Failure environment analysis tool applications

Understanding risks and avoiding failure are daily concerns for the women and men of NASA. Although NASA's mission propels us to push the limits of technology, and though the risks are considerable, the NASA community has instilled within, the determination to preserve the integrity of the systems upon which our mission and, our employees lives and well-being depend. One of the ways this is being done is by expanding and improving the tools used to perform risk assessment. The Failure Environment Analysis Tool (FEAT) was developed to help engineers and analysts more thoroughly and reliably conduct risk assessment and failure analysis. FEAT accomplishes this by providing answers to questions regarding what might have caused a particular failure; or, conversely, what effect the occurrence of a failure might have on an entire system. Additionally, FEAT can determine what common causes could have resulted in other combinations of failures. FEAT will even help determine the vulnerability of a system to failures, in light of reduced capability. FEAT also is useful in training personnel who must develop an understanding of particular systems. FEAT facilitates training on system behavior, by providing an automated environment in which to conduct 'what-if' evaluation. These types of analyses make FEAT a valuable tool for engineers and operations personnel in the design, analysis, and operation of NASA space systems

The Duty to Survive Well: Neoliberal Governance, Temporality and Breast Cancer Survivorship Discourse

This study critically examines how discourses of breast cancer survivorship are constructed within professional and popular fields of knowledge production. In this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods informed by Foucauldian, feminist, and queer theoretical perspectives to analyze a sample of texts, published in the Springer Journal of Cancer Survivorship and by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, in order to elucidate a complex understanding of how discourses of breast cancer survivorship effectively privilege and exclude particular forms of subjectivity and temporal trajectories. I argue that these discourses of breast cancer survivorship operate as neoliberal technologies of governance that invoke particular constructions of responsible and healthy citizenship, gender, and the future in order to direct the capacities and conduct of women affected by the disease, and the population at large, towards normative ideals. The specific forms of subjectivity constructed in these discursive fields include the Chronic Survivor; the Resilient, Fit Survivor; the Decliner; the Universal Woman At-Risk; the Child At-Risk. This theoretically-informed, empirically-grounded CDA suggests that the forms of subjectivity idealized in these discursive fields charge post-treatment women with the duty to ‘survive well,’ cultivating particular forms of bodily and civic fitness that reinforce individualized notions of responsibility for health, dampen women’s resistive potential, and encourage complicity with traditional forms of femininity and gendered responsibilities. The findings of this study further highlight how the temporal and affective dimensions of survivorship discourses operate to orient and mobilize survivor subjects towards a future secured by biomedicine in ways that align with the aims of neoliberalism and the biopolitical imperative to optimize life. Ultimately, I argue that breast cancer survivorship discourses govern post-treatment women, and the population at large, by assuming and inciting anticipatory temporal trajectories and modes of conduct that are characterized by a moral imperative to live and think towards the (reproductive) future. These findings raise pressing concerns about how breast cancer survivorship discourses, and the forms of subjectivity it inspires, are informed by neoliberal political rationalities, heteronormative and ageist assumptions, and contemporary anxieties about women’s social and political roles, and are thus implicated in the reproduction of gender, sexual, and citizenship norms

It takes a town to build a trail: Relationships between nonprofit organizations and local governments in rail-trail and greenway development in three West Virginia communities

As more communities across the country are developing rail-trails and greenways, relationships among community-based nonprofit organizations and local government entities evolve during trail development. Twenty-three participants from the nonprofit and local government sectors in three West Virginia municipalities were interviewed about their relationships and experience in rail-trail and greenway development. This qualitative analysis employs a grounded theory framework and reveals several practical and theoretical findings. Perceived benefits and costs of trail development reported by participants provided a context for how participants relayed experiences indicative of their political and built environments. Factors that constrain or facilitate relationship building between nonprofit organizations and local government entities, as well as the role of community involvement, leadership, attitudes, and planning principles and processes were categories that emerged to support the importance of individual and organizational level social capital in exploring nonprofit and local government relations in rail-trail and greenway development

Hands-On Universe: A Global Program for Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy

Hands-On Universe (HOU) is an educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing software. This program is developing now in many countries, including the USA, France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and others. A network of telescopes has been established among these countries, many of them remotely operated, as shown in the accompanying demo. Using this feature, students in the classroom are able to make night observations during the day, using a telescope placed in another country. An archive of images taken on large telescopes is also accessible, as well as resources for teachers. Students are also dealing with real research projects, e.g. the search for asteroids, which resulted in the discovery of a Kuiper Belt object by high-school students. Not only Hands-On Universe gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it is also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated system, the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least, through the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form of powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the ADASS X conference, Boston, October 2000, ASP conf. pro

Investigation of acceleration characteristics of a single-spool turbojet engine

Operation of a single-spool turbojet engine with constant exhaust-nozzle area was investigated at one flight condition. Data were obtained by subjecting the engine to approximate-step changes in fuel flow, and the information necessary to show the relations of acceleration to the sensed engine variables was obtained. These data show that maximum acceleration occurred prior to stall and surge. In the low end of the engine-speed range the margin was appreciable; in the high-speed end the margin was smaller but had not been completely defined by these data. Data involving acceleration as a function of speed, fuel flow, turbine-discharge temperature, compressor-discharge pressure, and thrust have been presented and an effort has been made to show how a basic control system could be improved by addition of an override in which the acceleration characteristic is used not only to prevent the engine from entering the surge region but also to obtain acceleration along the maximum acceleration line during throttle bursts