Assessment of avionics technology in European aerospace organizations

This report provides a summary of the observations and recommendations made by a technical panel formed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The panel, comprising prominent experts in the avionics field, was tasked to visit various organizations in Europe to assess the level of technology planned for use in manufactured civil avionics in the future. The primary purpose of the study was to assess avionics systems planned for implementation or already employed on civil aircraft and to evaluate future research, development, and engineering (RD&E) programs, address avionic systems and aircraft programs. The ultimate goal is to ensure that the technology addressed by NASa programs is commensurate with the needs of the aerospace industry at an international level. The panel focused on specific technologies, including guidance and control systems, advanced cockpit displays, sensors and data networks, and fly-by-wire/fly-by-light systems. However, discussions the panel had with the European organizations were not limited to these topics

Flexible Plug Repair for Shuttle Wing Leading Edge

In response to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, a plug repair kit has been developed to enable astronauts to repair the space shuttle's wing leading edge (WLE) during orbit. The plug repair kit consists of several 17.78- cm-diameter carbon/silicon carbide (C/SiC) cover plates of various curvatures that can be attached to the refractory carbon-carbon WLE panels using a TZM refractory metal attach mechanism. The attach mechanism is inserted through the damage in the WLE panel and, as it is tightened, the cover plate flexes to conform to the curvature of the WLE panel within 0.050 mm. An astronaut installs the repair during an extravehicular activity (EVA). After installing the plug repair, edge gaps are checked and the perimeter of the repair is sealed using a proprietary material, developed to fill cracks and small holes in the WLE

Effect of garlic on cardiovascular disorders: a review

Garlic and its preparations have been widely recognized as agents for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases, atherosclerosis, hyperlipidemia, thrombosis, hypertension and diabetes. Effectiveness of garlic in cardiovascular diseases was more encouraging in experimental studies, which prompted several clinical trials. Though many clinical trials showed a positive effect of garlic on almost all cardiovascular conditions mentioned above, however a number of negative studies have recently cast doubt on the efficary of garlic specially its cholesterol lowering effect of garlic. It is a great challenge for scientists all over the world to make a proper use of garlic and enjoy its maximum beneficial effect as it is the cheapest way to prevent cardiovascular disease. This review has attempted to make a bridge the gap between experimental and clinical study and to discuss the possible mechanisms of such therapeutic actions of garlic

Transformation of Mexican lime with an intron-hairpin construct expressing untranslatable versions of the genes coding for the three silencing suppressors of Citrus tristeza virus confers complete resistance to the virus

[EN] Citrus tristeza virus (CTV), the causal agent of the most devastating viral disease of citrus, has evolved three silencing suppressor proteins acting at intra- (p23 and p20) and/or intercellular level (p20 and p25) to overcome host antiviral defence. Previously, we showed that Mexican lime transformed with an intron-hairpin construct including part of the gene p23 and the adjacent 3' untranslated region displays partial resistance to CTV, with a fraction of the propagations from some transgenic lines remaining uninfected. Here, we transformed Mexican lime with an intron-hairpin vector carrying full-length, untranslatable versions of the genes p25, p20 and p23 from CTV strain T36 to silence the expression of these critical genes in CTV-infected cells. Three transgenic lines presented complete resistance to viral infection, with all their propagations remaining symptomless and virus-free after graft inoculation with CTV-T36, either in the nontransgenic rootstock or in the transgenic scion. Accumulation of transgene-derived siRNAs was necessary but not sufficient for CTV resistance. Inoculation with a divergent CTV strain led to partially breaking the resistance, thus showing the role of sequence identity in the underlying mechanism. Our results are a step forward to developing transgenic resistance to CTV and also show that targeting simultaneously by RNA interference (RNAi) the three viral silencing suppressors appears critical for this purpose, although the involvement of concurrent RNAi mechanisms cannot be excluded.We thank J.E. Peris for his excellent technical assistance and Dr. W.O. Dawson (University of Florida, C.R.E.C., Lake Alfred, FL, USA) for providing the GFP-tagged CTV strain CTV947R-GFP. N.S. was supported by a PhD fellowship from the IVIA. C.F. is recipient of a postdoctoral Ramon y Cajal contract from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN). This research was supported by grants AGL2009-08052, co-financed by Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional-MICINN, and Prometeo/2008/121 from the Generalitat Valenciana.Soler, N.; Plomer Sáez, M.; Fagoaga García, CC.; Moreno, P.; Navarro, L.; Flores Pedauye, R.; Peña Garcia, L. (2012). Transformation of Mexican lime with an intron-hairpin construct expressing untranslatable versions of the genes coding for the three silencing suppressors of Citrus tristeza virus confers complete resistance to the virus. Plant Biotechnology Journal. 10(5):597-608. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7652.2012.00691.xS59760810

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Characteristics of gravity waves of permanent form

Includes bibliographical references"May 1968"In the classical problem of two-dimensional gravity waves of permanent form over a horizontal sea bed, one seeks a velocity potential and/or a stream function which satisfies Laplace's equation plus certain boundary conditions and symmetry conditions (see for example, Lamb, 1945, art. 227). Although the velocity potential satisfies a linear condition at the sea bed and in the interior of the fluid, it has a highly nonlinear boundary condition imposed at the sea surface. Part of this nonlinearity arises because the shape of the surface itself is a dependent variable of the problem. The classical procedure for the arrested wave form (i.e., the Stokes representation) is to express the complex velocity potential (φ + iψ) as a cyclic function of the complex coordinate (x + iy), the functional form being taken as a Fourier series with unknown coefficients such that the nonlinear surface boundary condition are satisfied. In contrast to the above procedure one can regard (x + iy) as the dependent and (φ + iψ) as the independent (complex) variable of the problem and seek a cyclic representation of the former in terms of the latter. This procedure has the advantage that the free-surface condition occurs as a known constant value of the coordinate ψ. Moreover, both the velocity field and the surface profile can be evaluated directly form the cyclic function F(φ + iψ). In this work the surface boundary condition is expressed in non-dimensional form in terms of the above representation. An iterative procedure which requires a simple harmonic analysis at each step is employed to obtain successive approximations of the coefficients entering into the unknown cyclic functions. This set of coefficients is calculated for 62 sets of assumed initial wave conditions through an iterative numerical process. The output of this process is compared with results obtained from Stokes' first, third, and fifth order theory by previous investigators

Resume of Joseph John Von Schwind, 1984-01

Naval Postgraduate School Faculty Resum

Resume of Joseph John Von Schwind, 1972

Naval Postgraduate School Faculty Resum

Characteristics of gravity waves of permanent form

Includes bibliographical references"May 1968"In the classical problem of two-dimensional gravity waves of permanent form over a horizontal sea bed, one seeks a velocity potential and/or a stream function which satisfies Laplace's equation plus certain boundary conditions and symmetry conditions (see for example, Lamb, 1945, art. 227). Although the velocity potential satisfies a linear condition at the sea bed and in the interior of the fluid, it has a highly nonlinear boundary condition imposed at the sea surface. Part of this nonlinearity arises because the shape of the surface itself is a dependent variable of the problem. The classical procedure for the arrested wave form (i.e., the Stokes representation) is to express the complex velocity potential (φ + iψ) as a cyclic function of the complex coordinate (x + iy), the functional form being taken as a Fourier series with unknown coefficients such that the nonlinear surface boundary condition are satisfied. In contrast to the above procedure one can regard (x + iy) as the dependent and (φ + iψ) as the independent (complex) variable of the problem and seek a cyclic representation of the former in terms of the latter. This procedure has the advantage that the free-surface condition occurs as a known constant value of the coordinate ψ. Moreover, both the velocity field and the surface profile can be evaluated directly form the cyclic function F(φ + iψ). In this work the surface boundary condition is expressed in non-dimensional form in terms of the above representation. An iterative procedure which requires a simple harmonic analysis at each step is employed to obtain successive approximations of the coefficients entering into the unknown cyclic functions. This set of coefficients is calculated for 62 sets of assumed initial wave conditions through an iterative numerical process. The output of this process is compared with results obtained from Stokes' first, third, and fifth order theory by previous investigators

Resume of Joseph John Von Schwind, 1981

Naval Postgraduate School Faculty Resum