5′‐Iodination of Solid‐Phase‐Linked Oligodeoxyribonucleotides

5′‐Iodinated oligodeoxyribonucleotides readily react with 3′‐phosphorothioated DNA in the presence of a complementary template to yield a conjugate that is identical to natural DNA in every respect except that one oxygen atom in the phosphodiester backbone is replaced by a sulfur atom. The 5′‐iodo group is easily converted to a variety of other functional groups and will quickly react with thiol‐containing labels to yield stable thioether conjugates. This unit presents manual and automated procedures for converting the 5′‐hydroxyl of protected CPG–bound oligodeoxyribonucleotides to an iodo group and for releasing and purifying the products.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143744/1/cpnc0419.pd

Injustice perceptions about pain: parent–child discordance is associated with worse functional outcomes

Pain is experienced within and influenced by social environments. For children with chronic pain, the child–parent relationship and parental beliefs about pain are particularly important and may influence pain outcomes. Pain-related injustice perceptions have recently been identified as an important cognitive–emotional factor for children with pain. The current study aimed to better understand the pain-related injustice perceptions of children with chronic pain and their parents. The sample consisted of 253 pediatric chronic pain patients (mean age = 14.1 years, 74% female) presenting to a tertiary pain clinic. Patients completed measures of pain intensity, pain-related injustice perceptions, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. Parents completed a measure of pain-related injustice perceptions about their child's pain. Child–parent dyads were categorized into 1 of 4 categories based on the degree of concordance or discordance between their scores on the injustice measures. One-way analysis of variances examined differences in pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life across the 4 dyad categories. Our findings indicated that both the degree (concordant vs discordant) and direction (discordant low child–high parent vs discordant high child–low parent) of similarity between child and parent injustice perceptions were associated with child-reported pain intensity, stress, functional disability, and quality of life. The poorest outcomes were reported when children considered their pain as highly unjust, but their parents did not. These findings highlight the important role of parents in the context of pain-related injustice perceptions in pediatric chronic pain

An OSSE on Mesoscale Model Assimilation of Simulated HIRAD-Observed Hurricane Surface Winds

The hazards of landfalling hurricanes are well known, but progress on improving the intensity forecasts of these deadly storms at landfall has been slow. Many cite a lack of high-resolution data sets taken inside the core of a hurricane, and the lack of reliable measurements in extreme conditions near the surface of hurricanes, as possible reasons why even the most state-of-the-art forecasting models cannot seem to forecast intensity changes better. The Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) is a new airborne microwave remote sensor for observing hurricanes, and is operated and researched by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in partnership with the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory/Hurricane Research Division, the University of Central Florida, the University of Michigan, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. This instrument?s purpose is to study the wind field of a hurricane, specifically observing surface wind speeds and rain rates, in what has traditionally been the most difficult areas for other instruments to study; the high wind and heavy rain regions. Dr. T. N. Krishnamurti has studied various data assimilation techniques for hurricane and monsoon rain rates, and this study builds off of results obtained from utilizing his style of physical initializations of rainfall observations, but obtaining reliable observations in heavy rain regions has always presented trouble to our research of high-resolution rainfall forecasting. Reliable data from these regions at such a high resolution and wide swath as HIRAD provides is potentially very valuable to mesoscale forecasting of hurricane intensity. This study shows how the data assimilation technique of Ensemble Kalman Filtering (EnKF) in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model can be used to incorporate wind, and later rain rate, data into a mesoscale model forecast of hurricane intensity. The study makes use of an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) with a simulated HIRAD dataset sampled during a hurricane and uses EnKF to forecast the track and intensity prediction of the hurricane. Comparisons to truth and error metrics are used to assess the model?s forecast performance

Perceived Injustice Is Associated With Pain and Functional Outcomes in Children and Adolescents With Chronic Pain: A Preliminary Examination

Chronic pain is prevalent in children/adolescents and contributes to high rates of healthcare utilization. Research suggests injustice perceptions about pain are important in adult patients and a possible treatment focus. We conducted a preliminary evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Injustice Experiences Questionnaire (IEQ) and the relationship between injustice perceptions, pain, and functioning in chronic pain patients (N = 139, mean age = 15 years, 72% female) presenting to a pediatric pain clinic. Patients completed measures assessing pain intensity, injustice perceptions about pain, catastrophizing, overall functional disability, emotional functioning, social functioning, and school functioning. The IEQ showed good reliability and validity. Higher levels of perceived injustice were associated with higher levels of pain intensity, catastrophizing, and functional disability, and with poorer emotional, social, and school functioning. Additionally, perceived injustice remained significantly associated with pain intensity, functional disability, emotional functioning, social functioning, and school functioning after accounting for relevant demographic and clinical factors. This is the first study to suggest that injustice perceptions are important in the experience of pediatric chronic pain patients. Future studies should more thoroughly examine the psychometric properties of the IEQ in children/adolescents and elucidate the causal nature of these relationships, which will inform treatment efforts to improve pediatric pain care. Perspective This initial investigation suggests that injustice perceptions about pain can be reliably and validly measured and are tied to important clinical outcomes in children/adolescents. Future studies that replicate and extend these preliminary results are necessary to determine the extent to which injustice perceptions are an important target for intervention

Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) Thruster Valve Testing

The Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) is a project in the NASA Technology Demonstration Missions (TDM) that will perform a spaceflight demonstration of an AF-M315E propulsion system. The mission is led by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, with participation across industry and government. The spacecraft is based on the Ball BCP-100 bus, with an Aerojet propulsion system. NASA GSFC provides system testing and analysis of the flow within the AF-M315E propulsion system. A facility was developed at the NASA GSFC propulsion test site to safely use and test the AF-M315E propellant. Testing was performed on multiple 1 N and 22 N non-flight thruster valves provided by Aerojet. A mock-up of the flight system was driven at multiple pressures and temperatures to approximate different flight conditions. Testing was conducted to observe how AF-M315E behaves in fight-like conditions due to the propellant's mass properties heavy dependence on changes in temperature. The testing consisted of driving the different thruster valves at a set on-time and off-time for all and varying the driving pressure from 125 psig to 410 psig. Individual pulses were measured and analyzed for each valve to compare the various rise times and fall times of each thruster valve. The rise times and fall times were then analyzed for thruster valves by measuring the differential pressure from directly upstream and downstream of the valve. The rise times and fall times were also analyzed by measuring the amperage trace of the thruster valve measured with an oscilloscope. The pressure and amperage rise and fall times were compared collectively and individually for the various thruster valves. These results were compared to the fall time data provided by Aerojet

Counselor Allegiance and Client Expectancy in Neuroscience-Informed Cognitive-Behavior Therapy: A 12-Month Qualitative Follow-Up

This article presents summative findings from a 12-month multiphase mixed-methods pilot study examining counselor and client perceptions of neuroscience-informed cognitive-behavior therapy (nCBT) following clinical application. Results from the first 6 months of the study indicated that the counselor\u27s and client\u27s beliefs about the credibility and effectiveness of nCBT (i.e., expectancy) remained stable from pretreatment to 6 months into treatment. The fourth phase of data collection at the 12-month interval followed an explanatory sequential process whereby the qualitative data were connected to earlier merged quantitative data to better understand initial findings from the first 6 months of the study. Results indicate that counselors\u27 initial comprehension and familiarity with the model, counselor–client trust, counselor delivery and suggestion, and client willingness to practice outside of session were key components to the development of counselor and client belief (expectancy) in the model. Implications for nCBT theory development and application are discussed

Airborne Simulation of Launch Vehicle Dynamics

In this paper we present a technique for approximating the short-period dynamics of an exploration-class launch vehicle during flight test with a high-performance surrogate aircraft in relatively benign endoatmospheric flight conditions. The surrogate vehicle relies upon a nonlinear dynamic inversion scheme with proportional-integral feedback to drive a subset of the aircraft states into coincidence with the states of a time-varying reference model that simulates the unstable rigid body dynamics, servodynamics, and parasitic elastic and sloshing dynamics of the launch vehicle. The surrogate aircraft flies a constant pitch rate trajectory to approximate the boost phase gravity-turn ascent, and the aircraft's closed-loop bandwidth is sufficient to simulate the launch vehicle's fundamental lateral bending and sloshing modes by exciting the rigid body dynamics of the aircraft. A novel control allocation scheme is employed to utilize the aircraft's relatively fast control effectors in inducing various failure modes for the purposes of evaluating control system performance. Sufficient dynamic similarity is achieved such that the control system under evaluation is optimized for the full-scale vehicle with no changes to its parameters, and pilot-control system interaction studies can be performed to characterize the effects of guidance takeover during boost. High-fidelity simulation and flight test results are presented that demonstrate the efficacy of the design in simulating the Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle dynamics using NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's Full-scale Advanced Systems Testbed (FAST), a modified F/A-18 airplane, over a range of scenarios designed to stress the SLS's adaptive augmenting control (AAC) algorithm

Airborne Simulation of Launch Vehicle Dynamics

In this paper we present a technique for approximating the short-period dynamics of an exploration-class launch vehicle during flight test with a high-performance surrogate aircraft in relatively benign endoatmospheric flight conditions. The surrogate vehicle relies upon a nonlinear dynamic inversion scheme with proportional-integral feedback to drive a subset of the aircraft states into coincidence with the states of a time-varying reference model that simulates the unstable rigid body dynamics, servodynamics, and parasitic elastic and sloshing dynamics of the launch vehicle. The surrogate aircraft flies a constant pitch rate trajectory to approximate the boost phase gravity turn ascent, and the aircraft's closed-loop bandwidth is sufficient to simulate the launch vehicle's fundamental lateral bending and sloshing modes by exciting the rigid body dynamics of the aircraft. A novel control allocation scheme is employed to utilize the aircraft's relatively fast control effectors in inducing various failure modes for the purposes of evaluating control system performance. Sufficient dynamic similarity is achieved such that the control system under evaluation is configured for the full-scale vehicle with no changes to its parameters, and pilot-control system interaction studies can be performed to characterize the effects of guidance takeover during boost. High-fidelity simulation and flight-test results are presented that demonstrate the efficacy of the design in simulating the Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle dynamics using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Armstrong Flight Research Center Fullscale Advanced Systems Testbed (FAST), a modified F/A-18 airplane (McDonnell Douglas, now The Boeing Company, Chicago, Illinois), over a range of scenarios designed to stress the SLS's Adaptive Augmenting Control (AAC) algorithm

The SMC SNR 1E0102.2-7219 as a Calibration Standard for X-ray Astronomy in the 0.3-2.5 keV Bandpass

The flight calibration of the spectral response of CCD instruments below 1.5 keV is difficult in general because of the lack of strong lines in the on-board calibration sources typically available. We have been using 1E 0102.2-7219, the brightest supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, to evaluate the response models of the ACIS CCDs on the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), the EPIC CCDs on the XMM-Newton Observatory, the XIS CCDs on the Suzaku Observatory, and the XRT CCD on the Swift Observatory. E0102 has strong lines of O, Ne, and Mg below 1.5 keV and little or no Fe emission to complicate the spectrum. The spectrum of E0102 has been well characterized using high-resolution grating instruments, namely the XMM-Newton RGS and the CXO HETG, through which a consistent spectral model has been developed that can then be used to fit the lower-resolution CCD spectra. We have also used the measured intensities of the lines to investigate the consistency of the effective area models for the various instruments around the bright O (~570 eV and 654 eV) and Ne (~910 eV and 1022 eV) lines. We find that the measured fluxes of the O VII triplet, the O VIII Ly-alpha line, the Ne IX triplet, and the Ne X Ly-alpha line generally agree to within +/-10 % for all instruments, with 28 of our 32 fitted normalizations within +/-10% of the RGS-determined value. The maximum discrepancies, computed as the percentage difference between the lowest and highest normalization for any instrument pair, are 23% for the O VII triplet, 24% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 13% for the Ne IX triplet, and 19% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line. If only the CXO and XMM are compared, the maximum discrepancies are 22% for the O VII triplet, 16% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 4% for the Ne IX triplet, and 12% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, to be published in Proceedings of the SPIE 7011: Space Telescopes and Instrumentation II: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray 200

(Dis)Agreement in Parent-Child Perceptions of Injustice and Their Relationship to Pain Outcomes

poster abstractPerceiving one’s pain as unjust and thinking about pain in a catastrophic manner are linked to worse outcomes in children with chronic pain. Dyads where the child catastrophized more than the parent experienced particularly poor outcomes in previous research. We investigated the concordance between parent and child injustice perceptions and its relationship to pain outcomes. 139 patients (age=15.4±2.1; 71.9% female) attending the pain clinic at Riley Children’s Hospital completed measures of perceived injustice, pain, and QOL. Parents completed a measure of perceived injustice about their child’s pain. Parent-child dyads were categorized into one of four groups based on concordance of injustice perceptions: (1) concordant high, (2) concordant low, (3) discordant high parent (P) – low child (C), and (4) discordant low P – high C. Parent injustice perceptions were significantly higher than child perceptions (t(138)=5.80, p<.001, d=.50). ANOVAs identified significant group differences for pain intensity (F(3,138)=2.80, p<.05, η2=.06) and QOL (F(3,138)=15.11, p<.01, η2=.25). For pain intensity, discordant low P – high C dyads reported the highest pain, and significantly higher pain than discordant high P – low C dyads (mean difference [MD]=1.94, p<.05). Concordant high dyads reported the second highest pain. A similar pattern emerged for QOL. Discordant low P – high C dyads reported the worst QOL, and significantly worse QOL than concordant high dyads (MD=-10.22, p<.01), concordant low dyads (MD=-23.70, p<.01), and discordant high P – low C dyads (MD=-28.97, p<.01). Concordant high dyads reported the second worse QOL. Overall, dyads where the child endorsed high injustice perceptions, regardless of parental perceptions, experienced worse pain and QOL, with the worst outcomes observed for discordant dyads (low P – high C). Children in low P – high C dyads may feel invalidated and, thus, use maladaptive strategies in an attempt to communicate the severity of their pain. Research is needed to identify the mechanisms underlying these relationships