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 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Biphasic response of human iPSC-derived neural network activity following exposure to a sarin-surrogate nerve agent

Organophosphorus nerve agents (OPNA) are hazardous environmental exposures to the civilian population and have been historically weaponized as chemical warfare agents (CWA). OPNA exposure can lead to several neurological, sensory, and motor symptoms that can manifest into chronic neurological illnesses later in life. There is still a large need for technological advancement to better understand changes in brain function following OPNA exposure. The human-relevant in vitro multi-electrode array (MEA) system, which combines the MEA technology with human stem cell technology, has the potential to monitor the acute, sub-chronic, and chronic consequences of OPNA exposure on brain activity. However, the application of this system to assess OPNA hazards and risks to human brain function remains to be investigated. In a concentration-response study, we have employed a human-relevant MEA system to monitor and detect changes in the electrical activity of engineered neural networks to increasing concentrations of the sarin surrogate 4-nitrophenyl isopropyl methylphosphonate (NIMP). We report a biphasic response in the spiking (but not bursting) activity of neurons exposed to low (i.e., 0.4 and 4 μM) versus high concentrations (i.e., 40 and 100 μM) of NIMP, which was monitored during the exposure period and up to 6 days post-exposure. Regardless of the NIMP concentration, at a network level, communication or coordination of neuronal activity decreased as early as 60 min and persisted at 24 h of NIMP exposure. Once NIMP was removed, coordinated activity was no different than control (0 μM of NIMP). Interestingly, only in the high concentration of NIMP did coordination of activity at a network level begin to decrease again at 2 days post-exposure and persisted on day 6 post-exposure. Notably, cell viability was not affected during or after NIMP exposure. Also, while the catalytic activity of AChE decreased during NIMP exposure, its activity recovered once NIMP was removed. Gene expression analysis suggests that human iPSC-derived neurons and primary human astrocytes resulted in altered genes related to the cell’s interaction with the extracellular environment, its intracellular calcium signaling pathways, and inflammation, which could have contributed to how neurons communicated at a network level.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Defining Collaborative Control Interactions Using Systems Theory

Human teams collaborate by establishing roles, changing functional authorities, maintaining team cognition, coordinating, and mutually helping one another close control loops. These complex inter-actions are inspiring novel concepts to improve human-machine and multi-machine collaboration. However, these new systems face engineering gaps in modeling, analysis, design, and assurance. As such, few have been fielded in safety-critical domains like aerospace. To analyze safety, this paper introduces a system-theoretic framework to describe interactions that are—or are planned to be—used in multi-controller systems. It outlines a taxonomy of seven structural dimensions that influence controller interactions and nine dynamics observed in collaborative control that are defined using Systems Theory. An analyzed set of 101 controller interactions in aerospace systems demonstrates how to apply the framework and that designers are trying to create more sophisticated systems. This framework provides the foundation to extend system-theoretic hazard analysis techniques to systematically find collabora-tive-control causal factors.

Human machine teaming↗
NASA NTRS2017

Towards Designing Graceful Degradation into Trajectory Based Operations: A Human-Machine System Integration Approach

One of the most fundamental changes to the air traffic management system in NextGen is the concept of trajectory based operations (TBO). With the introduction of such change, system safety and resilience is a critical concern, in particular, the ability of systems to gracefully degrade. In order to design graceful degradation into a TBO envrionment, knowledge of the potential causes of degradation, and appropriate solutions, is required. In addition, previous research has predominantly explored the technological contribution to graceful degradation, frequently neglecting to consider the role of the human operator, specifically, air traffic controllers (ATCOs). This is out of step with real-world operations, and potentially limits an ecologically valid understanding of achieving graceful degradation in an air traffic control (ATC) environment. The following literature review aims to identify and summarize the literature to date on the potential causes of degradation in ATC and the solutions that may be applied within a TBO context, with a specific focus on the contribution of the air traffic controller. A framework of graceful degradation, developed from the literature, is presented. It is argued that in order to achieve graceful degradation within TBO, a human-system integration approach must be applied.

human-system integration↗
NASA NTRS2017

Towards Designing Graceful Degradation into Trajectory Based Operations: A Human-Machine System Integration Approach

One of the most fundamental changes to the air traffic management system in NextGen is the concept of trajectory based operations (TBO). With the introduction of such change, system safety and resilience is a critical concern, in particular, the ability of systems to gracefully degrade. In order to design graceful degradation into a TBO envrionment, knowledge of the potential causes of degradation, and appropriate solutions, is required. In addition, previous research has predominantly explored the technological contribution to graceful degradation, frequently neglecting to consider the role of the human operator, specifically, air traffic controllers (ATCOs). This is out of step with real-world operations, and potentially limits an ecologically valid understanding of achieving graceful degradation in an air traffic control (ATC) environment. The following literature review aims to identify and summarize the literature to date on the potential causes of degradation in ATC and the solutions that may be applied within a TBO context, with a specific focus on the contribution of the air traffic controller. A framework of graceful degradation, developed from the literature, is presented. It is argued that in order to achieve graceful degradation within TBO, a human-system integration approach must be applied.

trajectory based operations↗
NASA NTRS2019

Small Satellites for NASA Earth Science

NASA’s Earth Science Division (ESD) seeks to develop a scientific understanding of Earth and its response to natural and human-induced changes. Earth is a system comprised of diverse components interacting in complex ways. Understanding Earth’s atmosphere, surface and interior, oceans and surface water, ice and snow, and life as a single connected system is necessary in order to improve our predictions of climate, weather, and natural hazards. The ESD’s Flight Program consists of a coordinated series of satellite and airborne systems providing long and short-term, global and regional observations. In addition, the Flight Program provides infrastructure for operating these missions, processing their scientific data, and distributing them on a free and open basis to researchers, operational users, and the public. The Flight Program currently has 24 operating Earth observing space missions and instruments. There are 18 more missions and instruments planned for launch over the next five years. These comprise missions recommended by the National Academies 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey, missions and selected instruments to ensure availability of key climate data sets, operational missions to sustain the land imaging provided by the Landsat system, and small-sized competitively selected orbital and instrument missions of opportunity belonging to the Earth Venture (EV) program. The Earth Science Decadal Survey, released in early 2018, recommended four new Flight Program elements in addition to the above activities that comprise the Program of Record (POR). Small satellites (~500 kg or less) are essential components of these activities. Presently, there is an increasing use of micro and nanosatellites (or CubeSats) in constellations to support NASA ESD’s scientific objectives. These include the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) for observing tropical cyclone intensification and genesis factors, the Timed-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission, and the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) CubeSat mission. ESD small satellite initiatives like the Small Satellite Constellation Data Buy and Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) are also underway. The Earth Science Technology Office’s (ESTO) In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) and the Venture Technology program elements have launched seven 3U and 6U CubeSat missions to validate advanced instruments and related technologies. An equivalent number of InVEST and other technology demonstration CubeSats are being prepared for launch in the next year. An overview of plans and current status including topics related to small satellite enabling activities will be presented.

Neeck, Steven P.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Recommendation for a Medical System Concept of Operations for Gateway Missions

NASA’s exploration missions to cis-lunar space will establish a permanent gateway to future transport missions to Mars. These missions mandate a significant paradigm change for mission planning, spacecraft design, human systems integration, and in-flight medical care due to constraints on mass, volume, power, resupply, and medical evacuation capability. These constraints require medical system development to be tightly integrated with mission and habitat design to provide a sufficient medical infrastructure and enable mission success. This concept of operations provides a vision of medical care needs that will be used to guide the development of a medical system for the cis-lunar Gateway Habitat. This medical system will serve as the precursor to what is implemented in future exploration missions to Mars. This concept of operations documents an overview of the stakeholder needs and system goals of a medical system and provides examples of the types of activities for which the system will be used during the mission. This concept of operations informs the ExMC systems engineering effort to define the Gateway Habitat Medical System by documenting the medical activities and capabilities relevant to Gateway missions, as identified by the ExMC clinician community. In addition, this concept of operations will inform the subsequent systems engineering process of developing technical requirements, system architectures, interfaces, and verification and validation approaches for the medical system. This document supports the closure of ExMC Gap Med01: We do not have a concept of operations for medical care during exploration missions, corresponding to the ExMC-managed human system risk: Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes & Decrements in Performance due to Inflight Medical Conditions.

Rubin, David↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Human Systems Intergration & Engineering: HSI & E Design Influence

The design of space systems is a long and complicated process where changes to the design increase cost and schedule as the design progresses into implementation. Human Systems Integration uses tools such as mockups, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and human simulations early in the design process to evaluate designs for usability, operability, and maintainability. This early design influence provides cost and schedule savings during manufacturing and operations. Examples of how MSFC EV74 Human Systems Integration Team have used these tools to evaluate hardware designs will be discussed.

Tanya Andrews↗
NASA NTRS1986

Automation effects in a multiloop manual control system

An experimental and analytical study was undertaken to investigate human interaction with a simple multiloop manual control system in which the human's activity was systematically varied by changing the level of automation. The system simulated was the longitudinal dynamics of a hovering helicopter. The automation-systems-stabilized vehicle responses from attitude to velocity to position and also provided for display automation in the form of a flight director. The control-loop structure resulting from the task definition can be considered a simple stereotype of a hierarchical control system. The experimental study was complemented by an analytical modeling effort which utilized simple crossover models of the human operator. It was shown that such models can be extended to the description of multiloop tasks involving preview and precognitive human operator behavior. The existence of time optimal manual control behavior was established for these tasks and the role which internal models may play in establishing human-machine performance was discussed.

Hess, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS2023

The Hazard Components of Representative Key Risks. The Physical Climate Perspective

The framework of Representative Key Risks (RKRs) has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II (WGII) to categorize, assess and communicate a wide range of regional and sectoral key risks from climate change. These are risks expected to become severe due to the potentially detrimental convergence of changing climate conditions with the exposure and vulnerability of human and natural systems. Other papers in this special issue treat each of eight RKRs holistically by assessing their current status and future evolution as a result of this convergence. However, in these papers, such assessment cannot always be organized according to a systematic gradation of climatic changes. Often the big-picture evolution of risk has to be extrapolated from either qualitative effects of “low”, “medium” and “high” warming, or limited/focused analysis of the consequences of particular mitigation choices (e.g., benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2C), together with consideration of the socio-economic context and possible adaptation choices. In this study we offer a representation – as systematic as possible given current literature and assessments – of the future evolution of the hazard components of RKRs. We identify the relevant hazards for each RKR, based upon the WGII authors’ assessment, and we report on their current state and expected future changes in magnitude, intensity and/or frequency, linking these changes to Global Warming Levels (GWLs) to the extent possible. We draw on the assessment of changes in climatic impact-drivers relevant to RKRs described in the 6th Assessment Report by Working Group I supplemented when needed by more recent literature. For some of these quantities - like regional trends in oceanic and atmospheric temperature and precipitation, some heat and precipitation extremes, permafrost thaw and Northern Hemisphere snow cover - a strong and quantitative relationship with increasing GWLs has been identified. For others - like frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones and extra-tropical storms, and fire weather - that link can only be described qualitatively. For some processes - like the behavior of ice sheets, or changes in circulation dynamics - large uncertainties about the effects of different GWLs remain, and for a few others - like ocean pH and air pollution - the composition of the scenario of anthropogenic emissions is most relevant, rather than the warming reached. In almost all cases, however, the basic message remains that every small increment in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and associated warming will bring changes in climate phenomena that will contribute to increasing risk of impacts on human and natural systems, in the absence of compensating changes in these systems’ exposure and vulnerability, and in the absence of effective adaptation. Our picture of the evolution of RKR-relevant climatic impact-drivers complements and enriches the treatment of RKRs in the other papers in at least two ways: by filling in their often only cursory or limited representation of the physical climate aspects driving impacts, and by providing a fuller representation of their future potential evolution, an important component – if never the only one – of the future evolution of risk severity.

Representative Key Risks↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Oculometric Standard to Assess the Performance of the Ocular System for Long Duration Spaceflight

Changes in the human brain, due to spaceflight, have been a challenge to the space program since its inception; a challenge that is becoming more acute as extended International Space Station (ISS) missions become routine, a return to crewed lunar exploration is about to begin, and a multi-year crewed trip to Mars is being planned. Determining the extent to which neurophysiological adaptations may adversely impact performance in operational tasks, assessing the full-time course of these changes, and identifying/mitigating any potential long-term health consequences are crucial steps required to enable safe crew-autonomous, long-duration, deep-space missions. Vision is the predominant perceptual sense used to guide cognition and motor control in humans. Thus, it is critical for the success of any future, long-duration mission to understand how long-term exposure to microgravity and to other stressors of spaceflight and their interactions, impact visual function. This is an especially challenging task given the small and disparate samples from which we have been and will be able to collect human performance data. NASA has recently been carefully tracking spaceflight-induced ophthalmic changes, driven in large part by the fluid shifts related to microgravity. In particular, a recent study of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) postflight measures revealed that more than two-thirds of US crew members experience significant increases in retinal thickness after 6month or longer ISS missions. Space Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS) also includes visual acuity decrements and other ocular structural changes that could adversely impact in-flight performance as missions become longer. However, the impact of spaceflight on the visual system is not limited to the retina. Recent comparisons of pre-and post-flight brain images have revealed structural changes throughout the brain that implicate visual, visuomotor, and visual-cognitive pathways, consistent with observed functional impacts (e.g., decreased speed/accuracy/timing of fine goal-oriented movements). Current limitations on inflight testing make it very difficult to determine when and under what conditions SANS and other disruptions of human neurological subsystems arise. Currently, one cannot anticipate the time course and extent of impairment and recovery. This study addresses this knowledge gap by creating an integrated framework of the relevant existing literature on visual and oculomotor function during spaceflight with an eye towards complementing current structural measures of visuomotor impairment with new oculometric standard measures. Using eye-movement based visual function assessment and diagnostics would provide a valuable enhancement of crew health and performance monitoring in support of deepspace exploration.

Vision↗
NASA NTRS2001

Welcome to NASA's Earth Science Enterprise

There are strong scientific indications that natural change in the Earth system is being accelerated by human intervention. As a result, planet Earth faces the possibility of rapid environmental changes that would have a profound impact on all nations. However, we do not fully understand either the short-term effects of our activities, or their long-term implications - many important scientific questions remain unanswered. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working with the national and international scientific communities to establish a sound scientific basis for addressing these critical issues through research efforts coordinated under the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program, and the World Climate Research Program. The Earth Science Enterprise is NASA's contribution to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise will use space- and surface-based measurement systems to provide the scientific basis for understanding global change. The space-based components will provide a constellation of satellites to monitor the Earth from space. A major component of the Earth Science Enterprise is the Earth Observing System (EOS). The overall objective of the EOS Program is to determine the extent, causes, and regional consequences of global climate change. EOS will provide sustained space-based observations that will allow researchers to monitor climate variables over time to determine trends. A constellation of EOS satellites will acquire global data, beginning in 1998 and extending well into the 21st century.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2024

Risk Analysis for Remote Operation of Microreactors

Microreactors are a subset of advanced nuclear reactors that can be factory fabricated, transportable, and self-regulating. They have the potential to be used in microgrids, rural and remote areas, or emergency response applications, replacing fossil fuel sources like diesel generators and enabling sustainable energy generation. In order to make microreactor operation cost-effective, it is likely that remote communications will be needed to reduce the number of personnel required to be on site. While remote operation of energy generation and other industrial control systems is common in other industries, it is not yet adopted in the nuclear community and has many perceived and actual risks. In this paper, the severity of the risks introduced by remote operations for microreactors are explored. The primary changes in the operations involve the addition of a remote communications network and a certification system for data and controls. These changes lend themselves to considerations of cyber risks, whether unintentional or adversarial, but the assessment considers not just cyber risks introduced, but also how physical and human factors-based risks will impact the remote operations system and change the overall risk profile. This initial assessment indicates that there are standard cyber and mitigation measures that can be put in place so the risk of doing remote operations does not dramatically increase compared to local operations. This evaluation is a critical step in the process of evaluating if remote operations of microreactors is a suitable solution to meet future sustainable grid needs

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Manual Crew Override of Vehicle Landings Following G-Transitions

BACKGROUND Manual control during exploration spaceflight consists of both planned automated supervisory control and unplanned crew override. This crew override capability is critical to enable overall mission success during landing contingencies. However, the introduction of manual override capabilities must be implemented to enable crews to mitigate risks introduced by human error. Adaptive changes in the sensorimotor system can manifest during g-transitions as spatial disorientation. While training and landing aids enable successful landing through disorientation, these adaptive changes may increase cognitive demand that needs to be accounted for in the manual control strategy. It is important to characterize these effects as soon as possible following the G-transition to develop appropriate countermeasures. METHODS In this study, we will examine operational piloting tasks following International Space Station (ISS) missions in a simulated lunar landing using a six-degree-of-freedom (6DOF) motion base. The motion-based simulation will be implemented in our laboratory at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) and will be available within hours following the return from commercial crew landings. The primary goals of this study are (1) to understand the impact of spaceflight on crew ability to perform manual crew override tasks, (2) to examine how adaptive changes in vestibular and cognitive function relate to changes in manual crew override proficiency, and (3) compare performance during late “just-in-time” on-board training with early post-flight crew performance. The impact of spaceflight on piloting capability will be assessed from pre- versus post-flight changes in crewmembers assigned to either short duration (< 30 day) or long duration (~6- month) missions to the International Space Station (ISS). Individual differences in post-flight vestibular and cognitive changes include motion sickness reports, measures of tilt motion perception accuracy and precision, and dual-task tracking. During the 6DOF lunar simulation, the crew will manually takeover attitude and rate-of-descent to the nominal or re-designated landing aim point during the approach phase. The outcome measures for the lunar crew override tasks will be the percent time maintaining actual vehicle states, e.g., attitude and rate-of-descent, within recommended guidance during the landing approach, number and maximum deviation outside limits, and root mean square error (RMSE). Given that “just-in-time” (JIT) training is an operational expectation for the Human Landing System (HLS) program, all participants will perform late inflight JIT training for each manual crew override task in which they will participate. Crew proficiency will be captured inflight during JIT training that will be implemented on a laptop with hand controllers to allow the crewmember to practice the landing task procedures like the approach implemented for JIT training with Shuttle landing and ISS telerobotic tasks. COUNTERMEASURE UPDATES The lunar lander simulation has been implemented onto a two-laptop display system where subjects select from alternative landing points, based upon avoiding hazards that the on-board system identifies during the landing. The subject makes inputs using a rotational hand controller (i.e., joystick) and a translational hand controller, which are processed by simulated vehicle dynamics to update the vehicle attitude and rate of descent. Subjects will utilize a combination of flight, situation, and status displays to monitor the state of the simulated vehicle. The simulation exports tilt and translation movements to a 6DOF motion base synced to visual movements and provides representative vestibular cues to the subject while performing the task inside an enclosed cabin featuring a simulated lunar out-the-window view and a heads-down lander cockpit view. RELEVANCE This project will deliver an operational demonstration of crew override capability following spaceflight and identify potential deficits that may require remediation. Comparison of individual vestibular and cognitive changes with crew override performance will help better characterize the manual control risks associated with sensorimotor alterations. The inclusion of “just-in-time” on-board training will ensure we are characterizing changes in override proficiency with this expected countermeasure in place. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors acknowledge contributions from Draper, HLS Joint Test Panel, Crew HLS Interfaces for Piloting Working Group, and Dynamic Skills Trainer (DST) Lab toward the development of the lunar landing simulation. This project is funded by the Human Health Countermeasures Element.

Austin M Bollinger↗
NASA NTRS1993

Review of the biological effects of weightlessness on the human endocrine system

Studies from space flights over the past two decades have demonstrated that there are basic physiological changes in humans during space flight. These changes include cephalad fluid shifts, loss of fluid and electrolytes, loss of muscle mass, space motion sickness, anemia, reduced immune response, and loss of calcium and mineralized bone. The cause of most of these manifestations is not known but the general approach has been to investigate systemic and hormonal changes. However, data from the 1973-1974 Skylabs, Spacelab 3 (SL-3), Spacelab D-I (SL-DI), and now the new SLS-1 missions support a more basic biological response to microgravity that may occur at the tissue, cellular, and molecular level. This report summarizes ground-based and SLS-1 experiments that examined the mechanism of loss of red blood cell mass in humans, the loss of bone mass and lowered osteoblast growth under space flight conditions, and loss of immune function in microgravity.

STS-40 Shuttle Project↗
NASA NTRS2018

Evolving Relationship between Humans and Machines

Traditional design typically consists of a master-servant relationship between humans and machines where the human directly controls what the machine will do and when it will do it through an interface. The current archetypical path encompasses moving from informational displays, where the human directly controls the machine based on information displayed, to automation where the human still directs the machine that then caries out the request using predefined set of instructions. Rapid pace of technological advancement makes it possible now, or in a near future, for machines to reach a level of intelligence that enables for systems to execute tasks/missions without predefined specific instructions; thus attaining a status of non- human autonomous agents. Now the course of human-machine interface technology changes from an information system to automation to an autonomous agent—essentially moving from a master-servant relationship to teammates. This paper discusses these changing relationships and challenges associated with progressing from a master-servant relationship with technology to more of an equal teammate. Examples of this progression includes current work encompassing rotorcraft noise minimization for urban air mobility.

Trujillo, Anna C.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling the Air Quality Impacts of Future Energy Scenarios

Many greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction measures achieve simultaneous reductions in air pollutants. Human-Earth system models can estimate such emission changes in the energy system but using them in chemistry-transport models (CTMs) to study their air quality impacts involves resource-intensive emissions processing. This is greatly simplified by an emissions scaling approach linking state-level emissions estimated by a human-Earth system model to a CTM. A scenario continuing pre-2022 energy policy in the U.S. to 2050 shows widespread air quality improvements over the 2015 baseline from SO 2 and NO x emission reductions of 50–80% from electricity generation and light-duty vehicles. Scenarios of GHG mitigation and vehicle electrification at the state and national level add further benefits. However, PM 2.5 increases from increased use of wood heating and bioenergy suggest that additional PM 2.5 management may be needed when using biofuels. In conclusion, this approach helps assess multiple future energy scenarios efficiently without sacrificing chemical detail in the air quality simulations.

air quality↗