Report of the committee on a commercially developed space facility

Major facilities that could support significant microgravity research and applications activity are discussed. The ground-based facilities include drop towers, aircraft flying parabolic trajectories, and sounding rockets. Facilities that are intrinsically tied to the Space Shuttle range from Get-Away-Special canisters to Spacelab long modules. There are also orbital facilities which include recoverable capsules launched on expendable launch vehicles, free-flying spacecraft, and space stations. Some of these existing, planned, and proposed facilities are non-U.S. in origin, but potentially available to U.S. investigators. In addition, some are governmentally developed and operated whereas others are planned to be privately developed and/or operated. Tables are provided to show the facility, developer, duration, estimated gravity level, crew interaction, flight frequency, year available, power to payload, payload volume, and maximum payload mass. The potential of direct and indirect benefits of manufacturing in space are presented

Integrating best practice and filling knowledge gaps in remote Aboriginal diabetes detection and care: Improving case detection and service delivery

This pilot project will provide detailed feedback on the results of previous studies to participating services. During discussions with clinic and management staff, barriers and enablers to implementing a new screening protocol using HbA1c testing will be determined. The project will also conduct a clinical systems and software / data quality needs assessment at participating sites, documenting strategies to improve diabetes programs and monitor short term changes resulting from the audit.The research reported in this paper is a project of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute which is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing under the Primary Health Care Research Evaluation and Development Strategy

Loss of DOK2 induces carboplatin resistance in ovarian cancer via suppression of apoptosis

Objective. Ovarian cancers are highly heterogeneous and while chemotherapy is the preferred treatment many patients are intrinsically resistant or quickly develop resistance. Furthermore, all tumors that recur ultimately become resistant. Recent evidence suggests that epigenetic deregulation may be a key factor in the onset and maintenance of chemoresistance. We set out to identify epigenetically silenced genes that affect chemoresistance. Methods. The epigenomes of a total of 45 ovarian samples were analyzed to identify epigenetically altered genes that segregate with platinum response, and further filtered with expression data to identify genes that were suppressed. A tissue culture carboplatin resistance screen was utilized to functionally validate this set of candidate platinum resistance genes. Results. Our screen correctly identified 19 genes that when suppressed altered the chemoresistance of the cells in culture. Of the genes identified in the screen we further characterized one gene, docking protein 2 (DOK2), an adapter protein downstream of tyrosine kinase, to determine if we could elucidate the mechanism by which it increased resistance. The loss of DOK2 decreased the level of apoptosis in response to carboplatin. Furthermore, in cells with reduced DOK2, the level of anoikis was decreased. Conclusions. We have developed a screening methodology that analyzes the epigenome and informatically identifies candidate genes followed by in vitro culture screening of the candidate genes. To validate our screening methodology we further characterized one candidate gene, DOK2, and showed that loss of DOK2 induces chemotherapy resistance by decreasing the level of apoptosis in response to treatment. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Mothers of Soldiers in Wartime: A National News Narrative

National news media represent mothers of US combat soldiers in the Iraq War as archetypal good mothers, that is, mothers who continue their maternal work even after their children are deployed. However, not all mothers are depicted as the archetypal patriotic mother, i.e., a good mother who is also stoic and silent about the war and her child\u27s role in it. Mothers of soldiers are portrayed as good mothers who sometimes also voice their attitudes about the war effort. The maternal attitudes ranged from complete support for the war to opposition to the war but support for the soldiers. The findings suggest a picture of wartime motherhood that is more nuanced than the historical image of the patriotic mother suggests

Trust, morality and altruism in the donation of biological material : the case of Portugal

This paper examines a number of social, ethical and cultural issues related to the application of biotechnology. The focus of the paper relies on two different cases of governing biotechnology in Portugal, referring to donation of biological material: the act of donation of eggs and sperm; and volunteers for donation of DNA material for the forensic national DNA database. We analyze the discourses on donation of biological material framing them in rhetorical devices of gift, altruism, informed consent and social responsibility. This comes blended with still unclear and emergent regulation and policies of access, retention, preservation and governing of biological material and of donors’ identification. The risks are mitigated by narratives of science and technology as social progress and providers of public good and health benefits, as well as by underlining the individual responsibility in this domain and by reinforcing the rhetoric of gene quality, based on socio-cultural and bio-genetic criteria

Public Exposure to U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants Induced Disasters

This study explores the potential risks associated with the 65 U.S.-based commercial nuclear power plants and the distribution of those risks among the populations of both their respective host communities and of the communities located in outlying areas. First, it starts by examining the racial/ethnic composition of the host community populations, as well as the disparities in socioeconomic status that exist, if any, between the host communities and communities located in outlying areas. Second, it utilizes two independent-sample T tests to identify any differences in the sociodemographic compositions of the two areas. Third, it explores regional demographic trends by looking at the percent change in demographic variables in the host communities and communities located in outlying areas in 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. Findings reveal that during the past two decades more people were exposed to the risks as population living in the host communities increased

A Review of NEST Models, and Their Application to Improvement of Particle Identification in Liquid Xenon Experiments

Liquid xenon is a leader in rare-event physics searches. Accurate modeling of charge and light production is key for simulating signals and backgrounds in this medium. The signal- and background-production models in the Noble Element Simulation Technique (NEST) are presented. NEST is a simulation toolkit based on experimental data, fit using simple, empirical formulae for the average charge and light yields and their variations. NEST also simulates the final scintillation pulses and exhibits the correct energy resolution as a function of the particle type, the energy, and the electric fields. After vetting of NEST against raw data, with several specific examples pulled from XENON, ZEPLIN, LUX/LZ, and PandaX, we interpolate and extrapolate its models to draw new conclusions on the properties of future detectors (e.g., XLZD's), in terms of the best possible discrimination of electron(ic) recoil backgrounds from a potential nuclear recoil signal, especially WIMP dark matter. We discover that the oft-quoted value of 99.5% discrimination is overly conservative, demonstrating that another order of magnitude improvement (99.95% discrimination) can be achieved with a high photon detection efficiency (g1 ~ 15-20%) at reasonably achievable drift fields of 200-350 V/cm.Comment: 24 Pages, 6 Tables, 15 Figures, and 15 Equation