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Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle made its first flight above the Kármán Line, returning safely to Earth in November 2015. At the time when this paper is being written (February 2021), the system has conducted 14 flights, including 10 with research and education payloads aboard. More than 100 payloads have exercised a wide range of capabilities and interfaces, from small cubesat-form factor student payloads to large custom payloads of nearly 100 kg. Investigations have spanned a wide range of high-altitude and microgravity research objectives, as well as raising technology readiness level (TRL) on diverse hardware. This paper summarizes New Shepard's payload missions to date, and presents standardized and custom accommodations, both in the shirtsleeve cabin and directly exposed to the space environment.

ABSTRACT As the International Space Station comes to the end of a transformative era of in-space research, NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Destinations (CLD) Program aims to catalyze a new generation of platforms with co-investment from the private sector, preventing a potential gap in research performed in LEO, while building a robust LEO economy. In this paper, we provide insight into the CLD Program focusing on Orbital Reef, describing its operational and technical characteristics as well as new opportunities it may enable. Achieving about a third of the pressurized volume of the ISS with the launch of a single pressurized module and growing to support hundreds of Middeck Locker Equivalents (MLE) in passive and active payloads internally and externally, Orbital Reef will enable government, academic, and commercial institutions to continue and expand upon research and development (R&D) efforts currently performed on ISS. Additionally, it will enable nascent markets to establish their operations in space, by initiating new lines of research and technology development and the implementation of new ventures and visions. Using Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy launch system, Sierra Space’s cargo and crew Dream Chaser® vehicles, and Boeing’s Starliner crew vehicle, and expertise from Amazon/Amazon Supply Chain, Arizona State University, Genesis Engineering, and Redwire, Orbital Reef is being designed to address ISS-era transportation logistics challenges. Finally, this manuscript describes some of the expected challenges from the ISS-to-CLD transition, and provides guidance on how researchers in academia and industry can shape the future of commercial destinations and work performed in LEO.

Pairing a clear, measurable end goal with a variety of motivators, well-designed prizes leverage the principles of competition to bring afield of solvers to bear on a given challenge. Prizes offer organizations an important tool to foster innovation and raise awareness. By setting forth a credible but challenging goal with minimal hurdles to entry, prizes rally diverse approaches around a focused agenda, supporting an entire field of innovators rather than a single solution. Perhaps most importantly, they capitalize on a deep-seated competitive drive, capturing public interest for the issue at hand through the creation of visible heroes and compelling stories. This article explores how and why prizes are most effectively used and how organizations can use competitions to enhance their R&D portfolio and engage user communities by embracing diverse risk-takers and investors.

Nonverbal communication habitually leaks out in ways that expose underlying thoughts, true feelings, and integrity of a counterpart. Social cognition is deficient in a wide range of mental disorders, including schizophrenia (SZ). Inferring social signals through the eyes is pivotal for social interaction but remains poorly investigated. The present work aims to fill this gap by examining whether and, if so, how reading language of the eyes is altered in SZ. We focused on male SZ, primarily because the disorder manifests a gender-specific profile. Patients and matched typically developing (TD) individuals were administered the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test-Modified (RMET-M) and Emotions in Masked Faces (EMF) task that provide comparable visual information. The findings indicate that in SZ, the emotion recognition profile is similar to TD, with a more accurate recognition of some emotions such as fear, neutral expressions, and happiness than the others (sadness and disgust). In SZ, however, this profile is shifted down: all emotions are recognized less accurately than in TD. On the RMET-M, patients are also less precise, albeit they perform better on items with positive valence. In SZ only, recognition accuracy on both tasks is tightly linked to each other. The outcome reveals global challenges for males with SZ in inferring social information in the eyes and calls for remediation programs to shape social cognition. This work offers novel insights into the profiles of social cognitive deficits in mental disorders that differ in their gender prevalence.

OVERVIEW: Pairing a clear, measurable end goal with a variety of motivators, well-designed prizes leverage the principles of competition to bring afield of solvers to bear on a given challenge. Prizes offer organizations an important tool to foster innovation and raise awareness. By setting forth a credible but challenging goal with minimal hurdles to entry, prizes rally diverse approaches around a focused agenda, supporting an entire field of innovators rather than a single solution. Perhaps most importantly, they capitalize on a deep-seated competitive drive, capturing public interest for the issue at hand through the creation of visible heroes and compelling stories. This article explores how and why prizes are most effectively used and how organizations can use competitions to enhance their R&D portfolio and engage user communities by embracing diverse risk-takers and investors.

We used microPET to map the dose–response to the novel P-glycoprotein (P-gp) inhibitor tariquidar (TQD) of the initial influx of the P-gp substrate [18F]-MPPF in rat brain, and to test for effects of P-gp inhibition on the subsequent binding of [18F]-MPPF to serotonin 5-HT1A receptors. Summation maps of [18F]-MPPF uptake during the first 100 seconds after intravenous injection were calculated in groups of rats with vehicle (glucose 5%) pretreatment, or following pretreatment with TQD at doses of 5, 15, or 30 mg/kg. The early summation image (K1-weighted), were validated as a surrogate marker for the physiological blood–brain clearance (K1; ml g−1 min−1) by linear graphic analysis of the unidirectional blood–brain clearance relative to an image-based arterial input measured in the left ventricle of the heart. In the same animals, parametric maps of the [18F]-MPPF binding potential (BPND) were calculated from the entire 60-minute emission recordings using conventional reference tissue methods. All [18F]-MPPF recordings were followed by an [18F]-FDG emission recording, the summation of which was used for spatial normalization to a rat brain atlas. Test–retest variability of K1-weighted uptake and BPND was 25%. TQD treatment evoked a global dose-dependent increase in K1-weighted summation, which increased 2.5-fold with TQD (30 mg/kg), suggesting an IC50 of 5 mg/kg TQD. All TQD doses increased the apparent [18F]-MPPF BPND calculated by the Logan method by 30%–40%, a bias likely arising due to increased free [18F]-MPPF concentrations in brain. TQD (15 mg/kg) evoked a 45% global increase in [18F]-FDG uptake, suggesting perturbation of brain energy metabolism due to P-gp blockade.

En Colombia se han propuesto numerosas iniciativas para la erradicación de los cultivos de uso ilícito sin traer consigo una solución definitiva. Se examina la ejecución del Programa Nacional Integral de Sustitución de cultivos de uso ilícito desde su implementación en 2019 en los municipios de La Montañita y Puerto Rico en Caquetá a través de encuestas analizadas descriptivamente y entrevistas semiestructuradas codificadas con el software libre QDA Miner lite®. En estas, se buscó entender las complejidades de su implementación desde las particularidades de los equipos técnicos agropecuarios, las condiciones del Plan de Atención Inmediata, el desarrollo agropecuario y encadenamiento productivo dando elementos para reflexionar sobre enfoques de implementación y el potencial transformador del acompañamiento agropecuario a la luz del Sistema Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria.  

Even the most successful companies have trouble developing breakthroughs. R&D programs are effective at accelerating progress in known areas, but they aren't good at spotting new opportunities outside of a company's experience base and tend to be biased in favor of innovations that reinforce existing business models. Increasingly, however, companies are discovering that many of the best ideas lie outside their organizations, with innovators who possess wide-ranging skills and knowledge. To discover and attract these contributors, organizations are launching competitions and offering prizes. As the authors point out, innovation competitions generate numerous ideas at once. And while many of the ideas wont outperform the status quo (or the efforts of a highly focused internal team), it only takes one outlier to open up a new direction. As companies such as Netflix and Progressive Insurance have found, competitions have the ability to leverage the entire ecosystem of potential innovators, with the sponsoring organization paying only for the best (in other words, winning) solution. Competitions generate diversity in three critical inputs to the innovation process: motivations, participants and organizations. This diversity generates a wider variety and greater number of solutions to any given problem. Diverse Motivations In many challenges, competitors in their aggregate (and sometimes individually) spend far more money than the competition prize purse. Although the authors say that competitors systematically overestimate their chances of winning, this doesn't fully explain the over-allocation of effort in relation to expected returns. Indeed, when the authors surveyed the entrants to the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize about their motivations, winning the prize ranked only fifth, trailing behind the desire to gain publicity, enhance their reputation and address environmental concerns. Different motivations attract different types of participants, many of whom might not otherwise think of devoting their skills and attention to a challenge. This dynamic is powerful because in many situations it is impossible to predict who will have the best ideas, or what combination of skills will best solve a problem. In fact, research shows that the best solutions often come from outside the field of expertise in which a solution is expected to reside.

Purpose This study investigates the effects of 111 In-oxine incorporation on human mesenchymal stem cells’ (hMSC) biology and viability, and the applicability of 111 In-oxine for single-photon emission computed tomography/X-ray computed tomography (SPECT/CT) monitoring of hMSC in vivo . Procedures HMSC were labelled with 10 Bq/cell. Cellular retention of radioactivity, cell survival, and migration were evaluated over 48 h. Metabolic activity was assessed over 14 days and the hMSC’s stem cell character was evaluated. Serial SPECT/CT was performed after intra-osseous injection to athymic rats over 48 h. Results Labelling efficiency was 25%, with 61% of incorporated 111 In remaining in the hMSC at 48 h. The radiolabelling was without effect on cell viability, stem cell character, and plasticity, whereas metabolic activity and migration were significantly reduced. Grafted cells could be imaged in situ with SPECT/CT. Conclusions 111 In-oxine labelling moderately impaired hMSC’s functional integrity while preserving their stem cell character. Combined SPECT/CT imaging of 111 In-oxine-labelled hMSC opens the possibility for non-invasive sequential monitoring of therapeutic stem cells.