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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2001

On Abstractions and Simplifications in the Design of Human-Automation Interfaces

This report addresses the design of human-automation interaction from a formal perspective that focuses on the information content of the interface, rather than the design of the graphical user interface. It also addresses the, issue of the information provided to the user (e.g., user-manuals, training material, and all other resources). In this report, we propose a formal procedure for generating interfaces and user-manuals. The procedure is guided by two criteria: First, the interface must be correct, i.e., that with the given interface the user will be able to perform the specified tasks correctly. Second, the interface should be as succinct as possible. The report discusses the underlying concepts and the formal methods for this approach. Several examples are used to illustrate the procedure. The algorithm for constructing interfaces can be automated, and a preliminary software system for its implementation has been developed.

Heymann, Michael↗
NASA NTRS2011

Making Human Spaceflight Practical and Affordable: Spacecraft Designs and their Degree of Operability

As we push toward new and diverse space transportation capabilities, reduction in operations cost becomes increasingly important. Achieving affordable and safe human spaceflight capabilities will be the mark of success for new programs and new providers. The ability to perceive the operational implications of design decisions is crucial in developing safe yet cost competitive space transportation systems. Any human spaceflight program - government or commercial - must make countless decisions either to implement spacecraft system capabilities or adopt operational constraints or workarounds to account for the lack of such spacecraft capabilities. These decisions can benefit from the collective experience that NASA has accumulated in building and operating crewed spacecraft over the last five decades. This paper reviews NASA s history in developing and operating human rated spacecraft, reviewing the key aspects of spacecraft design and their resultant impacts on operations phase complexity and cost. Specific examples from current and past programs - including the Space Shuttle and International Space Station - are provided to illustrate design traits that either increase or increase cost and complexity associated with spacecraft operations. These examples address factors such as overall design performance margins, levels of redundancy, degree of automated failure response, type and quantity of command and telemetry interfaces, and the definition of reference scenarios for analysis and test. Each example - from early program requirements, design implementation and resulting real-time operations experience - to tell the end-to-end "story" Based on these experiences, specific techniques are recommended to enable earlier and more effective assessment of operations concerns during the design process. A formal method for the assessment of spacecraft operability is defined and results of such operability assessments for recent spacecraft designs are provided. Recent experience in applying these techniques to Orion spacecraft development is reviewed to highlight the direct benefits of early operational assessment and collaborative development efforts.

Crocker, Alan R.↗
NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions.NASAs Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Autonomous Mission Operations↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

SAGE III/ISS Rapid Data Analysis Through Dashboarding with Jupyter Notebooks

Spaceborne remote sensing observations of Earth’s atmosphere produce significant quantities of data over the life of each mission. In the case of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) nearly four years of vertical profiles of atmospheric ozone, water vapor, and nitrogen dioxide concentrations as well as aerosol extinction coefficients have been released. The dichotomy of the desire for both long-term trends in the atmospheric state alongside the assessment of short-term impacts of major disruptive events such as volcanic eruptions and pyrocumulus injections requires agile tools to handle these cases in near real-time as new data are produced. The analysis landscape is further complicated by the desire to compare results between the numerous contemporary observations available for a given dataset. The SAGE III/ISS team has developed a suite of tools leveraging modern web-based frameworks allowing members to interact with a dashboard-style interface to load the data record, assess new profiles as they are generated and in ensemble, compare between species, and additionally add in measurements observed by other platforms as necessary. Leveraging a commonly packaged data format of NetCDF alongside the Python Jupyter Notebook framework, the data can be served to interested parties from an analysis server while still runnable on personal systems if required. This presentation illustrates the ecosystem developed by the SAGE III/ISS team, the applicability to measurements made by any limb-observing platform, and the benefit to transforming routine analyses into readily accessible dynamic plots. Frameworks currently exist at larger scales with projects such as GIOVANNI, and this illustration seeks to show that similar frameworks are accessible and possible within the local research environment while simultaneously unloading human processing cycles for more specialized analysis tasks.

Dashboarding↗
NASA NTRS2008

Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO)

The Virtual Energetic Particle Observatory (VEPO) focuses on improved discovery, access, and usability of heliospheric energetic particle and ancillary data products from selected spacecraft and sub-orbital instruments of the heliophysics data environment. The energy range of interest extends over the full range of particle acceleration from keV energies of suprathermal seed particles to GeV energies of galactic cosmic ray particles. Present spatial coverage is for operational and legacy spacecraft operating from the inner to the outer heliosphere, e.g. from measurements by the two Helios spacecraft to 0.3 AU to the inner heliosheath region now being traversed by the two Voyager spacecraft. This coverage will eventually be extended inward to ten solar radii by the planned NASA solar probe mission and at the same time beyond the heliopause into the outer heliosheath by continued Voyager operations. The geospace fleet of spacecraft providing near-Earth interplanetary measurements, selected magnetospheric spacecraft providing direct measurements of penetrating interplanetary energetic particles, and interplanetary cruise measurements from planetary spacecraft missions further extend VEPO resources to the domain of geospace and planetary interactions. Ground-based (e.g., neutron monitor) and high-altitude suborbital measurements can expand coverage to the highest energies of galactic cosmic rays affected by heliospheric interaction and of solar energetic particles. Science applications include investigation of solar flare and coronal mass ejection events. acceleration and transport of interplanetary particles within the inner heliosphere, cosmic ray interactions with planetary surfaces and atmospheres, sources of suprathermal and anomalous cosmic ray ions in the outer heliosphere, and solar cycle modulation of galactic cosmic rays. Robotic and human exploration, and eventual habitation, of planetary and space environments beyond the Earth require knowledge of radiation hazards informed by VEPO data resources. The VEPO project has completed the first year of work to define science requirements, to document and register selected data products in SPASE format while evolving SPASE for increased applicability to VEPO data, and to support enhanced discovery and access for these products through the evolving data query and middleware system of the Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO). The VEPO team operates as a heliophysics focus group for energetic particle data resources in partnership with VHO and also leverages existing data services of NASA's Space Physics Data Facility. We invite comments from the U.S. and international data provider and user communities on review of the current VEPO/VHO user interface, on directions for future evolution of VEPO and supporting data systems including VHO and SPDF, and on relations to other elements of the heliophysics virtual observatory environment.

Cooper, John F.↗
NASA NTRS2011

ARES I Upper Stage Subsystems Design and Development

From 2005 through early 2011, NASA conducted concept definition, design, and development of the Ares I launch vehicle. The Ares I was conceived to serve as a crew launch vehicle for beyond-low-Earth-orbit human space exploration missions as part of the Constellation Program Architecture. The vehicle was configured with a single shuttle-derived solid rocket booster first stage and a new liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen upper stage, propelled by a single, newly developed J-2X engine. The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle was to be mated to the forward end of the Ares I upper stage through an interface with fairings and a payload adapter. The vehicle design passed a Preliminary Design Review in August 2008, and was nearing the Critical Design Review when efforts were concluded as a result of the Constellation Program s cancellation. At NASA Glenn Research Center, four subsystems were developed for the Ares I upper stage. These were thrust vector control (TVC) for the J-2X, electrical power system (EPS), purge and hazardous gas (P&HG), and development flight instrumentation (DFI). The teams working each of these subsystems achieved 80 percent or greater design completion and extensive development testing. These efforts were extremely successful representing state-of-the-art technology and hardware advances necessary to achieve Ares I reliability, safety, availability, and performance requirements. This paper documents the designs, development test activity, and results.

Frate, David T.↗
NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities.

Stetson, Howard K.↗
NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities. The autonomous operations concept includes a reduction of the amount of data a crew operator is required to verify during activation or de-activation, as well as integration of procedure execution status and relevant data in a single integrated display. During execution, the auto-procedures (via Timerliner) provide a step-by-step messaging paradigm and a high-level status upon termination. This messaging and high-level status is the only data generated for operator display. To enhance situational awareness of the operator, the Web-based Procedure Display (WebPD) provides a novel approach to the issues of procedure display and execution tracking. WebPD is a web based application that serves as the user interface for electronic procedure execution. It incorporates several aspects of the HTML5 standard. Procedures are written in a dialect of XML called Procedure Representation Language (PRL). WebPD tracks execution status in the procedure or procedures being displayed. WebPD aggregates and simplifies the auto-sequence execution status information, and formatted to be easily followed and understood by an operator who is not dedicated to actively monitoring the task. WebPD also provides an integrated data and control interface to pause or halt the execution in order to provide a check point of operation and to examine progress before starting the next sequence of activities. For this demonstration, the procedure was initiated and monitored from the ground. As the Timeliner sequences executed, their high-level execution status was written to PLMDM memory. This memory is read and downlinked via Ku-Band at a 1 Hz rate. The data containing the high-level execution status is de-commutated on the ground, and rebroadcast for WebPD consumption. A future demonstration will be performed onboard, with ISS astronauts initiating the operations instead of ground controllers. The AMO EXPRESS experiment demonstrated activation and de-activation of EXPRESS rack 7, providing the capability of future single button activations and deactivations of facility class racks. The experiment achieved numerous technical and operations 'firsts' for the ISS

Stetson, Howard K.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Architecture Project Update

Future Human Exploration missions will face new constraints as crews move further from terrestrial communication, resupply, and the real-time support enjoyed by Low Earth Orbit missions today. Exploration crews will need to be more self-reliant and able to respond to emergencies without immediate support from ground-based personnel. A new generation of technologies, employing advanced analytical and predictive modeling techniques, is needed to assist the crew’s work, help maintain their health, and inform the decisions they make on these future Exploration missions. The Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Architecture (CHP-IDA) project is laying a foundation for these future technologies by integrating sources of data generated by and around the crew then providing them though common data models and Application Programming Interfaces to external systems. The combined data model makes comprehensive Crew Health and Performance data accessible and more meaningful to the decision-making process. This presentation will describe the currently ongoing effort to develop a path-to-flight concept of the CHP-IDA software, current integrations that have been developed, updates to the architecture, and examples of the corresponding exploration scenarios in which CHP-IDA would be used.

Exploration↗
DOE OSTI2021

Real-time and Autonomous Water Quality Monitoring System Based on Remotely Operated Vehicle

Existing water quality monitoring systems near hydropower facilities are limited by the lack of mobility of the sensors’ carrier platform. Most systems use a buoy, a mounting fixture attached to a solid structure, or a human worker, which significantly limits the selection of the sampling sites and poses safety risks during data collection and equipment maintenance. To improve on this technology, we developed an autonomous water quality monitoring system that can operate in dangerous water environments near hydropower facilities for water sampling at multiple locations. The goal is to enable safe, timely, and comprehensive water-quality data collection; maximize power generation revenue with improved operational control; and reduce Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state water quality monitoring costs for compliance. The system incorporates a remotely operated vehicle as the mobile monitoring platform, a dissolved oxygen sensor for monitoring water quality, a tether management system for automatically winding the tether, a solar mobile docking platform for suppling power to the ROV, and a web-based graphical user interface for data post-processing and visualization. In addition, preliminary field research are presented to demonstrate the system capabilities.

Salalila, Aljon L.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Architecture Project Updates

Future Human Exploration missions will face new constraints as crews move further from terrestrial communication, resupply, and the real-time support enjoyed by Low Earth Orbit missions today. Exploration crews will need to be more self-reliant and able to respond to emergencies without immediate support from ground-based personnel. A new generation of technologies, employing advanced analytical and predictive modeling techniques, is needed to assist the crew’s work, help maintain their health, and inform the decisions they make on these future Exploration missions. The Crew Health and Performance Integrated Data Architecture (CHP-IDA) project is laying a foundation for these future technologies by integrating sources of data generated by and around the crew and then providing them though common data models and Application Programming Interfaces to external systems. The combined data model makes comprehensive Crew Health and Performance data accessible and more meaningful to the decision-making process. This presentation will describe the currently ongoing effort to develop and evaluate a path-to-flight concept of the CHP-IDA software, current integrations, updates to the architecture, and examples of exploration scenarios in which CHP-IDA would be used.

B Schmitt↗
DOE OSTI2023

Autonomy Loops for Monitoring, Operational Data Analytics, Feedback, and Response in HPC Operations

Many High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities have developed and deployed frameworks in support of continuous monitoring and operational data analytics (MODA) to help improve efficiency and throughput. Because of the complexity and scale of systems and workflows and the need for low-latency response to address dynamic circumstances, automated feedback and response have the potential to be more effective than current human-in-the-loop approaches which are laborious and error prone. Progress has been limited, however, by factors such as the lack of infrastructure and feedback hooks, and successful deployment is often site- and case-specific. In this position paper we report on the outcomes and plans from a recent Dagstuhl Seminar, seeking to carve a path for community progress in the development of autonomous feedback loops for MODA, based on the established formalism of similar (MAPE-K) loops in autonomous computing and self-adaptive systems. By defining and developing such loops for significant cases experienced across HPC sites, we seek to extract commonalities and develop conventions that will facilitate interoperability and interchangeability with system hardware, software, and applications across different sites, and will motivate vendors and others to provide telemetry interfaces and feedback hooks to enable community development and pervasive deployment of MODA autonomy loops.

autonomy loops↗
NASA NTRS1989

Control of free-flying space robot manipulator systems

Control techniques for self-contained, autonomous free-flying space robots are being tested and developed. Free-flying space robots are envisioned as a key element of any successful long term presence in space. These robots must be capable of performing the assembly, maintenance, and inspection, and repair tasks that currently require astronaut extra-vehicular activity (EVA). Use of robots will provide economic savings as well as improved astronaut safety by reducing and in many cases, eliminating the need for human EVA. The focus of the work is to develop and carry out a set of research projects using laboratory models of satellite robots. These devices use air-cushion-vehicle (ACV) technology to simulate in two dimensions the drag-free, zero-g conditions of space. Current work is divided into six major projects or research areas. Fixed-base cooperative manipulation work represents our initial entry into multiple arm cooperation and high-level control with a sophisticated user interface. The floating-base cooperative manipulation project strives to transfer some of the technologies developed in the fixed-base work onto a floating base. The global control and navigation experiment seeks to demonstrate simultaneous control of the robot manipulators and the robot base position so that tasks can be accomplished while the base is undergoing a controlled motion. The multiple-vehicle cooperation project's goal is to demonstrate multiple free-floating robots working in teams to carry out tasks too difficult or complex for a single robot to perform. The Location Enhancement Arm Push-off (LEAP) activity's goal is to provide a viable alternative to expendable gas thrusters for vehicle propulsion wherein the robot uses its manipulators to throw itself from place to place. Because the successful execution of the LEAP technique requires an accurate model of the robot and payload mass properties, it was deemed an attractive testbed for adaptive control technology.

Cannon, Robert H., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Mercury Toolset for Spatiotemporal Metadata

Mercury (http://mercury.ornl.gov) is a set of tools for federated harvesting, searching, and retrieving metadata, particularly spatiotemporal metadata. Version 3.0 of the Mercury toolset provides orders of magnitude improvements in search speed, support for additional metadata formats, integration with Google Maps for spatial queries, facetted type search, support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) delivery of search results, and enhanced customization to meet the needs of the multiple projects that use Mercury. It provides a single portal to very quickly search for data and information contained in disparate data management systems, each of which may use different metadata formats. Mercury harvests metadata and key data from contributing project servers distributed around the world and builds a centralized index. The search interfaces then allow the users to perform a variety of fielded, spatial, and temporal searches across these metadata sources. This centralized repository of metadata with distributed data sources provides extremely fast search results to the user, while allowing data providers to advertise the availability of their data and maintain complete control and ownership of that data. Mercury periodically (typically daily) harvests metadata sources through a collection of interfaces and re-indexes these metadata to provide extremely rapid search capabilities, even over collections with tens of millions of metadata records. A number of both graphical and application interfaces have been constructed within Mercury, to enable both human users and other computer programs to perform queries. Mercury was also designed to support multiple different projects, so that the particular fields that can be queried and used with search filters are easy to configure for each different project.

Wilson, Bruce E.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Spacesuit and Space Vehicle Comparative Ergonomic Evaluation

With the advent of the latest manned spaceflight objectives, a series of prototype launch and reentry spacesuit architectures were evaluated for eventual down selection by NASA based on the performance of a set of designated tasks. A consolidated approach was taken to testing, concurrently collecting suit mobility data, seat-suit-vehicle interface clearances and movement strategies within the volume of a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle mockup. To achieve the objectives of the test, a requirement was set forth to maintain high mockup fidelity while using advanced motion capture technologies. These seemingly mutually exclusive goals were accommodated with the construction of an optically transparent and fully adjustable frame mockup. The mockup was constructed such that it could be dimensionally validated rapidly with the motion capture system. This paper will describe the method used to create a motion capture compatible space vehicle mockup, the consolidated approach for evaluating spacesuits in action, as well as the various methods for generating hardware requirements for an entire population from the resulting complex data set using a limited number of test subjects. Kinematics, hardware clearance, suited anthropometry, and subjective feedback data were recorded on fifteen unsuited and five suited subjects. Unsuited subjects were selected chiefly by anthropometry, in an attempt to find subjects who fell within predefined criteria for medium male, large male and small female subjects. The suited subjects were selected as a subset of the unsuited subjects and tested in both unpressurized and pressurized conditions. Since the prototype spacesuits were fabricated in a single size to accommodate an approximately average sized male, the findings from the suit testing were systematically extrapolated to the extremes of the population to anticipate likely problem areas. This extrapolation was achieved by first performing population analysis through a comparison of suited subjects performance to their unsuited performance and then applying the results to the entire range of population. The use of a transparent space vehicle mockup enabled the collection of large amounts of data during human-in-the-loop testing. Mobility data revealed that most of the tested spacesuits had sufficient ranges of motion for tasks to be performed successfully. A failed tasked by a suited subject most often stemmed from a combination of poor field of view while seated and poor dexterity of the gloves when pressurized or from suit/vehicle interface issues. Seat ingress/egress testing showed that problems with anthropometric accommodation does not exclusively occur with the largest or smallest subjects, but rather specific combinations of measurements that lead to narrower seat ingress/egress clearance.

England, Scott↗
NASA NTRS1988

A design for a ground-based data management system

An initial design for a ground-based data management system which includes intelligent data abstraction and cataloging is described. The large quantity of data on some current and future NASA missions leads to significant problems in providing scientists with quick access to relevant data. Human screening of data for potential relevance to a particular study is time-consuming and costly. Intelligent databases can provide automatic screening when given relevent scientific parameters and constraints. The data management system would provide, at a minimum, information of availability of the range of data, the type available, specific time periods covered together with data quality information, and related sources of data. The system would inform the user about the primary types of screening, analysis, and methods of presentation available to the user. The system would then aid the user with performing the desired tasks, in such a way that the user need only specify the scientific parameters and objectives, and not worry about specific details for running a particular program. The design contains modules for data abstraction, catalog plan abstraction, a user-friendly interface, and expert systems for data handling, data evaluation, and application analysis. The emphasis is on developing general facilities for data representation, description, analysis, and presentation that will be easily used by scientists directly, thus bypassing the knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Expert system technology is used for many different aspects of the data management system, including the direct user interface, the interface to the data analysis routines, and the analysis of instrument status.

Lambird, Barbara A.↗
DOE OSTI2018

TGF beta inhibits expression of SP-A, SP-B, SP-C, but not SP-D in human alveolar type II cells

Highlights: • TGF beta inhibits expression of SP-A, SP-B, SP-C, Fatty acid synthase, and ABCA3. • TGF beta does not inhibit the expression of SP-D. • TGF beta does not induce EMT changes in highly differentiated type II cells. TGF beta is a multifunctional cytokine that regulates alveolar epithelial cells as well as immune cells and fibroblasts. TGF beta inhibits surfactant protein A, B and C expression in fetal human lung and can inhibit type II cell proliferation induced by FGF7 (KGF). However, little is known about direct effects of TGF beta on adult human type II cells. We cultured alveolar type II cells under air/liquid interface conditions to maintain their state of differentiation with or without TGF beta. TGF beta markedly decreased expression of SP-A, SP-B, SP-C, fatty acid synthase, and the phospholipid transporter ABCA3. However, TGF beta increased protein levels of SP-D with little change in mRNA levels, indicating that it is regulated independently from other components of surfactant. TGF beta is a negative regulator of both the protein and the phospholipid components of surfactant. TGF beta did not induce EMT changes in highly differentiated human type II cells. SP-D is an important host defense molecule and regulated independently from the other surfactant proteins. Taken together these data are the first report of the effect of TGF beta on highly differentiated adult human type II cells. The effects on the surfactant system are likely important in the development of fibrotic lung diseases.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2000

Using XML and Java for Astronomical Instrumentation Control

Traditionally, instrument command and control systems have been highly specialized, consisting mostly of custom code that is difficult to develop, maintain, and extend. Such solutions are initially very costly and are inflexible to subsequent engineering change requests, increasing software maintenance costs. Instrument description is too tightly coupled with details of implementation. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is developing a general and highly extensible framework that applies to any kind of instrument that can be controlled by a computer. The software architecture combines the platform independent processing capabilities of Java with the power of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a human readable and machine understandable way to describe structured data. A key aspect of the object-oriented architecture is software that is driven by an instrument description, written using the Instrument Markup Language (IML). ]ML is used to describe graphical user interfaces to control and monitor the instrument, command sets and command formats, data streams, and communication mechanisms. Although the current effort is targeted for the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera, a first-light instrument of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, the framework is designed to be generic and extensible so that it can be applied to any instrument.

Ames, Troy↗