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To enable sustainable aviation growth, mitigation of environmental effects must be developed in parallel. To further this effort, these effects are modeled using capabilities such as the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT), a program that is able to model aircraft performance, fuel burn, emissions, and noise. Past and current projects are performed with the intent of improving the accuracy of the models within AEDT to capture various real-world effects. This paper targets the sensitivity of the noise prediction and propagation by varying multiple assumptions within AEDT. To validate the noise capabilities, multiple streams of real-world data will be used to accurately model actual flights to and from SFO airport. This data includes High-Fidelity weather data,detailed flight performance characteristics from airline flight data records and noise monitoring data obtained from stations around the airport. The results from this study are expected to offer recommendations and help users prioritize and more accurately quantify community noise exposure using AEDT.

Successful mitigation of aviation noise is a key enabler for sustainable aviation growth. A key focus of this effort is the noise arising from aircraft arrival operations. Arrival operations are characterized by the use of high-lift devices, deployment of landing gear, and low thrust levels, which results in the airframe being the major component of noise. In order to optimize for arrival noise, management of the flap schedule and gear deployment is crucial. This research aims to create an optimization framework for evaluating various aircraft trajectories in terms of their noise impact. A parametric representation of the aircraft arrival trajectory will be created to allow for the variation of aircraft's flap schedule. The Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Environmental Design Tool will be used to simulate the aircraft trajectory and performance, and to compute the noise metrics. Specifically, the latest performance model from EUROCONTROL called "Base of Aircraft Data - Family 4" will be used. This performance model contains higher fidelity modeling of aircraft aerodynamics and other characteristics which allows for better parametric variation.

Accurate modeling of aircraft fuel consumption, emissions, and noise is crucial in evaluating new air transportation operational procedures and policies to abate negative environmental impacts. The...

Chaplains and community religious leaders may be first responders when people struggle with four kinds of suffering: suicide and despair, addictions, trauma, and moral injury. How can they offer immediate and ongoing evidence-based spiritual care? What interpersonal competencies do they need in order to build trust when people struggle with suicide, addictions, post-traumatic symptoms, and moral injury? In this chapter, we use the Helping Styles Inventory along with an extended case study to illustrate how chaplains integrate research-based knowledge with interpersonal competencies in response to these forms of suffering.

To investigate the effect of high fructose diet on ultrastructure and content of hepatic mitochondria, we randomized 6-8 weeks old male C57Bl6/J mice to ad lib chow or high-fat-high-fructose (HF2) diet for 32 weeks. HF2-fed mice gained more weight, had higher plasma alanine aminotransferase, and fasting glucose levels and increased hepatic triglyceride content at all time points compared to chow-fed mice. HF2-fed mice had lower mitochondrial to nuclear DNA ratio compared to chow-fed mice. HF2-fed mice had lower average mitochondrial surface area and the number of mitochondria compared to chow-fed mice. HF2-fed mice had higher expression of the hepatic endoplasmic reticulum stress marker Chop, compared to chow-fed mice. A diet high in fat and fructose leads to enhanced hepatic mitochondrial aging, depletion, and dysfunction, which may be important determinants of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis pathogenesis.

A rapid fleet-level noise computation model is assessed to quantify errors associated with its simplifying assumptions. A method for rapidly evaluating population exposure to significant noise by m...

By modeling compatibilities, benefits, and penalties of various technology packages at the subsystem level in a vehicle design tool, bottom-up assessments of projected technological benefits can be...

Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) represent a large proportion of any country’s business activity, and their contribution to national supply is significant. There are many studies and reports revealing the threat to business from cyber security issues resulting in system penetration and information compromise. Very few studies are focused on evaluating SME cyber security postures. Even fewer are focused on directly surveying the actual SMEs themselves about the issues they face. Utilizing these type of survey results to improve SME outcomes with respect to cyber security is even rarer still.

Aviation noise remains one of the major barriers to sustainable aviation growth. With increasing traffic at major airports and rapid urbanization, community noise exposure is also expected to increase concurrently. New technologies, while effective, take a long time to mature and penetrate the market, and are therefore only suitable as the long-term solution. A near-term solution of noise mitigation is to analyze and modify the ways existing aircraft are flown in current operations. The objective of this paper is to analyze the sensitivities of airport level environmental impacts such as noise and emissions to changes in aircraft takeoff weight, thrust and departure profiles.

A method is proposed for modeling average generic vehicles for fleet-level analysis of technology impacts on environmental metrics. Vehicles are grouped into classes distinguished by aircraft-level...

Most aviation communities have increasing concerns about the environmental impacts, which are directly linked to health issues for local residents near the airport. In this study, the environmental impact of different departure procedures using the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) was analyzed. First, actual operational data were compiled at Gimpo International Airport (March 20, 2017) from an open source. Two modifications were made in the AEDT to model the operational circumstances better and the preliminary AEDT simulations were performed according to the acquired operational procedures. Simulated noise results showed good agreements with noise measurement data at specific locations. Second, a multi-objective optimization of departure procedures was performed for the Boeing 737–800. Four design variables were selected and AEDT was linked to a variety of advanced design methods. The results showed that takeoff thrust had the greatest influence and it was found that fuel burn and noise had an inverse relationship. Two points representing each fuel burn and noise optimum on the Pareto front were parsed and run in AEDT to compare with the baseline. The results showed that the noise optimum case reduced Sound Exposure Level 80-dB noise exposure area by approximately 5% while the fuel burn optimum case reduced total fuel burn by 1% relative to the baseline for aircraft-level analysis.

Hepatic inflammation is a key pathologic feature of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Natural killer T (NKT) cells and clusters of differentiation (CD)8+ T‐cells are known to play an important role in obesity‐related adipose tissue inflammation. We hypothesized that these same inflammatory phenotypes would be present in progressive NASH. We used a previously established high‐fat high‐carbohydrate (HFHC) murine obesogenic diet model of progressive NASH to investigate the role of NKT cells and CD8+ T‐cells in C57Bl6/J mice. To better understand the impact of these cell populations, CD1d‐deficient and CD8+ T‐cell‐depleted mice were subjected to an HFHC diet for 16 weeks. C57Bl6/J mice fed an HFHC diet had increased body weight, liver triglyceride content, serum alanine aminotransferase levels, and increased NKT‐cell and CD8+ T‐cell infiltration in the liver. In addition, human liver sections from patients with NASH showed increased CD8+ T‐cells. In comparison, CD1d‐deficient and CD8 T‐cell‐depleted mice fed an HFHC diet had a lower hepatic triglyceride content, lower alanine aminotransferase levels, lower activated resident macrophages and infiltrating macrophages, improved nonalcoholic fatty liver disease activity scores, and reduced α‐smooth muscle actin, collagen type 1 alpha 1, and collagen type 1 alpha 2 messenger RNA expression. Further, while CD1d‐deficient mice were protected against weight gain on the HFHC diet, CD8 T‐cell‐depleted mice gained weight on the HFHC diet. Conclusion: We found that NASH has an immunological signature that includes hepatic infiltrating NKT and CD8+ T‐cells. Depletion of these cells resulted in reduced NASH progression and thus presents novel therapeutic avenues for the treatment of NASH. (Hepatology Communications 2017;1:299–310)

Demand projections for civil aviation have forecast increases in operations in future decades. Increases in demand are beneficial to the growth and advancement of the aviation industry, but also come with the threat of significant increase in environmental impacts. In response, the industry is focusing on programs to develop technologies for reductions in fuel burn, NO x emissions, and noise. While aircraft-level impacts are an obvious metric of success, it is difficult to make informed robust technology investment decisions with respect to noise without understanding the fleet-level impacts. Fleet-level predictions of noise for technology explorations are especially complicated because it is computationally expensive, highly combinatorial, and airport-specific. Recently, rapid automated airport noise models have been developed, which can be simulated using Design of Experiments (DOE). The results of these simulations are used to generate surrogate models for airport noise contour area, which can be summed to yield a fleet-level impact. These models make use of simplifying assumptions to provide estimates of airport-level noise that are substantially cheaper to compute. They can be used to perform parametric trade-off analyses in conjunction with the equivalency assumption. Equivalency asserts that environmental impacts of a technology infused aircraft can be represented by scaled operations of the baseline aircraft in the same class. This simple assumption allows for the modeling of technology and market penetration factors under the same units: operations. This research uses surrogate models in conjunction with the equivalency assumption to examine two potential technology scenarios in a target forecast year, simulating technology and market performance factors to identify vehicle classes that could have the greatest impact in reducing contour area. Results show that technology and market performance of future notional Small Single Aisle and Large Single Aisle vehicle aircraft have the highest positive correlations with potential reductions in contour area.

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the application of data science techniques that leverage aviation data collected from commercial airline operations to improve safety. This paper presents the application of machine learning to improve the understanding of risk factors during flight and their causal chains. With increasing complexity and volume of operations, rapid accumulation and analysis of this safety-related data has the potential to maintain and even lower the low global accident rates in aviation. This paper presents the development of an analytical methodology called Safety Analysis of Flight Events (SAFE) that synthesizes data cleaning, correlation analysis, classification-based supervised learning, and data visualization schema to streamline the isolation of critical parameters and the elimination of tangential factors for safety events in aviation. The SAFE methodology outlines a robust and repeatable framework that is applicable across heterogeneous data sets containing multiple aircraft, airport of operations, and phases of flight. It is demonstrated on Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) data from a commercial airline through use cases related to three safety events, namely Tire Speed Event, Roll Event, and Landing Distance Event. The application of the SAFE methodology yields a ranked list of critical parameters in line with subject-matter expert conceptions of these events for all three use cases. The work concludes by raising important issues about the compatibility levels of machine learning and human conceptualization of incidents and their precursors, and provides initial guidance for their reconciliation.

Operations forecast are projecting significant growth in total operations in the United States and internationally. As a result there has been a concerted effort to identify technology options to reduce the environmental impacts of aviation including fuel burn, NOx , and noise emissions. To rapidly evaluate the impact of large sets of diverse and interacting technologies, a screening fidelity generic fleet-level approach to measuring environmental impacts is required. Fuel burn and NOx emissions are easily scaled to the fleet-level by generalizing specific flights by aircraft type and route distance. Noise requires airport-level analysis because it is a local and spatial effect. Unique modeling of specific airports does not suit the rapid simplified models of a generic framework. This research discusses a process to create a set of generic airports by decoupling a subset of U.S. airports into their operational and geometric characteristic to perform grouping. The resulting models are demonstrated to provide an accurate system-level estimation of fleet-level contour area through a series of verification and validation tests. The resulting set of Generic Airports can be used to model the baseline set of airports, as well as to categorize other airports not considered for grouping.

Future air transportation demand forecasts suggest that environmental concerns such as noise will be exacerbated beyond their current level. Although detailed airport noise modeling with tools such as the integrated noise model and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Environmental Design Tool are available, these software require relatively long setup and run times due to the number of inputs available to the user and the general fidelity level of the models. A rapid, flexible, and more simplified method that reduces the input variables to a critical few and can provide results in minutes is desired to evaluate fleet-level metrics with respect to new technologies or forecasted changes in demand. Current lower-fidelity methods only calculate a change in contour area due to changes within the overall fleet composition. These methods cannot account for the shape of the contour. This paper presents a rapid airport noise computation model that leverages the fidelity of detailed models. By performing...

BackgroundOur previous studies demonstrated that growth and migration of medulloblastoma (MB), the most common malignant brain tumor in children, are stimulated by 17β-estradiol. The growth stimulating effects of estrogens are mediated through ERβ and insulin-like growth factor 1 signaling to inhibit caspase 3 activity and reduce tumor cell apoptosis. The objective of this study was to determine whether estrogens decreased sensitivity of MB cells to cytotoxic actions of chemotherapeutic drugs.MethodsUsing in vitro cell viability and clonogenic survival assays, concentration response analysis was used to determine whether the cytoprotective effects of estradiol protected human D283 Med MB cells from the cytotoxic actions of the MB chemotherapeutic drugs cisplatin, vincristine, or lomustine. Additional experiments were done to determine whether the ER antagonist fulvestrant or the selective ER modulator tamoxifen blocked the cytoprotective actions of estradiol. ER-selective agonists and antagonists were used to define receptor specificity, and the impacts of the soy-derived phytoestrogens genistein, daidzein, and s-equol on chemosensitivity were evaluated.ResultsIn D283 Med cells the presence of 10 nM estradiol increased the IC50 for cisplatin-induced inhibition of viability 2-fold from ~5 μM to >10 μM. In clonogenic survival assays estradiol decreased the chemosensitivity of D283 Med exposed to cisplatin, lomustine and vincristine. The ERβ selective agonist DPN and low physiological concentrations of the soy-derived phytoestrogens genistein, daidzein, and s-equol also decreased sensitivity of D283 Med cells to cisplatin. The protective effects of estradiol were blocked by the antiestrogens 4-hydroxytamoxifen, fulvestrant (ICI 182,780) and the ERβ selective antagonist PPHTP. Whereas estradiol also decreased chemosensitivity of PFSK1 cells, estradiol increased sensitivity of Daoy cell to cisplatin, suggesting that ERβ mediated effects may vary in different subtypes of MB.ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate that E2 and environmental estrogens decrease sensitivity of MB to cytotoxic chemotherapeutics, and that ERβ selective and non-selective inhibition of estrogen receptor activity blocks these cytoprotective actions. These findings support the therapeutic potential of antiestrogen adjuvant therapies for MB, and findings that soy phytoestrogens also decrease sensitivity of MB cells to cytotoxic chemotherapeutics suggest that decreased exposure to environmental estrogens may benefit MB patient responses to chemotherapy.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is considered the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome. The more clinically concerning form of the disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), is characterized by steatosis, lobular inflammation, and ballooning degeneration. Here we describe a naturally occurring syndrome in the common marmoset that recapitulates the pathologic findings associated with NAFLD/NASH in humans. Hepatomegaly determined to result from NAFLD was observed in 33 of 183 marmosets. A comprehensive histopathologic assessment performed in 31 marmosets demonstrated that NAFLD was characterized by variably sized, Oil Red O staining cytoplasmic vacuoles and observed primarily in animals with evidence of obesity and insulin resistance. A subset of marmosets (16 of 31) also demonstrated evidence of NASH characterized by multifocal inflammation combined with ballooning hepatocellular degeneration. Marmosets with NASH demonstrated an increase in immunostaining with an antibody targeted against the human leukocyte antigens (HLA)–DP, HLA-DQ, and HLA-DR compared with marmosets without NASH (38.89 cells/10× field vs 12.05 cells/10× field, P = .05). In addition, marmosets with NASH demonstrated increased Ki-67 immunopositive cellular proliferation compared with those without (5.95 cells/10× field vs 1.53 cells/10× field, P = .0002). Finally, animals with NASH demonstrated significantly increased mean circulating serum iron levels (160.47 μg/dl, P = .008) and an increase in numbers of Prussian blue–positive Kupffer cells (9.28 cells/40× field, P = .005) relative to marmosets without NASH (97.75 μg/dl and 1.87 cells/40×, respectively). This study further characterizes the histopathology of NAFLD/NASH and suggests that the marmoset may be a valuable animal model with which to investigate the host and environmental factors contributing to the progression of NAFLD/ NASH.

To mitigate aviation CO2 emissions, the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection is considering an aircraft CO2 emissions certification requirement. This paper presents an evaluation of potential CO2 metric systems for their suitability as a basis for an aircraft CO2 certification requirement. Candidate CO2 metric systems, consisting of a metric, a correlating parameter, evaluation conditions, and a notional limit line are assessed against a set of key criteria. The metric systems were chosen to reflect aircraft fuel consumption, which directly correlates with CO2 emissions for a given fuel type. Key criteria were identified to represent desirable attributes of the metric system, that is the ability to represent fuel efficiency performance improvements, validity across a range of aircraft types, correlation with fuel efficiency in actual operations, fairness across stakeholders, ease of measurement, and robustness against unintended consequences. The analy...

Objective Our objective was to investigate the role of bile acids in hepatic steatosis reduction after vertical sleeve gastrectomy (VSG). Design and Methods High fat diet (HFD)-induced obese C57Bl/6 mice were randomized to VSG, Sham operation (Sham), Sham operation with pair feeding to VSG (Sham-PF), or nonsurgical controls (Naive). All mice were on HFD until sacrifice. Mice were observed postsurgery and data for body weight, body composition, metabolic parameters, serum bile acid level and composition were collected. Further hepatic gene expression by mRNA-seq and RT-PCR analysis was assessed. Results VSG and Sham-PF mice lost equal weight postsurgery while VSG mice had the lowest hepatic triglyceride content at sacrifice. The VSG mice had elevated serum bile acid levels that positively correlated with maximal weight loss. Serum bile composition in the VSG group had increased cholic and tauroursodeoxycholic acid. These bile acid composition changes in VSG mice explained observed downregulation of hepatic lipogenic and bile acid synthetic genes. Conclusion VSG in obese mice results in greater hepatic steatosis reduction than seen with caloric restriction alone. VSG surgery increases serum bile acids that correlate with weight lost postsurgery and changes serum bile composition that could explain suppression of hepatic genes responsible for lipogenesis.

Bariatric surgery elevates serum bile acids. Conjugated bile acid administration, such as tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA), improves insulin sensitivity, whereas short-circuiting bile acid circulation through ileal interposition surgery in rats raises TUDCA levels. We hypothesized that bariatric surgery outcomes could be recapitulated by short circuiting the normal enterohepatic bile circulation. We established a model wherein male obese rats underwent either bile diversion (BD) or Sham (SH) surgery. The BD group had a catheter inserted into the common bile duct and its distal end anchored into the middistal jejunum for 4–5 weeks. Glucose tolerance, insulin and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) response, hepatic steatosis, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress were measured. Rats post-BD lost significantly more weight than the SH rats. BD rats gained less fat mass after surgery. BD rats had improved glucose tolerance, increased higher postprandial glucagon-like peptide-1 response and serum bile acids but less liver steatosis. Serum bile acid levels including TUDCA concentrations were higher in BD compared to SH pair-fed rats. Fecal bile acid levels were not different. Liver ER stress (C/EBP homologous protein mRNA and pJNK protein) was decreased in BD rats. Bile acid gavage (TUDCA/ursodeoxycholic acid [UDCA]) in diet-induced obese rats, elevated serum TUDCA and concomitantly reduced hepatic steatosis and ER stress (C/EBP homologous protein mRNA). These data demonstrate the ability of alterations in bile acids to recapitulate important metabolic improvements seen after bariatric surgery. Further, our work establishes a model for focused study of bile acids in the context of bariatric surgery that may lead to the identification of therapeutics for metabolic disease.

such as the ones encountered during takeoff and approach. This method is for rapid prototyping during the conceptual design stage with a goal to predict the performance or the change of lift coefficient within 5–10% of accuracy. This method includes three parts: an alternate approach for estimating jet speed without assuming the jet staticpressureattheexit,anempiricalapproachforestimatingtheliftcoefficientsofcirculation-controlairfoils,and a lifting-line theory for estimating wing-lift curves based on the airfoil-lift data. The validation against the windtunnel test data available for a modified Intruder A-6 aircraft with a circulation-control wing was deemed

Surgical interposition of distal ileum into the proximal jejunum is a bariatric procedure that improves the metabolic syndrome. Changes in intestinal and hepatic physiology after ileal interposition (transposition) surgery (IIS) are not well understood. Our aim was to elucidate the adaptation of the interposed ileum, which we hypothesized, would lead to early bile acid reabsorption in the interposed ileum, thus short circuiting enterohepatic bile acid recycling to more proximal bowel segments. Rats with diet-induced obesity were randomized to IIS, with 10 cm of ileum repositioned distal to the duodenum, or sham surgery. A subgroup of sham rats was pair-fed to IIS rats. Physiological parameters were measured until 6 wk postsurgery. IIS rats ate less and lost more weight for the first 2 wk postsurgery. At study completion, body weights were not different, but IIS rats had reversed components of the metabolic syndrome. The interposed ileal segment adapted to a more jejunum-like villi length, mucosal surface area, and GATA4/ILBP mRNA. The interposed segment retained capacity for bile acid reabsorption and anorectic hormone secretion with the presence of ASBT and glucagon-like-peptide-1-positive cells in the villi. IIS rats had reduced primary bile acid levels in the proximal intestinal tract and higher primary bile acid levels in the serum, suggesting an early and efficient reabsorption of primary bile acids. IIS rats also had increased taurine and glycine-conjugated serum bile acids and reduced fecal bile acid loss. There was decreased hepatic Cyp27A1 mRNA with no changes in hepatic FXR, SHP, or NTCP expression. IIS protects against the metabolic syndrome through short-circuiting enterohepatic bile acid recycling. There is early reabsorption of primary bile acids despite selective “jejunization” of the interposed ileal segment. Changes in serum bile acids or bile acid enterohepatic recycling may mediate the metabolic benefits seen after bariatric surgery.