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The paper discusses all phases of aquaculture, including commercial viability, sanitary and biological considerations, public health, financial/economic and sociological aspects. Current studies are detailed and options are discussed for their potential applicability to developing countries, considering requirements for capital and labor skills as well as physical needs such as land.
Parameters were described for spatial database to facilitate drought monitoring and famine early warning in the African Sahel. The proposed system, referred to as the African Drought and Famine Information System (ADFIS) is ultimately recommended for implementation with the NASA/FEMA Spatial Analysis and Modeling System (SAMS), a GIS/Dymanic Modeling software package, currently under development. SAMS is derived from FEMA'S Integration Emergency Management Information System (IEMIS) and the Pacific Northwest Laborotory's/Engineering Topographic Laboratory's Airland Battlefield Environment (ALBE) GIS. SAMS is primarily intended for disaster planning and resource management applications with the developing countries. Sources of data for the system would include the Developing Economics Branch of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the World Bank, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine's Famine Early Warning Systems (FEWS) Project, the USAID's Foreign Disaster Assistance Section, the World Resources Institute, the World Meterological Institute, the USGS, the UNFAO, UNICEF, and the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO). Satellite imagery would include decadal AVHRR imagery and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values from 1981 to the present for the African continent and selected Landsat scenes for the Sudan pilot study. The system is initially conceived for the MicroVAX 2/GPX, running VMS. To facilitate comparative analysis, a global time-series database (1950 to 1987) is included for a basic set of 125 socio-economic variables per country per year. A more detailed database for the Sahelian countries includes soil type, water resources, agricultural production, agricultural import and export, food aid, and consumption. A pilot dataset for the Sudan with over 2,500 variables from the World Bank's ANDREX system, also includes epidemiological data on incidence of kwashiorkor, marasmus, other nutritional deficiencies, and synergistically-related infectious diseases.
The Centers for Disease Control, a Public Health Service agency, is responsible for the prevention and control of disease and injury. Programs range from surveillance and prevention of chronic and infectious diseases to occupational health and injury control. These programs have produced technologies in a variety of fields, including vaccine development, new methods of disease diagnosis, and new tools to ensure a safer work environment.
In ominous projections issued by both U.S. Public Health Service and the World Health Organization, the epidemic of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection will continue to rise more rapidly worldwide than predicted earlier. The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) patients are susceptible to diseases called opportunistic infections of which tuberculosis and M. avium Complex (MAC) infection are most common. This has created an urgent need to uncover new drugs for the treatment of these infections. In the seventies, NASA scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, had adopted a biochemical indicator, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to detect presence of life in extraterrestrial space. Therefore, we proposed to develop ATP assay technique to determine sensitivity of antibacterial compounds against MAC and M. tuberculosis. The work was initiated in June 1992. In the last report, we described our efforts in developing ATP assay method using MAC. Studies were continued further, and during the period of this report, we established the relationship between colony forming units and ATP levels of these organisms during the growth cycle. Also, we evaluated the effects of standard antimycobacterial drugs using ATP assay technique and compared the results with those obtained with conventional tube dilution proportional method.
A remote sensing, medical satellite (MEDSAT) aids in the control of carrier (vector) borne disease. The prototype design is a light satellite to test for control of malaria. The design features a 340-kg satellite with visual/IR and SAR sensors in a low inclination orbit observing a number of worldwide test sites. The approach is to use four-band visual/IR and dual-polarized L-band SAR images obtained from MEDSAT in concert with in-situ data to estimate the temporal and spatial variations of malaria risk. This allows public health resources to focus on the most vulnerable areas at the appropriate time. It is concluded that a light-satellite design for a MEDSAT satellite with a Pegasus launch is feasible.
Communication among physicians is an essential in order to combine our experiences for the elucidation and application of new knowledge and for the accurate and uniform application of established medical practice. This communication requires an adequate understanding of the culture of the patient and the social context of disease and indeed the culture of the physician. Malnutrition in Bangladesh means caloric insufficiency, and a program to lower cholesterol would be impertinent, while a program to enhance the nutrition of patients in Texas by an international effort to import more grain would be ludicrous. In the same vein a public health effort to combat alcoholic cirrhosis in Mecca would be as silly as a program to increase fiber in the diet of the Bantu. Clinical communication must acknowledge the culture of the issue at hand and the differences in the experiential base of the physicians. Not only do geography and culture affect the potential differences in the experiential bases, but the world utilizes very different traditions of education and science in training physicians. We are influenced by the diseases we treat, and learn to look for the expected at least as much as we are attentive to the unexpected. A physician in Siberia would be much more likely to recognize frostbite than one from Buenos Aires, and the Argentine doctor would much more likely consider Chaga's Disease to explain abdominal pain than a colleague in Zurich. Beyond these obvious issues in communication among physicians we must deal with the many languages and idioms used in the world. An overview of using Telemedicine SpaceBridge after the earthquake in the Republic of Armenia in 1988 is presented.
The stated goal of this meeting is to examine the use of telemedicine in disaster management, public health, and remote health care. NASA has a vested interest in providing health care to crews in remote environments. NASA has unique requirements for telemedicine support, in that our flight crews conduct their job in the most remote of all work environments. Compounding the degree of remoteness are other environmental concerns, including confinement, lack of atmosphere, spaceflight physiological deconditioning, and radiation exposure, to name a few. In-flight medical care is a key component in the overall support for missions, which also includes extensive medical screening during selection, preventive medical programs for astronauts, and in-flight medical monitoring and consultation. This latter element constitutes the telemedicine aspect of crew health care. The level of in-flight resources dedicated to medical care is determined by the perceived risk of a given mission, which in turn is related to mission duration, planned crew activities, and length of time required for return to definitive medical care facilities.
The Final Report on the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Telemedicine Consultation Spacebride to Armenia and Ufa is presented. The goal of this activity was to provide expert medical consultation to the Armenian medical personnel in the areas of plastic and reconstructive surgery, physical and psychological rehabilitation, public health, and epidemiology following the devastating earthquake in Dec. 1988. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. implementation teams developed new standards for medical information transmittal as well as protocols and schedules on how to conduct medical consultations. The consultations were provided to the Republic Diagnostic Center in Yerevan, U.S.S.R. by four U.S. medical centers: University of Utah/LDS Hospital, University of Texas, Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Service Systems, and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Advanced control rooms (ACR's) will utilize human-system interface (HSI) technologies that may have significant implications for plant safety in that they will affect the operator's overall role and means of interacting with the system. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the human factors engineering (HFE) aspects of HSI's to ensure that they are designed to good HFE principles and support performance and reliability in order to protect public health and safety. However, the only available NRC guidance was developed more than ten years ago, and does not adequately address the human performance issues and technology changes associated with ACR's. Accordingly, a new approach to ACR safety reviews was developed based upon the concept of 'convergent validity'. This approach to ACR safety reviews is described.
In ominous projections issued by both U.S. Public Health Service and the World Health Organization, the epidemic of HIV infection will continue to rise more rapidly worldwide than predicted earlier. The AIDS patients are susceptible to diseases called opportunistic infections of which tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infection are most common. This has created an urgent need to uncover new drugs for the treatment of these infections. In the seventies, NASA scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, had adopted a biochemical indicator, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to detect presence of life in extraterrestrial space. We proposed to develop ATP assay technique to determine sensitivity of antibacterial compounds against MAC and M. tuberculosis.
The successful launch of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) Ocean Color and Temperature Sensor (OCTS) in August 1996, and the launch of Orbital Science Corporation's (OSC) Sea-viewing Wide-Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) in August 1997 signaled the beginning of a new era for ocean color research and application. These data may be used to remotely evaluate 1) water quality, 2) transport of sediments and adhered pollutants, 3) primary production, upon which commercial shellfish and finfish populations depend for food, and 4) harmful algal blooms which pose a threat to public health and economies of affected areas. Several US government agencies have recently expressed interest in monitoring U.S. coastal waters using optical remote sensing. This renewed interest is broadly driven by 1) resource management concerns over the impact of coastward shifts in population and land use on the ecosystems of estuaries, wetlands, nearshore benthic environments and fisheries, 2) recognition of the need to understand short time scale global change due to urbanization of sensitive land-margin ecosystems, and 3) national security issues. Satellite ocean color sensors have the potential to furnish data at the appropriate time and space scales to evaluate and resolve these concerns and problems. In this draft technical memorandum, we outline our progress during the first year of our SIMBIOS project to evaluate ocean color bio-optical algorithms and products generated using OCTS and SeaWiFS data in coastal US waters.
Nonpremixed (diffusion) flames are attractive for practical applications because they avoid the stability, autoignition, flashback, etc. problems of premixed flames. Unfortunately, soot formation in practical hydrocarbon-fueled diffusion flames reduces their attractiveness due to widely-recognized public health and combustor durability problems of soot emissions. For example, more deaths are attributed to the emission of soot (15,000-60,000 deaths annually in the U.S. alone) than any other combustion-generated pollutant. In addition, continuum radiation from soot-containing flames is the principle heat load to combustor components and is mainly responsible for engine durability problems of aircraft and gas turbine engines. As a result, there is considerable interest in controlling both soot concentrations within flames and soot emissions from flames. Thus, the objective of the present investigation is to study ways to control soot formation in diffusion flames by manipulating the mixing process between the fuel and oxidant streams. In order to prevent the intrusion of gravity from masking flow properties that reduce soot formation in practical flames (where effects of gravity are small), methods developed during past work will be exploited to minimize effects of buoyant motion.
The objective of the research is to derive an assessment of the potential climate change impacts on a global city - in this case the 31 county region that comprises the New York City metropolitan area. This study comprises one of the regional components that contribute to the ongoing U.S. National Assessment: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change and is an application of state-of-the-art climate change science to a set of linked sectoral assessment analyses for the Metro East Coast (MEC) region. We illustrate how three interacting elements of global cities react and respond to climate variability and change with a broad conceptual model. These elements include: people (e.g., socio- demographic conditions), place (e.g., physical systems), and pulse (e.g., decision-making and economic activities). The model assumes that a comprehensive assessment of potential climate change can be derived from examining the impacts within each of these elements and at their intersections. Thus, the assessment attempts to determine the within-element and the inter-element effects. Five interacting sector studies representing the three intersecting elements are evaluated. They include the Coastal Zone, Infrastructure, Water Supply, Public Health, and Institutional Decision-making. Each study assesses potential climate change impacts on the sector and on the intersecting elements, through the analysis of the following parts: 1. Current conditions of sector in the region; 2. Lessons and evidence derived from past climate variability; 3. Scenario predictions affecting sector; potential impacts of scenario predictions; 4. Knowledge/information gaps and critical issues including identification of additional research questions, effectiveness of modeling efforts, equity of impacts, potential non-local interactions, and policy recommendations; and 5. Identification of coping strategies - i.e., resilience building, mitigation strategies, new technologies, education that affects decision-making, and better preparedness for contingencies.
Recent manned and unmanned Earth-orbital operations have suggested great promise of improved knowledge and of substantial economic and associated benefits to be derived from services offered by a space station. Proposed application areas include agriculture, forestry, hydrology, public health, oceanography, natural disaster warning, and search/rescue operations. The need for reliable estimates of economic and related Earth-oriented benefits to be realized from Earth-orbital operations is discussed and recent work in this area is reviewed. Emphasis is given to those services based on remote sensing. Requirements for a uniform, comprehensive and flexible methodology are discussed. A brief review of the suggested methodology is presented. This methodology will be exercised through five case studies which were chosen from a gross inventory of almost 400 user candidates. The relationship of case study results to benefits in broader application areas is discussed, Some management implications of possible future program implementation are included.
There is a need for highly reliable measurements of stratospheric ozone. Policy makers worldwide concerned with public health rely oil a clear consensus from the scientific community as a basis for ozone-related environmental policy that has a significant impact oil national economies. Tile latest Such consensus was presented in WMO, and used in a 1999 meeting of the parties considering amendments to the Montreal Protocol oil Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Tile scientific community, in turn, needs highly precise and accurate measurements of ozone levels, and small time derivatives of these levels, both in continued - development of its understanding of the physical and chemical processes involved and as clear evidence that these processes are occurring as stated. Over most of the world, changes in ozone levels are small. For example, over the heavily populated northern midlatitudes, the linearized rate of ozone decline is between 0.2% per year and 0.7% per year, depending on altitude. These values are small enough to make measurement requirements technically challenging. Data quality may suffer from imperfections in individual instruments. In one instance, early results from a satellite-borne ozone sensor were later found to be invalid because of calibration drift. Even in the absence of drift, tile absolute calibration of a new sensor may differ slightly from that of its predecessor in service. Most ozone remote sensing instruments operate at ultraviolet or infrared wavelengths where scattering from dust and aerosols must be taken into account; results from these systems may be or are affected following a major volcanic eruption, such as tile one at Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. Given these difficulties, a consensus of measurements from several independent systems is required to insure a reliable understanding of stratospheric ozone levels. Because of the above-described need for highly precise and accurate ozone measurements using several independent techniques, there was interest in developing several techniques which were known but not highly developed in the 1980's into systems capable of being used in ail operational manner to make measurements with the level of quality needed to-detect small trends in ozone levels. A ground-based microwave instrument capable of remotely sensing stratospheric ozone had been designed by tile Principal Investigator of the present project. This instrument was built at tile Millitech Corporation in South Deerfield, Massachusetts before tile present work began. (Funding for design and construction of the instrument came from sources other than the present grant.) Tile instrument measured the spectrum of one of the many emission lines produced by purely rotational transitions of ozone, one at a frequency of 110.8 GHz. The altitude distribution of ozone can. in principle, be retrieved from the details of the pressure-broadened spectrum of the ozone transition. However, the level of contamination of the spectral measurement by instrumentally induced artifacts must be very low in order to retrieve a ozone profile of useful quality from it. The Millitech instrument demonstrated spectral purity at ail adequate level, and there were promising ideas for instrumental improvements and for further development of the technique. The initial objectives of the present project, then, were to develop techniques for calibrating the Millitech instrument, to minimize artifacts in tile spectra it produces, to optimally retrieve ozone profiles from tile spectra, to test tile quality of the microwave profiles by comparing them with profiles obtained using several other, independent techniques over both short and periods of time, and to perform research using the ozone data gathered with the instrument.
Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is located in Huntsville, Alabama (north-central Alabama), on approximately 1,840 acres near the center of the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal (RSA). MSFC is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) principal propulsion development center. Its scientists, engineers, and support personnel play a major role in the National Space Transportation System by managing space shuttle mission activities, including the microgravity laboratory. In addition, MSFC will be a significant contributor to several of NASA's future programs, including the Reusable Launch Vehicle (X-33), International Space Station, and Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, as well as research on a variety of space science applications. MSFC has been used to develop, test and manufacture space vehicles and components since 1960, when civilian rocketry and missile activities were transferred from RSA to MSFC. In 1994, MSFC was placed on the National Priority List for the management of hazardous waste sites, under the requirements of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). One requirement of the CERCLA program is to evaluate the nature and extent of environmental contamination resulting from identified CERCLA sites, assess the public health and environmental risks associated with the identified contamination, and identify potential remedial actions. A CERCLA remedial investigation (RI) for the groundwater system has identified at least five major plumes of chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) in the groundwater beneath the facility. These plumes are believed to be the result of former management practices at 14 main facility locations (termed "source areas") where CVOCs were released to the subsurface. Trichloroethene (TCE) is the predominant CVOC and is common to all the plumes. Perchloroethene (PCE) also exists in two of the plumes. In addition to TCE and PCE, carbon tetrachloride and 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane are contained in one of the plumes. The CVOCs are believed to exist as dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) beneath many of the source areas.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has led the development of advanced imaging sensors and image processing technologies for space science and Earth science missions. NASA considers the transfer and commercialization of such technologies a fundamental mission of the agency. Over the last two years, efforts have been focused on the application of aerospace imaging and computing to the field of diagnostic imaging, specifically to breast cancer imaging. These technology transfer efforts offer significant promise in helping in the national public health priority of the early detection of breast cancer.
Reinvestment in urban centers is breathing new life into neighborhoods that have been languishing as a result of explosive suburban development over the past several decades. In cities all over the country, adaptive reuse, brownfields redevelopment, transforming urban landscapes, economies, and quality of life. However, the way in which this development occurs has the potential to exacerbate the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, an existing problem in many areas and one which poses a threat to the long-term sustainability and environmental quality of cities. The UHI phenomenon is rooted in the science of how the land covers respond to solar heating and can adversely effect the environment. This phenomenon is responsible for urban centers having higher air temperatures and poorer air quality than suburban areas. In addition, the UHI phenomenon causes metrological occurrences, degrades water quality, increases energy demands, poses threats to public health and contributes to global warming. While the name of the phenomenon implies that is solely an urban issue, research has shown that the effects of the UHI are becoming prevalent in suburbs, as well. The UHI phenomenon can plague regions - urban centers and their suburbs. Furthermore, heat islands have been found to exist in both city centers and suburban communities. As suburban areas increasingly develop using land covers and building materials common to urban areas, they are inheriting urban problems - such as heat islands. In this way, it may be necessary for non-urban communities to engage in heat island mitigation. The good news is that through education and planning, the effects of the UHI phenomenon can be prevented and mitigated. Heat islands are more a product of urban design rather than the density of development. Therefore, cities can continue to grow and develop without exacerbating the UHI by employing sustainable development strategies.