FY 2017 Center Innovation Fund Annual Report - Highlights/Abstract section

This project evaluated the feasibility of low pressure cold plasma (CP) for two applications: disinfection of produce grown in space and sterilization of medical equipment in space. Currently there is no ISS capability for disinfecting pick and eat crops, food utensils, food production areas, or medical devices. This deficit is extended to projected long duration missions. Small, portable, cold plasma devices would provide an enhanced benefit to crew health and address issues concerning microbial cross contamination. The technology would contribute to the reduction of solid waste since currently crews utilize benzalkonium chloride wet wipes for cleaning surfaces and might use PRO-SAN wipes for cleaning vegetables. CP cleaning/disinfection/sterilization can work on many surfaces, including all metals, most polymers, and this project evaluated produce. Therefore CP provides a simple system that has many different cleaning application in space: produce, medical equipment, cutlery, miscellaneous tools

Vestiges of the Phoenix: De Quincey, Kant and the Heavens

© Edinburgh University Press, 2011publication-status: Accepte

A Pure Solar World : Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism

"Surveying the range of Sun Ra’s extraordinary creativity, this book explores how the father of Afrofuturism brought “space music” to a planet in need of transformation, supporting the aspirations of black people in an inhospitable white world." -- Publisher's website

Techno-Prosthetic Romantic Futurism

Cyberspace creates new ecologies for scholarship: information displaces interpretation, argument cedes to association, and possibility disturbs certainty. What happens, then, when Romanticism goes digital? Rather than answer that question the piece that follows performs it. A hundred little paragraphs, interlinked and unfettered, open a field of digital inquiry where one possibility gives rise to another, and another, and another, and . . . . Skimming/scanning replaces reading as a means of communication. Hacking becomes another word for criticism, and you become a player in the game of digital scholarship. As you confront the possibilities Romanticism raises, your responses conjure various futures. In this particular version of the game such possibilities include virtual subjects, digital territories, raced relations, hacked classics, and mixed messages. The futures they provoke are yours to imagine. Point, click, and perform “Techno-Prosthetic Romantic Futurism.