The Copernicus project

The Copernicus spacecraft, to be launched on May 4, 2009, is designed for scientific exploration of the planet Pluto. The main objectives of this exploration is to accurately determine the mass, density, and composition of the two bodies in the Pluto-Charon system. A further goal of the exploration is to obtain precise images of the system. The spacecraft will be designed for three axis stability control. It will use the latest technological advances to optimize the performance, reliability, and cost of the spacecraft. Due to the long duration of the mission, nominally 12.6 years, the spacecraft will be powered by a long lasting radioactive power source. Although this type of power may have some environmental drawbacks, currently it is the only available source that is suitable for this mission. The planned trajectory provides flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. These flybys provide an opportunity for scientific study of these planets in addition to Pluto. The information obtained on these flybys will supplement the data obtained by the Voyager and Galileo missions. The topics covered include: (1) scientific instrumentation; (2) mission management, planning, and costing; (3) power and propulsion system; (4) structural subsystem; (5) command, control, and communication; and (6) attitude and articulation control

"Our Word is Our Weapon": Text-Analyzing Wars of Ideas from the French Revolution to the First World War

What are political thinkers doing with their words when they write a text, engage in a debate, or give a speech? We propose a "computational political theory", pairing recent breakthroughs in computational linguistics with the hermeneutic practices of intellectual history, as a set of tools for mapping out the political-discursive fields within which ideas circulate. We begin by showing, via a series of historical case studies, how a particular class of computational-linguistic algorithms called word embeddings are able to capture subtle differences in how authors employ certain contested terms (liberty, freedom, sovereignty, etc.) by explicitly modeling both the words and the contexts they're used in across a corpus of texts. We then demonstrate how the results of these embedding models can shed light on important questions in the history of political thought, by performing two in-depth studies of the origins and trajectories of Marxism from the 19th to the 20th century. In the first study, we use these models to trace the construction of Marx's thought out of the raw intellectual materials of 18th and early-19th century philosophy. We combine a new, comprehensive corpus of Marx's complete works from 1835 to 1883 ($N > 1200$) with a large sample ($N = 250$) of prominent 18th and early-19th century texts to measure conceptual distance between Marx's works and various schools of 19th-century thought (political economists, socialists, and Hegelian philosophers) over time. Two key breaks emerge in Marx's writings: (a) they become less Hegelian as he is exposed to Paris' brand of working-class-oriented socialism between 1843 and 1845, then (b) become more focused on issues of political economy over the remainder of his life in London, from 1849 onwards. Our second study turns from the origins to the illocutionary impacts of Marx's published works, assessing his influence on the broader socialist discourse of the 19th century using a corpus of \textit{post}-1850 socialist texts ($N = 200$). We find that Marx's semantic trajectory is mirrored, with a lag, by changes in the semantic trajectory of European socialist thought. This discourse shifts away from moralistic and Hegelian themes and towards a more positivistic political-economic vocabulary, especially after Marx's rise to public prominence in the wake of the 1871 Paris Commune. Our findings thus trace out, within the computationally-inferred ideological field of 19th-century socialist thought, how Marx's unique blend of German philosophy, French socialism, and British political economy defeated would-be competitors and established his thought as the default language of European socialism by the time of Engels' death in 1895. The dissertation thus demonstrates the utility of modern context-sensitive language models as tools for historical research, providing a framework for their use in developing, testing, and revising our understandings of key questions in the history of political thought

A Modified Outdoor Adventure Program Serving Individuals with Cognitive Disabilities Who Present Serious Accommodation Challenges

When inclusive programming is to be offered in an outdoor adventure context, and attempts are made to welcome individuals who present disability issues that make accommodation unusually challenging, the obstacles to program success can begin to look insurmountable. Research indicates there are a number of benefits realized through participation in inclusive outdoor adventure programs (McAvoy, Schatz, Stutz, Schleien, & Lais, 1989; Anderson, Schleien, McAvoy, Lais, & Seligman, 1997; McAvoy, 2001). There has been a paucity of research focused on persons with cognitive disabilities in outdoor programs that typically go on camping excursions into wilderness or wilderness-like natural areas rather than staying in a developed camp facility. The limited research available does show that benefits can be realized through outdoor adventure programs that include persons with cognitive disabilities (Newman, 2004). Recognizing the need for further study in this area, the primary purpose of this research was to assess participant growth in social/socialization and leisure skill functioning of persons with cognitive disabilities relative to participation in a modified inclusive outdoor adventure program. The study used the Peterson and Stumbo (2000) Leisure Ability Model as a conceptual foundation for assessing programmatic outcomes

Collecting and Analyzing Eye-Tracking Data in Outdoor Environments

Natural outdoor conditions pose unique obstacles for researchers, above and beyond those inherent to all mobile eye-tracking research. During analyses of a large set of eye-tracking data collected on geologists examining outdoor scenes, we have found that the nature of calibration, pupil identification, fixation detection, and gaze analysis all require procedures different from those typically used for indoor studies. Here, we discuss each of these challenges and present solutions, which together define a general method useful for investigations relying on outdoor eye-tracking data. We also discuss recommendations for improving the tools that are available, to further increase the accuracy and utility of outdoor eye-tracking data

The Purdue Agro-climatic (PAC) Dataset for The U.S. Corn Belt: Development and Initial Results

This study is a result of a project titled ‘‘Useful to Usable (U2U): Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers”. This paper responds to the project goal to improve farm resiliency and proftability in the U.S. Corn Belt region by transforming existing meteorological dataset into usable knowledge and tools for the agricultural community. A high-resolution agro-climatic dataset that covers the U.S. Corn Belt was built for the U2U project based on a Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) framework. This data referred to as the Purdue Agro-climatic (PAC) dataset is a gridded, continuous dataset suitable for agrocli- matic and crop model studies over the U.S. Corn Belt. The dataset was created at 4 km, sub- daily spatiotemporal resolution and covers the period of 1981–2014. The dataset includes a range of variables such as daily maximum/minimum temperature, solar radiation, rainfall, evapotranspiration (ET), multilevel soil moisture and soil temperatures. The data were com- pared to feld measurements from Amerifux and the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN), and with coarser but widely used atmospheric regional reanalysis data products. Validations indicate an overall good agreement between this dataset and feld measurements. The agree- ment is particularly high for radiation and temperature parameters and lesser for rainfall and soil moisture data. Despite the differences with observations, the data show improvements over the coarser resolution products and other available models and thus highlights the value of the dataset for agroclimatic and crop model studies. This high-resolution dataset is available to the wider community, and can fll gaps in observed data records and increase accessibility for the agricultural sector, and for conduct- ing variety of if-then assessments

Propionibacterium acnes bacteriophages display limited genetic diversity and broad killing activity against bacterial skin isolates.

UnlabelledInvestigation of the human microbiome has revealed diverse and complex microbial communities at distinct anatomic sites. The microbiome of the human sebaceous follicle provides a tractable model in which to study its dominant bacterial inhabitant, Propionibacterium acnes, which is thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of the human disease acne. To explore the diversity of the bacteriophages that infect P. acnes, 11 P. acnes phages were isolated from the sebaceous follicles of donors with healthy skin or acne and their genomes were sequenced. Comparative genomic analysis of the P. acnes phage population, which spans a 30-year temporal period and a broad geographic range, reveals striking similarity in terms of genome length, percent GC content, nucleotide identity (>85%), and gene content. This was unexpected, given the far-ranging diversity observed in virtually all other phage populations. Although the P. acnes phages display a broad host range against clinical isolates of P. acnes, two bacterial isolates were resistant to many of these phages. Moreover, the patterns of phage resistance correlate closely with the presence of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat elements in the bacteria that target a specific subset of phages, conferring a system of prokaryotic innate immunity. The limited diversity of the P. acnes bacteriophages, which may relate to the unique evolutionary constraints imposed by the lipid-rich anaerobic environment in which their bacterial hosts reside, points to the potential utility of phage-based antimicrobial therapy for acne.ImportancePropionibacterium acnes is a dominant member of the skin microflora and has also been implicated in the pathogenesis of acne; however, little is known about the bacteriophages that coexist with and infect this bacterium. Here we present the novel genome sequences of 11 P. acnes phages, thereby substantially increasing the amount of available genomic information about this phage population. Surprisingly, we find that, unlike other well-studied bacteriophages, P. acnes phages are highly homogeneous and show a striking lack of genetic diversity, which is perhaps related to their unique and restricted habitat. They also share a broad ability to kill clinical isolates of P. acnes; phage resistance is not prevalent, but when detected, it appears to be conferred by chromosomally encoded immunity elements within the host genome. We believe that these phages display numerous features that would make them ideal candidates for the development of a phage-based therapy for acne

A Qualitative Investigation of Californian Youth Interests in the Outdoors

Prior research has found connections between youth participation in recreational activities and academic achievement, civic involvement, and improved health. To investigate California youth outdoor recreation attitudes, behaviors, and constraints, eight focus groups were conducted with community recreation center youth participants. Youth answered 10 questions about their experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of outdoor recreation. Data were analyzed using grounded theory. Three to seven axial codes were identified for each question. Results showed that youth want to have more access to outdoor recreational activities. However, there are frequently considerable constraints for the youth to overcome including draws of technology, family obligations, and laziness. Safety was a recurring concern among participants. Understanding youth attitudes and perceptions allows managers to meet youth needs, program for youth interests, and provides a strong foundation for marketing and as a rational for funding grants

Next Steps for Human-Centered Generative AI: A Technical Perspective

Through iterative, cross-disciplinary discussions, we define and propose next-steps for Human-centered Generative AI (HGAI) from a technical perspective. We contribute a roadmap that lays out future directions of Generative AI spanning three levels: Aligning with human values; Accommodating humans' expression of intents; and Augmenting humans' abilities in a collaborative workflow. This roadmap intends to draw interdisciplinary research teams to a comprehensive list of emergent ideas in HGAI, identifying their interested topics while maintaining a coherent big picture of the future work landscape

Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Journal of Research in Mathematics Science and Technology Education on 2009, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03043790902989457.In this paper, we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering, we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engineering-related activities through which students can develop engineering identities and make more explicit key aspects of the discourse of engineering of which lecturers are tacitly aware. We include three vignettes to illustrate how some of the authors of this paper (from across three different institutions) have applied this perspective of learning in their teaching practice