Alternatives for Navigating Small Unmanned Air Vehicles without GPS

Considering the increased reliance on GPS navigation for the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems, adversaries have invested in capabilities to deny our systems access to genuine GPS signals. Although significant effort has been put forth in the areas of anti-jamming and anti-spoofing in GPS receivers, a need for alternative navigation methods in a GPS denied environment has grown in importance. This report outlines the recommendation and analysis completed for Mr. Lars Ericsson of the Army Project Manager Unmanned Aircraft Systems (PM-UAS).  The report includes background research in the domain space, comprehensive stakeholder analysis, derived system requirements and functional requirements, ending with alternative generation, value scoring, costing, and provided findings for a recommended alternative for future consideration. 

Transgenic human ES and iPS reporter cell lines for identification and selection of pluripotent stem cells in vitro

Optimization of pluripotent stem cell expansion and differentiation is facilitated by biological tools that permit non-invasive and dynamic monitoring of pluripotency, and the ability to select for an undifferentiated input cell population. Here we report on the generation and characterisation of clonal human embryonic stem (HES3, H9) and human induced pluripotent stem cell lines (UQEW01i-epifibC11) that have been stably modified with an artificial EOS(C3+) promoter driving expression of EGFP and puromycin resistance-conferring proteins. We show that EGFP expression faithfully reports on the pluripotency status of the cells in these lines and that antibiotic selection allows for an efficient elimination of differentiated cells from the cultures. We demonstrate that the extinction of the expression of the pluripotency reporter during differentiation closely correlates with the decrease in expression of conventional pluripotency markers, such as OCT4 (POU5F1), TRA-1-60 and SSEA4 when screening across conditions with various levels of pluripotency-maintaining or differentiation-inducing signals. We further illustrate the utility of these lines for real-time monitoring of pluripotency in embryoid bodies and microfluidic bioreactors. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V

Upscaling Flow and Transport Processes

Peer reviewe

Construction progress of WEAVE: the next generation wide-field spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope

We present an update on the overall construction progress of the WEAVE next-generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), now that all the major fabrication contracts are in place. We also present a summary of the current planning behind the 5-year initial phase of survey operations, and some detailed end-to-end science simulations that have been effected to evaluate the final on-sky performance after data processing. WEAVE will provide optical ground-based follow up of ground-based (LOFAR) and space-based (Gaia) surveys. WEAVE is a multi-object and multi-IFU facility utilizing a new 2-degree prime focus field of view at the WHT, with a buffered pick-and-place positioner system hosting 1000 multi-object (MOS) fibres, 20 integral field units, or a single large IFU for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single (dual-beam) spectrograph, with total of 16k spectral pixels, located within the WHT GHRIL enclosure on the telescope Nasmyth platform, supporting observations at R 5000 over the full 370-1000nm wavelength range in a single exposure, or a high resolution mode with limited coverage in each arm at R 20000. The project has experienced some delays in procurement and now has first light expected for the middle of 2019

Introducing the Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL)

This article introduces the Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL), a new, fully open access digital library for religious studies. The OADTL, curated by professional librarians and employing OCLC's integrated library system, seeks to apply the principles of professional librarianship to make all open access content in religious studies fully discoverable to a global audience. The initial collections contain over 100,000 ebooks and over 200,000 full text, peer-reviewed, articles. The project is funded by a not-for-profit corporation, the Digital Theological Library, a 501c3 charity. Collections include recently published OA content, dissertations, public domain documents, and books from institutional repositories--as well content for Open Access journals. Much of the content is cataloged as e-content for the first time in this library. There are no fees of any kind for use

Primitive cardiac cells from human embryonic stem cells

Pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes are currently being investigated for in vitro human heart models and as potential therapeutics for heart failure. In this study, we have developed a differentiation protocol that minimizes the need for specific human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line optimization. We first reduced the heterogeneity that exists within the starting population of bulk cultured hESCs by using cells adapted to singlecell passaging in a 2-dimensional.(2D) culture format. Compared with bulk cultures, single-cell cultures comprised larger fractions of TG30(hi)/OCT4(hi) cells, corresponding to an increased expression of pluripotency markers OCT4 and NANOG, and reduced expression of early lineage-specific markers. A 2D temporal differentiation protocol was then developed, aimed at reducing the inherent heterogeneity and variability of embryoid body-based protocols, with induction of primitive streak cells using bone morphogenetic protein 4 and activin A, followed by cardiogenesis via inhibition of Wnt signaling using the small molecules IWP-4 or IWR-1. IWP-4 treatment resulted in a large percentage of cells expressing low amounts of cardiac myosin heavy chain and expression of early cardiac progenitor markers ISL1 and NKX2-5, thus indicating the production of large numbers of immature cardiomyocytes ( similar to 65,000 / cm(2) or similar to 1.5 per input hESC). This protocol was shown to be effective in HES3, H9, and, to a lesser, extent, MEL1 hESC lines. In addition, we observed that IWR-1 induced predominantly atrial myosin light chain (MLC2a) expression, whereas IWP-4 induced expression of both atrial (MLC2a) and ventricular (MLC2v) forms. The intrinsic flexibility and scalability of this 2D protocol mean that the output population of primitive cardiomyocytes will be particularly accessible and useful for the investigation of molecular mechanisms driving terminal cardiomyocyte differentiation, and potentially for the future treatment of heart failure

Alternatives for Navigating Small Unmanned Air Vehicles without GPS

Considering the increased reliance on GPS navigation for the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems, adversaries have invested in capabilities to deny our systems access to genuine GPS signals. Although significant effort has been put forth in the areas of anti-jamming and anti-spoofing in GPS receivers, a need for alternative navigation methods in a GPS denied environment has grown in importance. This report outlines the recommendation and analysis completed for Mr. Lars Ericsson of the Army Project Manager Unmanned Aircraft Systems (PM-UAS). The report includes background research in the domain space, comprehensive stakeholder analysis, derived system requirements and functional requirements, ending with alternative generation, value scoring, costing, and provided findings for a recommended alternative for future consideration