The 1981 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program: Research reports

Research reports related to spacecraft industry technological advances, requirements, and applications were considered. Some of the topic areas addressed were: (1) Fabrication, evaluation, and use of high performance composites and ceramics, (2) antenna designs, (3) electronics and microcomputer applications and mathematical modeling and programming techniques, (4) design, fabrication, and failure detection methods for structural materials, components, and total systems, and (5) chemical studies of bindary organic mixtures and polymer synthesis. Space environment parameters were also discussed

ESTUDO LONGITUDINAL DE FATORES QUE AFETAM O RISCO DE FRATURA POR ESTRESSE EM DUAS POPULAÇÕES DE COLEGIAIS DO SEXO FEMININO

Objetivos: As fraturas por estresse causam significante morbidade em mulheres. Diferenças no nível de atividades, valores hormonais e densidade mineral óssea (BMD) afetam diferentemente as taxas de fraturas por estresse. Os autores hipotetizaram que mulheres de um Colégio militar terão maior nível de atividade do que mulheres em colégios com um ambiente mais flexível, que correlacionará com mudanças nos valores hormonais, menor (BMD) e mais fraturas por estresse. Método: Nesse estudo prospectivo comparativo, 63 mulheres de duas Instituições (The Citadel: The Military College Of South Carolina And The College Of Cherleston) relataram detalhadamente suas atividades, dieta e lesões através de um questionário e tiveram sua BMB e os valores hormonais séricos medidos num intervalo de 06 meses, por um período de 2 anos; 38 sujeitos completaram o estudo. A análise estatística examinou diferenças e mudanças ao longo do tempo entre as duas amostras.Resultados: Uma fratura por estresse ocorreu em cada Instituição. As mulheres do Citadel tiveram maiores níveis de atividade, que as mulheres do College of Charleston no longo do estudo. As mulheres do Citadel tiveram menor nível de hormônio folículo estimulante, maior 17 Beta-Estradiol aos 24 meses e maior BMD na extremidade proximal femoral aos 18 meses da investigação (p< 0,05). Conclusões: Os valores séricos hormonais podem ser um indicador mais sensível de resposta ao nível da atividade física que o BMD dentro da amostra e duração deste estudo. Outros estudos são necessários para definir esta complexa interrelação. LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF FACTORS AFFECTING STRESS FRACTURE RISK IN TWO DISTINCT COLLEGE FEMALE POPULATIONS Abstract Objectives: Stress fractures cause significant morbidity in females. Differences in activity levels, hormone values, and bone mineral density (BMD) affect different rates of stress fracture. The authors hypothesized that females at a military college will have greater activity levels than females in a flexible college environment, which will correlate with greater changes in hormone values, lower BMD, and more stress fractures. Methods: In this prospective comparative study 63 females from two institutions (The Citadel: The Military College of South Carolina and the College of Charleston) self-reported on a detailed activity, diet, and injury questionnaire and had BMD and serum hormone values measured at 6- month intervals for a two year period; 38 completed the study. Statistical analysis was designed to examine differences and changes over time between the two samples. Results: One stress fracture occurred in each institution. Citadel females had higher activity levels than females at the College of Charleston throughout the study. Citadel females had lower follicle stimulating hormone levels at 24 months, greater 17 beta-estradiol at 24 months, and greater proximal femoral BMD at eighteen months (

Providing a Safe Harbor for Those Who Play by the Rules: The Case for a Strong Regulatory Compliance Defense

On September 25, 2003, a fire broke out at the National Health Care (NHC) nursing home facility in Nashville, Tennessee, causing sixteen deaths and a number of injuries from smoke inhalation. Thirty-two victims subsequently filed suit against the nursing home, alleging that NHC was negligent for failing to install sprinklers in its facility. This claim was made notwithstanding the fact that applicable federal, state, and local safety regulations did not require the installation of sprinklers in this particular type of building, and notwithstanding that the NHC facility had been inspected by state fire inspectors just months before the fire and was found to be in compliance with all requirements of the fire code. NHC eventually settled these lawsuits in order to avoid the uncertainty and expense of further litigation. The NHC case illustrates how good-faith compliance with applicable safety regulations provides businesses with almost no protection against potentially devastating tort liability. The problem is with the legal rule that governs compliance with government regulations. In effect, most courts treat a defendant\u27s compliance with governmental regulations as evidence of due care, but allow the jury to find that a defendant was negligent, notwithstanding his or her compliance with legislative or administrative regulations. We shall refer to this as the traditional approach to regulatory compliance. The traditional approach originated in Grand Trunk Railway Co. of Canada v. Ives, decided by the United States Supreme Court in the late nineteenth century. Later, § 288C of the Second Restatement of Torts endorsed this version of the rule, declaring that compliance with safety regulations was not conclusive evidence that a defendant exercised due care. The American Law Institute is currently in the process of drafting the Third Restatement of Torts, and the revised version of the regulatory compliance defense is substantially similar to that of the Second Restatement. In our view, there are many problems with the traditional approach. First, legislatures and administrative agencies have more expertise than lay juries when it comes to determining efficient levels of safety, but the traditional approach allows lay juries to second guess them. Second, under our constitutional system, legislative bodies and administrative agencies, not courts, are responsible for making resource allocation and other policy decisions. Therefore, courts should accept the trade-offs that are often embodied in safety regulations instead of allowing plaintiffs to use the litigation process to substitute their own policy choices for those of legislative bodies and administrative agencies. Third, the traditional approach wrongly assumes that government safety regulations merely set minimum standards, while, in reality, modem regulations typically reflect state-of-the-art standards. Thus, by adding jury-created safety standards on top of existing regulatory requirements, the traditional approach to regulatory compliance adds to the cost of doing business without achieving significant safety gains. Fourth, the traditional approach to regulatory compliance undermines the principle of uniform application of regulatory standards. Because jury verdicts are seldom consistent, business entities are often subjected to nonuniform safety standards. Finally, the traditional approach deters useful economic activity by imposing potentially crushing tort liability upon those who have complied in good faith with regulatory standards. Part II of this Article examines the traditional approach to the regulatory compliance defense, beginning with the Supreme Court\u27s opinion in Grand Trunk Railway Co. of Canada v. Ives, and proceeding to the Restatement (Second) § 288C and the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical Harm § 16. In Part III, we discuss a number of cases that explicitly recognize a strong regulatory compliance defense, as well as cases that achieve a similar objective by expressly or impliedly applying the Second Restatement\u27s § 16, comment (a) exception. Part IV reviews some of the arguments that support a stronger regulatory compliance defense. These include: (1) the institutional competence argument, (2) the separation of powers argument, (3) the regulatory efficiency argument, (4) the nonuniform standards argument, and (5) the overdeterrence argument. In Part V, we focus on nursing home regulation to -see what impact a stronger regulatory compliance defense would have on this socially useful industry. Finally, in Part VI, we set forth a proposed alternative to the current version of Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical Harm § 16

Volatile Decision Dynamics: Experiments, Stochastic Description, Intermittency Control, and Traffic Optimization

The coordinated and efficient distribution of limited resources by individual decisions is a fundamental, unsolved problem. When individuals compete for road capacities, time, space, money, goods, etc., they normally make decisions based on aggregate rather than complete information, such as TV news or stock market indices. In related experiments, we have observed a volatile decision dynamics and far-from-optimal payoff distributions. We have also identified ways of information presentation that can considerably improve the overall performance of the system. In order to determine optimal strategies of decision guidance by means of user-specific recommendations, a stochastic behavioural description is developed. These strategies manage to increase the adaptibility to changing conditions and to reduce the deviation from the time-dependent user equilibrium, thereby enhancing the average and individual payoffs. Hence, our guidance strategies can increase the performance of all users by reducing overreaction and stabilizing the decision dynamics. These results are highly significant for predicting decision behaviour, for reaching optimal behavioural distributions by decision support systems, and for information service providers. One of the promising fields of application is traffic optimization.Comment: For related work see http://www.helbing.or

Water Quality Impacts of Natural Riparian Grasses Part 1: Empirical Studies

Studies were conducted on the effectiveness of natural riparian grass buffer strips in removing sediment and ag chemicals from surface runoff. No till and conventional tillage erosion plots served as the sediment and chemical source area. Runoff from the plots was directed onto 15, 30, and 45 foot filter strips where the inflow and outflow concentrations and sediment size distributions. Trapping percentages for sediment and ag chemicals typically ranged near or above 90%. An evaluation was made of the distribution of trapped chemicals among infiltrated mass and mass stored in the surface layer and on plant surfaces. The analysis showed that most of the chemicals were trapped by infiltration onto the soil matrix

Intruder bands and configuration mixing in the lead isotopes

A three-configuration mixing calculation is performed in the context of the interacting boson model with the aim to describe recently observed collective bands built on low-lying $0^+$ states in neutron-deficient lead isotopes. The configurations that are included correspond to the regular, spherical states as well as two-particle two-hole and four-particle four-hole excitations across the Z=82 shell gap.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, accepted by PRC, reference added for section 1 in this revised versio

An Efficient Site-Specific Method for Irreversible Covalent Labeling of Proteins with a Fluorophore

Fluorophore labeling of proteins while preserving native functions is essential for bulk Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) interaction and single molecule imaging analysis. Here we describe a versatile, efficient, specific, irreversible, gentle and low-cost method for labeling proteins with fluorophores that appears substantially more robust than a similar but chemically distinct procedure. The method employs the controlled enzymatic conversion of a central Cys to a reactive formylglycine (fGly) aldehyde within a six amino acid Formylglycine Generating Enzyme (FGE) recognition sequence in vitro. The fluorophore is then irreversibly linked to the fGly residue using a Hydrazinyl-Iso-Pictet-Spengler (HIPS) ligation reaction. We demonstrate the robust large-scale fluorophore labeling and purification of E. coli (Ec) mismatch repair (MMR) components. Fluorophore labeling did not alter the native functions of these MMR proteins in vitro or in singulo. Because the FGE recognition sequence is easily portable, FGE-HIPS fluorophore-labeling may be easily extended to other proteins.open1157sciescopu

Associations of variants In the hexokinase 1 and interleukin 18 receptor regions with oxyhemoglobin saturation during sleep

Sleep disordered breathing (SDB)-related overnight hypoxemia is associated with cardiometabolic disease and other comorbidities. Understanding the genetic bases for variations in nocturnal hypoxemia may help understand mechanisms influencing oxygenation and SDB-related mortality. We conducted genome-wide association tests across 10 cohorts and 4 populations to identify genetic variants associated with three correlated measures of overnight oxyhemoglobin saturation: average and minimum oxyhemoglobin saturation during sleep and the percent of sleep with oxyhemoglobin saturation under 90%. The discovery sample consisted of 8,326 individuals. Variants with p −6 were analyzed in a replication group of 14,410 individuals. We identified 3 significantly associated regions, including 2 regions in multi-ethnic analyses (2q12, 10q22). SNPs in the 2q12 region associated with minimum SpO2 (rs78136548 p = 2.70 × 10−10). SNPs at 10q22 were associated with all three traits including average SpO2 (rs72805692 p = 4.58 × 10−8). SNPs in both regions were associated in over 20,000 individuals and are supported by prior associations or functional evidence. Four additional significant regions were detected in secondary sex-stratified and combined discovery and replication analyses, including a region overlapping Reelin, a known marker of respiratory complex neurons.These are the first genome-wide significant findings reported for oxyhemoglobin saturation during sleep, a phenotype of high clinical interest. Our replicated associations with HK1 and IL18R1 suggest that variants in inflammatory pathways, such as the biologically-plausible NLRP3 inflammasome, may contribute to nocturnal hypoxemia

Investigating locally relevant risk factors for Campylobacter infection in Australia: Protocol for a case-control study and genomic analysis

Introduction The CampySource project aims to identify risk factors for human Campylobacter infection in Australia. We will investigate locally relevant risk factors and those significant in international studies in a case-control study. Case isolates and contemporaneous isolates from food and animal sources will be sequenced to conduct source attribution modelling, and findings will be combined with the case-control study in a source-assigned analysis. Methods and analysis The case-control study will include 1200 participants (600 cases and 600 controls) across three regions in Australia. Cases will be recruited from campylobacteriosis notifications to health departments. Only those with a pure and viable Campylobacter isolate will be eligible for selection to allow for whole genome sequencing of isolates. Controls will be recruited from notified cases of influenza, frequency matched by sex, age group and geographical area of residence. All participants will be interviewed by trained telephone interviewers using a piloted questionnaire. We will collect Campylobacter isolates from retail meats and companion animals (specifically dogs), and all food, animal and human isolates will undergo whole genome sequencing. We will use sequence data to estimate the proportion of human infections that can be attributed to animal and food reservoirs (source attribution modelling), and to identify spatial clusters and temporal trends. Source-assigned analysis of the case-control study data will also be conducted where cases are grouped according to attributed sources. Ethics and dissemination Human and animal ethics have been approved. Genomic data will be published in online archives accompanied by basic metadata. We anticipate several publications to come from this study

Not just ‘small potatoes’: Knowledge of the idiomatic meanings of collocations

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can be both literal and figurative. One hundred and seven Chilean Spanish-speaking university students of English were asked to complete a meaning-recall collocation test in which the target items were embedded in non-defining sentences. Results showed limited collocation knowledge, with a mean score of 33% correct. The study also examined the effects of frequency, semantic transparency, year at university, and everyday engagement with the second language (L2) outside the classroom on this collocation knowledge. Mixed-effects modelling indicated that there was no relationship between frequency and semantic transparency and the knowledge of the figurative meanings. However, a positive relationship was found between this knowledge and year at university, time spent in an English-speaking country, and time spent reading