Sustainable Human Presence on the Moon using In Situ Resources

New capabilities, technologies and infrastructure must be developed to enable a sustained human presence on the moon and beyond. The key to having this permanent presence is the utilization of in situ resources. To this end, NASA is investigating how in situ resources can be utilized to improve mission success by reducing up-mass, improving safety, reducing risk, and bringing down costs for the overall mission. To ensure that this capability is available when needed, technology development is required now. NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is supporting this endeavor, along with other NASA centers, by exploring how lunar regolith can be mined for uses such as construction, life support, propulsion, power, and fabrication. Efforts at MSFC include development of lunar regolith simulant for hardware testing and development, extraction of oxygen and other materials from the lunar regolith, production of parts and tools on the moon from local materials or from provisioned feedstocks, and capabilities to show that produced parts are "ready for use". This paper discusses the lunar regolith, how the regolith is being replicated in the development of simulants and possible uses of the regolith

Critical infrastructure systems of systems assessment methodology.

Assessing the risk of malevolent attacks against large-scale critical infrastructures requires modifications to existing methodologies that separately consider physical security and cyber security. This research has developed a risk assessment methodology that explicitly accounts for both physical and cyber security, while preserving the traditional security paradigm of detect, delay, and respond. This methodology also accounts for the condition that a facility may be able to recover from or mitigate the impact of a successful attack before serious consequences occur. The methodology uses evidence-based techniques (which are a generalization of probability theory) to evaluate the security posture of the cyber protection systems. Cyber threats are compared against cyber security posture using a category-based approach nested within a path-based analysis to determine the most vulnerable cyber attack path. The methodology summarizes the impact of a blended cyber/physical adversary attack in a conditional risk estimate where the consequence term is scaled by a ''willingness to pay'' avoidance approach

Overdiagnosis in organised mammography screening in Denmark. A comparative study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Overdiagnosis in cancer screening is the detection of cancer lesions that would otherwise not have been detected. It is arguably the most important harm. We quantified overdiagnosis in the Danish mammography screening programme, which is uniquely suited for this purpose, as only 20% of the Danish population has been offered organised mammography screening over a long time-period.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We collected incidence rates of carcinoma in situ and invasive breast cancer in areas with and without screening over 13 years with screening (1991-2003), and 20 years before its introduction (1971-1990). We explored the incidence increase comparing unadjusted incidence rates and used Poisson regression analysis to compensate for the background incidence trend, variation in age distribution and geographical variation in incidence.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>For the screened age group, 50 to 69 years, we found an overdiagnosis of 35% when we compared unadjusted incidence rates for the screened and non-screened areas, but after compensating for a small decline in incidence in older, previously screened women. Our adjusted Poisson regression analysis indicated a relative risk of 1.40 (95% CI: 1.35-1.45) for the whole screening period, and a potential compensatory drop in older women of 0.90 (95% CI: 0.88-0.96), yielding an overdiagnosis of 33%, which we consider the most reliable estimate. The drop in previously screened women was only present in one of the two screened regions and was small in absolute numbers.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>One in four breast cancers diagnosed in the screened age group in the Danish screening programme is overdiagnosed. Our estimate for Denmark is lower than that for comparable countries, likely because of lower uptake, lower recall rates and lower detection rates of carcinoma in situ.</p

Residential Radon and Brain Tumour Incidence in a Danish Cohort

BACKGROUND: Increased brain tumour incidence over recent decades may reflect improved diagnostic methods and clinical practice, but remain unexplained. Although estimated doses are low a relationship between radon and brain tumours may exist. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the long-term effect of exposure to residential radon on the risk of primary brain tumour in a prospective Danish cohort. METHODS: During 1993-1997 we recruited 57,053 persons. We followed each cohort member for cancer occurrence from enrolment until 31 December 2009, identifying 121 primary brain tumour cases. We traced residential addresses from 1 January 1971 until 31 December 2009 and calculated radon concentrations at each address using information from central databases regarding geology and house construction. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate incidence rate-ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the risk of primary brain tumours associated with residential radon exposure with adjustment for age, sex, occupation, fruit and vegetable consumption and traffic-related air pollution. Effect modification by air pollution was assessed. RESULTS: Median estimated radon was 40.5 Bq/m(3). The adjusted IRR for primary brain tumour associated with each 100 Bq/m(3) increment in average residential radon levels was 1.96 (95% CI: 1.07; 3.58) and this was exposure-dependently higher over the four radon exposure quartiles. This association was not modified by air pollution. CONCLUSIONS: We found significant associations and exposure-response patterns between long-term residential radon exposure radon in a general population and risk of primary brain tumours, adding new knowledge to this field. This finding could be chance and needs to be challenged in future studies

Bacterial Symbiosis Maintenance in the Asexually Reproducing and Regenerating Flatworm Paracatenula galateia

Bacteriocytes set the stage for some of the most intimate interactions between animal and bacterial cells. In all bacteriocyte possessing systems studied so far, de novo formation of bacteriocytes occurs only once in the host development, at the time of symbiosis establishment. Here, we present the free-living symbiotic flatworm Paracatenula galateia and its intracellular, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria as a system with previously undescribed strategies of bacteriocyte formation and bacterial symbiont transmission. Using thymidine analogue S-phase labeling and immunohistochemistry, we show that all somatic cells in adult worms – including bacteriocytes – originate exclusively from aposymbiotic stem cells (neoblasts). The continued bacteriocyte formation from aposymbiotic stem cells in adult animals represents a previously undescribed strategy of symbiosis maintenance and makes P. galateia a unique system to study bacteriocyte differentiation and development. We also provide morphological and immunohistochemical evidence that P. galateia reproduces by asexual fragmentation and regeneration (paratomy) and, thereby, vertically transmits numerous symbiont-containing bacteriocytes to its asexual progeny. Our data support the earlier reported hypothesis that the symbiont population is subjected to reduced bottleneck effects. This would justify both the codiversification between Paracatenula hosts and their Candidatus Riegeria symbionts, and the slow evolutionary rates observed for several symbiont genes

Do genetic factors protect for early onset lung cancer? A case control study before the age of 50 years

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Early onset lung cancer shows some familial aggregation, pointing to a genetic predisposition. This study was set up to investigate the role of candidate genes in the susceptibility to lung cancer patients younger than 51 years at diagnosis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>246 patients with a primary, histologically or cytologically confirmed neoplasm, recruited from 2000 to 2003 in major lung clinics across Germany, were matched to 223 unrelated healthy controls. 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms of genes with reported associations to lung cancer have been genotyped.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Genetic associations or gene-smoking interactions was found for <it>GPX1(Pro200Leu) </it>and <it>EPHX1(His113Tyr)</it>. Carriers of the Leu-allele of <it>GPX1(Pro200Leu) </it>showed a significant risk reduction of OR = 0.6 (95% CI: 0.4–0.8, p = 0.002) in general and of OR = 0.3 (95% CI:0.1–0.8, p = 0.012) within heavy smokers. We could also find a risk decreasing genetic effect for His-carriers of <it>EPHX1(His113Tyr) </it>for moderate smokers (OR = 0.2, 95% CI:0.1–0.7, p = 0.012). Considered both variants together, a monotone decrease of the OR was found for smokers (OR of 0.20; 95% CI: 0.07–0.60) for each protective allele.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Smoking is the most important risk factor for young lung cancer patients. However, this study provides some support for the T-Allel of <it>GPX1(Pro200Leu) </it>and the C-Allele of <it>EPHX1(His113Tyr) </it>to play a protective role in early onset lung cancer susceptibility.</p