This 30 day mission will help our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. This study at our Johnson Space Center prepares us for long duration
space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.
The Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) that the crew members will be living in is one compact, science-making house. But
unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 30 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to
internet. So no checking social media kids!
The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.
The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including the same criteria for astronaut selection.
What will they be doing?
Because this mission simulates a 715-day journey to a Near-Earth asteroid, the four crew members will complete activities similar to what would happen during an outbound transit, on location at
the asteroid, and the return transit phases of a mission (just in a bit of an accelerated timeframe). This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a
delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 10 minutes each way. The crew will also perform virtual spacewalk missions once they reach their destination, where they will inspect the asteroid
and collect samples from it.
A few other details:
The crew follows a timeline that is similar to one used for the ISS crew.
They work 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday. This includes time for daily planning, conferences, meals and exercises.
They will be growing and taking care of plants and brine shrimp, which they will analyze and document.
But beware! While we do all we can to avoid crises during missions, crews need to be able to respond in the event of an emergency. The HERA crew will conduct a couple of emergency scenario
simulations, including one that will require them to maneuver through a debris field during the Earth-bound phase of the mission.
Throughout the mission, researchers will gather information about cohabitation, teamwork, team cohesion, mood, performance and overall well-being. The crew members will be tracked by numerous
devices that each capture different types of data.
Past HERA crew members wore a sensor that recorded heart rate, distance, motion and sound intensity. When crew members were
working together, the sensor would also record their proximity as well, helping investigators learn about team cohesion.
Researchers also learned about how crew members react to stress by recording and analyzing verbal interactions and by analyzing “markers” in blood and saliva samples.
In total, this mission will include 19 individual investigations across key human research elements. From psychological to physiological experiments, the crew members will help prepare us for
future missions.
This 30 day mission will help our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. This study at our Johnson Space Center prepares us for long duration
space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.
The Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) that the crew members will be living in is one compact, science-making house. But
unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 30 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to
internet. So no checking social media kids!
The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.
The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including the same criteria for astronaut selection.
What will they be doing?
Because this mission simulates a 715-day journey to a Near-Earth asteroid, the four crew members will complete activities similar to what would happen during an outbound transit, on location at
the asteroid, and the return transit phases of a mission (just in a bit of an accelerated timeframe). This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a
delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 10 minutes each way. The crew will also perform virtual spacewalk missions once they reach their destination, where they will inspect the asteroid
and collect samples from it.
A few other details:
The crew follows a timeline that is similar to one used for the ISS crew.
They work 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday. This includes time for daily planning, conferences, meals and exercises.
They will be growing and taking care of plants and brine shrimp, which they will analyze and document.
But beware! While we do all we can to avoid crises during missions, crews need to be able to respond in the event of an emergency. The HERA crew will conduct a couple of emergency scenario
simulations, including one that will require them to maneuver through a debris field during the Earth-bound phase of the mission.
Throughout the mission, researchers will gather information about cohabitation, teamwork, team cohesion, mood, performance and overall well-being. The crew members will be tracked by numerous
devices that each capture different types of data.
Past HERA crew members wore a sensor that recorded heart rate, distance, motion and sound intensity. When crew members were
working together, the sensor would also record their proximity as well, helping investigators learn about team cohesion.
Researchers also learned about how crew members react to stress by recording and analyzing verbal interactions and by analyzing “markers” in blood and saliva samples.
In total, this mission will include 19 individual investigations across key human research elements. From psychological to physiological experiments, the crew members will help prepare us for
future missions.
“One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. … The overall
conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.” Wow, that sounds like almost
reasonable and understandable copyright law.
2009 Aug 12, 8:08"In a formal academic paper, every claim is referenced to another academic paper... This convention gives us an opportunity to study how ideas spread, and myths grow, because in theory you could
trace who references what, and how, to see an entire belief system evolve from the original data."sciencememeresearchhealthmedicineben-goldacrenetworkgraph
2009 Jul 6, 2:06"Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pate or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst... Although 72%
of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste... subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food."humorsciencestatisticsfoodcultureresearchstudypaper
2008 Oct 10, 3:35Apparently thanks to the Open House Project, US legislation can now have real and permanent links. I'm kind of surprised that legislation would exist so freely on the Internet without real links. The
Open House Project is "a collaborative effort by government and legislative information experts, congressional staff, non-profit organizers and bloggers to study how the House of Representatives
currently integrates the Internet into its operations, and to suggest attainable reforms to promote public access to its work and members."interneturllinkuripolitics
2008 May 19, 11:46Museum of fraudulent art. "Instead of being destroyed, as they were in the past, the fraudulent pieces will live to see another day in the Museum of Fakes, established in 1991 as part of the
University of Salerno's Center for the Study of Forgery."artmuseumfraudvia:boingboing
2008 Feb 18, 3:05A case study on the origins of a humorous mistranslation. FTA: "The really weird ones are apparently from dictionary look-up errors ... not just taking an unlikely choice from the correct entry, but
actually reading a different (but nearby) entry."humorlanguageblogarticletranslatemistranslationlanguagelog
2007 Oct 12, 3:20And now to fit in better with the rest of the emo kids on LJ, in no particular order here are some reasons why I feel old:
I've attended friends weddings sorted chronologically by when I met them: Lucas from high school, followed by Carissa from college,
and then Palak from Microsoft.
I rarely get carded for alcohol.
Jon's moving to Germany soon -- this time permanently. He's already started the process of getting rid of possessions he's not taking with him like his car and TV. However, after doing so he
couldn't maintain his smug "I don't even own a TV" attitude and ended up trading me my small CRT TV (as
mentioned previously) for his DDR pads and games. A good trade for both since we were each looking to dump these items. So far I've only
convinced Sarah to try DDR once with me. Somehow I've gotten much worse at something I wasn't that great at to begin with.
I have business cards.
I still have semi-monthly nightmares in which I'm taking a Linear Algebra course for which I haven't studied or done homework in years. This differs from the more frequent nightmares I had
immediately after finishing that series of classes in which I was taking the final and it was all on the one topic I didn't study. In reality, the prof. had done his PhD work on this one topic and
I, correctly betting it wouldn't appear on the final, didn't study it. Apparently this was a traumatic bet for me to make given the wake of destruction left on my dreams.
I have to remind myself that 2005 was two years ago.
2007 Mar 26, 11:13Researcher watches person try to switch off robot while the robot begs them not to. Kind of messed up. Study finds people less likely to turn off robot if its agreeable and smart.videohumorairobotrobots
2006 Nov 27, 2:15Public bodies are by far the largest producers of information in Europe. This information is recognised as a major, but so far under-exploited asset, which could and should be a fundamental building
block of the ‘new economy’ in the Information Socistudyeconomicseuropepublic-domaininformationgovernmentread
2003 Feb 12, 1:35After much insisting and assisting from Jessica, I have a Live Journal account. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to make it look respectable and add in more friends. Thanks for the code and
suggestions Jessica. This morning, I ran around collecting various forms from a plethora of offices in an attempt to figure out how to graduate. I had a modicum of success and I'm fairly happy, but
all this thinking about the future has left me feeling tired and little time to study for Chemistry, or, as I refer to it, the class I hope I don't have to take next quarter. Speaking of which, I
really should get back to that. Or maybe I'll just go to sleep.
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