"Hope is that fiery feeling": Using Poetry as Data to Explore the Meanings of Hope for Young People

Poetic inquiry is a contentious area of qualitative research. In this article, we discuss some of the issues plaguing this field of inquiry. We then analyse a collection of poems about hope written by a sample of young people from Tasmania, Australia. The poems were written as part of the 2011 Tree of Hope project, which utilised multiple, arts-based methods to provide insights into what young people hope for in the future and the role of hope in their lives. Participants utilised one of three poetic structures. While each structure produced distinct themes, a connection between "hope and happiness" overlapped the two structured types of poetry—the acrostic and sense poetry. However, when writing free verse poetry, the expression of additional dimensions of hope, including the flipside of both having hope and losing hope was evident. We conclude that hope is particularly important to young people and that inviting participant-voiced poetry is an effective technique for investigating conceptual topics such as young people and hope

Intractable? Identifying Consensus Policy Opportunities to Address Legal and Ethical Challenges in National Public Health Surveillance from State and Local Epidemiologist Leaders.

Presentation at APHA 2022 Annual Meeting and ExpoBackground. Nearly all US jurisdictions that conduct syndromic surveillance to monitor public health threats send their data to the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP), operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, current data sharing agreements (DUAs) limit federal access to only multi-state regional aggregations. This limitation was a significant challenge for the national response to COVID-19 because federal agencies could not access available data to see how the pandemic was developing across state lines. Methods. NSSP DUAs (2018, 2021) between state/local governments and CDC NSSP were analyzed to: 1) determine whether DUA provisions are consistent with 2017 World Health Organization’s (WHO) ethical guidance; and 2) to determine the extent that legal provisions address (fully, partially, or omitted) policy opportunities identified by state and local epidemiologist leaders in a 2021 study. Results. The NSSP DUAs are in apparent conflict with the WHO ethical recommendations for sharing public health surveillance data between public health agencies. However, NSSP DUAs at least partially address all but three of the policy opportunities identified by state and local epidemiologist leaders (i.e., audit process, access restriction standards, breach responsibility). Conclusions. Imminent public health data modernization efforts require careful examination of existing legal and ethical challenges in public health surveillance. Critically, these findings suggest that these challenges are not intractable. In fact, federal, state, and local partners may be closer to agreement than they might realize. Moreover, several consensus policy opportunities (i.e., data analysis collaborations and developing communication protocols) provide a promising path forward

The Effects of CenteringPregnancy Group Prenatal Care on Postpartum Visit Attendance and Contraception Use

We examined whether Medicaid-enrolled women in CenteringPregnancy group prenatal care had 23 higher rates of postpartum visit attendance and postpartum uptake of contraceptives, compared to women in individual prenatal care

iSat Surface Charging and Thruster Plume Interactions Analysis

No abstract availabl

Spacecraft Charging Current Balance Model Applied to High Voltage Solar Array Operations

No abstract availabl

Making Cities Cool Again: Heat Mitigation Strategies in Hazard Mitigation Plans from Six US States

More people in the US are killed per year by heat waves than any other weather-related disaster. Extreme heat events (heat waves) are also expected to increase in severity and frequency due to climate change. Because of the urban heat island effect that causes cities to warm faster than surrounding rural areas, urban areas are at greater risk of experiencing devastating heat waves. By modifying the way land is used, cities can reduce the threat of heat waves. There are three primary categories of land use or built environment-related heat wave mitigation strategies: cool materials, greening, and energy efficiency strategies. I analyzed 47 county hazard mitigation plans to determine if local jurisdictions are using these heat wave mitigation strategies. I found that although most hazard mitigation plans include a section focused on heat hazards, few plans include land use or built environment mitigation strategies focused on mitigating heat. Most plans did include land use or built environment mitigation strategies used to mitigate other disasters that could have heat wave reduction co-benefits. Population and region had positive relationships with the comprehensiveness of the heat section. None of the variables I tested had associations with the inclusion of heat-related mitigation strategies or co-benefit mitigation strategies

An Investigation of Low Earth Orbit Internal Charging

Low Earth orbit is usually considered a relatively benign environment for internal charging threats due to the low flux of penetrating electrons with energies of a few MeV that are encountered over an orbit. There are configurations, however, where insulators and ungrounded conductors used on the outside of a spacecraft hull may charge when exposed to much lower energy electrons of some 100's keV in a process that is better characterized as internal charging than surface charging. For example, the minimal radiation shielding afforded by thin thermal control materials such as metalized polymer sheets (e.g., aluminized Kapton or Mylar) and multilayer insulation may allow electrons of 100's of keV to charge underlying materials. Yet these same thermal control materials protect the underlying insulators and ungrounded conductors from surface charging currents due to electrons and ions at energies less than a few keV as well as suppress the photoemission, secondary electron, and backscattered electron processes associated with surface charging. We investigate the conditions required for this low Earth orbit "internal charging" to occur and evaluate the environments for which the process may be a threat to spacecraft. First, we describe a simple one-dimensional internal charging model that is used to compute the charge accumulation on materials under thin shielding. Only the electron flux that penetrates exposed surface shielding material is considered and we treat the charge balance in underlying insulation as a parallel plate capacitor accumulating charge from the penetrating electron flux and losing charge due to conduction to a ground plane. Charge dissipation due to conduction can be neglected to consider the effects of charging an ungrounded conductor. In both cases, the potential and electric field is computed as a function of time. An additional charge loss process is introduced due to an electrostatic discharge current when the electric field reaches a prescribed breakdown strength. For simplicity, the amount of charge lost in the discharge is treated as a random percentage of the total charge between a set maximum and minimum amount so a user can consider partial discharges of insulating materials (small loss of charge) or arcing from a conductor (large loss of charge). We apply the model to electron flux measurements from the NOAA-19 spacecraft to demonstrate that charging can reach levels where electrostatic discharges occur and estimate the magnitude of the discharge

Correlation of ISS Electric Potential Variations with Mission Operations

Orbiting approximately 400 km above the Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) is a unique research laboratory used to conduct ground-breaking science experiments in space. The ISS has eight Solar Array Wings (SAW), and each wing is 11.7 meters wide and 35.1 meters long. The SAWs are controlled individually to maximize power output, minimize stress to the ISS structure, and minimize interference with other ISS operations such as vehicle dockings and Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVA). The Solar Arrays are designed to operate at 160 Volts. These large, high power solar arrays are negatively grounded to the ISS and collect charged particles (predominately electrons) as they travel through the space plasma in the Earth's ionosphere. If not controlled, this collected charge causes floating potential variations which can result in arcing, causing injury to the crew during an EVA or damage to hardware [1]. The environmental catalysts for ISS floating potential variations include plasma density and temperature fluctuations and magnetic induction from the Earth's magnetic field. These alone are not enough to cause concern for ISS, but when they are coupled with the large positive potential on the solar arrays, floating potentials up to negative 95 Volts have been observed. Our goal is to differentiate the operationally induced fluctuations in floating potentials from the environmental causes. Differentiating will help to determine what charging can be controlled, and we can then design the proper operations controls for charge collection mitigation. Additionally, the knowledge of how high power solar arrays interact with the environment and what regulations or design techniques can be employed to minimize charging impacts can be applied to future programs

CubeSat Susceptibility to Auroral Space Weather Events

No abstract availabl

Characteristics of Extreme Auroral Charging Events

The highest level spacecraft charging observed in low Earth orbit (LEO) occurs when spacecraft are exposed to energetic auroral electrons. Since auroral charging has been identified as a mechanism responsible for on-orbit anomalies and even possible satellite failures it is important to consider extreme auroral charging events as design and test environments for spacecraft to be used in high inclination LEO orbits. This paper will report on studies of extreme auroral charging events using data from the SSJ/4 and SSJ/5 precipitating electron and ion sensors on the Defense Meteorology Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites. Early studies of DMSP charging to negative potentials 100 V focused on statistics of the electron environment responsible for charging. Later statistical studies of auroral charging have generally focused on solar cycle dependence of charging behavior and magnitude of the maximum potential and duration of the charging events. We extend these studies to focus on more detailed investigations of extreme charging event characteristics that are required to evaluate potential threats to spacecraft systems. A collection of example auroral charging events is assembled from the DMSP data set using the criteria that "extreme auroral charging" is defined as periods with spacecraft negative potentials 400 V. Specific characteristics to be treated include (but are not limited to) maximum and mean potentials, time history of spacecraft potentials through the events, total charging duration and the time potentials exceed voltage thresholds, frame charging/discharging rates, and information on geographic and geomagnetic latitudes at which the events are observed. Finally, we will comment on the implications of these studies for potential auroral charging risks to the International Space Station