Jetzt geht es ins All. Die NASA sucht iOS-Entwickler, die eine Food-Intake-Tracker-App für das iPad entwickeln können, um die Ernährung der Astronauten auf der ISS zu dokumentieren. Dazu hat die NASA mit Topcoder einen Programmierwettbewerb für die App angekündigt.
Da im All keine Erdanziehungskraft herrscht, werden auch wenige Muskelgruppen beansprucht, wodurch es zu Muskelschwund und weiteren gesundheitlichen Problemen kommen kann. Um dem gegenzuwirken, müssen die Astronauten genug Kalorien zu sich nehmen. Der Food-Intake-Tracker soll abspeichern, was gegessen wurde und dementsprechend Empfehlungen wurde die nächste Mahlzeit geben. Derzeit verwendet die NASA noch den „Food Frequency“-Fragebogen, den die Astronauten jede Woche ausfüllen müssen, doch mit der iPad-App möchte man das alles erleichtern.
Natürlich hat die NASA besondere Anforderung für die App:
- Must be an iOS App to work on an iPad.
- The App that will capture accurate dietary intake in an efficient manner shall not take more than 15 min per week (there is room for some flexibility here), which is the current time allotment given for the FFQ.
- The 15 min data entry session will capture data for 7 days of meals, three meals per day, along with ad-hoc snacks.
- Data can be entered upon each meal, after each day, or once per week; the total accumulated time for data entry should not exceed 15 minutes per week (there is room for some flexibility here).
- The App needs to be capable of producing data that describes or shows which food items were consumed in the past week (the App does not need to convert the foods to nutrient content- we use a detailed database for obtaining nutrient data once the file is received).
- The App should associate the appropriate user with the dietary intake data (there are 3 iPads on the ISS, but they are not necessarily assigned to specific crewmembers).
- The App needs to include a timeframe over which the food was consumed. For example, if we receive diet records, we need to know if the record was from X number of days (nominally a week, but some crewmembers prefer to do this for shorter periods of time, down to a day). Preferably, a timestamp would be included when foods are consumed.
- The App should be easy to update, when new foods are flown to ISS.
- The App should output data in an Excel file with a consistent layout.
- The App should run without internet connection.
Es scheint ein interessantes Projekt zu sein und ich bin gespannt, was am Ende dabei rauskommt.
via: MacLife
