Computers - applications to the quantification of human behavior.
Computerized behavior analysis systems in quantification of human behavior, noting simulation and data collection
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Computerized behavior analysis systems in quantification of human behavior, noting simulation and data collection
Transient heat transfer and thermodynamic behavior analysis for Apollo service module propulsion system - fuel cell effect on overheating
A nuclear war using less than 1% of the current global nuclear arsenal, which would inject 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history and significant impacts on agricultural productivity and the economy. These effects would be most severe for the first five years after the nuclear war and may last for more than a decade. This paper calculates how food availability would change by employing the Environmental Impact and Sustainability Applied General Equilibrium model. Under a robust world trading system, global food availability would drop by a few percentage points. If the war would destabilize trade, it would magnify by several times the negative ramifications of land productivity shocks on food availability. If exporting countries redirect production to domestic consumption at the expense of importing countries, it would lead to the destabilization of international trade. The analysis suggests that economic models aiming to inform policymakers require both economic behavior analysis and biophysical drivers. Policy lessons derived from a crop model can be significantly nuanced when coupled with economic feedback derived from economic models. Through the impact on yield, farmers could shift production among crops and reallocate land use to maximize profits, showing the importance of general equilibrium effects such as product and input substitution and international trade. Although the global impact on corn and soybean production would be significant when just considering crop production, it could be considerably smaller under the economic model. However, this would be at the expense of other sectors, including livestock. In addition, the costs borne from disruptions to climate would vary significantly across regions, with significant adverse effects in high latitude regions. The severity of the shocks in the high-latitude areas would marginalize the farmers' product and input substitution ability.
A research platform for rodent experiment on the ISS is a valuable tool for advancing biomedical research in space. Capabilities offered by the Rodent Research project developed at NASA Ames Research Center can support experiments of much longer duration on the ISS than previous experiments performed on the Space Shuttle. NASAs Rodent Research (RR)-1 mission was completed successfully and achieved a number of objectives, including validation of flight hardware, on-orbit operations, and science capabilities as well as support of a CASIS-sponsored experiment (Novartis) on muscle atrophy. Twenty C57BL6J adult female mice were launched on the Space-X (SpX) 4 Dragon vehicle, and thrived for up to 37 days in microgravity. Daily health checks of the mice were performed during the mission via downlinked video; all flight animals were healthy and displayed normal behavior, and higher levels of physical activity compared to ground controls. Behavioral analysis demonstrated that Flight and Ground Control mice exhibited the same range of behaviors, including eating, drinking, exploratory behavior, self- and allo-grooming, and social interactions indicative of healthy animals. The animals were euthanized on-orbit and select tissues were collected from some of the mice on orbit to assess the long-term sample storage capabilities of the ISS. In general, the data obtained from the flight mice were comparable to those from the three groups of control mice (baseline, vivarium and ground controls, which were housed in flight hardware), showing that the ISS has adequate capability to support long-duration rodent experiments. The team recovered 35 tissues from 40 RR-1 frozen carcasses, yielding 3300 aliquots of tissues to distribute to the scientific community in the U.S., including NASAs GeneLab project and scientists via Space Biology's Biospecimen Sharing Program Ames Life Science Data Archive. Tissues also were distributed to Russian research colleagues at the Institute for Biomedical Problems. The expression levels of select genes including albumin, catalase, GAPDH, HMGCoA Reductase, and IGF1 were determined using RNA isolated from the livers by qPCR and no significant differences by one factor ANOVA were found between flight and ground control groups. In addition, some of the liver samples were analyzed for transcriptomic, epigenomic and proteomic profiles; some of the data sets are now available to the scientific community through GeneLabs open science data website. A second long duration mission, Rodent Research-2 (RR-2) was completed on the ISS in 2015; 20 female C57BL6J mice were successfully maintained on the ISS for various durations, with the last group of 5 animals living on-orbit for 54 days. Furthermore, we continue to expand the ISSs capabilities by introducing new on-orbit technologies including blood collection and separation, bone densitometry scanning, muscle grip strength and anesthesia with recovery. In addition, series of ground-based verification testing to fly male mice and increase the total number of mice on-orbit from 20 to 40. Subsequent missions will provide the capability to return live mice from the ISS animals to evaluate recovery on Earth, further expanding operational and science capabilities of the RR project on the ISS.
Management development of scientists and engineers in federal government, and analysis of behavior and systems
Parallel computer systems are among the most complex of man's creations, making satisfactory performance characterization difficult. Despite this complexity, there are strong, indeed, almost irresistible, incentives to quantify parallel system performance using a single metric. The fallacy lies in succumbing to such temptations. A complete performance characterization requires not only an analysis of the system's constituent levels, it also requires both static and dynamic characterizations. Static or average behavior analysis may mask transients that dramatically alter system performance. Although the human visual system is remarkedly adept at interpreting and identifying anomalies in false color data, the importance of dynamic, visual scientific data presentation has only recently been recognized Large, complex parallel system pose equally vexing performance interpretation problems. Data from hardware and software performance monitors must be presented in ways that emphasize important events while eluding irrelevant details. Design approaches and tools for performance visualization are the subject of this paper.
A literature review of the use of sensitivity analyses in modelling nonlinear, ill-defined systems, such as ecological interactions is presented. Discussions of previous work, and a proposed scheme for generalized sensitivity analysis applicable to ill-defined systems are included. This scheme considers classes of mathematical models, problem-defining behavior, analysis procedures (especially the use of Monte-Carlo methods), sensitivity ranking of parameters, and extension to control system design.
Research and analysis outline for organizational behavior and administration of scientific and engineering facilities
A Research platform for rodent experiment on the ISS is an essential tool for advancing biomedical research in space. The Rodent Research allows for experiments of much longer duration that experiments on the Shuttle. NASA’s Rodent Research (RR)-1 mission was successfully completed, including post-flight analysis and achieved a number of objectives including validation of flight hardware, on-orbit operations, and science capabilities that were developed at the NASA Ames Research Center. Briefly, twenty C57BL/6J adult female mice were launched on the SpX4 Dragon vehicle, which thrived for up to 37 days in microgravity. Daily health checks of the mice were performed during the mission via downlinked video; all animals were healthy and displayed normal behavior without any significant signs of stress. Behavioral analysis demonstrated that Flight and Ground Control mice exhibited the same range of behaviors, including eating, drinking, exploratory behavior, self- and allo-grooming, and social interactions indicative of healthy animals. The animals were euthanized and select tissues were collected from some of the mice on orbit to assess the long-term sample storage capabilities of the ISS. The data obtained from the flight mice were comparable to those from the 3 groups of control mice (baseline, vivarium and ground controls), suggesting that the ISS has adequate capability to support long-duration rodent experimentations. We recovered over 35 tissues from 40 RR1 frozen carcasses, yielded over 3200 aliquots of tissues, and distributed to the scientific community, including NASA’s GeneLab and scientists in the U.S. through Biospecimen Sharing Program via Ames Life Science Data Archive. Tissues were also distributed to Russian research colleagues at the Institute for Biomedical Problems. The expression levels of select genes including albumin, catalase, GAPDH, HMGCoA Reductase, and IGF1 were determined using RNA isolated from the livers by qPCR and no significant differences by one factor ANOVA were found between flight and ground control groups. In addition, some of the liver samples were subject to transcriptomics, epigenomics and proteomics. The data are now available to the scientific community through GeneLab’s open science data website. Since the RR1 mission, another long duration mission (Rodent Research-2) was completed on the ISS in 2015 in which 20 female C57 BL/6J mice were successfully maintained on the ISS for varying time points, with the last group of 5 animals being on-orbit for 54 days. This second Rodent Research flight expanded the program’s capabilities with the introduction of new technologies including blood collection and separation and bone densitometry scanning. Furthermore, we have continued to expand the ISS’s capabilities by running a series of ground-based verification testing using male mice. Our next step is to fly male mice for Rodent Research-4 on SpaceX-10 to study the effects of microgravity on bone healing and regeneration. It will be the first long-duration mission using male mice using Rodent Hardware. In addition, the number of mice will increase from 20 mice (on RR-1 and RR-2) to 40 for RR-4. When samples return to Earth, a number of tissues will be dissected from the frozen carcasses and select tissue samples will become available to the scientific community via BSP. Altogether, we have continued to expand our capabilities for performing long-duration missions on the ISS as emphasized in the National Research Council’s Decadal Survey released in 2011 and to maximize science return from each mission.
The NASA Decadal Survey (2011) emphasized the importance of long duration rodent experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). To accomplish this objective, flight hardware and science capabilities supporting mouse studies in space were developed at Ames Research Center. Here we present a video-based behavioral analysis of ten C57BL6 female adult mice exposed to a total of 37 days in space compared with identically housed Ground Controls. Flight and Control mice exhibited the same range of behaviors, including feeding, drinking, exploratory behavior, grooming, and social interactions. Mice propelled themselves freely and actively throughout the Habitat using their forelimbs to push off or by floating from one cage area to another. Overall activity was greater in Flt as compared to GC mice. Spontaneous, organized circling or race-tracking behavior emerged within the first few days of flight and encompassed the primary dark cycle activity for the remainder of the experiment. I will summarize qualitative observations and quantitative comparisons of mice in microgravity and 1g conditions. Behavioral phenotyping revealed important insights into the overall health and adaptation of mice to the space environment, and identified unique behaviors that can guide future habitat development and research on rodents in space.
The NASA Decadal Survey (2011), Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era, emphasized the importance of expanding NASA life sciences research to long duration, rodent experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). To accomplish this objective, flight hardware, operations, and science capabilities supporting mouse studies in space were developed at NASA Ames Research Center. The first flight experiment carrying mice, Rodent Research Hardware and Operations Validation (Rodent Research-1), was launched on Sept 21, 2014 in an unmanned Dragon Capsule, SpaceX4, exposing the mice to a total of 37 days in space. Ground control groups were maintained in environmental chambers at Kennedy Space Center. Mouse health and behavior were monitored for the duration of the experiment via video streaming. Here we present behavioral analysis of two groups of five C57BL/6 female adult mice viewed via fixed camera views compared with identically housed Ground Controls. Flight (Flt) and Ground Control (GC) mice exhibited the same range of behaviors, including eating, drinking, exploratory behavior, self- and allo-grooming, and social interactions at similar or greater levels of occurrence. Mice propelled themselves freely and actively throughout the Habitat using their forelimbs to push off or by floating from one cage area to another, and they quickly learned to anchor themselves using tails and/or paws. Overall activity was greater in Flt as compared to GC mice, with spontaneous ambulatory behavior including the development of organized ‘circling’ or ‘race-tracking’ behavior that emerged within the first few days of flight and encompassed the primary dark cycle activity for the remainder of the experiment. We quantified the bout frequency, duration and rate of circling with respect to characteristic behaviors observed in the varying stages of the progressive development of circling: flipping utilizing two sides of the habitat, circling, multi-lap circling and group-circling. Once begun, mice did not regress to flipping behavior or other previous behavioral milestones for the remainder of flight. An overall upward trend in circling frequency, rate, duration, participation, and organization was observed over the course of the 37-day spaceflight experiment. In this presentation, we will summarize qualitative observations and quantitative comparisons of mice in microgravity and 1g conditions. Behavioral analyses provide important insights into the overall health and adaptation of mice to the space environment, and identify unique behaviors and social interactions to guide future habitat development and research on rodents in space.
Aviation and cognitive science researchers have identified situations in which the pilot's expectations for behavior of autopilot avionics are not matched by the actual behavior of the avionics. These "automation surprises" have been attributed to differences between the pilot's model of the behavior of the avionics and the actual behavior encoded in the avionics software. A formal technique is described for the analysis and measurement of the behavior of the cruise pitch modes of a modern Autopilot. The analysis characterizes the behavior of the Autopilot as situation-action rules. The behavior of the cruise pitch mode logic for a contemporary modern Autopilot was found to include 177 rules, including Level Change (23), Vertical Speed (16), Altitude Capture (50), and Altitude Hold (88). These rules are determined based on the values of 62 inputs. Analysis of the rule-based model also shed light on the factors cited in the literature as contributors to "automation surprises."
Large urban wildfires throughout southern California have caused billions of dollars of damage and significant loss of life over the last few decades. Rapid urban growth along the wildland interface, high fuel loads and a potential increase in the frequency of large fires due to climatic change suggest that the problem will worsen in the future. Improved fire spread prediction and reduced uncertainty in assessing fire hazard would be significant, both economically and socially. Current problems in the modeling of fire spread include the role of plant community differences, spatial heterogeneity in fuels and spatio-temporal changes in fuels. In this research, we evaluated the potential of Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) data for providing improved maps of wildfire fuel properties. Analysis concentrated in two areas of Southern California, the Santa Monica Mountains and Santa Barbara Front Range. Wildfire fuel information can be divided into four basic categories: fuel type, fuel load (live green and woody biomass), fuel moisture and fuel condition (live vs senesced fuels). To map fuel type, AVIRIS data were used to map vegetation species using Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) and Binary Decision Trees. Green live biomass and canopy moisture were mapped using AVIRIS through analysis of the 980 nm liquid water absorption feature and compared to alternate measures of moisture and field measurements. Woody biomass was mapped using L and P band cross polarimetric data acquired in 1998 and 1999. Fuel condition was mapped using spectral mixture analysis to map green vegetation (green leaves), nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV; stems, wood and litter), shade and soil. Summaries describing the potential of hyperspectral and SAR data for fuel mapping are provided by Roberts et al. and Dennison et al. To utilize remotely sensed data to assess fire hazard, fuel-type maps were translated into standard fuel models accessible to the FARSITE fire spread simulator. The FARSITE model and BEHAVE are considered industry standards for fire behavior analysis. Anderson level fuels map, generated using a binary decision tree classifier are available for multiple dates in the Santa Monica Mountains and at least one date for Santa Barbara. Fuel maps that will fill in the areas between Santa Barbara and the Santa Monica Mountains study sites are in progress, as part of a NASA Regional Earth Science Application Center, the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center. Species-level maps, were supplied to fire managing agencies (Los Angeles County Fire, California Department of Forestry). Research results were published extensively in the refereed and non-refereed literature. Educational outreach included funding of several graduate students, undergraduate intern training and an article featured in the California Alliance for Minorities Program (CAMP) Quarterly Journal.
Change impact analysis techniques estimate the potential effects of changes made to software. Directed Incremental Symbolic Execution (DiSE) is an intraprocedural technique for characterizing the impact of software changes on program behaviors. DiSE first estimates the impact of the changes on the source code using program slicing techniques, and then uses the impact sets to guide symbolic execution to generate path conditions that characterize impacted program behaviors. DiSE, however, cannot reason about the flow of impact between methods and will fail to generate path conditions for certain impacted program behaviors. In this work, we present iDiSE, an extension to DiSE that performs an interprocedural analysis. iDiSE combines static and dynamic calling context information to efficiently generate impacted program behaviors across calling contexts. Information about impacted program behaviors is useful for testing, verification, and debugging of evolving programs. We present a case-study of our implementation of the iDiSE algorithm to demonstrate its efficiency at computing impacted program behaviors. Traditional notions of coverage are insufficient for characterizing the testing efforts used to validate evolving program behaviors because they do not take into account the impact of changes to the code. In this work we present novel definitions of impacted coverage metrics that are useful for evaluating the testing effort required to test evolving programs. We then describe how the notions of impacted coverage can be used to configure techniques such as DiSE and iDiSE in order to support regression testing related tasks. We also discuss how DiSE and iDiSE can be configured for debugging finding the root cause of errors introduced by changes made to the code. In our empirical evaluation we demonstrate that the configurations of DiSE and iDiSE can be used to support various software maintenance tasks
Superlinear phosphor behavior analysis for single gun color cathode ray tube development
Coupled systems stability and oscillatory behavior analysis using Liapunov theory
Nonlinear acoustic absorbers behavior analysis, discussing spectral and temporal computation methods
Axial-load fatigue-life, fatigue-crack propagation, and fracture-toughness experiments were conducted on sheet specimens made of 7075-T6 aluminum alloy. These experiments were conducted at air pressures ranging from 101 kN/sq m to 7 micronewtons/sq m to determine the effect of air pressure on fatigue behavior. Analysis of the results from the fatigue-life experiments indicated that for a given stress level, the lower the air pressure was the longer the fatigue life. At a pressure of 7 micronewtons/sq m, fatigue lives were 15 to 30 times longer than at 101 kN/sq m. Analysis of the results from the fatigue-crack-growth experiments indicates that at low values of stress-intensity range, the fatigue-crack-growth rates were approximately twice as high at atmospheric pressure as in vacuum. However, at higher values of stress-intensity range, the fatigue-crack-growth rates were nominally the same in vacuum and at atmospheric pressure.