The Saturnian moon Enceladus with its extensive water bodies underneath a thick ice sheet cover is a potential candidate for extraterrestrial life. Direct exploration of such extraterrestrial aquatic ...ecosystems requires advanced access and sampling technologies with a high level of autonomy. A new technological approach has been developed as part of the collaborative research project Enceladus Explorer (EnEx). The concept is based upon a minimally invasive melting probe called the IceMole. The force-regulated, heater-controlled IceMole is able to travel along a curved trajectory as well as upwards. Hence, it allows maneuvers which may be necessary for obstacle avoidance or target selection. Maneuverability, however, necessitates a sophisticated on-board navigation system capable of autonomous operations. The development of such a navigational system has been the focal part of the EnEx project. The original IceMole has been further developed to include relative positioning based on in-ice attitude determination, acoustic positioning, ultrasonic obstacle and target detection integrated through a high-level sensor fusion. This paper describes the EnEx technology and discusses implications for an actual extraterrestrial mission concept.
•The IceMole concept allows oblique melting trajectories and changing the melting direction.•Trilateration of acoustic signals yields the probe's absolute in-ice position.•Combined inertial and magnetometer data allow to track relative changes in attitude and position.•Acoustic reconnaissance provides information about the ice structure in the probe's fore-field.•Multi-sensor fusion combines all available data and provides decision support for the operator.
The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment will measure the mass of the neutrino with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV (90 % CL). The Forward Beam Monitor (FBM) is a monitoring system which comprises ...of a complex mechanical setup capable of inserting a detector board into the KATRIN beamline at the end of the source and transport section. The detector board contains a Hall sensor, a temperature gauge, and two PIN diodes which can detect electrons from the source with a precision of 0.1 % in less than a minute within an electron flux density of 106 s−1mm−2.
Large-scale collaborative research will be a hallmark of future psychiatric genetic research. Ideally, both academic and non-academic institutions should be able to participate in such collaborations ...to allow for the establishment of very large samples in a straightforward manner. Any such endeavor requires an easy-to-implement information technology (IT) framework. Here we present the requirements for a centralized framework and describe how they can be met through a modular IT toolbox.
Summary
Objective:
Data from clinical care is increasingly being used for research purposes. The i2b2 platform has been introduced in some US research communities as a tool for data integration and ...querying by clinical users. The purpose of this project was to assess the applicability of i2b2 in Germany regarding use cases, functionality and integration with privacy enhancing tools.
Methods:
A set of four research usage scenarios was chosen, including the transformation and import of ontology and fact data from existing clinical data collections into i2b2 v1.4 instances. Query performance was measured in comparison to native SQL queries. A setup and administration tool for i2b2 was developed. An extraction tool for CDISC ODM data was programmed. Interfaces for the TMF privacy enhancing tools (PID Generator, Pseudonymization Service) were implemented.
Results:
Data could be imported in all tested scenarios from various source systems, including the generation of i2b2 ontology definitions. The integration of TMF privacy enhancing tools was possible without modification of the platform. Limitations were found regarding query performance in comparison to native SQL and certain temporal queries.
Conclusions:
i2b2 is a viable platform for data query tasks in use cases typical for networked medical research in Germany. The integration of privacy enhancing tools facilitates the use of i2b2 within established data protection concepts. Entry barriers should be lowered by providing tools for simplified setup and import of medical standard formats like CDISC ODM.
Design and performance of the South Pole Acoustic Test Setup Abdou, Y.; Becker, K.-H.; Berdermann, J. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
08/2012, Volume:
683
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS) was built to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of the South Pole ice in the 10–100kHz frequency range, for the purpose of assessing the feasibility of ...an acoustic neutrino detection array at the South Pole. The SPATS hardware consists of four vertical strings deployed in the upper 500m of the South Pole ice cap. The strings form a trapezoidal array with a maximum baseline of 543m. Each string has seven stages equipped with one transmitter and one sensor module (glaciophone). Sound is detected or generated by piezoelectric ceramic elements inside the modules. Analogue signals are sent to the surface on electric cables where they are digitized by a PC-based data acquisition system. The data from all strings are collected on a central computer in the IceCube Laboratory from where they are sent to a central data storage facility via a satellite link or stored locally on tape. A technical overview of SPATS and its performance is presented.
The data protection requirements matured in parallel to new clinical tests generating more personal data since the 1960s. About ten years ago it was recognized that a generic data protection scheme ...for medical research networks is required, which reinforces patient rights but also allows economically feasible medical research compared to "hand-carved" individual solutions.
To give recommendations for more efficient IT infrastructures for medical research networks in compliance with data protection requirements.
The IT infrastructures of three medical research networks were reviewed with respect to the relevant data management modules. Recommendations are derived to increase cost efficiency in research networks assessing the consequences of a service provider approach without lowering the data protection level.
The existing data protection schemes are very complex. Smaller research networks cannot afford the implementation of such schemes. Larger networks struggle to keep them sustainable. Due to a modular redesign in the medical research network community, a new approach offers opportunities for an efficient sustainable IT infrastructure involving a service provider concept. For standard components 70-80% of the costs could be cut down, for open source components about 37% over a three-year period.
Future research networks should switch to a service-oriented approach to achieve a sustainable, cost-efficient IT infrastructure.
Core elements of such toolbox are a) the Phenotype tool, in which clinical data such as psychiatric rating scales and psychological tests are stored, b) the Biomaterial tool, which manages ...biospecimens such as blood and other bodily material and c) the Identity & Pseudonym tool, which holds all identifying data of a participant (name, age, etc.), ensuring secure storage of sensitive personal data in accordance with laws on data protection.
To verify the fundamental Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) sum rule for the first time experimentally, we measured the helicity dependent total photoabsorption cross section with circularly polarized real ...photons and longitudinally polarized nucleons in the photon energy range 0.68-1.82 GeV with the tagged photon facility at ELSA. The experiment was carried out with a 4pi detection system, a circularly polarized tagged photon beam, and a frozen spin polarized proton target. The contribution to the GDH sum rule in this photon energy range is 49.9+/-2.4(stat)+/-2.2(syst) mub.
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