Using Bi-Weekly Surveys to Portray Adolescent Partnership Dynamics: Lessons From a Mobile Diary Study.

Partnership formation is an important developmental task for adolescents, but cross-sectional and periodic longitudinal studies have lacked the measurement precision to portray partnership stability and flux and to capture the range of adolescent partnership experiences. This article assesses the promises and challenges of using bi-weekly mobile diaries administered over the course of a year to study adolescent partnership dynamics. Descriptive findings illustrate the potential of bi-weekly diaries for both capturing the longitudinal complexity and fluidity of adolescent partnerships as well as for reducing retrospection biases. Results also underscore several challenges, including those posed by missing data, and highlight several strategies for maximizing participant engagement and reliably tracing adolescent partnerships

Plant Growth Experiments in Zeoponic Substrates: Applications for Advanced Life Support Systems

A zeoponic plant-growth system is defined as the cultivation of plants in artificial soils, which have zeolites as a major component (Allen and Ming, 1995). Zeolites are crystalline, hydrated aluminosilicate minerals that have the ability to exchange constituent cations without major change of the mineral structure. Recently, zeoponic systems developed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) slowly release some (Allen et at., 1995) or all of the essential plant-growth nutrients (Ming et at., 1995). These systems have NH4- and K-exchanged clinoptilolite (a natural zeolite) and either natural or synthetic apatite (a calcium phosphate mineral). For the natural apatite system, Ca and P were made available to the plant by the dissolution of apatite. Potassium and NH4-N were made available by ion-exchange reactions involving Ca(2+) from apatite dissolution and K(+) and NH4(+) on zeolitic exchange sites. In addition to NH4-N, K, Ca, and P, the synthetic apatite system also supplied Mg, S, and other micronutrients during dissolution (Figure 1). The overall objective of this research task is to develop zeoponic substrates wherein all plant growth nutrients are supplied by the plant growth medium for several growth seasons with only the addition of water. The substrate is being developed for plant growth in Advanced Life Support (ALS) testbeds (i.e., BioPLEX) and microgravity plant growth experiments. Zeoponic substrates have been used for plant growth experiments on two Space Shuttle flight experiments (STS-60; STS-63; Morrow et aI., 1995). These substrates may be ideally suited for plant growth experiments on the International Space Station and applications in ALS testbeds. However, there are several issues that need to be resolved before zeoponics will be the choice substrate for plant growth experiments in space. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview on recent research directed toward the refinement of zeoponic plant growth substrates

Rapid Start-up and Loading of an Attached Growth, Simultaneous Nitrification/Denitrification Membrane Aerated Bioreactor

Membrane aerated bioreactors (MABR) are attached-growth biological systems used for simultaneous nitrification and denitrification to reclaim water from waste. This design is an innovative approach to common terrestrial wastewater treatments for nitrogen and carbon removal and implementing a biologically-based water treatment system for long-duration human exploration is an attractive, low energy alternative to physiochemical processes. Two obstacles to implementing such a system are (1) the "start-up" duration from inoculation to steady-state operations and (2) the amount of surface area needed for the biological activity to occur. The Advanced Water Recovery Systems (AWRS) team at JSC explored these two issues through two tests; a rapid inoculation study and a wastewater loading study. Results from these tests demonstrate that the duration from inoculation to steady state can be reduced to under two weeks, and that despite low ammonium removal rates, the MABRs are oversized

Results of the Alternative Water Processor Test, A Novel Technology for Exploration Wastewater Remediation

Biologically-based water recovery systems are a regenerative, low energy alternative to physiochemical processes to reclaim water from wastewater. This report summarizes the results of the Alternative Water Processor (AWP) Integrated Test, conducted from June 2013 until April 2014. The system was comprised of four (4) membrane aerated bioreactors (MABRs) to remove carbon and nitrogen from an exploration mission wastewater and a coupled forward and reverse osmosis system to remove large organic and inorganic salts from the biological system effluent. The system exceeded the overall objectives of the test by recovering 90% of the influent wastewater processed into a near potable state and a 64% reduction of consumables from the current state of the art water recovery system on the International Space Station (ISS). However, the biological system fell short of its test goals, failing to remove 75% and 90% of the influent ammonium and organic carbon, respectively. Despite not meeting its test goals, the BWP demonstrated the feasibility of an attached-growth biological system for simultaneous nitrification and denitrification, an innovative, volume- and consumable-saving design that does not require toxic pretreatment

Observing the Sun with the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA): Fast-Scan Single-Dish Mapping

The Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope has commenced science observations of the Sun starting in late 2016. Since the Sun is much larger than the field of view of individual ALMA dishes, the ALMA interferometer is unable to measure the background level of solar emission when observing the solar disk. The absolute temperature scale is a critical measurement for much of ALMA solar science, including the understanding of energy transfer through the solar atmosphere, the properties of prominences, and the study of shock heating in the chromosphere. In order to provide an absolute temperature scale, ALMA solar observing will take advantage of the remarkable fast-scanning capabilities of the ALMA 12m dishes to make single-dish maps of the full Sun. This article reports on the results of an extensive commissioning effort to optimize the mapping procedure, and it describes the nature of the resulting data. Amplitude calibration is discussed in detail: a path that utilizes the two loads in the ALMA calibration system as well as sky measurements is described and applied to commissioning data. Inspection of a large number of single-dish datasets shows significant variation in the resulting temperatures, and based on the temperature distributions we derive quiet-Sun values at disk center of 7300 K at lambda=3 mm and 5900 K at lambda=1.3 mm. These values have statistical uncertainties of order 100 K, but systematic uncertainties in the temperature scale that may be significantly larger. Example images are presented from two periods with very different levels of solar activity. At a resolution of order 25 arcsec, the 1.3 mm wavelength images show temperatures on the disk that vary over about a 2000 K range.Comment: Solar Physics, accepted: 24 pages, 13 figure

The intensification of metallic layered phenomena above thunderstorms through the modulation of atmospheric tides

We present a multi-instrument experiment to study the effects of tropospheric thunderstorms on the mesopause region and the lower ionosphere. Sodium (Na) lidar and ionospheric observations by two digital ionospheric sounders are used to study the variation in the neutral metal atoms and metallic ions above thunderstorms. An enhanced ionospheric sporadic E layer with a downward tidal phase is observed followed by a subsequent intensification of neutral Na number density with an increase of 600 cm−3 in the mesosphere. In addition, the Na neutral chemistry and ion-molecule chemistry are considered in a Na chemistry model to simulate the dynamical and chemical coupling processes in the mesosphere and ionosphere above thunderstorms. The enhanced Na layer in the simulation obtained by using the ionospheric observation as input is in agreement with the Na lidar observation. We find that the intensification of metallic layered phenomena above thunderstorms is associated with the atmospheric tides, as a result of the troposphere-mesosphere-ionosphere coupling

Plant Growth Optimization by Vegetable Production System in HI-SEAS Analog Habitat

The Vegetable Production System (Veggie) is a scientific payload designed to support plant growth for food production under microgravity conditions. The configuration of Veggie consists of an LED lighting system with modular rooting pillows designed to contain substrate media and time-release fertilizer. The pillows were designed to be watered passively using capillary principles but have typically been watered manually by the astronauts in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The design of Veggie allows cabin air to be drawn through the plant enclosure for thermal and humidity control and for supplying CO2 to the plants. Since its delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014, Veggie has undergone several experimental trials by various crews. Ground unit testing of Veggie was conducted during an 8-month Mars analog study in a semi-contained environment of a simulated habitat located at approximately 8,200 feet (2,500 m) elevation on the Mauna Loa volcano on the Island of Hawaii. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) offered conditions (habitat, mission, communications, etc.) intended to simulate a planetary exploration mission. This paper provides data and analyses to show the prospect for optimized use of the current Veggie design for human habitats. Lessons learned during the study may provide opportunities for updating the system design and operational parameters for current Veggie experiments being conducted onboard the ISS and for payloads on future deep space missions

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

An Overview of the 2014 ALMA Long Baseline Campaign

A major goal of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is to make accurate images with resolutions of tens of milliarcseconds, which at submillimeter (submm) wavelengths requires baselines up to ~15 km. To develop and test this capability, a Long Baseline Campaign (LBC) was carried out from September to late November 2014, culminating in end-to-end observations, calibrations, and imaging of selected Science Verification (SV) targets. This paper presents an overview of the campaign and its main results, including an investigation of the short-term coherence properties and systematic phase errors over the long baselines at the ALMA site, a summary of the SV targets and observations, and recommendations for science observing strategies at long baselines. Deep ALMA images of the quasar 3C138 at 97 and 241 GHz are also compared to VLA 43 GHz results, demonstrating an agreement at a level of a few percent. As a result of the extensive program of LBC testing, the highly successful SV imaging at long baselines achieved angular resolutions as fine as 19 mas at ~350 GHz. Observing with ALMA on baselines of up to 15 km is now possible, and opens up new parameter space for submm astronomy.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters; this version with small changes to affiliation