Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “changes in human systems”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2024

NASA's Human Research Program: Evolving Collaborations to Enable the Future of Human Spaceflight

Since its formation in 2007, the NASA Human Research Program’s (HRP) mission has been to protect the health and performance of astronauts as they explore beyond low Earth orbit. The HRP helps enable exploration spaceflight through a focused program of research that leads to the development and delivery of solutions to protect human health and performance during and after these missions. This research is conducted primarily in ground analogs of the spaceflight environment and on the International Space Station (ISS). Over the last 3 years, NASA has undergone transformative changes with the flight of Artemis I, the formation of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations Program, commercial flights to the ISS, and collaboration with new international partners participating in human spaceflight. The HRP has embraced these new opportunities and is collaborating on all these fronts to collect biomedical research data. Artemis I marked the arrival of NASA’s new human spaceflight exploration missions. NASA established the Moon to Mars Program Office to design a roadmap for the exploration of the lunar surface and the journey beyond to Mars. The HRP has a critical role in conducting research and delivering technologies that will lead to solutions that protect human health and performance, and is working closely with the Moon to Mars Office to ensure these deliverables are ready in time to support their strategy. The HRP is also developing the partnership strategies required to support these deliverables. Commercial space flights, both free flyer and suborbital missions and private astronaut missions to the ISS, are providing broader opportunities and more subjects to characterize spaceflight-induced changes to the human system and to test countermeasures. To better use these opportunities to achieve its mission, the HRP has been working to understand the commercial spaceflight companies’ needs and then partnering with them on aspects of mutual interest. In addition, the HRP continues to engage in long-standing relationships with its international partners through the International Space Life Sciences Working Group and other joint international groups. The HRP is interested in sharing its knowledge and collaborating on projects of mutual interest with new countries that are developing capabilities for human spaceflight. The next 10 years will shape how humanity partners on exploration missions to Mars, and the HRP is committed to enabling and developing collaborative strategies with commercial and international partners to keep humans safe and productive as they explore longer and further into space.

Human research↗
NASA NTRS1998

Modeling Controller Tasks for Safety Analysis

As control systems become more complex, the use of automated control has increased. At the same time, the role of the human operator has changed from primary system controller to supervisor or monitor. Safe design of the human computer interaction becomes more difficult. In this paper, we present a visual task modeling language that can be used by system designers to model human-computer interactions. The visual models can be translated into SpecTRM-RL, a blackbox specification language for modeling the automated portion of the control system. The SpecTRM-RL suite of analysis tools allow the designer to perform formal and informal safety analyses on the task model in isolation or integrated with the rest of the modeled system.

Brown, Molly↗
NASA NTRS2013

Detection and Attribution of Anthropogenic Climate Change Impacts

Human-influenced climate change is an observed phenomenon affecting physical and biological systems across the globe. The majority of observed impacts are related to temperature changes and are located in the northern high- and midlatitudes. However, new evidence is emerging that demonstrates that impacts are related to precipitation changes as well as temperature, and that climate change is impacting systems and sectors beyond the Northern Hemisphere. In this paper, we highlight some of this new evidence-focusing on regions and sectors that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) noted as under-represented-in the context of observed climate change impacts, direct and indirect drivers of change (including carbon dioxide itself), and methods of detection. We also present methods and studies attributing observed impacts to anthropogenic forcing. We argue that the expansion of methods of detection (in terms of a broader array of climate variables and data sources, inclusion of the major modes of climate variability, and incorporation of other drivers of change) is key to discerning the climate sensitivities of sectors and systems in regions where the impacts of climate change currently remain elusive. Attributing such changes to human forcing of the climate system, where possible, is important for development of effective mitigation and adaptation. Current challenges in documenting adaptation and the role of indigenous knowledge in detection and attribution are described.

detection↗
NASA NTRS2017

The Challenges of Human-Autonomy Teaming

Machine intelligence is improving rapidly based on advances in big data analytics, deep learning algorithms, networked operations, and continuing exponential growth in computing power (Moores Law). This growth in the power and applicability of increasingly intelligent systems will change the roles humans, shifting them to tasks where adaptive problem solving, reasoning and decision-making is required. This talk will address the challenges involved in engineering autonomous systems that function effectively with humans in aeronautics domains.

artificial intelligence↗
NASA NTRS2017

The Challenges of Human-Autonomy Teaming

Machine intelligence is improving rapidly based on advances in big data analytics, deep learning algorithms, networked operations, and continuing exponential growth in computing power (Moores Law). This growth in the power and applicability of increasingly intelligent systems will change the roles humans, shifting them to tasks where adaptive problem solving, reasoning and decision-making is required. This talk will address the challenges involved in engineering autonomous systems that function effectively with humans in aeronautics domains.

Human-Autonomy teaming↗
NASA NTRS2008

Latent Herpes Viruses Reactivation in Astronauts

Space flight has many adverse effects on human physiology. Changes in multiple systems, including the cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, neurovestibular, endocrine, and immune systems have occurred (12, 32, 38, 39). Alterations in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (12), nutritional needs (31), renal stone formation (40), and microbial flora (2) have also been reported. Evidence suggests that the magnitude of some changes may increase with time in space. A variety of changes in immunity have been reported during both short (.16 days) and long (>30 days) space missions. However, it is difficult to determine the medical significance of these immunological changes in astronauts. Astronauts are in excellent health and in superb physical condition. Illnesses in astronauts during space flight are not common, are generally mild, and rarely affect mission objectives. In an attempt to clarify this issue, we identified the latent herpes viruses as medically important indicators of the effects of space flight on immunity. This chapter demonstrates that space flight leads to asymptomatic reactivation of latent herpes viruses, and proposes that this results from marked changes in neuroendocrine function and immunity caused by the inherent stressfullness of human space flight. Astronauts experience uniquely stressful environments during space flight. Potential stressors include confinement in an unfamiliar, crowded environment, isolation, separation from family, anxiety, fear, sleep deprivation, psychosocial issues, physical exertion, noise, variable acceleration forces, increased radiation, and others. Many of these are intermittent and variable in duration and intensity, but variable gravity forces (including transitions from launch acceleration to microgravity and from microgravity to planetary gravity) and variable radiation levels are part of each mission and contribute to a stressful environment that cannot be duplicated on Earth. Radiation outside the Earth's magnetosphere is particularly worrisome because it includes ionizing radiation from cosmic galactic radiation. Increased stress levels appear even before flight, presumably from the rigors of preflight training and the anticipation of the mission (12, 32, 38, 39). Space flight causes significant changes in human immune function (32), but the means by which these changes come about have been difficult to discern. Consistent indicators of stress associated with space flight include increased production of stress hormones, and changes in cells of the immune system. These changes include elevated white blood cell (WBC) and neutrophil counts at landing (15, 16, 35, 37). Activation of generalized stress responses before, during, and after space flight probably affects the function of the immune system. Space flight has been shown to decrease many aspects of immune function, including natural killer (NK) cell activity, interferon production, the blastogenic response of leukocytes to mitogens, cell-mediated immunity, neutrophil function and monocyte function (5, 16, 18, 21, 35-37).

Mehta, Satish K.↗
NASA NTRS1991

A quantitative method for studying human arterial baroreflexes

A new system is described that delivers precise, stereotyped pressure changes to the human neck and elicits neurally-mediated heart rate changes. The centerpiece of this system is a Silastic chamber that is strapped to the anterior neck. This chamber is connected to a stepping-motor-controlled bellows assembly. A strain-gauge transducer measures the intensity of pressure changes. The entire system is controlled by microprocessors, and both stimuli and responses are displayed on a digital oscilloscope. The end-product of this system is a reproducible baroreceptor stimulus-cardiac response relation that can be recorded rapidly and safely in astronauts in space.

Eckberg, Dwain L.↗
NASA NTRS1986

On the pilot's behavior of detecting a system parameter change

The reaction of a human pilot, engaged in compensatory control, to a sudden change in the controlled element's characteristics is described. Taking the case where the change manifests itself as a variance change of the monitored signal, it is shown that the detection time, defined to be the time elapsed until the pilot detects the change, is related to the monitored signal and its derivative. Then, the detection behavior is modeled by an optimal controller, an optimal estimator, and a variance-ratio test mechanism that is performed for the monitored signal and its derivative. Results of a digital simulation show that the pilot's detection behavior can be well represented by the model proposed here.

Morizumi, N.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Human Immune Function and Microbial Pathogenesis in Human Spaceflight

This oral presentation was requested by Conference conveners. The requested subject is microbial risk assessment considering changes in the human immune system during flight and microbial diversity of environmental samples aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The presentation will begin with an introduction discussing the goals and limitations of microbial risk assessment during flight. The main portion of the presentation will include changes in the immune system that have been published, historical data from microbial analyses, and initial modeling of the environmental flora aboard ISS. The presentation will conclude with future goals and techniques to enhance our ability to perform microbial risk assessment on long duration missions.

Pierson, Duane J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

The Right Stuff: A Look Back at Three Decades of Flight Controller Training for Space Shuttle Mission Operations

This paper will summarize the thirty-year history of Space Shuttle operations from the perspective of training in NASA Johnson Space Center's Mission Control Center. It will focus on training and development of flight controllers and instructors, and how training practices have evolved over the years as flight experience was gained, new technologies developed, and programmatic needs changed. Operations of human spaceflight systems is extremely complex, therefore the training and certification of operations personnel is a critical piece of ensuring mission success. Mission Control Center (MCC-H), at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas manages mission operations for the Space Shuttle Program, including the training and certification of the astronauts and flight control teams. This paper will give an overview of a flight control team s makeup and responsibilities during a flight, and details on how those teams are trained and certified. The training methodology for developing flight controllers has evolved significantly over the last thirty years, while the core goals and competencies have remained the same. In addition, the facilities and tools used in the control center have evolved. These changes have been driven by many factors including lessons learned, technology, shuttle accidents, shifts in risk posture, and generational differences. Flight controllers will share their experiences in training and operating the Space Shuttle throughout the Program s history. A primary method used for training Space Shuttle flight control teams is by running mission simulations of the orbit, ascent, and entry phases, to truly "train like you fly." The audience will learn what it is like to perform a simulation as a shuttle flight controller. Finally, we will reflect on the lessons learned in training for the shuttle program, and how those could be applied to future human spaceflight endeavors.

Dittemore, Gary D.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Identifying Outside Influences as Latent Factors to Risk in Human Performance

During the Acquisition Life Cycle for a program, there are several opportunities for the system in design to be adjusted in accordance with its changing landscape as it is being shaped by evolving policy and organizational culture. Human Systems Integration is integral to identifying these opportunities of change as there are a set number of activities that may account for altered operational states, human performance deviations, and overall component engagement if HSI is enacted early enough in the life cycle. Some changes that occur in the operational environment may not be accounted for since the organizational culture and practices are not currently a part of the HSI focus. Likewise, policy changes themselves from a top-to-bottom analysis may not have the appearance of effecting human performance until having gone through a trail-and-error period. Workarounds to adjust for unforeseen policy affects become the system's solution that usually includes changes in the training and education of the operators, maintainers, and support personnel. A system full of workarounds and off-normal practices, that cause operators to disregard the purpose of the design, coupled with the false notion that these activities are proven for successful system operation, is the very definition of “an accident waiting to happen”. Unforeseen changes in policies and practices that cause new and unusual activities to successfully and keep the system running, should be considered latent factors that may cause a potential mishap, and not part of the resilience that humans provide to the successful operation of the system. This presentation will explore how latent factors may find their way into system operations and how they can be identified and addressed.

Human Systems Integration↗
NASA NTRS1991

A comprehensive mission to planet Earth: Woods Hole Space Science and Applications Advisory Committee Planning Workshop

The NASA program Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) is described in this set of visuals presented in Massachusetts on July 29, 1991. The problem presented in this document is that the earth system is changing and that human activity accelerates the rate of change resulting in increased greenhouse gases, decreasing levels of stratospheric ozone, acid rain, deforestation, decreasing biodiversity, and overpopulation. Various national and international organizations are coordinating global change research. The complementary space observations for this activity are sun-synchronous polar orbits, low-inclination, low altitude orbits, geostationary orbits, and ground measurements. The Geostationary Earth Observatory is the major proposed mission of MTPE. Other proposed missions are EOS Synthetic Aperture Radar, ARISTOTELES Magnetic Field Experiment, and the Global Topography Mission. Use of the NASA DC-8 aircraft is outlined as carrying out the Airborne Science and Applications Program. Approved Earth Probes Program include the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS). Other packages for earth observation are described.

Source record↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Brace For Impact – It’s Coming, Do You Know What to Do With It?

Long-duration human exploration spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars present unprecedented challenges for providing in-mission medical care. Compared with the International Space Station, the greater distance from Earth will mean increased mission durations, communication delays, limited to no resupply opportunities, and significant limitations on the evacuation of ill or injured crew. Spacecraft mass, volume, and power will be curtailed while higher demands will be placed on the crew’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. In this higher risk environment, it is important to define and quantitatively estimate human system risk attributable to medical conditions. IMPACT (Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces) is a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) and medical trade space analysis tool being developed by NASA to advance medical system design for exploration missions. IMPACT has made a number of enhancements on the Integrated Medical Model, the PRA tool currently used by NASA. These updates include a novel medical evidence base baselined to a long duration, deep space exploration environment; an expanded medical condition list; and a trade space analysis capability (e.g. comparing risk profiles and mass/volume constraints for medical capabilities and resources). IMPACT core functionality includes quantification of a medical capability set and assisting with identification of specific medical resources/hardware for exploration missions. In addition, IMPACT provides sophisticated trade space capabilities to estimate how human system risk varies with changes to the mission architecture or medical capability set. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the IMPACT tool, discuss representative use cases, and show example results.

Benjamin Easter↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

IMPACT-ing Exploration Spaceflight Risk Prediction and Medical System Design

Human exploration spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars present unprecedented challenges for in-mission medical care. Compared with the ISS, the greater distance from Earth will mean increased mission durations, communication delays, limited to no resupply opportunities, and significant limitations on the evacuation of ill or injured crew. Spacecraft mass, volume, and power will be curtailed while higher demands will be placed on the crew’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. In this higher risk environment, it is important to: a) quantitatively estimate human system risk attributable to medical conditions, a process known as Probabilistic Risk Analysis, and b) use these estimates to inform medical system design. IMPACT (Informing Mission Planning via Analysis of Complex Tradespaces) is a PRA and medical trade space analysis tool developed by NASA to advance exploration mission medical system design. IMPACT improves upon and will soon replace NASA’s existing tool, the Integrated Medical Model, with: a novel evidence base baselined to exploration environments; an expanded list of 120 medical conditions; a significant increase in the number of medical resources that can be utilized and in the flexibility of their use; and the modelling of time lost performing mission-specific tasks due to medical conditions. IMPACT provides evidence-based, mission-specific PRA estimates of in-flight medical risk and an initial list of clinical capabilities and medical resources/hardware to be considered. In addition, sophisticated trade space capabilities estimate how human system risk varies with changes to the mission architecture or medical capability set (e.g., if the system mass constraint decreases by 10% or ultrasound is removed). This panel will provide an overview of IMPACT, its intended use cases, and future development plans. The panel will be the first public presentation of IMPACT results, including medical risk estimates for extended duration Artemis missions, the medical conditions most influencing medical risk metrics, and the clinical capabilities that have the largest effect on medical risk.

Ben Easter↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessment of the State of Communication Delay Research in Preparation for Missions Beyond Low Earth Orbit

NASA’s mission-operations paradigm, established during Project Mercury and minimally evolving through the Apollo Program, Space Shuttle Program, and ISS missions, has primarily depended on real-time support from a ground team of experts. This ground team has served as the safety net for crewed spaceflight missions over the past 60 years, managing the combined state of the mission, vehicle, and crew. However, this operational paradigm, which has seen little change in its Human-Systems Integration Architecture (HSIA), will face challenges during long-duration exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit. Lunar missions may experience one-way communication latencies ranging from 3 to 14 seconds, while Mars missions will encounter up to a 44-minute round-trip latency at a maximum distance from Earth. Communication delays negatively impact the behavioral health and performance of individuals and crews operating across the multi-team space-to-ground system. Previous research indicates that increased isolation and the challenges posed by delayed communication lead to heightened stress, frustration, adverse behavioral symptoms, and reduced individual performance. NASA has investigated the nature and effectiveness of managing this shift in complex operations since early 2000, but additional research is necessary to assess the issues associated with communication latencies and identify effective countermeasures. This work aimed to examine the evidence from 20 years of research on comm delays. We systematically reviewed the past 20 years of communication delay literature, focusing on how this research aligns with relevant, high-priority needs in the HSIA, Team, and BMed Risks. This type of panoramic review has not been done since 2013; a current, aggregated picture of what has been studied and how is needed to inform additional studies and mitigation development. Additional perspectives were gained from interviews with the research participants, operations experts, and communication delay researchers. Results from this effort will help characterize the risk posed by communication latency for upcoming Artemis missions and point toward potential mitigations. The final results will be presented. For the literature review, we formed a search term seed set drawing from languages used in two papers representative of the previous state of knowledge and supplemented it with additional search terms. We conducted literature searches on Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science and searched NASA project archives for output from NASA-sponsored research. This search yielded 150 papers, of which 48 were relevant. SME interviews provided perspective on key communication delay issues and concerns and what is being worked on to mitigate those issues. Preliminary results of the literature review have been presented. Final results to be presented include the results of the literature review and findings from the interviews.

literature review↗
NASA NTRS2012

Linked Open Data in the Global Change Information System (GCIS)

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (http://globalchange.gov) coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. The USGCRP is developing a Global Change Information System (GCIS) that will centralize access to data and information related to global change across the U.S. federal government. The first implementation will focus on the 2013 National Climate Assessment (NCA) . (http://assessment.globalchange.gov) The NCA integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the USGCRP; analyzes the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity; and analyzes current trends in global change, both human-induced and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years. The NCA has received over 500 distinct technical inputs to the process, many of which are reports distilling and synthesizing even more information, coming from thousands of individuals around the federal, state and local governments, academic institutions and non-governmental organizations. The GCIS will present a web-based version of the NCA including annotations linking the findings and content of the NCA with the scientific research, datasets, models, observations, etc. that led to its conclusions. It will use semantic tagging and a linked data approach, assigning globally unique, persistent, resolvable identifiers to all of the related entities and capturing and presenting the relationships between them, both internally and referencing out to other linked data sources and back to agency data centers. The developing W3C PROV Data Model and ontology will be used to capture the provenance trail and present it in both human readable web pages and machine readable formats such as RDF and SPARQL. This will improve visibility into the assessment process, increase understanding and reproducibility, and ultimately increase credibility and trust of the resulting report. Building on the foundation of the NCA, longer term plans for the GCIS include extending these capabilities throughout the U.S. Global Change Research Program, centralizing access to global change data and information across the thirteen agencies that comprise the program.

Tilmes, Curt A.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Effects of simulated weightlessness on regional blood flow specifically during cardiovascular stress

Significant changes in the cardiovasular system of humans and animals have been observed following exposure to prolonged periods of weightlessness during space flight. Although adaption to weightlessness is relatively uncomplicated, marked changes in cardiovascular deconditioning become evident upon return to normal gravity, including orthostatic hypotension and tachycardia. Some evidence that myocardial degeneration occurs has been demonstrated in animals who have been immobilized for two months. Also, evidence of possible loss of myocardial mass following manned space flight has been obtained by means of echocardiographic studies. These findings have serious implications in light of the increasing frequency and duration of Space Shuttle missions and the prospect of extended space station missions in the future. A number of both military and civilian investigators, including middle-aged scientists, will probably encounter prolonged periods of weightlessness. It has been imperative, therefore, to determine the effects of prolonged weightlessness on cardiovascular deconditioning and whether such effects are cumulative or reversible. The research project conducted under NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC 2-126 was undertaken to determine the effects of prolonged simulated weightlessness on regional blood flow. Research results are reported in the three appended publications.

Harrison, D. C.↗