The Experience of Songwriting in Music Therapy for Adults with Intellectual Disability

This research study investigated the lived experience of adults with Intellectual Disability (ID) in a music therapy songwriting session. Three study participants, referred to here as Emma, Anne, and Abdoul, took part in individual songwriting music therapy sessions. The participants each completed an original song in collaboration with a board certified music therapist. The songs were recorded and the lyrics of the song were transcribed. After the songwriting experience was complete a 10-20 minute semi-structured interview was conducted to gather data about the participants’ subjective experiences. This data was analyzed according to the interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) framework. Themes were identified intuitively and refined through multiple iterations and then compared across cases in order to answer the following research question: What is the lived experience of a music therapy songwriting session for an adult with intellectual disability? All three of the study participants reported that they found songwriting to be a positive experience. Additional themes were present in two interviews: Songwriting could be used to raise the individual’s esteem in the eyes of their community, songwriting was a novel experience, and songwriting was related to feelings of altruism. Unique themes emerged in individual interviews which related to the participant’s personal context

Evaluation of Herbicide Formulation and Spray Nozzle Selection on Physical Spray Drift

New transgenic crops are currently being developed which will be tolerant to dicamba and 2,4-D herbicides. This technology could greatly benefit producers who are impacted by weed species that have developed resistance to other herbicides, like glyphosate-resistant Palmer Amaranth. Adoption of this new technology is likely to be rapid and widespread which will lead to an increase in the amount of dicamba and 2,4-D applied each season. It is well-documented that these herbicides are very injurious to soybeans, cotton, tomatoes, and most other broadleaf crops, and their increased use brings along increased chances of physical spray drift onto susceptible crops. Because of these risks, research is being conducted on new herbicide formulation/spray nozzle combinations to determine management options which may minimize physical spray drift

Evaluation of Herbicide Formulation and Spray Nozzle Selection on Physical Spray Drift

New transgenic crops are currently being developed which will be tolerant to dicamba and 2,4-D herbicides. This technology could greatly benefit producers who are impacted by weed species that have developed resistance to other herbicides, like glyphosate-resistant Palmer Amaranth. Adoption of this new technology is likely to be rapid and widespread which will lead to an increase in the amount of dicamba and 2,4-D applied each season. It is well-documented that these herbicides are very injurious to soybeans, cotton, tomatoes, and most other broadleaf crops, and their increased use brings along increased chances of physical spray drift onto susceptible crops. Because of these risks, research is being conducted on new herbicide formulation/spray nozzle combinations to determine management options which may minimize physical spray drift

Initial Project Estimates for Design, Right of Way, Utilities, and Construction

Estimating the cost of highway construction projects is among the more challenging tasks state transportation agencies routinely deal with. Developing accurate estimates is a particularly fraught exercise during the planning and scoping phases, when projects have not been thoroughly defined and information on specifics is in short supply. While the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) has used several methodologies to generate initial cost estimates for design, right of way, utilities, and construction (DRUC), approaches vary between the agency’s districts. This report proposes a framework for estimating DRUC-related expenses that can be adopted throughout the state. Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC) researchers developed the framework after investigating the Cabinet’s current approaches to estimation and the limitation of those methods. In addition to the challenges introduced by incomplete project scopes, often staff have insufficient access to historical information, property records, and utility inventories. In many cases they also have too little time to prepare estimates. The proposed framework draws on best practices used at other state transportation agencies as well as those documented in research publications from AASHTO and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. To speed adoption of the proposed estimation process, researchers helped KYTC set up and implement the AASHTOWare Project PreConstruction software package. Additionally, a comprehensive user manual and video tutorial were completed to help project managers transition to the new estimation framework and AASHTOWare Project Estimation

Improved Boundary Layer Depth Retrievals from MPLNET

Continuous lidar observations of the planetary boundary layer (PBL) depth have been made at the Micropulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) site in Greenbelt, MD since April 2001. However, because of issues with the operational PBL depth algorithm, the data is not reliable for determining seasonal and diurnal trends. Therefore, an improved PBL depth algorithm has been developed which uses a combination of the wavelet technique and image processing. The new algorithm is less susceptible to contamination by clouds and residual layers, and in general, produces lower PBL depths. A 2010 comparison shows the operational algorithm overestimates the daily mean PBL depth when compared to the improved algorithm (1.85 and 1.07 km, respectively). The improved MPLNET PBL depths are validated using radiosonde comparisons which suggests the algorithm performs well to determine the depth of a fully developed PBL. A comparison with the Goddard Earth Observing System-version 5 (GEOS-5) model suggests that the model may underestimate the maximum daytime PBL depth by 410 m during the spring and summer. The best agreement between MPLNET and GEOS-5 occurred during the fall and they diered the most in the winter

Determining Cloud Thermodynamic Phase from Micropulse Lidar Network Data

Determining cloud thermodynamic phase is a critical factor in studies of Earth's radiation budget. Here we use observations from the NASA Micro Pulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) and thermodynamic profiles from the Goddard Earth Observing System, version 5 (GEOS-5) to distinguish liquid water, mixed-phase, and ice water clouds. The MPLNET provides sparse global, autonomous, and continuous measurements of clouds and aerosols which have been used in a number of scientific investigations to date. The use of a standardized instrument and a common suite of data processing algorithms with thorough uncertainty characterization allows for straightforward comparisons between sites. Lidars with polarization capabilities have recently been incorporated into the MPLNET project which allows, for the first time, the ability to infer a cloud thermodynamic phase. This presentation will look specifically at the occurrence of ice and mixed phase clouds in the temperature region of -10 C to -40 C for different climatological regions and seasons. We compare MPLNET occurrences of mixed-phase clouds to an historical climatology based on observations from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) spacecraft

Daytime Cirrus Cloud Top-of-Atmosphere Radiative Forcing Properties at a Midlatitude Site and their Global Consequence

One year of continuous ground-based lidar observations (2012) is analyzed for single-layer cirrus clouds at the NASA Micro Pulse Lidar Network site at the Goddard Space Flight Center to investigate top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) annual net daytime radiative forcing properties. A slight positive net daytime forcing is estimated (i.e., warming): 0.070.67 W m(exp -2) in sample-relative terms, which reduces to 0.030.27 W m(exp -2) in absolute terms after normalizing to unity based on a 40% midlatitude occurrence frequency rate estimated from satellite data. Results are based on bookend solutions for lidar extinction-to-backscatter (20 and 30 sr) and corresponding retrievals of the 532-nm cloud extinction coefficient. Uncertainties due to cloud under sampling, attenuation effects, sample selection, and lidar multiple scattering are described. A net daytime cooling effect is found from the very thinnest clouds (cloud optical depth of less than or equal to 0.01), which is attributed to relatively high solar zenith angles. A relationship involving positive negative daytime cloud forcing is demonstrated as a function of solar zenith angle and cloud-top temperature. These properties, combined with the influence of varying surface albedos, are used to conceptualize how daytime cloud forcing likely varies with latitude and season, with cirrus clouds exerting less positive forcing and potentially net TOA cooling approaching the summer poles (not ice and snow covered) versus greater warming at the equator. The existence of such a gradient would lead cirrus to induce varying daytime TOA forcing annually and seasonally, making it a far greater challenge than presently believed to constrain the daytime and diurnal cirrus contributions to global radiation budgets

Overview of MPLNET Version 3 Cloud Detection

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Micro Pulse Lidar Network, version 3, cloud detection algorithm is described and differences relative to the previous version are highlighted. Clouds are identified from normalized level 1 signal profiles using two complementary methods. The first method considers vertical signal derivatives for detecting low-level clouds. The second method, which detects high-level clouds like cirrus, is based on signal uncertainties necessitated by the relatively low signal-to-noise ratio exhibited in the upper troposphere by eye-safe network instruments, especially during daytime. Furthermore, a multitemporal averaging scheme is used to improve cloud detection under conditions of a weak signal-to-noise ratio. Diurnal and seasonal cycles of cloud occurrence frequency based on one year of measurements at the Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, Maryland) site are compared for the new and previous versions. The largest differences, and perceived improvement, in detection occurs for high clouds (above 5 km, above MSL), which increase in occurrence by over 5%. There is also an increase in the detection of multilayered cloud profiles from 9% to 19%. Macrophysical properties and estimates of cloud optical depth are presented for a transparent cirrus dataset. However, the limit to which the cirrus cloud optical depth could be reliably estimated occurs between 0.5 and 0.8. A comparison using collocated CALIPSO measurements at the Goddard Space Flight Center and Singapore Micro Pulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) sites indicates improvements in cloud occurrence frequencies and layer heights

Methods for LEO Testing of CubeSat Propulsion Systems

Low Earth Orbit is becoming an inexpensive and readily available technology demonstration environment. Many new CubeSat technologies are taking advantage of this as an economical mechanism to advance beyond TRL 5. A wave of CubeSat propulsion systems favoring both reaction control and primary thrust will approach TRL 5 over the coming years, with some already there. These propulsion systems cover a wide range of capabilities including taking CubeSats to interplanetary destinations. In order to determine the feasibility of using LEO to validate the propulsion system performance and in doing so raising the TRL, a variety of factors need to be addressed. These factors include: method of measurement, environmental disturbances, spacecraft control states, and spacecraft mass properties. Propulsion Pathfinder is a NASA Ames Research Center lead project focused on raising the TRL of multiple propulsion systems over a series of flights in the coming years. This paper will highlight a few of the methods of measurement considered by this project to validate the performance of a propulsion system. The measurement methods range from tracking acceleration andor wheel spin-up to monitoring Two Line Elements between thrusting and non thrusting states. Focus will then be placed on the uncertainty of the measurement method and subsequently its feasibility through an analysis of LEO disturbance environment models and common CubeSat mass properties. In addition, the primary spacecraft control states and their imposition from the propulsion system are assessed