LOFT-1 Mission: New Concepts For Educational and Commercial Spaceflight

The Launch Operations Flight Test One (LOFT-1) was originally conceived by E\u27Prime Aerospace Corporation (EPAC) of Titusville, Florida, as strictly an administrative pathfinder toward satisfying all governmental requirements for conducting commercial spaceflight activities from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS). As the program progressed from early June 1987 toward the original launch date set in the Fall, the complexion of the flight changed dramatically to one of a bonafide scientific mission. Four individual educational/commercial organizations agreed to provide experiments. As such, LOFT-1 would mark the first launch of a privately developed and funded suborbital vehicle carrying payloads from the CCAFS. The University of Alabama in Huntsville, by way of participants within the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, volunteered to serve as a focal point for all LOFT-1 payload design and integration tasks. In addition, UAH went on to design and develop its own experiment. Given only a few short months between conception of the mission and the originally planned flight date of October 1^, 1987, it was necessary to define a close-knit team, literally from across the nation, to make the mission possible within the original time constraint

Pesticide Ground Water Monitoring Project Phase VIII

During Phase VIII monitoring (March 24, 2000 to June 30, 2001 ), 86 samples were collected from 77 new wells and 9 samples were collected from wells with previous detectable herbicide

Hepatocyte growth factor, hepatocyte growth factor activator and arginine in a rat fulminant colitis model

INTRODUCTION: Dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) is commonly used to induce a murine fulminant colitis model. Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to decrease the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) but the effect of its activator, HGFA, is not well characterized. Arginine reduces effects of oxidative stress but its effect on IBD is not well known. The primary aim is to determine whether HGF and HGFA, or arginine will decrease IBD symptoms such as pain and diarrhea in a DSS-induced fulminant colitis murine model. METHODS: A severe colitis was induced in young, male Fischer 344 rats with 4% (w/v) DSS oral solution for seven days; rats were sacrificed on day 10. Rats were divided into five groups of 8 animals: control, HGF (700 mcg/kg/dose), HGF and HGFA (10 mcg/dose), HGF and arginine, and high dose HGF (2800 mcg/kg/dose). Main clinical outcomes were pain, diarrhea and weight loss. Blinded pathologists scored the terminal ileum and distal colon. RESULTS: DSS reliably induced severe active colitis in 90% of animals (n = 36/40). There were no differences in injury scores between control and treatment animals. HGF led to 1.38 fewer days in pain (p = 0.036), while arginine led to 1.88 fewer days of diarrhea (P = 0.017) compared to controls. 88% of HGFA-treated rats started regaining weight (P \u3c 0.001). DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: Although treatment was unable to reverse fulminant disease, HGF and arginine were associated with decreased days of pain and diarrhea. These clinical interventions may reduce associated symptoms for severe IBD patients, even when urgent surgical intervention remains the only viable option

Restoration of Hepatic Glucokinase Expression Corrects Hepatic Glucose Flux and Normalizes Plasma Glucose in Zucker Diabetic Fatty Rats

OBJECTIVE—We examined in 20-week-old Zucker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats whether restoration of hepatic glucokinase (GK) expression would alter hepatic glucose flux and improve hyperglycemia

Implementation and testing of the first prompt search for gravitational wave transients with electromagnetic counterparts

Aims. A transient astrophysical event observed in both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) channels would yield rich scientific rewards. A first program initiating EM follow-ups to possible transient GW events has been developed and exercised by the LIGO and Virgo community in association with several partners. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the methods used to promptly identify and localize GW event candidates and to request images of targeted sky locations. Methods. During two observing periods (Dec 17 2009 to Jan 8 2010 and Sep 2 to Oct 20 2010), a low-latency analysis pipeline was used to identify GW event candidates and to reconstruct maps of possible sky locations. A catalog of nearby galaxies and Milky Way globular clusters was used to select the most promising sky positions to be imaged, and this directional information was delivered to EM observatories with time lags of about thirty minutes. A Monte Carlo simulation has been used to evaluate the low-latency GW pipeline's ability to reconstruct source positions correctly. Results. For signals near the detection threshold, our low-latency algorithms often localized simulated GW burst signals to tens of square degrees, while neutron star/neutron star inspirals and neutron star/black hole inspirals were localized to a few hundred square degrees. Localization precision improves for moderately stronger signals. The correct sky location of signals well above threshold and originating from nearby galaxies may be observed with ~50% or better probability with a few pointings of wide-field telescopes.Comment: 17 pages. This version (v2) includes two tables and 1 section not included in v1. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Observation of Hadronic W Decays in t-tbar Events with the Collider Detector at Fermilab

We observe hadronic W decays in t-tbar -> W (-> l nu) + >= 4 jet events using a 109 pb-1 data sample of p-pbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.8 TeV collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). A peak in the dijet invariant mass distribution is obtained that is consistent with W decay and inconsistent with the background prediction by 3.3 standard deviations. From this peak we measure the W mass to be 77.2 +- 4.6 (stat+syst) GeV/c^2. This result demonstrates the presence of two W bosons in t-tbar candidates in the W (-> l nu) + >= 4 jet channel.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR