Viability and Application of Mounting Personal PID VOC Sensors to Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Using a UAS-mounted sensor to allow for a rapid response to areas that may be difficult to reach or potentially dangerous to human health can increase the situational awareness of first responders of an aircraft crash site through the remote detection, identification, and quantification of airborne hazardous materials. The primary purpose of this research was to evaluate the remote sensing viability and application of integrating existing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors with small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology to detect potentially hazardous airborne contaminants in emergency leak or spill response situations. By mounting the personal photoionization detector (PID) with volatile organic compound VOC sensor technology on UAS platforms, the needed information may be obtained at an optimum range and resolution without needlessly exposing a human to possible adverse conditions

Skills to Enhance Positivity in adolescents at risk for suicide: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BackgroundSuicide and suicidal behavior during adolescence have been steadily increasing over the past two decades. The preponderance of interventions focuses on crisis intervention, underlying psychiatric disorders, regulating negative affect, and reducing cognitive distortions. However, low positive affectivity may be a mechanism that contributes to adolescent suicidal ideation and behaviors independent of other risk factors. Skills to Enhance Positivity (STEP) is an acceptance-based intervention, designed to increase attention to, and awareness of, positive affect and positive experiences. Results from a pilot RCT demonstrated engagement of the target (positive affect) and a decrease in clinical outcomes (suicidal events; i.e., either a suicide attempt or an emergency intervention for an acute suicidal crisis), providing support to test the clinical effectiveness of STEP in a larger clinical trial with clinical staff implementing the intervention.ObjectiveTo test the effectiveness of STEP, compared to Enhanced Treatment as Usual (ETAU), in reducing suicidal events and ideation in adolescents admitted to inpatient psychiatric care due to suicide risk. We hypothesize that those randomized to STEP, compared to ETAU, will have lower rates of suicide events, active suicidal ideation (SI), and depressed mood over the 6-month follow-up period. We hypothesize that those randomized to STEP, compared to ETAU, will demonstrate greater improvement in the hypothesized mechanisms of attention to positive affect stimuli and gratitude and satisfaction with life.MethodsParticipants will be randomized to either STEP or ETAU. STEP consists of four in-person sessions focused on psychoeducation regarding positive and negative affect, mindfulness meditation, gratitude, and savoring. Mood monitoring prompts and skill reminders will be sent via text messaging daily for the first month post-discharge and every other day for the following two months. The ETAU condition will receive text-delivered reminders to use a safety plan provided at discharge from the hospital and healthy habits messages, matched in frequency to the STEP group. This trial was registered on 6 August 2021 (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04994873).ResultsThe STEP protocol was approved by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data and Safety Monitoring Board on March 4, 2022. The RCT is currently in progress.DiscussionThe STEP protocol is an innovative, adjunctive treatment that has the potential to have positive effects on adolescent suicidal ideation and attempts beyond that found for standard treatment alone