calibration problems including inaccurate measurements, large weight, size, and input power requirements, poor heat dissipation, high flammability, and inaccurate calibration. Device consists of lightweight, accurately controlled ergometer, restraint system, and calibration system

An operating system for future aerospace vehicle computer systems

The requirements for future aerospace vehicle computer operating systems are examined in this paper. The computer architecture is assumed to be distributed with a local area network connecting the nodes. Each node is assumed to provide a specific functionality. The network provides for communication so that the overall tasks of the vehicle are accomplished. The O/S structure is based upon the concept of objects. The mechanisms for integrating node unique objects with node common objects in order to implement both the autonomy and the cooperation between nodes is developed. The requirements for time critical performance and reliability and recovery are discussed. Time critical performance impacts all parts of the distributed operating system; e.g., its structure, the functional design of its objects, the language structure, etc. Throughout the paper the tradeoffs - concurrency, language structure, object recovery, binding, file structure, communication protocol, programmer freedom, etc. - are considered to arrive at a feasible, maximum performance design. Reliability of the network system is considered. A parallel multipath bus structure is proposed for the control of delivery time for time critical messages. The architecture also supports immediate recovery for the time critical message system after a communication failure

Independent Orbiter Assessment (IOA): Assessment of the hydraulics/water spray boiler subsystem

The results of the Independent Orbiter Assessment (IOA) of the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Critical Items List (CIL) are presented. The IOA effort first completed an analysis of the Hydraulics/Water Spray Boiler (HYD/WSB) hardware, generating draft failure modes and potential critical items. To preserve independence, this analysis was accomplished without reliance upon the results contained within the NASA FMEA/CIL documentation. The IOA results were then compared to the NASA FMEA/CIL baseline with proposed Post 51-L updates included. A resolution of each discrepancy from the comparison is provided through additional analysis as required. This report documents the results of that comparison for the Orbiter HYD/WSB hardware. The IOA product for the HYD/WSB analysis consisted of 447 failure mode worksheets that resulted in 183 potential critical items being identified. Comparison was made to the NASA baseline which consisted of 364 FMEAs and 111 CIL items. This comparison produced agreement on all but 68 FMEAs which caused differences in 23 CIL items

Graying of the Professoriate Reconsidered: The Impact of Demographics on Criminal Justice Education

The demographic composition, especially the age structure of criminal justice faculty, is of interest to students in criminal justice education for a number of reasons. First, an overall assessment provides some gauge of the relative age of the faculty in the field. Second, observations of changes in the composition of the age structure over time provide insight into the aging process and attendant developmental process of the field itself. Third, age composition has a major impact on the job market for criminal justice faculty. This of course, in turn, partially determines career possibilities for neophytes in the field. It also serves as a major factor in setting the limits of both vertical and horizontal faculty career mobility. Fourth, age composition has a direct bearing on potential for improving the quality of criminal justice education

Impact Remediation: Optimal Interventions to Reduce Inequality

A significant body of research in the data sciences considers unfair discrimination against social categories such as race or gender that could occur or be amplified as a result of algorithmic decisions. Simultaneously, real-world disparities continue to exist, even before algorithmic decisions are made. In this work, we draw on insights from the social sciences and humanistic studies brought into the realm of causal modeling and constrained optimization, and develop a novel algorithmic framework for tackling pre-existing real-world disparities. The purpose of our framework, which we call the "impact remediation framework," is to measure real-world disparities and discover the optimal intervention policies that could help improve equity or access to opportunity for those who are underserved with respect to an outcome of interest. We develop a disaggregated approach to tackling pre-existing disparities that relaxes the typical set of assumptions required for the use of social categories in structural causal models. Our approach flexibly incorporates counterfactuals and is compatible with various ontological assumptions about the nature of social categories. We demonstrate impact remediation with a real-world case study and compare our disaggregated approach to an existing state-of-the-art approach, comparing its structure and resulting policy recommendations. In contrast to most work on optimal policy learning, we explore disparity reduction itself as an objective, explicitly focusing the power of algorithms on reducing inequality

Causal Dependence Plots

Explaining artificial intelligence or machine learning models is increasingly important. To use such data-driven systems wisely we must understand how they interact with the world, including how they depend causally on data inputs. In this work we develop Causal Dependence Plots (CDPs) to visualize how one variable--an outcome--depends on changes in another variable--a predictor--$\textit{along with any consequent causal changes in other predictor variables}$. Crucially, CDPs differ from standard methods based on holding other predictors constant or assuming they are independent. CDPs make use of an auxiliary causal model because causal conclusions require causal assumptions. With simulations and real data experiments, we show CDPs can be combined in a modular way with methods for causal learning or sensitivity analysis. Since people often think causally about input-output dependence, CDPs can be powerful tools in the xAI or interpretable machine learning toolkit and contribute to applications like scientific machine learning and algorithmic fairness

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument Plant Community Composition and Structure Monitoring, 2011 Annual Report

Executive Summary The Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network (NGPN) was established to develop and provide scientifically credible information on the current status and long-term trends of the composition, structure, and function of ecosystems in thirteen parks located in five northern Great Plains states. NGPN identified upland plant communities, exotic plant early detection, and riparian lowland communities as vital signs that can be used to better understand the condition of terrestrial park ecosystems (Gitzen et al. 2010). Upland and riparian ecosystems are important targets for vegetation monitoring because the status and trends in plant communities provide critical insights into the status and trends of other biotic components within those ecosystems. In 2011, NGPN began plant community monitoring in Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (AGFO). We visited six long-term monitoring plots from June 13-16th, 2011, and recorded a total of 109 vascular plant species. This effort was the first year in a multiple-year venture to understand the status of upland plant communities in AGFO. At the end of five years, there will be an in-depth report describing the status of the plant community. In 2013, we will also revisit legacy plots that were established as part of the Prairie Cluster prototype monitoring. In this report, we provide a simple summary of our results from sampling in 2011. We found the following: • There was considerable variation among plots, but on average bare soil was one-third of ground cover. The absolute vascular plant cover was high due to a wet spring and early summer. Grasses and sedges made up the bulk of vascular plant cover at all sites. • The sites at AGFO had a large diversity of vascular plants. Average native species richness in the 10 m2 plots was 15 ± 2.9 species. Forbs, or broad-leaved herbaceous plants, were more diverse than graminoids, despite making up less of the total cover. • Exotic species occurred in all six plots we visited; however, the relative cover of exotics species was less than 10% across the plots. • The most common disturbance in plots at AGFO was small mammal burrowing, which occurred at four of the six sites

When will I get my paper back? A replication study of publication timelines for health professions education research.

INTRODUCTION: Biomedical researchers have lamented the lengthy timelines from manuscript submission to publication and highlighted potential detrimental effects on scientific progress and scientists\u27 careers. In 2015, Himmelstein identified the mean time from manuscript submission to acceptance in biomedicine as approximately 100 days. The length of publication timelines in health professions education (HPE) is currently unknown. METHODS: This study replicates Himmelstein\u27s work with a sample of 14 HPE journals published between 2008-2018. Using PubMed, 19,182 article citations were retrieved. Open metadata for each were downloaded, including the date the article was received by the journal, date the authors resubmitted revisions, date the journal accepted the article, and date of entry into PubMed. Journals without publication history metadata were excluded. RESULTS: Publication history data were available for 55% (n = 8) of the journals sampled. The publication histories of 4,735 (25%) articles were analyzed. Mean time from: (1) author submission to journal acceptance was 180.93 days (SD = 103.89), (2) author submission to posting on PubMed was 263.55 days (SD = 157.61), and (3) journal acceptance to posting on PubMed was 83.15 days (SD = 135.72). DISCUSSION: This study presents publication metadata for journals that openly provide it-a first step towards understanding publication timelines in HPE. Findings confirm the replicability of the original study, and the limited data suggest that, in comparison to biomedical scientists broadly, medical educators may experience longer wait times for article acceptance and publication. Reasons for these delays are currently unknown and deserve further study; such work would be facilitated by increased public access to journal metadata