Tactical Athletes: An Integrated Approach to Understanding and Enhancing the Health and Performance of Firefighters-in-Training

International Journal of Exercise Science 8(4): 341-357, 2015. In an effort to reduce the rates of firefighter fatality, injury, and workplace stress, there has been a call for research to advance knowledge of firefighting performance and injury prevention. Physical and psychological variables important to firefighter health and performance have been identified, yet the interrelated nature of these variables has been overlooked. Given the overlap between the physical and psychological demands of firefighting and sport, and given that an integrated framework has been used in the sport domain to guide athlete health and performance research and practice, firefighter organizations could benefit from adopting a sport-based, integrated model of firefighter training and performance management. Guided by the Meyer Athlete Performance Management Model (MAPM), the purposes of the current study were to: (a) describe the physical and psychological characteristics of firefighters-in-training (i.e., cadets and recruits), and (b) explore relationships between the physical and psychological variables associated with health and performance. Firefighters-in-training employed by a Midwestern area fire department in the United States (N = 34) completed a battery of physical and psychological assessments at the department’s Fire and Safety Academy building. Results of the current study revealed significant correlations between several of the physical and psychological characteristics of firefighters-in-training. These results, along with the multidimensional data set that was also established in the current study, provide preliminary evidence for the use of a sport-based integrated performance model such as the MAPM to guide training and performance research in firefighter populations

Simulating Mars on Earth: Georgia Tech's Crew 47 at the Mars Desert Research Station

Presentation for the Mars Society @ Georgia Tech

If One GEB is Good, a Community of GEBs is Better

Energy efficient, connected, grid-interactive, smart and flexible buildings are key to decarbonization, lowering energy use and improving the nation’s electricity grid. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Connected Communities initiative works to demonstrate how coordinated groups of highly efficient buildings combined with other distributed energy resources (DERs), such as electric vehicle (EV) charging, batteries, storage, demand response and photovoltaic (PV) generation can reliably and cost‐effectively serve as grid assets by strategically deploying efficiency and demand flexibility while reducing carbon emissions. In 2021, DOE competitively awarded $61 million to a diverse portfolio of 10 pilot projects to promote grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) working together to reliably and cost-effectively serve as grid assets while decarbonizing. Two of the main tenets of the program are measuring the communities’ energy and carbon performance and understanding how to replicate project successes in other communities. This paper begins with a discussion of what Connected Communities are (including a brief history) and their many benefits, including reduced carbon emissions and increased building efficiency and demand flexibility. Next, it provides an overview of the 10 projects, highlighting the diversity of approaches to measure success and replicate the projects: geographic locations; building types; utility, regulatory, market environments; and building vintages that will be used to test the ability of buildings to serve as grid resources. It concludes with a discussion of anticipated project impacts and the metrics that will be used to evaluate the Connected Communities projects

Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycan: An Arbovirus Attachment Factor Integral to Mosquito Salivary Gland Ducts

Variants of the prototype Alphavirus, Sindbis (SINV), were used in per os infections of adult female mosquitoes to investigate arbovirus interaction with the salivary gland (SG). Infection of Aedine mosquitoes with AR339, a heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG)-dependent variant, resulted in gross pathology in the SG lateral lobes while infection with TR339, a HSPG-independent variant, resulted in minimal SG pathology. HSPG was detected in the internal ducts of the SG lateral lobes by immunolabeling but not in the median lobe, or beyond the triad structure and external ducts. Reports that human lactoferrin interacts with HSPG, suggested an interference with virus attachment to receptors on vertebrate cells. Pre-incubation of Aedes albopictus cultured C7-10 cells with bovine lactoferrin (bLF) followed by adsorption of SINV resulted in earlier and greater intensity of cytopathic response to TR339 compared with AR339. Following pre-treatment of C7-10 cells with bLF, plaques from tissue culture-adapted high-titer SINVTaV-GFP-TC were observed at 48 h post-infection (p.i.), while plaques from low-titer SINVTaV-GFP-TC were not observed until 120 h p.i. Confocal optics detected this reporter virus at 30 days p.i. in the SG proximal lateral lobe, a region of HSPG-immunolocalization. Altogether these data suggest an association between SINV and HSPG in the host mosquito