The DRACO Door: Design, Test, and Integration of the Mechanism on the DART Spacecraft

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is NASA's first planetary defense mission to demonstrate the viability of kinetically impacting an asteroid and deflecting its trajectory. The DART spacecraft successfully launched on November 24, 2021 from the Vandenberg Space Force Base and successfully made impact on Dimorphos, the smaller asteroid in the Didymos system, on September 26, 2022. The DART spacecraft has one instrument called Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO). DRACO is an imaging telescope that, in conjunction with the SMART Navigation algorithm, autonomously guided the DART spacecraft to the asteroid. Because DRACO is a mission critical and light sensitive instrument, the DRACO Door mechanism was designed as the protective cover. The door functions to shield DRACO from stray light during launch, to deploy in space once when commanded, and to stay 180 degrees open for the duration of the mission. The DRACO Door went through several iterations during the design phase with decisions on various components such as Frangibolts ®, torsion springs, hardstops, and latches. After fabrication and assembly, the door went through a rigorous environmental testing plan, which included deployment testing, vibration testing, and thermal vacuum testing. After successful qualification of the mechanism, the door was installed and integrated into the DART spacecraft. It should be noted that during the fabrication of the mechanism piece-parts, the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the effects of the pandemic were seen in the challenges faced during the DRACO door assembly and testing. Under the constraints of the pandemic, the DART spacecraft was successfully built, tested, and launched, and the DRACO door was successfully deployed on December 7, 2021. The door has continued to function as intended. This paper will discuss the design choices behind the door components, the environmental qualification test program, and the installation of the door onto the DART spacecraft. In addition, this paper will discuss the lessons learned and the challenges of fabricating and testing the flight hardware. © 2023 IEEE.

Ecoprogramming the Vulnerable Bodies

This chapter argues that discourses on human vulnerability embedded in the extreme living conditions, such as the one that the world witnessed in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, can recalibrate the social semiotics of ecology, bringing as they do environmental awareness as a condition of planetary habitability. This chapter suggests that extreme conditions require transformative measures for healing and survival of humans and the ecology. The chapter goes on to show that such transformations can revive and position interconnectedness as a new way of life, resulting in the creation of an "ecotopian world”-a term used by Mayerson and Bellamy (An Ecotopian Lexicon. University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 2019). It will use the theoretical framework of vulnerability to examine the crisis of human civilization and, in so doing, it will draw from literary readings from different cultures and knowledge traditions to reflect on a possible ecotopian world. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Impacts, Learner Diversity, and Curricular Framework of a Virtual Global Health Elective Catalyzed by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: Place-based international electives that build global health competencies have existed for decades. However, these electives require travel and are infeasible for many trainees around the world, particularly those with insufficient financial resources, logistical complexities, or visa limitations. The emergence of virtual approaches to global health electives, catalyzed by the travel pause related to the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitates the exploration of learner impacts, participant diversity, and curricular frameworks. Child Family Health International (CFHI), a non-profit global health education organization that partners with universities to expand immersive educational offerings, launched a virtual global health elective in 2021. The elective drew on faculty from Bolivia, Ecuador, Ghana, Mexico, the Philippines, Uganda, and the United States. Objective: This study aimed to describe a newly developed virtual global health elective curriculum and evaluate the demographics of and impacts on trainee participants. Methods: Eighty-two trainees who were enrolled in the virtual global health elective from January to May 2021 completed both 1) pre- and post-elective self-assessments of domains of competency mapped to the elective curriculum and 2) free text responses to standardized questions. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistical analysis, paired t-testing, and qualitative thematic analysis. Findings: The virtual global health elective had 40% of its participants hail from countries other than the United States. Self-reported competency in global health broadly, planetary health, low resource clinical reasoning, and overall composite competency significantly increased. Qualitative analysis revealed learner development in health systems, social determinants of health, critical thinking, planetary health, cultural humility, and professional practice. Conclusion: Virtual global health electives effectively develop key competencies in global health. This virtual elective had a 40-fold increase in the proportion of trainees from outside the United States, compared to pre-pandemic place-based electives. The virtual platform facilitates accessibility for learners from a variety of health professions and a wide range of geographic and socioeconomic environments. Further research is needed to confirm and expand on self-reported data, and to pursue approaches to greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in virtual frameworks.

Current Healthcare Systems in Light of Hyperendemic NCDs and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Time to Change.

Despite the significant achievements of current healthcare systems (CHCSs) in curing or treating several acute conditions, there has been far less success coping with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which have complex roots and nonconventional transmission vectors. Owing to the impact of the invisible hyperendemic NCDs and the COVID-19 pandemic, the limitations of CHCSs have been exposed. In contrast, the advent of omics-based technologies and big data science has raised global hope of curing or treating NCDs and improving overall healthcare outcomes. However, challenges related to their use and effectiveness must be addressed. Additionally, while such advancements intend to improve quality of life, they can also contribute the ever-increasing health disparity among vulnerable populations, such as low/middle-income populations, poorly educated people, gender-based violence victims, and minority and indigenous peoples, to name a few. Among five health determinants, the contribution of medical care to individual health does not exceed 11%. Therefore, it is time to implement a new well-being-oriented system complementary or parallel to CHCSs that incorporates all five health determinants to tackle NCDs and unforeseen diseases of the future, as well as to promote cost-effective, accessible, and sustainable healthy lifestyle choices that can reduce the current level of healthcare inequity.

THREE-DIMENSIONAL ANALYTICAL SOLUTION OF THE ADVECTION-DIFFUSION EQUATION FOR AIR POLLUTION DISPERSION

We develop a new analytical solution of a three-dimensional atmospheric pollutant dispersion. The main idea is to subdivide vertically the planetary boundary layer into sub-layers, where the wind speed and eddy diffusivity assume average values for each sub-layer. Basically, the model is assessed and validated using data obtained from the Copenhagen diffusion and Prairie Grass experiments. Our findings show that there is a good agreement between the predicted and observed crosswind-integrated concentrations. Moreover, the calculated statistical indices are within the range of acceptable model performance.

New Ways to Protect the Host from SARS-CoV-2? Lung Microbiome Metabolites Inhibit STAT3 and Modulate the Immunological Network.

COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 infection is a systemic disease that affects multiple organs, biological pathways, and cell types. A systems biology approach would benefit the study of COVID-19 in the pandemic as well as the endemic state. Notably, patients with COVID-19 have dysbiosis of lung microbiota whose functional relevance to the host is largely unknown. We carried out a systems biology investigation of the impact of lung microbiome-derived metabolites on host immune system during COVID-19. RNAseq was performed to identify the host-specific pro- and anti-inflammatory differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in bronchial epithelium and alveolar cells during SARS-CoV-2 infection. The overlapping DEGs were harnessed to construct an immune network while their key transcriptional regulator was deciphered. We identified 68 overlapping genes from both cell types to construct the immune network, and Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT3) was found to regulate the majority of the network proteins. Furthermore, thymidine diphosphate produced from the lung microbiome had the highest affinity with STAT3 (-6.349 kcal/mol) than the known STAT3 inhibitors (n = 410), with an affinity ranging from -5.39 to 1.31 kcal/mol. In addition, the molecular dynamic studies showed distinguishable changes in the behavior of the STAT3 complex when compared with free STAT3. Overall, our results provide new observations on the importance of lung microbiome metabolites that regulate the host immune system in patients with COVID-19, and may open up new avenues for preventive medicine and therapeutics innovation.

The role of the university in recovering from COVID-19 and preparing for future crises-perspectives and experiences from Sunway University, Malaysia.

This article is part of the Research Topic 'Health Systems Recovery in the Context of COVID-19 and Protracted Conflict'. Universities, as engines of knowledge creation and dissemination and as incubators of disciplined yet original thinking, have a key role to play in tackling the most complex challenges that societies and our planet face, from infectious diseases to the climate emergency. This commentary presents the perspectives from Sunway University, a young private university in Malaysia that made a strong commitment to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) prior to the pandemic, and its experiences in promoting research, innovation, and learning as part of COVID-19 recovery and in preparation for future crises such as the climate emergency. Some of the university's initiatives include embracing the planetary health approach, reviving essential public health functions, exploring pandemic resilience, addressing 'infodemics' and promoting science diplomacy. The example of Sunway University provides some insights on the opportunities and challenges that academic institutions face as they seek to reorient the paradigm of education, research, and service away from disciplinary siloes and towards a more integrated, preventive, accessible and translational approach.

The Founder: Dispositional Greed, Showbiz, and the Commercial Determinants of Health.

Marketing unhealthy products by multinational corporations has caused considerable harm to individual health, collective wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. This is a growing threat to all societies and a significant contributor to the rising global burden of non-communicable diseases and early mortality. While there is growing consideration of the commercial determinants of health, this is largely focused on the methods by which unhealthy products are marketed and disseminated, including efforts to manipulate policy. Little attention has been paid to the underlying psychological traits and worldviews that are driving corporate greed. Here, we consider the role of "dispositional greed" in the commercial determinants of health with a focus on the historical attitudes and culture in the ultra-processed food industry-exemplified by "The Founder" of the McDonald's franchise. We argue that greed and associated psychological constructs, such as social dominance orientation and collective narcissism, permeate the commercial determinants of health at a collective level. This includes how a culture of greed within organizations, and individual dispositional greed, can magnify and cluster at scale, perpetuated by social dominance orientation. We also consider the ways in which "showbiz" marketing specifically targets marginalized populations and vulnerable groups, including children-in ways that are justified, or even celebrated despite clear links to non-communicable diseases and increased mortality. Finally, we consider how greed and exploitative mindsets mirror cultural values and priorities, with trends for increasing collective narcissism at scale, recognizing that many of these attitudes are cultivated in early life. A healthier future will depend on navigating a path that balances material prosperity with physical and spiritual wellbeing. This will require cultural change that places higher value on kindness, reciprocity, and mutualistic values especially in early life, for more equitable flourishing.

Achieving a sustainable food supply, for good health and planetary health, a focus on the international context

Globally, diet quality is poor, with populations failing to adhere to national dietary guidelines.(1) Such failure has been consistently linked with poorer health outcomes.(2) Examples of malnutrition include both under- and over-nutrition, with overweight and obesity now a significant health problem worldwide.(3) Other commonly occurring examples of malnutrition are micronutrient deficiencies with iron, vitamin A and iodine deficiencies being the most frequently occurring globally. These nutritional challenges have been influenced by recent global world events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the related economic uncertainties;with all of these events influencing food supply and food security. Diet and health status is socio-economically patterned, and such inequalities are likely to have been enhanced as a result of these recent events. In addition to the impact of diet on health outcomes it is increasingly recognised that what we eat, and the resulting food system, has significant environmental or planetary health impacts, and research activity is growing in terms of understanding the detail of these impacts, what changes are required to reduce these impacts and also how the impact of climate change on our food supply can be mitigated. Given the complexity of the interactions between climate change, other world events, food and health, and the different actors and drivers that influence these, a systems thinking approach to capture such complexity is essential.(4) Such an approach will help address the challenges set by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals, which are a call to action to end poverty and inequality, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy health, justice and prosperity.(5) Progress against SDGs has been challenging with an ultimate target of 2030. While the scientific uncertainties regarding diet and public and planetary health need to be addressed, equal attention needs to be paid to the structures and systems, as there is a need for multi-level, coherent and sustained structural interventions and policies across the full food system/supply chain to effect behavior change. Such systems-level change must always keep nutritional status, including impact on micronutrient status, in mind. However, benefits to both population and environmental health could be expected from achieving dietary behaviour change towards more sustainable diets.

Platform Urbanization, its recent acceleration, and implications on citizenship. The case of Singapore

Digital platforms operating on a global scale (social media, commerce, services, e-government and e-management services) are increasingly critical means for communication, exchange, and daily life, even without a direct use of platforms or connected devices. Their growing ecosystem and locally specific variations increase possibilities for data collection and targeting specific user profiles. Work life has become increasingly dependent on platforms including, for example, Microsoft's power platform, Google cloud, or the Apple iOS system. But also within community services and urban development, platforms are increasingly forming a firm component that may be for submitting taxes, getting health services, reporting suspicious activities in the neighborhood, profiling a political campaign, monitoring energy performances, or providing new employment opportunities. We argue that these processes in fact describe a specific kind of urbanization that is driven and administered through the digital means of platform technologies. This process of platform urbanization imbues every aspect of the urban environment and has experienced an acceleration during the recent pandemic. This contribution introduces the concept of platform urbanization and investigates the implications on citizenship and its digital realm, followed by an attempt to expand its conception. To bolster our argument, we discuss the case of Singapore, where the monitoring and control of the virus spread expedited the nation's digitization efforts and where platform corollaries of the pandemic were seamlessly incorporated into an increasingly digital urban environment. In what follows, the last section brings about a series of questions addressing an urban digital citizenship scenario within platform urbanization as a space of empowerment, inclusion and participation. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Citizenship Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Interventions to Reduce Risk for Pathogen Spillover and Early Disease Spread to Prevent Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics.

The pathogens that cause most emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in animals, particularly wildlife, and then spill over into humans. The accelerating frequency with which humans and domestic animals encounter wildlife because of activities such as land-use change, animal husbandry, and markets and trade in live wildlife has created growing opportunities for pathogen spillover. The risk of pathogen spillover and early disease spread among domestic animals and humans, however, can be reduced by stopping the clearing and degradation of tropical and subtropical forests, improving health and economic security of communities living in emerging infectious disease hotspots, enhancing biosecurity in animal husbandry, shutting down or strictly regulating wildlife markets and trade, and expanding pathogen surveillance. We summarize expert opinions on how to implement these goals to prevent outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics.

Interspecies cosmopolitanism: Non-human power and the grounds of world order in the Anthropocene

Cosmopolitanism claims to be the most just and inclusive of mainstream approaches to the ethics and practice of world order, given its commitment to human interconnection, peace, equality, diversity, and rights, and its concern with the many globalised pathologies that entrench injustice and vulnerability across borders. Yet it has largely remained oblivious to the agency, power, and value of non-human life on a turbulent and active Earth. Without rejecting its commitments to justice for human beings, the article challenges its humanism as both morally and politically inadequate to the situation of the Anthropocene, exemplified by the simultaneous crises of climate change, mass extinction, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In answer, the article develops new grounds and principles for an interspecies cosmopolitanism, exploring how we can reimagine its ontological foundations by creating new grounding images of subjectivity, existential unity, institutional organisation, and ordering purpose. These, in turn, can support political and institutional projects to secure the rights of ecosystems and people to flourish and persist through an increasingly chaotic epoch of human dominance and multispecies vulnerability across the Anthropocene Earth.

Native microbiomes in danger: Could One Health help to cope with this threat to global health

Planetary health faces an emergency associated with global change. Climate change, the increase in world population and urban concentration, the hyperintensification of productive systems, and the associated changes in land use, among other factors, are generating a risky substrate for global health deterioration. The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is an example of the problems that this situation can provoke. Several researchers and health professionals have addressed the role of microorganisms, particularly bacteria, in promoting global health, mainly in the past decades. However, global change has contributed to the extinction of a wide array of bacterial species and the disruption of microbial communities that support the homeostasis of humans, animals, and the environment. The need to protect the diversity and richness of native microbiomes in biotic and abiotic environments is crucial but has been frequently underestimated. The "One Health" approach, based on integrating traditionally unconnected fields such as human, animal, and environmental health, could provide a helpful framework to face this challenge. Anyway, drastic political decisions will be needed to tackle this global health crisis, in which the preservation of native microbial resources plays a critical role, even in preventing the risk of a new pandemic. This review aims to explain the importance of native microbiomes in biotic and abiotic ecosystems and the need to consider bacterial extinction as a crucial problem that could be addressed under a One Health approachCopyright © Zunino

Community gardens and urban agriculture: Healthy environment/healthy citizens.

Studies are showing that urban community gardening can improve people's psychological and physiological health in myriad ways. Community gardens increase social capital, provide opportunities for altruism, and create accessible and sustainable food sources in urban environments. The purpose of this study was to explore the mental, social, and physical health benefits of participation in an urban community garden in Edmonton, Canada. A focused ethnography was conducted with surveys and semi-structured interviews. Surveys were sent to volunteers and customers of the Green and Gold Garden (GGG). This was followed by focus group interviews with eight volunteers and four customers. The interview format comprised open-ended questions that encouraged participants to share their perceptions of the health and well-being benefits from being at the GGG. Data were coded via inductive coding, and subsequently categorized into themes via an iterative, reflective process. Four health-related themes were generated from thematic analysis: physical health, social health, mental/emotional health, and connection to the global community. Spending time at the GGG improved the respondents' mental health, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they reported feelings of altruism, serenity, and connection with nature. Their social health was improved through gathering with other garden members in a sheltered urban green space within the city limits. This study supports the idea that participation in an urban community garden confers health benefits and engenders a greater awareness of, and appreciation for, the local environment and expands one's scope of care to incorporate planetary health.

Evidence of Antimicrobial Resistance in Bats and Its Planetary Health Impact for Surveillance of Zoonotic Spillover Events: A Scoping Review.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other outbreaks, such as SARS and Ebola, bats are recognized as a critical species for mediating zoonotic infectious disease spillover events. While there is a growing concern of increased antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally during this pandemic, knowledge of AMR circulating between bats and humans is limited. In this paper, we have reviewed the evidence of AMR in bats and discussed the planetary health aspect of AMR to elucidate how this is associated with the emergence, spread, and persistence of AMR at the human-animal interface. The presence of clinically significant resistant bacteria in bats and wildlife has important implications for zoonotic pandemic surveillance, disease transmission, and treatment modalities. We searched MEDLINE through PubMed and Google Scholar to retrieve relevant studies (n = 38) that provided data on resistant bacteria in bats prior to 30 September 2022. There is substantial variability in the results from studies measuring the prevalence of AMR based on geographic location, bat types, and time. We found all major groups of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria in bats, which are resistant to commonly used antibiotics. The most alarming issue is that recent studies have increasingly identified clinically significant multi-drug resistant bacteria such as Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), ESBL producing, and Colistin resistant Enterobacterales in samples from bats. This evidence of superbugs abundant in both humans and wild mammals, such as bats, could facilitate a greater understanding of which specific pathways of exposure should be targeted. We believe that these data will also facilitate future pandemic preparedness as well as global AMR containment during pandemic events and beyond.

Health beyond medicine. A planetary theory extension.

In Niklas Luhmann's vision of the modern functionally differentiated society, health presents one of the essential function systems, along with politics, law, economy and science. While he devoted much effort to elaborating the theoretical foundations of the latter function systems, his work on the health system was relatively sparse. This research gap has been rendered particularly acute by the recent COVID-19 crisis. In reconstructing and updating the Luhmannian analysis of this system, this article presents a three-dimensional concept of organic, psychic and social health and highlights the risks raised by a potential overexpansion of the health concept to the planetary level. The most important of these risks is shown to be the potential rise of totalitarian social control that exceeds classical forms of medical social control. The proposed argument not only contributes to the public criticism of the political responses to the COVID-19 crisis but also fills in some missing pieces of Luhmann's seminal elaboration of the health system.

Systems Biology of COVID-19 and Human Diseases: Beyond a Bird's Eye View, and Toward One Health.

As we gaze into the future beyond the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there is a need to rethink our priorities in planetary health, research funding, and, importantly, the concepts and unchecked assumptions by which we attempt to understand health and prevent illness. Next-generation quantitative omics technologies promise a more profound and panoptic understanding of the dynamic pathophysiological processes and their aberrations in diverse diseased conditions. Systems biology research is highly relevant for COVID-19, a systemic disease affecting multiple organs and biological pathways. In addition, expanding the concept of health beyond humans so as to capture the importance of ecosystem health and recognizing the interdependence of human, animal, and plant health are enormously relevant and timely in the current historical moment of the pandemic. Notably, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing COVID-19, can affect our body clock, and the circadian aspects of this viral infection and host immunity need to be considered for its effective clinical management. Finally, we need to rethink and expand beyond the false binaries such as humans versus nature, and deploy multiomics systems biology research if we intend to design effective, innovative, and socioecological planetary health interventions to prevent future pandemics and ecological crises. We argue here that juxtaposing ecology and human health sciences scholarship is one of the key emerging tenets of 21st-century integrative biology.

Current research and future directions for realizing the ideal One-Health approach: A summary of key-informant interviews in Japan and a literature review.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of the One Health (OH) approach, which considers the health of humans, animals, and the environment in preventing future pandemics. A wide range of sustainable interdisciplinary collaborations are required to truly fulfill the purpose of the OH approach. It is well-recognized, however, that such collaborations are challenging. In this study, we undertook key-informant interviews with a panel of stakeholders from Japan to identify their perceived needs and challenges related to OH research. This panel included scientists, government officials, journalists, and industry stakeholders. By combining a thematic analysis of these interviews and a literature review, we summarized two key themes pertinent to the effective implementation of OH research: types of required research and systems to support that research. As a technological issue, interviewees suggested the importance of research and development of methodologies that can promote the integration and collaboration of research fields that are currently fragmented. An example of such a methodology would allow researchers to obtain high-resolution metadata (e.g. ecological and wildlife data) with high throughput and then maximize the use of the obtained metadata in research, such as in environmental DNA analysis, database construction, or the use of computational algorithms to find novel viral genomes. In terms of systems surrounding OH research, some interviewees stressed the importance of creating a sustainable research system, such as one that has continuous budget support and allows researchers to pursue their academic careers and interests. These perceptions and challenges held by Japanese stakeholders may be common to others around the world. We hope this review will encourage more researchers and others to work together to create a resilient society against future pandemics.

Planetary defense: The communication challenge-Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

As impact events are known to have had severe effects on the geological and biological evolution of the Earth, the need to detect potentially hazardous objects that might collide with the Earth, and to possibly protect our planet from asteroid impacts, has been recognized in recent years. Planetary defense covers human activities to address potential impacts of Near-Earth Objects on Earth. Once the immediate threat of such an impact is obvious, this fact, along with the intended countermeasures, will have to be communicated to the public. There is a parallel to the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) situation: an imminent threat and the required response are being communicated. Reactions between acceptance and cooperation all the way to denial, conspiracy theories, fake news, and active opposition can be observed. It is evident that these factors will have to be considered in the strategy for communicating the asteroid threat. © 2022 The Geological Society of America.