Illuminating Art: LED Relamping Project

A preventive conservation project, Illumination: LED Relamping Project aims to improve the preservation environment and increase operational sustainability. The project will 1) replace 90-watt and 50-watt tungsten halogens with maximum 21-watt non-UV/IR-emitting LED lamps in the main museum building, 2) replace obsolete track heads in two small galleries, and 3) install occupancy sensors in the one gallery lacking them. The project will bring the Yellowstone Art Museum's lighting system in all art exhibition and storage areas up to 21st-century standards. Expected outcomes are 1) reducing heat generated by conventional systems and 2) joining green building choices already made by the YAM that are improving its preservation environment and its financial and environmental sustainability profile. By saving energy and costs, the project reinforces the YAM's commitment to its collections, cultural preservation, environmental policy, and quest for cost-effective operations

The Relationship Between Overrepresentation of Minority Students and Explicit and Implicit Bias

The disproportionality of minority students referred to or qualifying for special education exceeds the number of minority students in the total school population. Many minority students will receive special education services in a secluded program or classroom. It can prevent students from receiving the appropriate education guaranteed to them. A teacher’s explicit or implicit bias could be a factor in determining the reason why disproportionality of minority students is referred to or qualify for special education services. The research indicated a trend on the over-representation of minority students being referred to or receiving special education services. However, the research on biases as a factor in determining the overrepresentation of minority students in special education services remains mixed due to the limited amount of research. Because racial bias is the current problem surrounding this country, further research should be done to learn more. Culturally responsive pedagogy should be used to train a teacher to become more multicultural in different perspectives and sociocultural conscious. Teachers have the power to engage all students in learning, and instead of accentuating deficits, they should be stressing a student\u27s instruction culturally and responsively, together in school and out of school

Clinical evaluation of the Korb goggle test for quantifying dry eye

Purpose: To evaluate the use of moisture chamber goggles in diagnosing dry eye. Methods: Participants (1 0 contact lens wearers and 10 non-contact lens wearers) completed a Comprehensive Dry Eye Questionnaire (CDEQ) and the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI). Subjects were also asked to subjectively rank their dry eye symptoms from one to ten. Tear break-up times (TBUT) were measured non-invasively before, during and after goggle-wear using a modified Keratometer. The time it took to report relief of dry eye symptoms while wearing the goggles was recorded. Results: We used the Pearson Correlation test to compare subjective and objective measurements of dry eye with the amount of time it took to report relief of symptoms with the goggles on. We found a correlation between initial subjective rank of dry eye symptoms and goggle-wear time (p = 0.028). However, we found no significant correlation between goggle-wear time and dry eye questionnaire scores nor length of TBUT. A one-way analysis ofvariance (ANOVA) was performed to compare the differences between the contact lens group and non-contact lens group. All comparisons yielded a p-value of greater than 0.05 (not significant). Conclusions: Moisture chamber goggles are not recommended for the evaluation of dry eye severity in the clinical setting. There was little correlation between goggle wear-time and subjective and objective measures of dry eye. The test is time-consuming and patients will have difficulty assessing when relief of their dry eye symptoms is achieved. It would be more useful for assessing dry eye in a patient that wanted or required a noninvasive procedure

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) Integrated Roadmap Development

Although NASA is currently considering a number of future human space exploration mission concepts, detailed mission requirements and vehicle architectures remain mostly undefined, making technology investment strategies difficult to develop and sustain without a top-level roadmap to serve as a guide. This paper documents the process and results of an effort to define a roadmap for Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) capabilities required to enhance the long-term operation of the International Space Station (ISS) as well as enable beyond-Low Earth Orbit (LEO) human exploration missions. Three generic mission types were defined to serve as a basis for developing a prioritized list of needed capabilities and technologies. Those are 1) a short duration micro-gravity mission; 2) a long duration microgravity mission; and 3) a long duration partial gravity (surface) exploration mission. To organize the effort, a functional decomposition of ECLSS was completed starting with the three primary functions: atmosphere, water, and solid waste management. Each was further decomposed into sub-functions to the point that current state-of-the-art (SOA) technologies could be tied to the sub-function. Each technology was then assessed by NASA subject matter experts as to its ability to meet the functional needs of each of the three mission types. When SOA capabilities were deemed to fall short of meeting the needs of one or more mission types, those gaps were prioritized in terms of whether or not the corresponding capabilities enable or enhance each of the mission types. The result was a list of enabling and enhancing capability needs that can be used to guide future ECLSS development, as well as a list of existing hardware that is ready to go for exploration-class missions. A strategy to fulfill those needs over time was then developed in the form of a roadmap. Through execution of this roadmap, the hardware and technologies intended to meet exploration needs will, in many cases, directly benefit the ISS operational capability, benefit the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and guide long-term technology investments for longer duration missions

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) Capability Roadmap Development for Exploration

NASA is considering a number of future human space exploration mission concepts. Although detailed requirements and vehicle architectures remain mostly undefined, near-term technology investment decisions need to be guided by the anticipated capabilities needed to enable or enhance the mission concepts. This paper describes a roadmap that NASA has formulated to guide the development of Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) capabilities required to enhance the long-term operation of the International Space Station (ISS) and enable beyond-Low Earth Orbit (LEO) human exploration missions. Three generic mission types were defined to serve as a basis for developing a prioritized list of needed capabilities and technologies. Those are 1) a short duration micro gravity mission; 2) a long duration transit microgravity mission; and 3) a long duration surface exploration mission. To organize the effort, ECLSS was categorized into three major functional groups (atmosphere, water, and solid waste management) with each broken down into sub-functions. The ability of existing, flight-proven state-of-the-art (SOA) technologies to meet the functional needs of each of the three mission types was then assessed. When SOA capabilities fell short of meeting the needs, those "gaps" were prioritized in terms of whether or not the corresponding capabilities enable or enhance each of the mission types. The resulting list of enabling and enhancing capability gaps can be used to guide future ECLSS development. A strategy to fulfill those needs over time was then developed in the form of a roadmap. Through execution of this roadmap, the hardware and technologies needed to enable and enhance exploration may be developed in a manner that synergistically benefits the ISS operational capability, supports Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) development, and sustains long-term technology investments for longer duration missions. This paper summarizes NASA s ECLSS capability roadmap development process, findings, and recommendatio

Final Report on MITRE Evaluations for the DARPA Big Mechanism Program

This report presents the evaluation approach developed for the DARPA Big Mechanism program, which aimed at developing computer systems that will read research papers, integrate the information into a computer model of cancer mechanisms, and frame new hypotheses. We employed an iterative, incremental approach to the evaluation of the three phases of the program. In Phase I, we evaluated the ability of system and human teams ability to read-with-a-model to capture mechanistic information from the biomedical literature, integrated with information from expert curated biological databases. In Phase II we evaluated the ability of systems to assemble fragments of information into a mechanistic model. The Phase III evaluation focused on the ability of systems to provide explanations of experimental observations based on models assembled (largely automatically) by the Big Mechanism process. The evaluation for each phase built on earlier evaluations and guided developers towards creating capabilities for the new phase. The report describes our approach, including innovations such as a reference set (a curated data set limited to major findings of each paper) to assess the accuracy of systems in extracting mechanistic findings in the absence of a gold standard, and a method to evaluate model-based explanations of experimental data. Results of the evaluation and supporting materials are included in the appendices.Comment: 46 pages, 8 figure

Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) Integrated Roadmap Development

This white paper documents a roadmap for development of Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) Systems (ECLSS) capabilities required to enable beyond-Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Exploration missions. In many cases, the execution of this Exploration-based roadmap will directly benefit International Space Station (ISS) operational capability by resolving known issues and/or improving overall system reliability. In addition, many of the resulting products will be applicable across multiple Exploration elements such as Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV), Deep Space Habitat (DSH), and Landers. Within the ECLS community, this white paper will be a unifying tool that will improve coordination of resources, common hardware, and technologies. It will help to align efforts to focus on the highest priority needs that will produce life support systems for future human exploration missions that will simply run in the background, requiring minimal crew interaction

Belief in the unstructured interview: The persistence of an illusion

Abstract Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions despite a vast literature suggesting that they have little validity. We sought to establish reasons why people might persist in the illusion that unstructured interviews are valid and what features about them actually lead to poor predictive accuracy. In three studies, we investigated the propensity for "sensemaking" -the ability for interviewers to make sense of virtually anything the interviewee saysand "dilution"-the tendency for available but non-diagnostic information to weaken the predictive value of quality information. In Study 1, participants predicted two fellow students' semester GPAs from valid background information like prior GPA and, for one of them, an unstructured interview. In one condition, the interview was essentially nonsense in that the interviewee was actually answering questions using a random response system. Consistent with sensemaking, participants formed interview impressions just as confidently after getting random responses as they did after real responses. Consistent with dilution, interviews actually led participants to make worse predictions. Study 2 showed that watching a random interview, rather than personally conducting it, did little to mitigate sensemaking. Study 3 showed that participants believe unstructured interviews will help accuracy, so much so that they would rather have random interviews than no interview. People form confident impressions even interviews are defined to be invalid, like our random interview, and these impressions can interfere with the use of valid information. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use them

Belief in the unstructured interview: The persistence of an illusion

Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions despite a vast literature suggesting that they have little validity. We sought to establish reasons why people might persist in the illusion that unstructured interviews are valid and what features about them actually lead to poor predictive accuracy. In three studies, we investigated the propensity for “sensemaking” - the ability for interviewers to make sense of virtually anything the interviewee says—and “dilution”—the tendency for available but non-diagnostic information to weaken the predictive value of quality information. In Study 1, participants predicted two fellow students’ semester GPAs from valid background information like prior GPA and, for one of them, an unstructured interview. In one condition, the interview was essentially nonsense in that the interviewee was actually answering questions using a random response system. Consistent with sensemaking, participants formed interview impressions just as confidently after getting random responses as they did after real responses. Consistent with dilution, interviews actually led participants to make worse predictions. Study 2 showed that watching a random interview, rather than personally conducting it, did little to mitigate sensemaking. Study 3 showed that participants believe unstructured interviews will help accuracy, so much so that they would rather have random interviews than no interview. People form confident impressions even interviews are defined to be invalid, like our random interview, and these impressions can interfere with the use of valid information. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use them