‘You don't understand us!’ An inside perspective on adventure climbing

This paper presents a specific (insider) perspective of a small group of experienced male Scottish adventure climbers and explores through in-depth semi-structured interviews their attitudes, strategies and justifications associated with potentially high-risk climbing situations. Attention is paid to how participants feel that they are represented and viewed by others (outsiders) who do not participate in mountaineering and climbing activities. Climbers identify the significance of media, commercial and social representations of them as risk takers. The analysis explores risk as being socially constructed, with the associated assumptions being embedded in particular discourses. Climbers present themselves as rational managers of risk and provide examples of their risk-management strategies, with such characterizations being central to their identity as climbers

SunSat Design Competition 2014-2015 Second Place Winner – Team SunFlower: Thermal Power Satellite

Space-based Solar Power has failed to be competitive on cost in spite of decades of study. A new approach appears to resolve the cost issue, undercutting coal and opening huge markets for low cost solar power from space. There are two parts to the problem. First is the cost of lifting parts to Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO; second is the mass of parts that make up a power satellite. Our team is proposing a combination that makes use of Skylon to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and a 15,000 ton payload ground powered electric propulsion from LEO to GEO. This strategy reduces the cost to under $200/kg, a 100-to-one reduction from the current cost for lifting communication satellites to GEO. Reaching these numbers requires a Skylon flight rate in excess of 10,000 per year. Even at$200/kg, the economics cannot tolerate more than 6.5 kg/kW for power satellites to undercut coal, e.g., 32,500 tons for a 5 GWe satellite. Low (20%) efficient photovoltaic (PV) systems are very difficult to reduce below 10 kg/kW. A 60% efficient thermal design has one third of the light intercepting area of a 20% efficient PV power satellite. Carnot considerations require a high temperature ratio between boilers and radiators. The thermal cycles considered in our approach use concentrating mirrors to direct sunlight into high-temperature boilers. The first working fluid proposed is potassium. After passing through a high temperature turbine, the condensing potassium heats a second working fluid (water or super critical CO2). Waste heat is channeled to low-temperature condensing radiators. Analysis found the radiators to be a relatively small part of the power satellite mass. Concentrators, boilers, turbines, generators, heat radiators and the transmitter massed close enough to 32,500 tons to merit further detailed investigation. The total, including rectenna, parts cost, labor and transportation, came to ~$2400/kW. Levelized cost of electricity from$2400 capital expense came to 3 cents per kWh, comfortably undercutting coal at 4 cents. Displacing coal on financial merits bypasses debates about CO2 buildup and climatology. If designs and economics can be verified, and assuming rapid expansion beyond the first dozen power satellites, the human race could be off fossil fuels as early as the mid-2030s. To achieve this goal, power satellites must cost less than $2400/kW, installed. It all depends on keeping the power satellite reasonably low in mass and transportation costs extremely low. Click here to see this team video: Team SunFlower - 2015 SunSat Design Competitio

Human Behavior and Performance Support for ISS Operations and Astronaut Selections: NASA Operational Psychology for Six-Crew Operations

The Behavioral Health and Performance group at NASA Johnson Space Center provides psychological support services and behavioral health monitoring for ISS astronauts and their families. The ISS began as an austere outpost with minimal comforts of home and minimal communication capabilities with family, friends, and colleagues outside of the Mission Control Center. Since 1998, the work of international partners involved in the Space Flight Human Behavior and Performance Working Group has prepared high-level requirements for behavioral monitoring and support. The "buffet" of services from which crewmembers can choose has increased substantially. Through the process of development, implementation, reviewing effectiveness and modifying as needed, the NASA and Wyle team have proven successful in managing the psychological health and well being of the crews and families with which they work. Increasing the crew size from three to six brought additional challenges. For the first time, all partners had to collaborate at the planning and implementation level, and the U.S. served as mentor to extrapolate their experiences to the others. Parity in available resources, upmass, and stowage had to be worked out. Steady progress was made in improving off-hours living and making provisions for new technologies within a system that has difficulty moving quickly on certifications. In some respect, the BHP support team fell victim to its previous successes. With increasing numbers of crewmembers in training, requests to engage our services spiraled upward. With finite people and funds, a cap had to placed on many services to ensure that parity could be maintained. The evolution of NASA BHP services as the ISS progressed from three- to six-crew composition will be reviewed, and future challenges that may be encountered as the ISS matures in its assembly-complete state will be discussed

General Interviewing Techniques: Developing Evidence-Based Practices

This poster is a hands-on demonstration of the in-progress General Interviewer Techniques (GIT) materials described by Schaeffer, Dykema, Coombs, Schultz, Holland, and Hudson. Participants will be able to view and listen to the lesson materials, delivered via an online interface, and talk to the GIT developers

Phase II multicentre, double-blind, randomised trial of ustekinumab in adolescents with new-onset type 1 diabetes (USTEK1D): trial protocol

Introduction Most individuals newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have 10%–20% of beta-cell function remaining at the time of diagnosis. Preservation of residual beta-cell function at diagnosis may improve glycaemic control and reduce longer-term complications.Immunotherapy has the potential to preserve endogenous beta-cell function and thereby improve metabolic control even in poorly compliant individuals. We propose to test ustekinumab (STELARA), a targeted and well-tolerated therapy that may halt T-cell and cytokine-mediated destruction of beta-cells in the pancreas at the time of diagnosis.Methods and analysis This is a double-blind phase II study to assess the safety and efficacy of ustekinumab in 72 children and adolescents aged 12–18 with new-onset T1D.Participants should have evidence of residual functioning beta-cells (serum C-peptide level >0.2nmol/L in the mixed-meal tolerance test (MMTT) and be positive for at least one islet autoantibody (GAD, IA-2, ZnT8) to be eligible.Participants will be given ustekinumab/placebo subcutaneously at weeks 0, 4 and 12, 20, 28, 36 and 44 in a dose depending on the body weight and will be followed for 12 months after dose 1.MMTTs will be used to measure the efficacy of ustekinumab for preserving C-peptide area under the curve at week 52 compared with placebo. Secondary objectives include further investigations into the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab, patient and parent questionnaires, alternative methods for measuring insulin production and exploratory mechanistic work

Radiation Tolerance of Fully-Depleted P-Channel CCDs Designed for the SNAP Satellite

Thick, fully depleted p-channel charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have been developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). These CCDs have several advantages over conventional thin, n-channel CCDs, including enhanced quantum efficiency and reduced fringing at near-infrared wavelengths and improved radiation tolerance. Here we report results from the irradiation of CCDs with 12.5 and 55 MeV protons at the LBNL 88-Inch Cyclotron and with 0.1-1 MeV electrons at the LBNL Co60 source. These studies indicate that the LBNL CCDs perform well after irradiation, even in the parameters in which significant degradation is observed in other CCDs: charge transfer efficiency, dark current, and isolated hot pixels. Modeling the radiation exposure over a six-year mission lifetime with no annealing, we expect an increase in dark current of 20 e/pixel/hr, and a degradation of charge transfer efficiency in the parallel direction of 3e-6 and 1e-6 in the serial direction. The dark current is observed to improve with an annealing cycle, while the parallel CTE is relatively unaffected and the serial CTE is somewhat degraded. As expected, the radiation tolerance of the p-channel LBNL CCDs is significantly improved over the conventional n-channel CCDs that are currently employed in space-based telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE Transaction

Where to look: sources of research in paramedicine

This article explains how to approach searching for paramedicine research, and the order in which you should consider types of sources, from synthesised sources to individual studies. Databases and sources for literature are covered and common issues about the search process are addressed, including when a search is complete and finding a gap in the literature. https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/full/10.12968/jpar.2021.13.8.316 This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12968/jpar.2021.13.8.31

How it's done: search tools and techniques for major bibliographic databases

This article explains how to write an effective search plan using simple steps. The article takes you through the tools and techniques that are widely used in major bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE and CINAHL to conduct searches. These include Boolean logic, truncation and wildcards, in-field searching, proximity operators, limits and subject thesauri. Each process is illustrated with an example to help you apply them to your own searches. The process of using these tools and techniques to either narrow (find fewer results) or broaden (find more results) is described and summarised in an easy-to-use table. Abstract published with permission