Cascade Distillation System Design for Safety and Mission Assurance

Per the NASA Human Health, Life Support and Habitation System Technology Area 06 report "crewed missions venturing beyond Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) will require technologies with improved reliability, reduced mass, self-sufficiency, and minimal logistical needs as an emergency or quick-return option will not be feasible." To meet this need, the development team of the second generation Cascade Distillation System (CDS 2.0) opted a development approach that explicitely incorporate consideration of safety, mission assurance, and autonomy. The CDS 2.0 prelimnary design focused on establishing a functional baseline that meets the CDS core capabilities and performance. The critical design phase is now focused on incorporating features through a deliberative process of establishing the systems failure modes and effects, identifying mitigative strategies, and evaluating the merit of the proposed actions through analysis and test. This paper details results of this effort on the CDS 2.0 design

Providing Diverse Trainees an Early and Transparent Introduction to Academic Appointment and Promotion Processes.

IntroductionThe growth in number of medical schools and increased numbers of faculty tracks have combined with evolving criteria for promotion to trigger a call for greater transparency of academic appointment and promotion processes. Most vulnerable to confusion about these changes are first-generation and diverse medical students and residents, the upstream pipeline of the academic medicine workforce. Diverse medical students have expressed diminished interest in academia because of perceived obstacles in appointment and promotion processes.MethodsThis workshop was designed to utilize didactics and career reflection exercises to help trainees learn: (1) how to define core terms related to academic appointment and promotion processes, (2) how to compare data elements for different CVs and portfolios, (3) common steps in submitting a promotion package, and (4) that they can immediately begin to document content for academic CVs, portfolios, and promotion packages.ResultsOne hundred forty-five diverse participants completed an evaluation at eight conferences across the U.S. More than 90% strongly agreed or agreed that the aforementioned objectives were met. Participants commented that the workshop was "illuminating," was "very informative," and "provided an inside look of how faculty are evaluated." Results showed an immediate impact on participants' self-reported confidence to negotiate appointment and promotion processes.DiscussionIncreases in self-rated confidence to negotiate appointment and promotion processes may help sustain trainees' interest in becoming future faculty. Further monitoring will be needed to determine if early exposure to these concepts improves probability of seeking, obtaining, and maintaining appointments

Development of an Exploration-Class Cascade Distillation Subsystem: Performance Testing of the Generation 1.0 Prototype

The ability to recover and purify water is crucial for realizing long-term human space missions. The National Aeronautics and Space Admininstration and Honeywell co-developed a five-stage vacuum rotary distillation water recovery system referred to as the Cascade Distillation Subsystem (CDS). Over the past three years, NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Water Recovery Project (WRP) has been working toward the development of a flight-forward CDS design. In 2012 the original CDS prototype underwent a series of incremental upgrades and tests intened to both demonstrate the feasibility of a on-orbit demonstration of the system and to collect operational and performance data to be used to inform a second generation design. The latest testing of the CDS Generation 1.0 prototype was conducted May 29 through July 2, 2014. Initial system performance was benchmarked by processing deionized water and sodium chloride. Following, the system was challenged with analogue urine waste stream solutions stabilized with an Oxone-based and the two International Space Station baseline and alternative pretreatment solutions. During testing, the system processed more than 160 kilograms of wastewater with targeted water recoveries between 75 and 85% depending on the specific waste stream tested. For all wastewater streams, contaminant removals from wastewater feed to product water distillate, were estimated at greater than 99%. The average specific energy of the system was less than 120 Watt-hours/kilogram. The following paper provides detailed information and data on the performance of the CDS as challenged per the WRP test objectives

Successful Desensitization to Docetaxel after Severe Hypersensitivity Reactions in Two Patients

Purpose Two cases of successful desensitization to docetaxel after severe hypersensitivity reactions are reported. Summary Two patients with gynecological malignancies (uterine leiomyosarcoma and ovarian adenocarcinoma) experienced severe hypersensitivity reactions with docetaxel, including flushing, numbness, sharp radiating pain, severe nausea and vomiting, apnea, and unresponsiveness. Both patients received ondansetron before docetaxel. One patient received dexamethasone, diphenhydramine, and famotidine premedication before docetaxel, as she had previously reacted to paclitaxel. Docetaxel infusions were stopped, and the reactions were treated with diphenhydramine and dexamethasone (one patient also received famotidine). After resolution of symptoms, the docetaxel was not reinitiated due to the nature of the reactions. For the next cycle, both patients received a graded drug challenge or desensitization. Both were pre-medicated with dexamethasone, diphenhydramine, and famotidine. The docetaxel was given as infusions of 0.1%, 1%, and 10% of the dose, with each infusion given over one hour. After this, the remainder of the dose was infused over one hour. Both patients tolerated this desensitization well and completed a total of three and four cycles each. The first patient to receive the desensitization did complain of chest pain during the first desensitization, and the infusion rate was decreased to administer the drug over two hours. After she tolerated two cycles of two-hour infusions, the infusion rate was increased to administer each docetaxel infusion over one hour. Conclusion Two patients who had severe hypersensitivity reactions to docetaxel successfully received further docetaxel doses via a desensitization procedure that involved the sequential administration of solutions containing increasing concentrations of the drug

Cascade Distiller System Performance Testing Interim Results

The Cascade Distillation System (CDS) is a rotary distillation system with potential for greater reliability and lower energy costs than existing distillation systems. Based upon the results of the 2009 distillation comparison test (DCT) and recommendations of the expert panel, the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Water Recovery Project (WRP) project advanced the technology by increasing reliability of the system through redesign of bearing assemblies and improved rotor dynamics. In addition, the project improved the CDS power efficiency by optimizing the thermoelectric heat pump (TeHP) and heat exchanger design. Testing at the NASA-JSC Advanced Exploration System Water Laboratory (AES Water Lab) using a prototype Cascade Distillation Subsystem (CDS) wastewater processor (Honeywell d International, Torrance, Calif.) with test support equipment and control system developed by Johnson Space Center was performed to evaluate performance of the system with the upgrades as compared to previous system performance. The system was challenged with Solution 1 from the NASA Exploration Life Support (ELS) distillation comparison testing performed in 2009. Solution 1 consisted of a mixed stream containing human-generated urine and humidity condensate. A secondary objective of this testing is to evaluate the performance of the CDS as compared to the state of the art Distillation Assembly (DA) used in the ISS Urine Processor Assembly (UPA). This was done by challenging the system with ISS analog waste streams. This paper details the results of the AES WRP CDS performance testing

Examining the Potential of Vitamin C Supplementation in Tissue-Engineered Equine Superficial Digital Flexor Tendon Constructs

Because equine tendinopathies are slow to heal and often recur, therapeutic strategies are being considered that aid tendon repair. Given the success of utilizing vitamin C to promote tenogenesis in other species, we hypothesized that vitamin C supplementation would produce dose-dependent improvements in the tenogenic properties of tendon proper (TP) and peritenon (PERI) cells of the equine superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT). Equine TP- and PERI-progenitor-cell-seeded fibrin three-dimensional constructs were supplemented with four concentrations of vitamin C. The gene expression profiles of the constructs were assessed with 3\u27-Tag-Seq and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR); collagen content and fibril ultrastructure were also analyzed. Moreover, cells were challenged with dexamethasone to determine the levels of cytoprotection afforded by vitamin C. Expression profiling demonstrated that vitamin C had an anti-inflammatory effect on TP and PERI cell constructs. Moreover, vitamin C supplementation mitigated the degenerative pathways seen in tendinopathy and increased collagen content in tendon constructs. When challenged with dexamethasone in two-dimensional culture, vitamin C had a cytoprotective effect for TP cells but not necessarily for PERI cells. Future studies will explore the effects of vitamin C on these cells during inflammation and within the tendon niche in vivo

Preliminary Feasibility Testing of the BRIC Brine Water Recovery Concept

The Brine Residual In-Containment (BRIC) concept is being developed as a new technology to recover water from spacecraft wastewater brines. Such capability is considered critical to closing the water loop and achieving a sustained human presence in space. The intention of the BRIC concept is to increase the robustness and efficiency of the dewatering process by performing drying inside the container used for the final disposal of the residual brine solid. Recent efforts in the development of BRIC have focused on preliminary feasibility testing using a laboratory- assembled pre-prototype unit. Observations of the drying behavior of actual brine solutions processed under BRIC-like conditions has been of particular interest. To date, experiments conducted with three types of analogue spacecraft wastewater brines have confirmed the basic premise behind the proposed application of in-place drying. Specifically, the dried residual mass from these solutions have tended to exhibit characteristics of adhesion and flow that are expected to continue to challenge process stream management designs typically used in spacecraft systems. Yet, these same characteristics may favor the development of capillary- and surface-tension-based approaches currently envisioned as part of an ultimate microgravity-compatible BRIC design. In addition, preliminary feasibility testing of the BRIC pre-prototype confirmed that high rates of water recovery, up to 98% of the available brine water, may be possible while still removing the majority of the brine contaminants from the influent brine stream. These and other early observations from testing are reported

Terrestrial Testing of the CapiBRIC, a Microgravity Optimized Brine Processor

Utilizing geometry based static phase separation exhibited in the radial vaned capillary drying tray, a system was conceived to recover water from brine. This technology has been named the Capillary BRIC; abbreviated CapiBRIC. The CapiBRIC utilizes a capillary drying tray within a drying chamber. Water is recovered from clean water vapor evaporating from the free surface leaving waste brine solids behind. A novel approach of optimizing the containment geometry to support passive capillary flow and static phase separation provides the opportunity for a low power system that is not as susceptible to fouling as membranes or other technologies employing physical barriers across the free brine surface to achieve phase separation in microgravity. Having been optimized for operation in microgravity, full-scale testing of the CapiBRIC as designed cannot be performed on the ground as the force of gravity would dominate over the capillary forces. However, subscale units relevant to full-scale design were used to characterize fill rates, containment stability, and interaction with a variable volume reservoir in the PSU Dryden Drop Tower (DDT) facility. PSU also using tested units scaled such that capillary forces dominated in a 1-g environment to characterize evaporation from a free-surface in 1-g upward, sideways and downward orientations. In order to augment the subscale testing performed by PSU, a full scale 1-g analogue of the CapiBRIC drying unit was initiated to help validate performance predictions regarding expected water recovery ratio, estimated processing time, and interface definitions for inlets, outlets, and internal processes, including vent gas composition. This paper describes the design, development and test of the terrestrial CapiBRIC prototypes

ExO: An Ontology for Exposure Science

An ontology is a formal representation of knowledge within a domain and typically consists of classes, the properties of those classes, and the relationships between them. Ontologies are critically important for specifying data of interest in a consistent manner, thereby enabling data aggregation, analysis and exchange. An exposure ontology, consistent with those being used in toxicology and other health sciences, is required to formally represent exposure concepts, the relationships between these concepts and most important, the relationships between exposure, susceptibility, and toxicology information. A successful exposure ontology must facilitate the semantic retrieval of exposure data in the context of environmental health science, medical surveillance, disease control, health tracking, risk assessment, and other public health and environmental science endeavors. To address this need, an Exposure Ontology, ExO, was designed and a prototype developed to provide the foundation for exposure data centralization and integration. The root classes forming the basis for the ontology are 'exposure event’ ‘exposure stressor', 'exposure receptor', and 'exposure outcome'. Although the initial development of ExO was focused on human exposure to chemicals, the ultimate intent is to provide domains that can be extended to address exposures to the full suite of environmental stressors