Each Space Shuttle mission produces more than 25,000 real-time measurements in NASA's mission control center. Within the mission control center, dozens of computer programs analyze these measurements and present results to mission control personnel. Because these programs support the practice of human-in-the-loop control, they serve primarily to present information to mission controllers. The c...

Developers of mission-critical distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems face a fundamental tension between (1) the performance gains achievable with hand-crafted optimizations to systems built largely from scratch and (2) the development cost and cycle-time reductions offered by common offthe-shelf (COTS) middleware, such as CORBA, COM+, and Java RMI. Current-generation COTS DRE middlew...

Given the increased use of traditional medicines, possibilities that would ensure its successful integration into a public health framework should be explored. This paper discusses some of the links between biodiversity and traditional medicine, and addresses their implications to public health. We explore the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to global and human health, the ris...

Many challenges remain in the development of tactical planning systems that will enable automated, cooperative replanning of routes and mission assignments for multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) under changing environmental and tactical conditions. We have developed such a planning system that uses an evolutionary algorithm to assign waypoints and mission goals to multiple UGVs so that th...

Despite the national goal of "drug-free" schools, recent data suggest that chemical abuse among school-aged children remains a concern. This qualitative case study presents a "unique case" within one school's substance abuse prevention program. In this program, pioneered in 1973, pairs of teen counselors "adopt" a middle school classroom and make regularly scheduled visits to conduct chemical a...

This article is the first part of an on-going ergonomic work analysis with the emergency services call center set up by the Fire Department of the Military Police of São Paulo. The final objective of the research is to identify the prescribed task, the real work executed and strategies used by workers to meet the demands of the job. Starting by identifying the tasks and activities developed, th...

The wide variety of optoelectronics applications in NASA flight systems and instruments require that optoelectronic technologies meet the demanding requirements of the space environment throughout mission life. These requirements vary widely from intense radiation near Jupiter to the very cold temperatures on the Martian surface to the effects of solar flares in Earth orbit. Considerable work h...