Arbitrarily shaped model survey system Patent

Deformation measuring apparatus with feedback control for arbitrarily shaped structure

Automatic rendezvous system testing at the Flight Robotics Laboratory

The Flight Robotics Laboratory of MSFC provides sophisticated real time simulation capability in the study of human/system interactions of remote systems. This paper will describe the Flight Robotics Facility of NASA/MSFC, the hardware-in-the-loop simulation configuration, and test results

Calculations of K+, K- and phi Production in Near-Threshold Proton-Nucleus Collisions

K+, K- and \phi meson production in proton-nucleus (pA) collisions has been calculated within a BUU transport model. It is shown that the nucleon-hyperon strangeness transfer channel is essential. The role of three-body reactions has been investigated within the medium. The targetmass dependence of $\phi$ production is predicted to give important information on the in-medium properties of all three mesons.Comment: Talk presented by H.W.B. at the Budapest 2004 workshop on 'Hot and Dense Matter in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions', March 24-27, 2004, Budapest, Hungar

NASA MSFC hardware in the loop simulations of automatic rendezvous and capture systems

Two complementary hardware-in-the-loop simulation facilities for automatic rendezvous and capture systems at MSFC are described. One, the Flight Robotics Laboratory, uses an 8 DOF overhead manipulator with a work volume of 160 by 40 by 23 feet to evaluate automatic rendezvous algorithms and range/rate sensing systems. The other, the Space Station/Station Operations Mechanism Test Bed, uses a 6 DOF hydraulic table to perform docking and berthing dynamics simulations

Progression of myopathology in Kearns-Sayre syndrome

We report on the progression of myopathology by comparing two biopsies from a patient with a Kearns-Sayre-Syndrome. The first biopsy was taken in 1979 and showed 10% ragged-red fibers. Myopathic changes were slight including internal nuclei and fiber splitting in 10% of the fibers. Electron microscopy revealed typical mitochondrial abnormalities with regard to number and shape. In 1989 a second biopsy was performed for an extended analysis of mitochondrial DNA. This time less than 5% of all fibers were ragged-red. Severe myopathic changes could be detected which so far has rarely been reported in mitochondrial cytopathy

The influence of expertise on brain activation of the action observation network during anticipation of tennis and volleyball serves

In many daily activities, and especially in sport, it is necessary to predict the effects of others' actions in order to initiate appropriate responses. Recently, researchers have suggested that the action-observation network (AON) including the cerebellum plays an essential role during such anticipation, particularly in sport expert performers. In the present study, we examined the influence of task-specific expertise on the AON by investigating differences between two expert groups trained in different sports while anticipating action effects. Altogether, 15 tennis and 16 volleyball experts anticipated the direction of observed tennis and volleyball serves while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The expert group in each sport acted as novice controls in the other sport with which they had only little experience. When contrasting anticipation in both expertise conditions with the corresponding untrained sport, a stronger activation of AON areas (SPL, SMA), and particularly of cerebellar structures, was observed. Furthermore, the neural activation within the cerebellum and the SPL was linearly correlated with participant's anticipation performance, irrespective of the specific expertise. For the SPL, this relationship also holds when an expert performs a domain-specific anticipation task. Notably, the stronger activation of the cerebellum as well as of the SMA and the SPL in the expertise conditions suggests that experts rely on their more fine-tuned perceptual-motor representations that have improved during years of training when anticipating the effects of others' actions in their preferred sport. The association of activation within the SPL and the cerebellum with the task achievement suggests that these areas are the predominant brain sites involved in fast motor predictions. The SPL reflects the processing of domain-specific contextual information and the cerebellum the usage of a predictive internal model to solve the anticipation task. © 2014 Balser, Lorey, Pilgramm, Naumann, Kindermann, Stark, Zentgraf, Williams and Munzert