PLAN-IT: Scheduling assistant for solar system exploration

A frame-based expert scheduling system shell, PLAN-IT, is developed for spacecraft scheduling in the Request Integration Phase, using the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) mission as a development base. Basic, structured, and expert scheduling techniques are reviewed. Data elements such as activity representation and resource conflict representation are discussed. Resource constraints include minimum and maximum separation times between activities, percentage of time pointed at specific targets, and separation time between targeted intervals of a given activity. The different scheduling technique categories and the rationale for their selection are also considered

Preventing and Reducing Falls in Assisted Living Facilities: An Educational Intervention

As the number of older adults continues to rise, falling in older adults has become a national health care issue. Many older adults who fall reside in assisted living facilities. Every time a fall incident occurs, first responders are called, utilizing a significant amount of first responder’s time and resources. Therefore, the purpose of this project was to implement a fall prevention program for residents of an assisted living facility (ALF) to reduce fall risk and fall-related calls to the local fire department. The project consisted of a four-week course given once weekly for 60 minutes to residents at an ALF. Course content was evidence-based and included information on the role of occupational therapy in fall prevention, strength and balance exercises, environmental fall risks, and how hydration, nutrition, vitamin D intake, bone health, and medication management impact fall risk. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, indicating that participants found the information helpful and relevant. Occupational therapists and other health professionals can play an important role in the education of residents and staff of ALFs to increase awareness of fall risks, promote health and well-being among older adults, and help decrease fall-related calls to first responders.https://scholar.dominican.edu/ug-student-posters/1018/thumbnail.jp

Preventing and Reducing Falls in Assisted Living Facilities: An Educational Intervention

As the number of older adults continues to rise, falling in older adults has become a national health care issue. Many older adults who fall reside in assisted living facilities. Every time a fall incident occurs, first responders are called, utilizing a significant amount of first responder’s time and resources. Therefore, the purpose of this project was to implement a fall prevention program for residents of an assisted living facility (ALF) to reduce fall risk and fall-related calls to the local fire department. The project consisted of a four-week course given once weekly for 60 minutes to residents at an ALF. Course content was evidence-based and included information on the role of occupational therapy in fall prevention, strength and balance exercises, environmental fall risks, and how hydration, nutrition, vitamin D intake, bone health, and medication management impact fall risk. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, indicating that participants found the information helpful and relevant. Occupational therapists and other health professionals can play an important role in the education of residents and staff of ALFs to increase awareness of fall risks, promote health and well-being among older adults, and help decrease fall-related calls to first responders

The View From Here: User-Centered Perspectives on Social Network Privacy

A great deal of personal information is released in online social network profiles, and this information is increasingly being sought as evidence in criminal, administrative and civil legal proceedings. Determination of the admissibility of social network profile information rests in part on the issue of subjective expectations of privacy: to what extent do online social network participants expect privacy in their social network profiles? This question is examined through a combination of interviews and focus groups. The results suggest that Facebook as a whole is characterized as a space where participants construct and display a produced version of the self to a large and indeterminate social network. The common perspective is that information posted on social network profiles is selected for social broadcast, and further dissemination (beyond the online social network to which information is disclosed) is therefore both acceptable and to be expected. Although they would prefer profile access to be restricted to a broadly defined social network of friends and acquaintances, online social network participants do not in general expect to control the audience for their profiles, and they therefore typically include only information that ‘everyone’ can know in their online profiles. They thus require and exercise control over the content that is associated with their online profiles, and actions that undermine this control run contrary to privacy expectations

Effect of Aging on the Reversibility of Pu(IV) Sorption to Goethite

Designing safe remediation and disposal strategies for plutonium (Pu) requires understanding the sorption affinity of Pu for soil minerals. Sorption of Pu(IV) was examined with respect to aging for a goethite system using batch sorption experiments. Sorption of Pu(IV) to iron oxides has been observed to be strong, rapid, and possibly irreversible or hysteretic. These observations may be explained by aging, a surface chemical process happening after initial sorption which causes a change in contaminant surface speciation over time. Measurements of Pu(IV) sorption are often complicated by oxidative leaching of Pu(IV) as Pu(V). Desferrioxamine B (DFOB) is a complexant capable of competing with the proposed strong surface complexes. Additionally, DFOB minimizes oxidative leaching by forming strong Pu(IV)-DFOB complexes, thereby stabilizing Pu(IV) as the dominant aqueous oxidation state. Pu(IV) was reacted in suspensions of 0.1g/L goethite and 10mM NaCl spanning pH 4–7 for various lengths of time (1,6,15,34 and 116 days). Supernatant was replaced with a 1.7µM DFOB solution and, after 34 more days, analyzed for aqueous Pu by liquid scintillation counting. Modeling sorption curves in FITEQL yielded logK values which increased from 0.078 to 0.953 over 116 days, indicating Pu(IV) sorption onto goethite becomes less reversible with aging

Abundance recovery error analysis using simulated AVIRIS data

Measurement noise and imperfect atmospheric correction translate directly into errors in the determination of the surficial abundance of materials from imaging spectrometer data. The effects of errors on abundance recovery were investigated previously using Monte Carlo simulation methods by Sabol et. al. The drawback of the Monte Carlo approach is that thousands of trials are needed to develop good statistics on the probable error in abundance recovery. This computational burden invariably limits the number of scenarios of interest that can practically be investigated. A more efficient approach is based on covariance analysis. The covariance analysis approach expresses errors in abundance as a function of noise in the spectral measurements and provides a closed form result eliminating the need for multiple trials. Monte Carlo simulation and covariance analysis are used to predict confidence limits for abundance recovery for a scenario which is modeled as being derived from Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS)

The Influence of Model Resolution on Dispersal and Retention in Oregon Coastal Waters

Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) models are used to explore how physical processes influence the transport of particles (e.g., eggs, larvae, or propagules) in the ocean. On the Oregon continental shelf and slope, the Northern California Current System (CCS) is influenced by spatially and temporally variable coastal currents driven by weather, tides, and topography. Nearshore waters, which are sites for recreational, cultural, and economic activities, are essential to coastal communities. In Oregon coastal waters, there are five marine reserves (MRs) which range in size from 3 km2 (e.g., Otter Rock) to 37 km2 (e.g., Cape Perpetua) and average maximum depths of 18 m (e.g., Otter Rock) to 55 m (e.g., Cape Falcon, Cape Perpetua). To date, the dispersal and retention potential of these coastal MRs is poorly characterized, in part because of limited modeling studies conducted at scales that are not consistent with the size and spacing of these MRs. In past LPT model studies, particle residence times in the Oregon nearshore and shelf are less than three weeks. However, the retention of particles in the nearshore may depend on the accurate representation of smaller-scale physical processes that are not resolved in those modeling studies. In chapter 2, I developed a LPT model to examine how the spatial resolution of a Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) at 2 km and 250 m affects dispersal and retention characteristics on the Oregon coast. Further, I compared the predictions of temperature, salinity, and current velocities from the 250 m ROMS to oceanographic data collected in situ to corroborate the overall trends between the model and observations. In chapter 3, I characterize particle dispersal along the Oregon nearshore, particularly in and out of the Oregon MRs, using ROMS of different spatial resolutions (2 km, 250 m). In chapter 2, I found that along-shelf and cross-shelf velocities are similar between the 250 m ROMS and in situ data for a majority of the domain, with the ROMS velocity higher at Heceta Bank and Cape Blanco. The 250 m ROMS tends to overestimate upwelling salinity and underestimate temperature, which may be due to an overestimation of upwelling strength (i.e., vertical velocity) in the 250 m ROMS model. A possible explanation is that the winds used to force the ROMS are higher than the observations. However, the winds at station NWPO3 are stronger than the winds used to force the ROMS (e.g., NOAA North American Mesoscale Model forecasts), making it unlikely that the higher salinity and lower temperature of the ROMS are driven by higher wind stress and consequently stronger upwelling. In simulations forced with the 250 m ROMS, particles have more meandering, a higher percentage of retention in the domain at the end of the simulation, and a greater depth range than in simulations forced with the 2 km ROMS. In chapter 3, similarly to chapter 2, a higher percentage of particles are retained in the domain, and particles exhibit a greater depth range when forced with the 250 m ROMS. Particles forced with the 250 m ROMS travel less distance in the latitudinal direction (e.g., alongshore) and greater retention than the 2 km ROMS. However, the general spatial patterns of particle retention for the three years examined are similar between the two models, showing that it may suffice to use a lower resolution model when asking questions related to areas that retain or source particles. This study has provided a better understanding of the influence of physical processes on particle dispersal and retention in Oregon coastal areas. The information gained by understanding regions in the Oregon nearshore that retain and disperse particles is important for the management and evaluation of the Oregon MR system

Immunotherapeutic approach to reduce senescent cells and alleviate senescence-associated secretory phenotype in mice

Accumulation of senescent cells (SNCs) with a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) has been implicated as a major source of chronic sterile inflammation leading to many age-related pathologies. Herein, we provide evidence that a bifunctional immunotherapeutic, HCW9218, with capabilities of neutralizing TGF-β and stimulating immune cells, can be safely administered systemically to reduce SNCs and alleviate SASP in mice. In the diabetic db/db mouse model, subcutaneous administration of HCW9218 reduced senescent islet β cells and SASP resulting in improved glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and aging index. In naturally aged mice, subcutaneous administration of HCW9218 durably reduced the level of SNCs and SASP, leading to lower expression of pro-inflammatory genes in peripheral organs. HCW9218 treatment also reverted the pattern of key regulatory circadian gene expression in aged mice to levels observed in young mice and impacted genes associated with metabolism and fibrosis in the liver. Single-nucleus RNA Sequencing analysis further revealed that HCW9218 treatment differentially changed the transcriptomic landscape of hepatocyte subtypes involving metabolic, signaling, cell-cycle, and senescence-associated pathways in naturally aged mice. Long-term survival studies also showed that HCW9218 treatment improved physical performance without compromising the health span of naturally aged mice. Thus, HCW9218 represents a novel immunotherapeutic approach and a clinically promising new class of senotherapeutic agents targeting cellular senescence-associated diseases

Neutralizing Antibody-Resistant Hepatitis C Virus Cell-to-Cell Transmission

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) can initiate infection by cell-free particle and cell-cell contact-dependent transmission. In this study we use a novel infectious coculture system to examine these alternative modes of infection. Cell-to-cell transmission is relatively resistant to anti-HCV glycoprotein monoclonal anti- bodies and polyclonal immunoglobulin isolated from infected individuals, providing an effective strategy for escaping host humoral immune responses. Chimeric viruses expressing the structural proteins rep- resenting the seven major HCV genotypes demonstrate neutralizing antibody-resistant cell-to-cell trans- mission. HCV entry is a multistep process involving numerous receptors. In this study we demonstrate that, in contrast to earlier reports, CD81 and the tight-junction components claudin-1 and occludin are all essential for both cell-free and cell-to-cell viral transmission. However, scavenger receptor BI (SR-BI) has a more prominent role in cell-to-cell transmission of the virus, with SR-BI-specific antibodies and small-molecule inhibitors showing preferential inhibition of this infection route. These observations highlight the importance of targeting host cell receptors, in particular SR-BI, to control viral infection and spread in the liver