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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1978

The control and prevention of seizures in children, a developmental and environmental approach

The clinical effectiveness of neurophysiological and developmental factors in controlling and preventing seizure mechanisms is detailed. It is shown that as cortical control advances with maturation, it requires increasingly severe environmental adversity to release this residual defensive reflex mechanism. Administration of anticonvulsant drugs is discouraged because of possible undesirable neuronal effects on the very young brain.

Lewinn, E. B.↗
NASA NTRS1978

The world of tomorrow: Aerospace activities for 8- to 10-year olds. A guide for leaders of children's groups and teachers of the lower grades

During January 1977, NASA helped the Cub Scout Division of the Boy Scouts of America in the conduct of its The World of Tomorrow monthly theme. In this period, 249 Cub Scout packs participated in a nationwide aerospace activities project, a pilot project in which den leaders and Cubmasters conducted local programs for their Cub Scouts and Webelos Scouts. The products of these local programs are presented with the written accounts submitted by adult leaders and written compositions, pictures, and photographs of models submitted by the youngsters.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1999

Is the spatial distribution of brain lesions associated with closed-head injury predictive of subsequent development of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder? Analysis with brain-image database

PURPOSE: To determine whether there is an association between the spatial distribution of lesions detected at magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the brain in children after closed-head injury and the development of secondary attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data obtained from 76 children without prior history of ADHD were analyzed. MR images were obtained 3 months after closed-head injury. After manual delineation of lesions, images were registered to the Talairach coordinate system. For each subject, registered images and secondary ADHD status were integrated into a brain-image database, which contains depiction (visualization) and statistical analysis software. Using this database, we assessed visually the spatial distributions of lesions and performed statistical analysis of image and clinical variables. RESULTS: Of the 76 children, 15 developed secondary ADHD. Depiction of the data suggested that children who developed secondary ADHD had more lesions in the right putamen than children who did not develop secondary ADHD; this impression was confirmed statistically. After Bonferroni correction, we could not demonstrate significant differences between secondary ADHD status and lesion burdens for the right caudate nucleus or the right globus pallidus. CONCLUSION: Closed-head injury-induced lesions in the right putamen in children are associated with subsequent development of secondary ADHD. Depiction software is useful in guiding statistical analysis of image data.

NASA Discipline Neuroscience↗
NASA NTRS2013

Forest Cover Associated with Improved Child Health and Nutrition: Evidence from the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and Satellite Data

Healthy forests provide human communities with a host of important ecosystem services, including the provision of food, clean water, fuel, and natural medicines. Yet globally, about 13 million hectares of forests are lost every year, with the biggest losses in Africa and South America. As biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation due to deforestation continue at unprecedented rates, with concomitant loss of ecosystem services, impacts on human health remain poorly understood. Here, we use data from the 2010 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey, linked with satellite remote sensing data on forest cover, to explore and better understand this relationship. Our analysis finds that forest cover is associated with improved health and nutrition outcomes among children in Malawi. Children living in areas with net forest cover loss between 2000 and 2010 were 19% less likely to have a diverse diet and 29% less likely to consume vitamin A-rich foods than children living in areas with no net change in forest cover. Conversely, children living in communities with higher percentages of forest cover were more likely to consume vitamin A-rich foods and less likely to experience diarrhea. Net gain in forest cover over the 10-year period was associated with a 34% decrease in the odds of children experiencing diarrhea (P5.002). Given that our analysis relied on observational data and that there were potential unknown factors for which we could not account, these preliminary findings demonstrate only associations, not causal relationships, between forest cover and child health and nutrition outcomes. However, the findings raise concerns about the potential short- and long-term impacts of ongoing deforestation and ecosystem degradation on community health in Malawi, and they suggest that preventing forest loss and maintaining the ecosystems services of forests are important factors in improving human health and nutrition outcomes.

malawi↗
NASA NTRS1986

Development of intuitive theories of motion - Curvilinear motion in the absence of external forces

College students and children between the ages of 4 and 12 were asked to draw the path a ball would take upon exiting a curved tube. As in previous studies, many subjects erroneously predicted curvilinear paths. However, a clear U-shaped curve was evident in the data: Preschoolers and kindergartners performed as well as college students, whereas school-aged children were more likely to make erroneous predictions. A second study suggested that the youngest children's correct responses could not be attributed to response biases or drawing abilities. This developmental trend is interpreted to mean that the school-aged children are developing intuitive theories of motion that include erroneous principles. The results are related to the 'growth errors' found in other cognitive domains and to the historical development of formal theories of motion.

Kaiser, M. K.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Project KEWL: Kinect Engineering With Learning

Project KEWL is a joint project between NASA/JPL and NASA/JSC to stimulate interest of children in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and bring the NASA space exploration experience to the classroom, museum and ultimately the living room. Using the Kinect game controller KEWL allows children to engage in NASA s missions in a fundamentally new way. KEWL allows children to experiment with gravity on Mars and the Moon; navigate through the International Space Station; fix a torn solar array on the ISS; drive a robot on Mars; visit an Asteroid; learn about the differences in gravity on different planets and control Robonaut 2 using their body as the input device. Project KEWL complements NASA s outreach investments in television, mobile platforms and the web by engaging the public through the rapidly expanding medium of console gaming. In 2008, 97% of teenagers played video games and 86% played on a home gaming console. (source: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/953/) As of March 2011, there have been more than 10 million Kinects sold. (source: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/03/10/kinect-record-breaking-sales-figures-top-10-million/) Project KEWL interacts with children on a platform on which they spend much of their time and teaches them information about NASA while they are having fun. Project KEWL progressed from completely custom C++ code written in house to using a commercial game engine. The art work and 3D geometry models come from existing engineering work or are created by the KEWL development team. Six different KEWL applications have been demonstrated at nine different venues including schools, museums, conferences, and NASA outreach events. These demonstrations have allowed the developers the chance to interact with players and observe the gameplay mechanics in action. The lessons learned were then incorporated into the subsequent versions of the applications.

Norris, Jeff↗
NASA NTRS1974

Bone mineral content in normal US whites

Photon absorptiometry with I-125 was used to measure the bone mineral content and the bone width on 763 children between the ages of 5 and 19 years, on 538 adults between the ages of 20 and 49 years, and on 550 adults over the age of 50 years. Measurements were made on the midshaft and the distal end of the radius and the ulna, and on the humerus midshaft. This has permitted analysis of annual bone growth in children, and the rate of change in elderly adults per decade. Male and female children grew at about the same rate until adolescence. After adolescence females grew at a slow rate until the mid-twenties, while males reached adult mineralization by age 20. Males remained relatively constant until the fifties, and females began their decline in the forties.

Mazess, R. B.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Test and evaluation of the 2.4-micron photorefractor ocular screening system

An improved 2.4-m photorefractor ocular screening system was tested and evaluated. The photorefractor system works on the principal of obtaining a colored photograph of both human eyes; and, by analysis of the retinal reflex images, certain ocular defects can be detected such a refractive error, strabismus, and lens obstructions. The 2.4-m photorefractory system uses a 35-mm camera with a telephoto lens and an electronic flash attachment. Retinal reflex images obtained from the new 2.4-m system are significantly improved over earlier systems in image quality. Other features were also improved, notably portability and reduction in mass. A total of 706 school age children were photorefracted, 211 learning disabled and 495 middle school students. The total students having abnormal retinal reflexes were 156 or 22 percent, and 133 or 85 percent of the abnormal had refractive error indicated. Ophthalmological examination was performed on 60 of these students and refractive error was verified in 57 or 95 percent of those examined. The new 2.4-m system has a NASA patent pending and is authorized by the FDA. It provides a reliable means of rapidly screening the eyes of children and young adults for vision problems. It is especially useful for infants and other non-communicative children who cannot be screened by the more conventional methods such as the familiar E chart.

Richardson, J. R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Suited for spacewalking: Teacher's guide with activities for physical and life science

Space walking has captured the imagination of generations of children and adults since science-fiction authors first placed their characters on the Moon. This publication is an activity guide for teachers interested in using the intense interest many children have in space exploration as a launching point for exciting hands-on learning opportunities. The guide begins with brief discussions of the space environment, the history of space walking, the Space Shuttle spacesuit, and working in space. These are followed by a series of activities that enable children to explore the space environment as well as the science and technology behind the functions of spacesuits. The activities are not rated for specific grade levels because they can be adapted for students of many ages. The chart on curriculum application at the back of the book is designed to help teachers incorporate activities into various subject areas.

Vogt, Gregory L.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Hey! What's Space Station Freedom?

This video, 'Hey! What's Space Station Freedom?', has been produced as a classroom tool geared toward middle school children. There are three segments to this video. Segment One is a message to teachers presented by Dr. Jeannine Duane, New Jersey, 'Teacher in Space'. Segment Two is a brief Social Studies section and features a series of Presidential Announcements by President John F. Kennedy (May 1961), President Ronald Reagan (July 1982), and President George Bush (July 1989). These historical announcements are speeches concerning the present and future objectives of the United States' space programs. In the last segment, Charlie Walker, former Space Shuttle astronaut, teaches a group of middle school children, through models, computer animation, and actual footage, what Space Station Freedom is, who is involved in its construction, how it is to be built, what each of the modules on the station is for, and how long and in what sequence this construction will occur. There is a brief animation segment where, through the use of cartoons, the children fly up to Space Station Freedom as astronauts, perform several experiments and are given a tour of the station, and fly back to Earth. Space Station Freedom will take four years to build and will have three lab modules, one from ESA and another from Japan, and one habitation module for the astronauts to live in.

Vonehrenfried, Dutch↗
NASA NTRS1994

Invention-driven marketing

Suppose you have just created a revolutionary bicycle suspension which allows a bike to be ridden over rough terrain at 60 miles per hour. In addition, suppose that you are deeply concerned about the plight of hungry children. Which should you do: be sure all hungry children have bicycles; transfer the technology for your new suspension to bicycle manufacturers worldwide; or start a company to supply premium sports bicycle based on your patented technology, and donate the profits to a charity which feeds hungry children? Woven through this somewhat trivial example is the paradox of technology transfer - the supplier (owner) may want to transfer technology; but to succeed, he or she must reformulate the problem as a user need for which there is a new and better solution. Successful technology transfer is little more than good marketing applied to an existing invention, process, or capability. You must identify who needs the technology, why they need it, why the new technology is better than alternatives, how much the customers are willing and able to pay for these benefits, and how to distribute products based on the technology tc the target customers. In market-driven development, the term 'technology transfer' is rarely used. The developers focus on studying user needs and designing solution They may have technology needs, but they don't have technology in search of a use.

Carlson, William E.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Technology Development, Implementation, and Assessment: K-16 Pre-Service, In-Service, and Distance Learning Initiatives

This summer 22 kindergarten through 8th grade teachers attended a 3-week Teacher Enhancement Institute (TEI) at NASA Langley Research Center. TEI is funded by NASA Education Division and is a collaborative effort between NASA Langley's Office of Education and Christopher Newport University. Selected teacher teams were drawn from Langley's 5-state precollege service region, which includes Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The goal of TEI was for teachers to learn aeronautics and the broad application of science and technology through a problem-based learning (PBL) strategy. PBL is an instructional method using a real world problem, also known as an ill-structured problem, as the context for an in-depth investigation. Most real life problems are ill-structured, as are all the really important social, political and scientific problems. The teachers were immediately immersed in an ill-structured problem to design a communication strategy for the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security to educate and disseminate aviation information to the general public. Specifically, the communication strategy was to focus on aeronautics principles, technology and design associated with US general aviation revitalization and aviation safety programs. The presented problem addressed NASA's strategic outcome to widely communicate the content, relevancy and excitement of its missions and discoveries to the general population. Further, the PBL scenario addressed the technological challenges being taken up by NASA to revolutionize air travel and the way in which aircraft are designed, built, and operated. It also addressed getting people and freight safely and efficiently to any location in the world at a reasonable cost. With a "real" need-to-know problem facing them, the teachers set out to gather information and to better understand the problem using inquiry-based and scientific methods. The learning in this aeronautics scenario was driven by the direction taken by participants. With the support of the TEI faculty, the teachers quickly identified NASA Langley researchers that served as consultants to help solve the problem. To achieve their goal, the teacher teams developed lesson plans for elementary and middle school students, wrote a newspaper, published a brochure to educate the general public, constructed games for children of all ages, and produced a video. As a second problem, the TEI participants will design their own aeronautic lesson plan and immerse their 1997-98 school year students in the problem. The problem is for the students "to create a traveling hands-on, minds-on aeronautics museum exhibit created for children by children." As a culminating activity, the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, VA, will set up a special display of the exhibits in the Summer 1998. The TEI faculty will visit each TEI teacher's classroom during the academic school year to observe the implementation of the unit. In addition to the classroom observations, electronic follow-up sessions will be conducted during the school year to support the teachers' efforts in developing their PBL units to integrate technology in math and science instruction. These sessions eill be conducted using the Internet. Teachers will be connected through a chat-line to share ideas, ask questions, and generate solutions.

Petersen, Richard↗
NASA NTRS2002

Designing a Unique Single Point Cross Over Method

The idea behind genetic algorithms is to extract optimization strategies nature uses successfully - known as Darwinian Evolution - and transform them for application in mathematical optimization theory to find the global optimum in a defined phase space. One could imagine a population of individual 'explorers' sent into the optimization phase-space. Each explorer is defined by its genes, what means, its position inside the phase-space is coded in his genes. Every explorer has the duty to find a value of the quality of his position in the phase space. (Consider the phase-space being a number of variables in some technological process, the value of quality of any position in the phase space - in other words: any set of the variables - can be expressed by the yield of the desired chemical product.) Then the struggle of 'life' begins. The three fundamental principles are selection, mating/crossover, and mutation. Only explorers (= genes) sitting on the best places will reproduce and create a new population. This is performed in the second step (mating/crossover). The 'hope' behind this part of the algorithm is, that 'good' sections of two parents will be recombined to yet better fitting children. In fact, many of the created children will not be successful (as in biological evolution), but a few children will indeed fulfill this hope. These good sections are named in some publications as building blocks. Now there appears a problem. Repeating these steps, no new area would be explored. The two former steps would only exploit the already known regions in the phase space, which could lead to premature convergence of the algorithm with the consequence of missing the global optimum by exploiting some local optimum. The third step, mutation, ensures the necessary accidental effects. One can imagine the new population being mixed up a little bit to bring some new information into this set of genes. Whereas in biology a gene is described as a macro-molecule with four different bases to code the genetic information, a gene in genetic algorithms is usually defined as a bitstring (a sequence of b 1's and 0's).

Wilson, Richard Phillip↗
NASA NTRS1978

Hearing Aid Tester

Hearing aids often develop malfunctions that are not detected by the wearer. This is particularly true when the wearers are school-age children. Studies of selected groups showed that from 30 to more than 50 percent of school children were not getting adequate benefit from their hearing aids because of unrecognized malfunctions, usually low or dead batteries. This can be serious because hearing impairment retards a child's educational progress. NASA technology incorporated in the Hearing Aid Malfunction Detection Unit (HAMDU), the device pictured, is expected to provide an effective countermeasure to the childrens' hearing aid problem. A patent license has been awarded to a minority-owned firm, Hopkins International Company, a subsidiary of H. H. Aerospace Design Co., Inc., Elmford, New York. The company plans early commercial availability of its version of the device.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2012

Paramyxovirus Infection Mimics In Vivo Cellular Dynamics in Three-Demensional Human Bronchio-Epithelial Tissue-Like Assemblies

Respiratory syncytial virus and parainfluenza virus cause severe respiratory disease, especially in infants, children and the elderly. An in vitro model that accurately mimics infection of the human respiratory epithelium (HRE) would facilitate vaccine development greatly. Monolayer cultures traditionally used to study these viruses do not accurately and precisely differentiate the replication efficiencies of wild type and attenuated viruses. Therefore, we engineered novel three-dimensional (3D) tissue-like assemblies (TLAs) of human broncho-epithelial (HBE) cells to produce a more physiologically relevant in vitro model of the HRE. TLAs resemble HRE structurally and by expression of differentiated epithelial cell markers. Most significantly, wild type viruses exhibited a clear growth advantage over attenuated strains in TLAs unlike monolayer cultures. In addition, the TLAs responded to virus infection by secreting pro-inflammatory mediators similar to the respiratory epithelia of infected children. These characteristics make the TLA model a valuable platform technology to develop and evaluate live, attenuated respiratory virus vaccine candidates for human use. Respiratory virus diseases, the most frequent and least preventable of all infectious diseases, range in severity from the common cold to severe bronchiolitis and pneumonia . Two paramyxoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and parainfluenza virus type 3 (PIV3), are responsible for a majority of the most severe respiratory diseases of infants and young children. RSV causes 70% of all bronchiolitis cases and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially in infants. PIV3 causes 10-15% of bronchiolitis and pneumonia during infancy, second only to RSV, and 40% of croup in infants To date, licensed vaccines are not available to prevent these respiratory diseases. At present, traditional monkey kidney (Vero and LLC-MK2) and human (HEp-2) tissue culture cells and small animal models (mouse, cotton rat, guinea pig, ferret, and hamster) fail to accurately imitate viral replication and human disease states (8). Lacking an authentic model has impeded the development and evaluation of live, attenuated vaccine candidates. Development of a physiologically relevant in vitro tissue culture model that reproduces characteristics of the HRE, the primary target of RSV and PIV3, would aid in predicting clinical attenuation and safety of vaccine candidates. Successful tissue engineering of a 3D human intestinal model using novel NASA technology inspired the development of a tri-culture 3D model for the HRE. Sequential layering of primary mesenchymal cells (comprised of normal human fibroblasts and endothelial cells) followed by BEAS-2B epithelial cells derived from human bronchi and tracheae were recapitulated on Cultisphere and/or cytodex3 microcarriers in cylindrical vessels that rotate horizontally creating an organized epithelial structure. Horizontal rotation randomizes the gravity vector modeling aspects of microgravity. Mesenchymal and epithelial cells grown under these conditions reproduce the structural organization, multi-cellular complexity, and differentiation state of the HRE. The opportunity to study respiratory viruses in a nasal epithelium model is invaluable because the most promising respiratory virus vaccine candidates are live attenuated viruses for intranasal administration. Here we characterize the interactions of respiratory viruses and epithelial cells grown under modeled microgravity in comparison to gravity-ladened monolayers. 3D HBE TLAs and traditional monolayers (2D) are infected at 35 C, the upper temperature of the upper HRE, to simulate in vivo infection conditions. Growth kinetics of wild type (wt) RSV and PIV3 viruses were compared in 2D and 3D cells to that of strains attenuated in humans or rhesus macaques. This novel 3D HBE model also offers an opportunity to study whether the epithelial cell function, especially in host defenses recapitulated by mimicking the structural organization of the HRE. In vivo, airway epithelial cells play a significant and dynamic role in host defense by blocking paracellular permeability and modulating airway function through cellular interactions or tight junctions. As regulators of the innate immune response, epithelial cells constitutively express cytokines, chemokines, and colony stimulating factors including RANTES, IL-8, IL-6, GM-CSF, and G-CSF for proactive host defense. In response to viral infection, epithelial cells induce potent immuno-modulatory and pro-inflammatory cytokines that recruit phagocytic and inflammatory cells to clear the virus and enhance protection. Although disease pathogenesis is classically attributed to the cytopathic effects of the pathogen, severe disease states associated with RSV and PIV3 are attributed to the inflammatory response, especially in infants. RSV is a potent inducer of cytokines and pro-inflammatory mediators in epithelial cells in vivo. A differentiated human epithelial model independent of the complete functional immune system will help elucidate the role of epithelial cells in respiratory disease. We reported here, virus and host cell interactions in 3D HBE TLAs are similar to that in vivo. Because the epithelial cell organization of the TLAs impacts not only the expression of airway epithelial characteristics, but also cellular communication, the TLAs represent a more physiologically relevant model of the HRE than BEAS-2B or other non-tumour monolayer models of respiratory disease. As a result, wild type respiratory viruses have a clear growth advantage over attenuated viruses in TLAs unlike traditional monolayers. In addition, the TLAs respond to wild type virus infection by secreting pro-inflammatory mediators characteristic of infected HRE. TLAs expressing microbial defense mechanisms provide an excellent model to study the interactions of respiratory pathogens with their host and to identify the innate immunity mediators. Therefore, 3D HBE TLAs offer advantages for the study of respiratory viruses and the development of viral vaccine candidates.

Deatly, Anne M.↗