Evaluation of upper body muscle activity during cardiopulmonary resuscitation performance in simulated microgravity

Performance of efficient single-person cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is vital to maintain cardiac and cerebral perfusion during the 2–4 min it takes for deployment of advanced life support during a space mission. The aim of the present study was to investigate potential differences in upper body muscle activity during CPR performance at terrestrial gravity (+1Gz) and in simulated microgravity (μG). Muscle activity of the triceps brachii, erector spinae, rectus abdominis and pectoralis major was measured via superficial electromyography in 20 healthy male volunteers. Four sets of 30 external chest compressions (ECCs) were performed on a mannequin. Microgravity was simulated using a body suspension device and harness; the Evetts–Russomano (ER) method was adopted for CPR performance in simulated microgravity. Heart rate and perceived exertion via Borg scores were also measured. While a significantly lower depth of ECCs was observed in simulated microgravity, compared with +1Gz, it was still within the target range of 40–50 mm. There was a 7.7% decrease of the mean (±SEM) ECC depth from 48 ± 0.3 mm at +1Gz, to 44.3 ± 0.5 mm during microgravity simulation (p < 0.001). No significant difference in number or rate of compressions was found between the two conditions. Heart rate displayed a significantly larger increase during CPR in simulated microgravity than at +1Gz, the former presenting a mean (±SEM) of 23.6 ± 2.91 bpm and the latter, 76.6 ± 3.8 bpm (p < 0.001). Borg scores were 70% higher post-microgravity compressions (17 ± 1) than post +1Gz compressions (10 ± 1) (p < 0.001). Intermuscular comparisons showed the triceps brachii to have significantly lower muscle activity than each of the other three tested muscles, in both +1Gz and microgravity. As shown by greater Borg scores and heart rate increases, CPR performance in simulated microgravity is more fatiguing than at +1Gz. Nevertheless, no significant difference in muscle activity between conditions was found, a result that is favourable for astronauts, given the inevitable muscular and cardiovascular deconditioning that occurs during space travel.     

The X/X/KA-band deep space transponder for the BepiColombo mission to mercury

This paper reports the main characteristics of the deep space transponder (DST) equipment that has been designed, developed and tested by Thales Alenia Space—Italy (TAS-I) for the European Space Agency (ESA) BepiColombo mission to Mercury.     

Lunar lander's three-dimensional translation and yaw rotation motion estimation during a descent phase using optical navigation

Optical navigation for a lunar lander consists of estimating a lander's 3-dimensional (3-D) relative dynamic motion with respect to a preselected landing site using a passive 2-dimensional (2-D) video image sequence. Lunar landing missions require a lander to perform an autonomous accurate landing with simple mechanical structure, easy operation and low cost. These requirements have motivated the need to develop an advanced navigation system. Existing navigation systems trade-off simplicity, accuracy and cost. High accuracy navigation systems typically imply complexity and high cost. In this paper, we consider a scenario where the descending phase starts from an initial altitude of 10 km with a time-of-descent of 100 s. The navigation camera is an off-the-shelf optical instrument used to take the video image sequence of the landing site during the landing phase. It is fed into the motion estimation algorithm to be processed. The continuous wavelet transform (CWT) is used to analyse each image frame of the input digital video image sequence. The output is a 2-D video image motion trajectory map, which represents the projection motion of the landing site. The 2-D video image motion is projected back to the 3-D lander's relative motion based on a geometric analysis. The outputs of this estimation algorithm are the 3-D attitude motion parameters of the lander at a time corresponding to an image being taken. The attitude determination and control system (ADCS) of the lander uses these data to perform the lander's attitude control task. In this article, we provide the motion modelling for a lunar lander during the descending phase. The projection of a 3-D planar to 2-D image plane is analysed which build the correspondence between the 3-D lander's motion and the 2-D image motion. This link provides the evidence for the geometry analysis. CWT is reviewed and CWT for video image sequence analysis is also introduced. Numerical simulation of the estimated 2-D video image sequence under the lander performing a 3-D translation and yaw rotation during the terminal descent are shown to verify the proposed concepts. The analysis of the results show that the proposed method achieves highly accurate 2-D video image motion estimation of less then 1% error with significant savings of cost, mass and volume. It leads to the accurate estimation of the lander's 3-D relative motion with respect to the landing site.     

The microbial habitability of weathered volcanic glass inferred from continuous sensing techniques

Basaltic glasses (hyaloclastite) are a widespread habitat for life in volcanic environments, yet their interior physical conditions are poorly characterized. We investigated the characteristics of exposed weathered basaltic glass from a surface outcrop in Iceland, using microprobes capable of continuous sensing, to determine whether the physical conditions in the rock interior are hospitable to microbial life. The material provided thermal protection from freeze-thaw and rapid temperature fluctuations, similar to data reported for other rock types. Water activity experiments showed that at moisture contents less than 13% wet weight, the glass and its weathering product, palagonite, had a water activity below levels suitable for bacterial growth. In pore spaces, however, these higher moisture conditions might be maintained for many days after a precipitation event. Gas exchange between the rock interior and exterior was rapid (< 10 min) when the rocks were dry, but when saturated with water, equilibration took many hours. During this period, we demonstrated the potential for low oxygen conditions within the rock caused by respiratory stimulation of the heterotrophic community within. These conditions might exist within subglacial environments during the formation of the rocks or in micro-environments in the interior of exposed rocks. The experiments showed that microbial communities at the site studied here could potentially be active for 39% of the year, if the depth of the community within the outcrop maintains a balance between access to liquid water and adequate protection from freezing. In the absence of precipitation, the interior of weathered basaltic glass is an extreme and life-limiting environment for microorganisms on Earth and other planets.     

Potential fossil endoliths in vesicular pillow basalt, Coral Patch Seamount, eastern North Atlantic Ocean

The chilled rinds of pillow basalt from the Ampère-Coral Patch Seamounts in the eastern North Atlantic were studied as a potential habitat of microbial life. A variety of putative biogenic structures, which include filamentous and spherical microfossil-like structures, were detected in K-phillipsite-filled amygdules within the chilled rinds. The filamentous structures (～2.5 μm in diameter) occur as K-phillipsite tubules surrounded by an Fe-oxyhydroxide (lepidocrocite) rich membranous structure, whereas the spherical structures (from 4 to 2 μm in diameter) are associated with Ti oxide (anatase) and carbonaceous matter. Several lines of evidence indicate that the microfossil-like structures in the pillow basalt are the fossilized remains of microorganisms. Possible biosignatures include the carbonaceous nature of the spherical structures, their size distributions and morphology, the presence and distribution of native fluorescence, mineralogical and chemical composition, and environmental context. When taken together, the suite of possible biosignatures supports the hypothesis that the fossil-like structures are of biological origin. The vesicular microhabitat of the rock matrix is likely to have hosted a cryptoendolithic microbial community. This study documents a variety of evidence for past microbial life in a hitherto poorly investigated and underestimated microenvironment, as represented by the amygdules in the chilled pillow basalt rinds. This kind of endolithic volcanic habitat would have been common on the early rocky planets in our Solar System, such as Earth and Mars. This study provides a framework for evaluating traces of past life in vesicular pillow basalts, regardless of whether they occur on early Earth or Mars.     

Preservation of martian organic and environmental records: final report of the Mars biosignature working group

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has an instrument package capable of making measurements of past and present environmental conditions. The data generated may tell us if Mars is, or ever was, able to support life. However, the knowledge of Mars' past history and the geological processes most likely to preserve a record of that history remain sparse and, in some instances, ambiguous. Physical, chemical, and geological processes relevant to biosignature preservation on Earth, especially under conditions early in its history when microbial life predominated, are also imperfectly known. Here, we present the report of a working group chartered by the Co-Chairs of NASA's MSL Project Science Group, John P. Grotzinger and Michael A. Meyer, to review and evaluate potential for biosignature formation and preservation on Mars. Orbital images confirm that layered rocks achieved kilometer-scale thicknesses in some regions of ancient Mars. Clearly, interplays of sedimentation and erosional processes govern present-day exposures, and our understanding of these processes is incomplete. MSL can document and evaluate patterns of stratigraphic development as well as the sources of layered materials and their subsequent diagenesis. It can also document other potential biosignature repositories such as hydrothermal environments. These capabilities offer an unprecedented opportunity to decipher key aspects of the environmental evolution of Mars' early surface and aspects of the diagenetic processes that have operated since that time. Considering the MSL instrument payload package, we identified the following classes of biosignatures as within the MSL detection window: organism morphologies (cells, body fossils, casts), biofabrics (including microbial mats), diagnostic organic molecules, isotopic signatures, evidence of biomineralization and bioalteration, spatial patterns in chemistry, and biogenic gases. Of these, biogenic organic molecules and biogenic atmospheric gases are considered the most definitive and most readily detectable by MSL.     

Is the presence of oxygen on an exoplanet a reliable biosignature?

We revisit the validity of the presence of O(2) or O(3) in the atmosphere of a rocky planet as being a biosignature. Up to now, the false positive that has been identified applies to a planet during a hot greenhouse runaway, which is restricted to planets outside the habitable zone (HZ) of the star that are closer to the star. In this paper, we explore a new possibility based on abiotic photogeneration of O(2) at the surface of a planet that could occur inside the HZ. The search for such a process is an active field of laboratory investigation that has resulted from an ongoing interest in finding efficient systems with the capacity to harvest solar energy on Earth. Although such a process is energetically viable, we find it to be a very unlikely explanation for the observation of O(2) or O(3) in the atmosphere of a telluric exoplanet in the HZ. It requires an efficient photocatalyst to be present and abundant under natural planetary conditions, which appears unlikely according to our discussion of known mineral photochemical processes. In contrast, a biological system that synthesizes its constituents from abundant raw materials and energy has the inherent adaptation advantage to become widespread and dominant (Darwinist argument). Thus, O(2) appears to continue to be a good biosignature.     

Deducing Electron Properties from Hard X-ray Observations

X-radiation from energetic electrons is the prime diagnostic of flare-accelerated electrons. The observed X-ray flux (and polarization state) is fundamentally a convolution of the cross-section for the hard X-ray emission process(es) in question with the electron distribution function, which is in turn a function of energy, direction, spatial location and time. To address the problems of particle propagation and acceleration one needs to infer as much information as possible on this electron distribution function, through a deconvolution of this fundamental relationship. This review presents recent progress toward this goal using spectroscopic, imaging and polarization measurements, primarily from the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). Previous conclusions regarding the energy, angular (pitch angle) and spatial distributions of energetic electrons in solar flares are critically reviewed. We discuss the role and the observational evidence of several radiation processes: free-free electron-ion, free-free electron-electron, free-bound electron-ion, photoelectric absorption and Compton backscatter (albedo), using both spectroscopic and imaging techniques. This unprecedented quality of data allows for the first time inference of the angular distributions of the X-ray-emitting electrons and improved model-independent inference of electron energy spectra and emission measures of thermal plasma. Moreover, imaging spectroscopy has revealed hitherto unknown details of solar flare morphology and detailed spectroscopy of coronal, footpoint and extended sources in flaring regions. Additional attempts to measure hard X-ray polarization were not sufficient to put constraints on the degree of anisotropy of electrons, but point to the importance of obtaining good quality polarization data in the future.     

Optimization of a tool kit for machining by methods of graph theory

Some methods of optimizing a cutting tool kit by the minimum labour content criterion in milling of an article are considered. Their advantages and disadvantages are given.     

Potential of salt-accumulating and salt-secreting halophytic plants for recycling sodium chloride in human urine in bioregenerative life support systems

This study addresses the possibility of growing different halophytic plants on mineralized human urine as a way to recycle NaCl from human wastes in a bioregenerative life support system (BLSS). Two halophytic plant species were studied: the salt-accumulating Salicornia europaea and the salt-secreting Limonium gmelinii. During the first two weeks, plants were grown on Knop’s solution, then an average daily amount of urine produced by one human, which had been preliminarily mineralized, was gradually added to the experimental solutions. Nutrient solutions simulating urine mineral composition were gradually added to control solutions. NaCl concentrations in the stock solutions added to the experimental and control solutions were 9 g/L in the first treatment and 20 g/L in the second treatment. The mineralized human urine showed some inhibitory effects on S. europaea and L. gmelinii. The biomass yield of experimental plants was lower than that of control ones. If calculated for the same time period (120 d) and area (1 m²), the amount of sodium chloride taken up by S. europaea plants would be 11.7 times larger than the amount taken up by L. gmelinii plants (486 g/m² vs. 41 g/m²). Thus, S. europaea is the better choice of halophyte for recycling sodium chloride from human wastes in BLSS.