Neuritogenesis: a model for space radiation effects on the central nervous system.

Pivotal to the astronauts' functional integrity and survival during long space flights are the strategies to deal with space radiations. The majority of the cellular studies in this area emphasize simple endpoints such as growth related events which, although useful to understand the nature of primary cell injury, have poor predictive value for extrapolation to more complex tissues such as the central nervous system (CNS). In order to assess the radiation damage on neural cell populations, we developed an in vitro model in which neuronal differentiation, neurite extension, and synaptogenesis occur under controlled conditions. The model exploits chick embryo neural explants to study the effects of radiations on neuritogenesis. In addition, neurobiological problems associated with long-term space flights are discussed.     

Determination of surface parameters and fluxes for climate studies from space observation. Methods,results and problems

Climate being the result of many interconnected processes, it can hardly be understood without models which describe these various processes as quantitatively as possible and define the parameters which are relevant for climate studies. Among those, surface processes and therefore surface parameters are now recognized to be of great importance. Some examples are discussed in the first part, showing the great interest to measure the relevant parameters on a multi-year basis, over large areas with sufficiently dense array and on a stable basis, in order to monitor climate changes or to study the impact on climate of the modifications of some relevant parameters which are analysed. Since space observations from satellites fulfil these requirements, it is clear that they will become very soon a fundamental tool for climate studies. Unfortunately, as it is discussed in the second part, satellites do measure only spectral radiances at the top of the atmosphere and the determination of the relevant surface parameters (or fluxes) from these radiances still raises many problems which have to be solved, although many progresses have already been made.The aim of this paper is therefore to review and discuss these problems and the various ways they have been tackled until now. The first part is devoted to an overview of what needs to be measured and why, while the existing methods for determining the most important surface parameters from space observations are presented in the second part where a particular attention is given to the theoretical and experimental validations of these methods, their limits and the problems still to be solved.     

The influence of space flight factors on viability and mutability of plants.

The experiments with air-dried Crepis capillaris seeds aboard the Soyuz 16 spaceship and the orbital stations Salyut 5, 6, 7 have revealed an increase in the frequency of aberrant cells in seedlings grown from flight-exposed seeds during the flight (experiment) and after the flight on Earth (flight control) as compared to the ground-based control. The increase in seedlings grown during the flight is more significant than in the flight control. During the flight Arabidopsis thaliana developed from cotyledons to the flowering stage. Analysis of seeds setting on these plants after the flight has shown a reduction in the fertility of these plants and an increase in the frequency of recessive mutants ("Light block-1"). An increased frequency of mutants was also retained in the progeny of plants which had passed through a complete cycle of development during the flight ("Fiton-3"). Suppression of embryo viability was observed in all experiments and expressed itself in reduced germinating ability of seeds from the exposed plants and in the early death of seedlings. Damages resulting from chromosome aberrations are eliminated in the first postflight generation and damages resulting from gene mutations and micro-aberrations are preserved for a longer time.     

Radiation protection problems for the space station and approaches to their mitigation.

With the advent of a permanent manned space station the longstanding problems of radiation protection in manned spaceflight have acquired an immediacy. This paper endeavors to emphasize the gaps of our knowledge which must be closed for effective radiation protection. The information that is required includes the accurate determination of the exposure inside the space station to the various components of tile ionizing radiation, the evaluation of the biological importance of the different radiation qualities and the depth dose distribution of the less penetrating component. There is also the possibility of an interaction with weightlessness. It is necessary to establish adequate radiation protection standards and a system of dosimetric surveillance. There is a need for studies of possible methods of hardening selective shielding of the space station. Spaceflight experiments, which might contribute to the solution of some of these problems are discussed.     

Somatic embryos of daylily in space

Poor growth and nuclear abnormalities observable in some space-grown plants have been hypothesized as due to a combination of factors such as degree of development, the specific way the plants are grown and the way they experience multiple stresses, some of which are space-specific. Data from a 132-day experiment on ‘Mir’ using embryogenic cell cultures of daylily (Hemerocallis) allow seemingly contradictory evidence from earlier Shuttle missions to be harmonized: a) the more developed an embryo the less likely it is to suffer catastrophic cell stress during growth, whereas the less developed it is, the greater its vulnerability; (b) the extent to which the stress becomes manifest is also dependent on the extent of pre-existing stresses imposed by suboptimal growing conditions; (c) an appropriate, albeit undesirable, ‘stress match’ with other non-equilibrium determinants, much like a ‘tug of war’, can result in genomic variations in space. It is not understood what is/are the feature(s) of the space environment that cause the various cell division perturbations but they have not yet been mimicked on earth. The stress symptoms were found only in space materials and, as predicted, they were most frequently encountered in smaller, less-developed materials grown under non-optimized conditions. It is concluded that, while any substantial deviation from ‘optimum’ can be a ‘stress’, spaceflight subjects vulnerable materials to cell division or DNA-repair stress(es) that appear distinctive, but remain elusive so far. Fastidiously-controlled growing environments must be devised to resolve the matter of direct versus indirect effects of space. On a practical level, it is predicted that adapting plant biotechnologies to space conditions will not be a casual matter.     

Early development in the mouse: would it be affected by microgravity?

Gravity has been identified as a morphogenetic signal in Amphibian and bird embryonic development so it is plausible that it might be such in mammals as well. Since early mammalian development shows some apparently significant differences to these other groups, a brief summary of mouse embryogenesis will be given identifying events in which polarity is an important feature and consequently, in which gravity may be a causative factor. These include compaction and polarization during cleavage, establishment of the radial axis, the embryonic-abembryonic axis, the dorso-ventral axis, and the anterior-posterior axis, implantation, and the later rotation of the embryo. The experimental data on these morphogenetic steps will be discussed and an assessment of the possible involvement of gravity will be made.     

Regional VTEC modeling with multivariate adaptive regression splines

Different algorithms have been proposed for the modeling of the ionosphere. The most frequently used method is based on the spherical harmonic functions achieving successful results for global modeling but not for the local and regional applications due to the bounded spherical harmonic representation. Irregular data distribution and data gaps cause also difficulties in the global modeling of the ionosphere. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm with Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) to represent a new non-parametric approach for regional spatio-temporal mapping of the ionospheric electron density using ground-based GPS observations. MARS can handle very large data sets of observations and is an adaptive and flexible method, which can be applied to both linear and non-linear problems. The basis functions are directly obtained from the observations and have space partitioning property resulting in an adaptive model. This property helps to avoid numerical problems and computational inefficiency caused by the number of coefficients, which has to be increased to detect the local variations of the ionosphere. Since the fitting procedure is additive it does not require gridding and is able to process large amounts of data with large gaps. Additionally the model complexity can be controlled by the user via limiting the maximal number of coefficients and the order of products of the basis functions. In this study the MARS algorithm is applied to real data sets over Europe for regional ionosphere modeling. The results are compared with the results of Bernese GPS Software over the same region.     

Injuries to plants from controlled environment contaminants.

The use of controlled environments is subject to problems from contaminants emitted from materials of the system and from plants. Many contaminants are difficult to identify because injurious dosages are very low, there is a lack of information on what compounds injure plants, because species and cultivars differ greatly in their sensitivity to injury and injury symptoms often are not distinctive. Plastics have been shown to emit many different volatile compounds. The compound, di-butyl phthalate, contained in certain flexible plastics, has been shown to be very toxic to plants. Other injuries have been produced by caulking compounds and bonded screening. Paints have been shown to release xylene that is toxic to plants. Steam for humidification can cause problems because of hydroxylamines and other compounds added to steam used for heating to control fungal growth in return lines. Mercury, from broken thermometers is a particular problem in growth chambers because small quantities can collect in cracks and slowly volatilize to slow growth of plants. Plants themselves release large quantities of volatile hydrocarbons, with ethylene being the commonly recognized chemical that can be damaging when allowed to accumulate. People release large quantities of carbon dioxide which can cause variations in the rate of growth of plants. Contaminant problems can be controlled through filtering of the air or ventilation with make-up air, however the potential for problems is always present and careful testing should be undertaken with the particular species and cultivars being grown insure that there are no toxic agents altering growth in each particular controlled environment being utilized.     

X-ray astronomy from the space shuttle

A wide variety of new X-ray instrumentation is being proposed to attack an even wider variety of astrophysical problems. It includes general-purpose instruments which, with further development and testing, may someday be part of the complement of an orbiting “observatory” facility, such as AXAF. Other instruments promise significant and often necessary advantages for a narrower range of problems. The testing and development of all of these ideas, and in particular finding an efficient way to employ the latter class to make the observations for which they are intended, pose dilemmas for which the Space Shuttle potentially offers solutions. A discussion of possible modes for using the Shuttle and a brief sampling of new instrumentation ideas are presented.     

移动IPv6切换性能研究及平滑切换框架的实现

现有IPv4网络的IP地址空间、安全性和服务质量控制等问题,限制了Internet应用的发展,研究IPv6的相关技术,可以推动下一代网络的建设和发展.针对移动IPv6在切换过程中出现的数据包丢失和切换延迟问题,分析了相关的快速、平滑切换和分级管理3种解决方案,并结合IETF草案文档建议,设计实现了一个基于MIPL(Mobile Ipv6 for Linux)的、具有平滑切换性能的移动IPv6切换框架.框架采用将切换过程和缓存管理相分离的松耦合模式,可有效地增强应用系统的可扩展性和可移植性,为基于移动IPv6网络的实时应用系统信息的可靠传输提供一种有效途径.     

The influence of gravity on the process of development of animal systems

The development of animal systems is described in terms of a series of overlapping phases: pattern specification; differentiation; growth; and aging. The extent to which altered (micro) gravity (g) affects those phases is briefly reviewed for several animal systems. As a model, amphibian egg/early embryo is described. Recent data derived from clinostat protocols indicates that microgravity simulation alters early pattern specification (dorsal/ventral polarity) but does not adversely influence subsequent morphogenesis. Possible explanations for the absence of catastrophic microgravity effects on amphibian embryogenesis are discussed.     

Non-linear magnetospheric amplification of VLF transmissions

Non-linear amplification of a monochromatic VLF transmission in the magnetosphere produces an output fluctuating in amplitude and phase, and so is not monochromatic. This output can usually be resolved into two waves: one similar to the input, but stronger, and a higher frequency sideband or “embryo emission”. The established theory is outlined as far as it goes.     

高速摄像三维图像分析技术与应用

高速摄像是光学测量的重要手段。分析了高速摄像三维图像分析技术的处理过程,重点讨论了像机标定、自动目标检测与跟踪技术、多目标匹配技术和三维姿态测量技术等关键环节所面临的问题及解决方法,并以无人机回收测量系统为例说明了高速摄像三维图像分析技术在无人机位姿参数测量中的应用,对构建高速摄像测量系统提供了参考。     

Genetic susceptibility to radiation.

In the context of space radiation, it is important to know whether the human population includes genetically predisposed radiosensitive subsets. One possibility is that haploinsufficiency for ATM confers radiosensitivity, and this defect involves 1-3% of the population. Using knock-out mice we chose to study cataractogenesis in the lens and oncogenic transformation in mouse embryo fibroblasts to assay for effects of ATM deficiency. Radiation induced cataracts appeared earlier in the heterozygous versus wild-type animals following exposure to either gamma rays or 1 GeV/nucleon iron ions. In addition, it was found that embryo fibroblasts of Atm heterozygotes showed an increased incidence of oncogenic transformation compared with their normal litter-matched counterparts. From these data we suggest that Ataxia Telangiectasia heterozygotes could indeed represent a societally significant radio sensitive subpopulation. Knock-out mice are now available for other genes including BRCA1 and 2, and Mrad9. An exciting possibility is the creation of double heterozygotes for pairs of mutated genes that function in the same signal transduction pathway, and consequently confer even greater radiosensitivity.     

Insects as test systems for assessing the potential role of microgravity in biological development and evolution.

Gravity and radiation are undoubtedly the two major environmental factors altered in space. Gravity is a weak force, which creates a permanent potential field acting on the mass of biological systems and their cellular components, strongly reduced in space flights. Developmental systems, particularly at very early stages, provide the larger cellular compartments known, where the effects of alterations in the size of the gravity vector on living organisms can be more effectively tested. The insects, one of the more highly evolved classes of animals in which early development occurs in a syncytial embryo, are systems particularly well suited to test these effects and the specific developmental mechanisms affected. Furthermore, they share some basic features such as small size, short life cycles, relatively high radio-resistance, etc. and show a diversity of developmental strategies and tempos advantageous in experiments of this type in space. Drosophila melanogaster, the current biological paradigm to study development, with so much genetic and evolutionary background available, is clearly the reference organism for these studies. The current evidence on the effects of the physical parameters altered in space flights on insect development indicate a surprising correlation between effects seen on the fast developing and relatively small Drosophila embryo and the more slowly developing and large Carausius morosus system. In relation to the issue of the importance of developmental and environmental constraints in biological evolution, still the missing link in current evolutionary thinking, insects and space facilities for long-term experiments could provide useful experimental settings where to critically assess how development and evolution may be interconnected. Finally, it has to be pointed out that since there are experimental data indicating a possible synergism between microgravity and space radiation, possible effects of space radiation should be taken into account in the planning and evaluation of experiments designed to test the potential role of microgravity on biological developmental and evolution.     

Human friendly architectural design for a small Martian base

The manned mission to Mars is expected to last almost three years. A human factor must be taken seriously into account in such a long-term mission. A big comfortable habitat can help to overcome sociopsychological problems, that occur in ICEs (Isolated and Confined Environments). Authors have come forward to this issue and have developed a Martian base design as a human friendly habitat. The project is based on researches of extreme conditions on Mars, architecture in ICEs and contemporary building technologies. The base consists of five modules: a Central Module (CM), an Agriculture Dome (AD), a Residential Dome (RD), a Laboratory Dome (LD) and a Garage (G). Each element has its own functional purpose. The CM is a metal capsule similar to the Reference Mission module (RM, NASA, 1997). Domes are inflatable multilayer structures, which interiors are “open planned”. Interiors can be arranged and divided into rooms by using modular partition walls designed by authors.     

GTO发射轨道的两级分解全局优化设计策略

文章提出了包含两级规划、轨道分解优化以及混合遗传算法的GTO发射轨道优化设计策略。针对最优控制变量和总体变量耦合所带来的收敛性差问题 ,建立了两级规划模型 ,其中上面级问题处理总体变量 ,下面级问题处理单独的轨迹控制变量。整个发射轨道优化设计问题被划分成两个轨道段优化设计子问题 ,采用串行混合遗传算法完成子问题的求解。选择一个二级GTO运载火箭 ,进行最大运载能力优化设计 ,对俯仰角选择、发射轨道参数选择等问题进行了分析 ,得出了一些有益的结论。算例分析结果表明所提出的GTO发射轨道优化设计策略的优良性能 ,在运载火箭总体设计中有良好的应用价值。     

参数不定区间估计的对偶线性规划方法

将参数不定区间估计(PIE)问题变换成一组对偶线性规划(DLP)问题,提出了求解这组DLP问题的改进单纯形方法.该方法利用变量间的对偶关系,直接计算初始基本可行解,省去了初始基本可行解的搜索步骤.此外,在确定旋入和旋出变量时都采用了目标值最大减少规则,减少了旋转迭代次数.针对由PIE问题所导出的全部DLP问题都具有相同的目标函数和约束矩阵,给出了单搜索过程求解全部DLP问题的联合单纯形法.仿真结果说明了所给算法的计算效率.      

Precision orbit computation in geodesy and geodynamics with KS variables

KS variables are an alternative and extended set of variables for describing the motion of a satellite. They originate in an idea of Levi-Civita for employing the theory of complex variables in three dimensional problems. KS variables turn out to be a generalized Spinor, are related to Quaternions, and have a deep meaning in mechanics. When used with the eccentric anomaly as the independent variable, the satellite motion is given as a regularized system of 10 first order ordinary differential equations. For orbit computation these variables have advantage in both numerical and analytical threatment. The energy equation becomes one of the equations and numerical methods are very stable. High eccentricity orbits are easily treated in both cases. With numerical methods, the step size variation is reduced. In analytical methods, expansion in powers of eccentricity is avoided.