Life sciences data collected before, during and after spaceflight are valuable and often irreplaceable. The Johnson Space Center Life is hard to find, and much of the data (e.g. Sciences Data Archive has been designed to provide researchers, engineers, managers and educators interactive access to information about and data from human spaceflight experiments. The archive system consists of a Data Acquisition System, Database Management System, CD-ROM Mastering System and Catalog Information System (CIS). The catalog information system is the heart of the archive. The CIS provides detailed experiment descriptions (both written and as QuickTime movies), hardware descriptions, hardware images, documents, and data. An initial evaluation of the archive at a scientific meeting showed that 88% of those who evaluated the catalog want to use the system when completed. The majority of the evaluators found the archive flexible, satisfying and easy to use. We conclude that the data archive effectively provides key life sciences data to interested users

Buckey, J. C.

Cardenas, J. A.

Havelka,J. A.

Turner, J. N.

White, T. S.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

NASA-TM-111626
AIAA-95-1 045
Using and Distributing Spaceflight Data:
The Johnson Space Center Life Sciences
Data Archive
J. Buckey
UT-Southwestern Medical Center
Houston, TX
J. Turner, T. White, J. Havelka
Martin Marietta Services
Houston, TX
J. Cardenas
NASA Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
Life Sciences and Space
Medicine Conference
April 3-5, 1995 / Houston, TX
For permission to copy or republish, contact the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19960052965 2020-06-16T03:45:31+00:00Z

/-ll/_H _0 1 I.//40
USING AND DISTRIBUTING SPACEFLIGHT DATA: THE JOHNSON SPACE CENTER
LIFE SCIENCES DATA ARCHIVE
J. C. Buckey M.D., UT-Southwestern Medical Center, J.N. Turner B.S., T.S. White B.S., J.A.
Havelka B.S., Martin Marietta Services, J.A. Cardenas B.S., NASA-Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas
ABSTRACT archive and use the facilities provided.
Life sciences data collected before, during
and after spaceflight are valuable and often
irreplaceable. The Johnson Space Center Life
Sciences Data Archive has been designed to
provide researchers, engineers, managers
and educators interactive access to
information about and data from human
spaceflight experiments. The archive system
consists of a Data Acquisition System,
Database Management System, CD-ROM
Mastering System and Catalog Information
System (CIS). The catalog information
system is the heart of the archive. The CIS
provides detailed experiment descriptions
(both written and as QuickTime movies),
hardware descriptions, hardware images,
documents, and data. An initial evaluation
of the archive at a scientific meeting showed
that 88% of those who evaluated the catalog
would want to use the system when
completed. The majority of the evaluators
found the archive flexible, satisfying and
easy to use. We conclude that the data
archive effectively provides key life sciences
data to interested users.
INTRODUCTION
Opportunities to study physiology in space
are limited, which makes the data collected
before, during and after spaceflight
particularly valuable. Published reports
focus on major findings and often provide
only summarized results. Analyses across
experiments and disciplines can be difficult
to perform.
Early in the space program the importance
of preserving data was recognized. After the
Skylab program in 1974 an effort was made
to archive the life sciences data from the
program (11) and to provide analysis tools
for the data (6). Computer technology at that
time, however, was limited. The archive
required a room to house the digital data
tapes, microfilm, strip chart records and
documents. Users had to travel to the
Today, the Skylab data resides at the Texas
Medical Center Library in Houston, Texas.
Detailed information about the experiments
is hard to find, and much of the data (e.g.
the analog tapes) can no longer be accessed.
Only the microfilms and various documents
remain for the interested researcher. Today
the best single source of information on the
Skylab program is a book (3), but this
publication includes mainly summarized
data.
DATA: DESCRIPTIONS:
I-Shuttle _ _r-Missi°n 1
-Spacelab [ [-Experiment
-Space Station_ /-Session
[-Hardware
-BDCF J k-Data
'JSC Archive System .[
Data Acquisition Database Management
System S_,ste.rn ....
_i__;_ i.....
P
_ CD-ROM
Mastering System
J
Digital experiment data set CD-ROMs
Catalog [
Infor_mati_owJ
Figure 1. Overall organization of the archive.
BDCF= Baseline Data Collection Facility.
The Spacelab program has produced a
tremendous influx of new life sciences
This paper is declared a work of the U.S.
Government and is not subject to
copyright protection in the United States
findings(12).To realizethe full benefit of
these data, an archive that allows interactive
access to all the data is needed. The archive
should have the capability to search across
experiments, disciplines and missions. Also,
new digital storage and retrieval
technologies allow information that
previously required a room for storage, to be
kept on a CD-ROM.
The Johnson Space Center Life Sciences Data
Archive has been designed to allow
researchers, engineers, managers and
educators easy access to information about
and data from human experiments
performed in space. At the Ames Research
Center a similar effort exists to archive non-
human data. Descriptive information from
both archives will also be available via the
Internet or modem connection at the
National Space Science Data Center
(NSSDC) as described previously (4). The
actual human data will only be available on
CD-ROM.
Currently, the Johnson Space Center Life
Sciences Data Archive is using the Spacelab
Life Sciences 1 flight information to create a
prototype archive. This paper will present
the design of the prototype as well as the
results from the first evaluation.
The Database Management System (DBMS)
will be used in the future to track data from
initial acquisition until final archival. This
system is still in development, since current
archive activity is focused on missions that
have already flown. This system will be
based on the Oracle client server relational
database software.
Once all the data from a particular flight
have been archived, the catalog for that
flight will be placed on a CD-ROM. The CD-
ROM Mastering System allows for CD-
ROMs to be produced from the experiment
data for distribution and deep archival.
The heart of the system is the Catalog
Information System (CIS).
CATALOG INFORMATION SYSTEM
This system is based on commercially
available FileMaker Pro database software.
The CIS contains detailed descriptions of the
mission, experiments, experiment sessions,
hardware, personnel, and datasets. The CIS
allows the user to search through the
database to find information on particular
parameters, experiments, subjects or
hardware. Help screens are provided to
guide the novice user.
SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The archival system has four main
components (Figure 1). The Data
Acquisition System (DAS) takes data from a
variety of sources (investigator labs, Shuttle
telemetry) and puts them into a standard
format for use in the archive. For example, a
spaceflight experiment may have used an
analog tape recorder for pre and post flight
data collection. In flight, this experiments
data may have been in the telemetry stream
from the Orbiter. Information from both
these sources can be read by the MIRAGE
software (1,9) used by the DAS. Once in the
archive, these data would share a common
format (ASCII) that could be used by a
variety of commercially available software
packages. Text is scanned into the DAS.
Johnson Space Center
Life Sciences Data
Archive
Figure 2. Entry screen to catalog information
system.
Figure 2 shows the entry screen for the CIS.
The user can press any of the software
"buttons" and advance through the system.
Figure 3 shows the screen that the user will
encounter if the experiment button is
2
pushed.The experimentinformation is
containedon two pagesin severalfields.
Oneof thesefields containsa QuickTime
moviethatdescribes,ata laylevel,whatthe
experimentis about.A detailed,scientific
description appearsin the experiment
descriptionfield.Byusingbothvideoand
text,theCIScanmeettheneedsof avariety
ofusers.A casualusermayfindthedetailed
experimentdescriptiontoo scientificand
difficulttounderstand,but thevideowould
providekey informationmoresimply.A
seriousresearchermightfind thevideotoo
superficial,so theexperimentdescription
wouldhelpthiskind of user.Referencesto
theopenscientificliteratureareprovidedfor
thosewhoneedfurtherinformation.
General Experiment Description PaUc I ol Z
Some of the fields available in the
experiment description are: experiment ID,
experiment title, payload ID, research area,
parameters measured, session, experiment
description, personnel (principal
investigator, co-investigator, key personnel),
publications, and hardware. These are all
searchable fields. This means that a user can
find experiments that share certain
characteristics. If the user wanted all the
experiments in cardiovascular physiology,
for example, he/she could do a search
using the research area field. All the
experiments dealing with cardiovascular
physiology would be found. Similarly, a
search can be done to find all experiments
that measured a particular parameter or
used a particular piece of hardware.
The icon bar across the top of the page
shown in figure 3 is common to all screens
in the CIS. The user navigates through the
system by pressing these buttons. Their
functions are described below.
Home- This takes the user back to
the opening page.
Help- This provides instruction on
how to use the system. An introduction to
navigating through the system is provided
as an animated presentation. This is
produced with Macromind director
software. The user receives both animation
and audio of how to navigate through the
catalog system.
Mission- This takes the user to the
mission page. This page gives both a text
and video description of the mission, shows
what experiments were on a given mission,
and who the key personnel were.
_ DatSet- This takes the user to the
actual datasets. When this button is pressed
within a particular experiment only the data
from that experiment are displayed. The
data set page has several fields to describe
the dataset, i.e. what hardware was used,
what the analysis techniques were, when
and where the data were acquired. From the
dataset page the user can press a button to
see the data. Analyzed data are displayed
using Microsoft Excel software. Continuous
data are in ASCII format and can be
displayed using a variety of software
packages (Microsoft Excel, LabView,
DADISP).
KeyPer- This takes the user to a
page that provides the address, phone
3
number and e-mail address of the key
personnel involved in the mission.
_ubjct- By pressing this button, the
user can find some key information about
the people who participated in the
experiments.
_ Hrdwre- This takes the user to
descriptions of the hardware used. This
database includes pre and post flight
hardware, in addition to flight items. A
written description and picture is included
for each item.
_ Docs- This takes the user to final
reports, test plans, proposals, and work
statements for the experiments. Scientific
publications in the open literature are not
listed here, but are included as references on
the experiment page itself.
_ Sess- By pressing this button the
user moves to descriptions of the major
sessions that constituted an experiment.
Many experiments have subdivisions. For
example, a cardiovascular experiment may
have stand tests, lower body negative
pressure tests, and exercise tests all as part
of the one experiment. Each one of these
sessions may use different protocols or
hardware, and measure different
parameters. To provide an interested user
with enough information to understand the
experiment, they need a session page that
describes what took place in an individual
session.
Searches
Within each of the major sections of the
catalog (experiments, sessions, datasets,
hardware, documents, key personnel,
subjects) the user can perform searches on
the various fields. For example, if a user
wanted to find all the datasets that included
a particular parameter, he/she could search
in the parameters measured field and find
all the datasets that include this parameter.
As the catalog grows in size this will be a
particularly powerful feature. Boolean
searches on multiple fields (e.g. a particular
parameter and a particular experiment) can
also be done.
Portability
The software for the archive will run on
either Macintosh or PC based computers. To
get the catalog, a user would order a CD-
ROM with the catalog information system
on it. This CD-ROM would include a run
time version of the FileMaker Pro software;
the user would need to have a CD-ROM
reader and a spreadsheet program to view
the data.
The display of individual data from
crewmembers who participated in
experiments in space presents a special
problem. These data are covered by the
Privacy Act (8) and internal NASA
regulations (5). The archive has to balance
the requirement for NASA to disseminate
space information (7,10) with the need to
maintain privacy. Different approaches to
this problem exist (2). A specific policy for
the archive is under development. For
evaluation purposes, the actual data have
been replaced with zeroes.
EVALUATION
To guide future development, the prototype
data archive was displayed at the American
Society for Gravitational and Space Biology
(ASGSB) annual meeting in October 1994.
This meeting attracts researchers working in
space life sciences research. At this meeting
attendees had the opportunity to use the
archive. They could browse through the
various pages, and evaluate how easy or
hard it was for them to use the system. After
using the system each person was
encouraged to fill out a questionnaire. A
total of 91 people used the archival system
and filled out a questionnaire.
These questionnaire results provide only a
rough guide to how well the JSC-Life
SciencesDataArchive performed.Other
elementsof the total Lifesciencesarchive
(NSSDC,Ames ResearchCenter, and
Mission Disk) (4) were also at the
demonstration,and thequestionnairedid
not distinguish between the various
elements.Thedifferentelements,however,
usesimilarapproachesandin somecases
contain the sameinformation (e.g. the
NSSDCcontainstoplevelinformationfrom
bothJSCandARC).Becauseof thisweare
confidenthatthequestionnairesdoprovide
avaluableinitiallookathowtheJSCarchive
isreceivedbypotentialscientificusers.
RESULTS
Figure 4 shows the results from the
questionnaire indicating overall reactions.
Overall, the impression was favorable.
Terrible
Frustrating
Dull
Difficult
Inadequate
power
Rigid
q
q
4 5 6 7
Wonderful
Satisfying
Stimulating
Easy
Adequate
Power
Flexible
Figure 4. Questionnaire results.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of the
individuals who completed a questionnaire
said they would want to use the archive
when it is completed. The reasons for
wanting to use the archive were as follows
(more than one answer could be chosen):
82% To find background information on
completed experiments
71% To locate and browse experiment data
48°/,, To plan new experiments
44% To combine data from more than one
experiment or discipline
22% To propose a data analysis or modeling
project using archive data
Most evaluators felt they would need little
instruction to use the archive. Eighty seven
percent (87%) said they would need either
no training, a brief overview or a few pages
on each of the major parts.
CONCLUSION
Acquiring data before, during and after
spaceflight requires a major commitment of
time and resources by investigators and
NASA. These data need to be used to the
fullest extent possible. The Johnson Space
Center Life Sciences Data Archive prototype
has been constructed to provide researchers,
engineers, managers and educators
interactive access to key life sciences data.
The initial evaluation of the archive has
shown that the approach taken is well-
received by scientists working in the field.
Currently, the prototype is entering a formal
evaluation phase. Privacy controls for the
human data are also being devised. Once
these tasks are complete the archive will be
modified to meet user needs and expanded
to include data from other missions.
REFERENCES
1. Beberness, BJ and Rosser, RS.
Microsystems Integrated Real-time
Acquisition Ground Equipment (MIRAGE)
User's Guide for the Macintosh. NASA LS-
40066-1, 1994.
2. Duncan GT, Pearson RW. Enhancing
access to microdata while protecting
confidentiality: Prospects for the future.
Statistical Science 6(3):219-239, 1991.
3. Johnston RS and Dietlein LF, eds.
Biomedical Results from Skylab,
Washington, DC: NASA, 1977.
4. Leonard JI, Callahan PX, Taylor G,
Cardenas J, Mains R, King J, White RJ,
Prototype of the Life Sciences Data Archive
(Abstract), ASGSB
Bulletin 8(1), October 1994, p85
5. Maintaining the Privacy of Biomedical
Research Data. NASA-Johnson Space Center
Management Directive 1382.5 (1992).
5
6. Marks VJ. User's guide for the Skylab
Medical Data Analysis System. NASA CR-
160189, NASA-Johnson Space Center,
Houston, 1975.
7. Policy Concerning Data Obtained from
Space Sciences Flight Investigations. NASA
Management Instruction 8030.3A (1978).
8. Privacy Act of 1974, 5 USC §552a (1992).
9. Rosser, RS and Rahman HH. MIRAGE:
The data acquisition, analysis and display
system. Proceedings of the third national
technology transfer conference and
exposition. NASA Conference Publication
3189, Vol. 2., pg. 419. 1992.
10. Space Act of 1958, 42 USC §203a (1994).
11. Spross FR. Skylab Medical Data Center
and Archives. NASA TM X-58148, NASA-
Johnson Space Center, Houston, 1974.
12. West JB. Life in space. J Appl Physiol.
72(5):1623-30. 1992.
6


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