Increasing the Reliability of Software Systems on Small Satellites Using Software-Based Simulation of the Embedded System

The utility of Small Satellites (SmallSats) for technology demonstrations and scientific research has been proven over the past few decades by governments, universities, and private companies. While the research and technology demonstration objectives that can be provided by these SmallSats are becoming similar to larger spacecraft, their reliability still falls behind. This is in part due to the reduced cost of SmallSat missions in comparison to large spacecraft, which requires cheaper components, rapid development schedules, and accepted risk. In these missions, the importance of the flight software is often overlooked, and the software is rushed through development and not fully tested to provide the reliability required for on-orbit operations. This research aims to investigate the common causes of failures on SmallSats, and to provide a solution to the problem of developing and testing reliable flight software, through the use of software-based simulation of the full embedded satellite system. Through the course of this research, an open-source product was developed and released to the public to assist SmallSat missions, which is currently in use by public and private institutions across the country. The resulting product, the NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites, commonly referred to as NOS3, will be discussed in detail. The results of NOS3 will be viewed through a case study of the application of NOS3 to a SmallSat mission

Perceptions of knowledge regarding the psychology of injury among Division I athletic trainers

The purpose of this study was to determine the different perceptions of knowledge regarding the psychology of injury among Division I athletic trainers who were certified and who were student trainers. Twenty NCAA Division I athletic trainers participated in the study. The group was divided into ten certified athletic trainers and ten student athletic trainers. The Athletic Training and Sport Psychology Questionnaire (ATSPQ) was used to determine attitudes, beliefs, and the application of a variety of psychological strategies and techniques athletic trainers may use in their work with injured athletes. The participants were administered the survey and asked to respond as accurately and honestly as possible. A t-test for related measures was conducted on the participants\u27 responses and the results failed to show any significant differences in the statistical analysis of the responses between the two groups. This suggests that knowledge of the psychology of injury is quite similar for trainers differing in age, education, and experience. Suggestions for future researchers are offered, as well as recommendations for changes in current trends present in the education of athletic trainers

Simulation-To-Flight 1 (STF-1): Automating the Planning, Scheduling, Assessment and Data Processing/Reduction for a Small Satellite

On December 16, 2019, a 3-U CubeSat named STF-1 launched as West Virginia’s first spacecraft. This event marked the culmination of a run-up to launch involving the production of the spacecraft, creation/configuration of command and control infrastructure, and the evolution of its co-creation, the NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites (NOS3). This event also marked the beginning of a new phase: operations. While plans, procedures, and infrastructure were already in place or started for operations, many lessons were learned during the operations phase, especially during early operations (first month/commissioning phase). Additional plans, procedures, and infrastructure, especially related to communication planning and automated data processing, were created and developed to fill needs for the operation of the STF-1 mission. This paper and presentation will overview the STF-1 operations team’s solutions to addressing the many needs of operating a low-earth orbiting CubeSat mission with a single ground antenna that is shared and scheduled with several other missions. The STF-1 operations team deployed a combination of virtualization technologies, ground station technology solutions, collaboration software, custom planning software solutions, and existing ground antenna scheduling solutions to create an effective and efficient CubeSat operations environment. The end-solution satisfied the operations stakeholders, which include NASA, its industry partner TMC Technologies, and four independent professor-student teams at West Virginia University

Brief sensory deprivation triggers plasticity of dopamine-synthesising enzyme expression in genetically labelled olfactory bulb dopaminergic neurons

In the glomerular layer of the olfactory bulb, local dopaminergic interneurons play a key role in regulating the flow of sensory information from nose to cortex. These dual dopamine- and GABA-releasing cells are capable of marked experience-dependent changes in the expression of neurotransmitter-synthesising enzymes, including tyrosine hydroxylase (TH). However, such plasticity has most commonly been studied in cell populations identified by their expression of the enzyme being studied, and after long periods of sensory deprivation. Here, instead, we used brief 1- or 3-day manipulations of olfactory experience in juvenile mice, coupled with a conditional genetic approach that labelled neurons contingent upon their expression of the dopamine transporter (DAT-tdTomato). This enabled us to evaluate the potential for rapid changes in neurotransmitter-synthesising enzyme expression in an independently identified neuronal population. Our labelling strategy showed good specificity for olfactory bulb dopaminergic neurons, whilst revealing a minority sub-population of non-dopaminergic DAT-tdTomato cells that expressed the calcium-binding protein calretinin. Crucially, the proportions of these neuronal subtypes were not affected by brief alterations in sensory experience. Short-term olfactory manipulations also produced no significant changes in immunofluorescence or whole-bulb mRNA for the GABA-synthesising enzyme GAD67/Gad1. However, in bulbar DAT-tdTomato neurons brief sensory deprivation was accompanied by a transient, small drop in immunofluorescence for the dopamine-synthesising enzyme dopa decarboxylase (DDC), and a sustained decrease for TH. Deprivation also produced a sustained decrease in whole-bulb Th mRNA. Careful characterisation of an independently identified, genetically labelled neuronal population therefore enabled us to uncover rapid experience-dependent changes in dopamine-synthesising enzyme expression

Sending Out an SMS: The Impact of Automatically Enrolling Consumers Into Overdraft Alerts

Incidental charges incurred by UK consumers on their Personal Current Account (PCA) are steep, especially for small amounts of unplanned borrowing and unpaid items. A recent policy mandates major UK banks to send consumers a text message alert of impending charges, allowing them to act before they incur a charge. Using a unique, large and detailed dataset covering the transactions of 1.5 million consumers across 6 banks, and by looking at large-scale automatic enrolment exercises carried out by two major banks, we estimate the effect of automatically enrolling consumers into these alerts. We find that automatic enrolment into alerts has large effects on charges: (i) automatic enrolment into unpaid item alerts (that inform customers of retry periods) reduces charges by 21-24% and (ii) automatic enrolment into unarranged overdraft alerts reduces charges by 25%. We also estimate average treatment effects for different types of consumers, grouped by their pre-alerts level of incidental charges (rare, occasional or heavy), and find that the benefits of automatic enrolment differ markedly between types of consumers. Those who rarely incur charges can avoid as much as half of charges thanks to alerts, whereas heavy users still incur substantial charges after automatic enrolment. We find strikingly similar patterns across the two banks, for both unpaid item and unarranged overdraft charges, providing reassurance that these findings are not specific to a particular customer base or firm implementation

A role for CaV1 and calcineurin signalling to depolarization-induced changes in neuronal DNA methylation

Copyright © 2015 The Authors Published by Elsevier Inc.Direct manipulations of neuronal activity have been shown to induce changes in DNA methylation (DNAm), although little is known about the cellular signaling pathways involved. Using reduced representation bisulfite sequencing, we identify DNAm changes associated with moderate chronic depolarization in dissociated rat hippocampal cultures. Consistent with previous findings, these changes occurred primarily in the vicinity of loci implicated in neuronal function, being enriched in intergenic regions and underrepresented in CpG-rich promoter regulatory regions. We subsequently used 2 pharmacological interventions (nifedipine and FK-506) to test whether the identified changes depended on 2 interrelated signaling pathways known to mediate multiple forms of neuronal plasticity. Both pharmacological manipulations had notable effects on the extent and magnitude of depolarization-induced DNAm changes indicating that a high proportion of activity-induced changes are likely to be mediated by calcium entry through L-type CaV1 channels and/or downstream signaling via the calcium-dependent phosphatase calcineurin.Wellcome TrustMRC 4-year PhD studentshipKCL CDN-SGDP collaborative seed fundin

Improved Classification Of Medical Data Using Meta-Best Feature Selection

Feature selection provides a useful method for reducing the size of large data sets while maintaining integrity, thereby improving the accuracy of neural networks and other classifiers. However, running multiple feature selection models and their accompanying classifiers can make interpreting results difficult. To this end, we present a data-driven methodology called Meta-Best that not only returns a single feature set related to a classification target, but also returns an optimal size and ranks the features by importance within the set. This proposed methodology is tested on six distinct targets from the well-known REGARDS dataset: Deceased, Self-Reported Diabetes, Light Alcohol Abuse Risk, Regular NSAID Use, Current Smoker, and Self-Reported Stroke. This methodology is shown to improve the classification rate of neural networks by 0.056 using the ROC Area Under Curve metric compared to a control test with no feature selection

NASA Operational Simulator for SmallSats (NOS3) – Design Reference Mission

The NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites (NOS3) has undergone significant advances including updating the framework to be component based and expanding the open-source code to include a generic design reference mission to enable advanced technologies. This paper details the changes to the framework as well as a number of innovative use-cases the team is currently supporting such as 1) the expansion of NOS3 to support distributed systems missions in collaboration with NASA GSFC, 2) the integration of NASA JPL’s Science Yield improvemeNt via Onboard Prioritization and Summary of Information Systems (SYNOPSIS) for on-orbit science data prioritization, and 3) the inclusion of NASA IV&V JSTAR’s software-only CCSDS encryption library (CryptoLib). NOS3 continues to serve the SmallSat community by providing an open-source digital twin that can significantly reduce costs associated with spacecraft software development, test, and operations. The NOS3 team plans to continue to expand the resources available to the community and partner with others to resolve issues and add new features requested via the NASA GitHub

Brief Sensory Deprivation Triggers Cell Type-Specific Structural and Functional Plasticity in Olfactory Bulb Neurons.

Can alterations in experience trigger different plastic modifications in neuronal structure and function, and if so, how do they integrate at the cellular level? To address this question, we interrogated circuitry in the mouse olfactory bulb responsible for the earliest steps in odor processing. We induced experience-dependent plasticity in mice of either sex by blocking one nostril for one day, a minimally invasive manipulation that leaves the sensory organ undamaged and is akin to the natural transient blockage suffered during common mild rhinal infections. We found that such brief sensory deprivation produced structural and functional plasticity in one highly specialized bulbar cell type: axon-bearing dopaminergic neurons in the glomerular layer. After 24 h naris occlusion, the axon initial segment (AIS) in bulbar dopaminergic neurons became significantly shorter, a structural modification that was also associated with a decrease in intrinsic excitability. These effects were specific to the AIS-positive dopaminergic subpopulation because no experience-dependent alterations in intrinsic excitability were observed in AIS-negative dopaminergic cells. Moreover, 24 h naris occlusion produced no structural changes at the AIS of bulbar excitatory neurons, mitral/tufted and external tufted cells, nor did it alter their intrinsic excitability. By targeting excitability in one specialized dopaminergic subpopulation, experience-dependent plasticity in early olfactory networks might act to fine-tune sensory processing in the face of continually fluctuating inputs.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sensory networks need to be plastic so they can adapt to changes in incoming stimuli. To see how cells in mouse olfactory circuits can change in response to sensory challenges, we blocked a nostril for just one day, a naturally relevant manipulation akin to the deprivation that occurs with a mild cold. We found that this brief deprivation induces forms of axonal and intrinsic functional plasticity in one specific olfactory bulb cell subtype: axon-bearing dopaminergic interneurons. In contrast, intrinsic properties of axon-lacking bulbar dopaminergic neurons and neighboring excitatory neurons remained unchanged. Within the same sensory circuits, specific cell types can therefore make distinct plastic changes in response to an ever-changing external landscape