A study of cloud motions on Mars, part B Final report

Photographic plates used to map cloud motions on Mar

Age, Socioeconomic Status and Obesity Growth

The rapid growth in obesity represents a major public concern. Although body weight tends to increase with age, the evolution of obesity over the lifecycle is not well understood. We use longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine how body weight changes with age for a cohort moving through early adulthood. We further investigate how the age-obesity gradient differs with socioeconomic status (SES) and begin to examine channels for these SES disparities. Our analysis uncovers three main findings. First, weight rises with age but is inversely related to SES at given ages. Second, the SES-obesity gradient widens over the lifecycle, a result consistent with research examining other health outcomes such as overall status or specific medical conditions. Third, a substantial portion of the SES "effect" is transmitted through race/ethnicity and the translation of advantaged family backgrounds during childhood into high levels of subsequent education. Conversely, little of the SES difference appears to be propagated through family income, marital status, number of children, or the set of health behaviors we control for. However, approximately half of the SES-weight correlation persists after the inclusion of controls, illustrating the need for further study of mechanisms for the gradient.

Virtual image out-the-window display system study. Volume 2 - Appendix

Virtual image out-the-window display system imaging techniques and simulation devices - appendices containing background materia

Post-mission Viking data anaysis

Three Mars data analysis projects from the Viking Mars program were identified initially, and three more came into being as the work proceeded. All together, these six pertained to: (1) the veritical distribution of scattering particles in the Martian atmosphere at various locations in various seasons, (2) the physical parameters that define photometric properties of the Martian surface and atmosphere, (3) patterns of dust-cloud and global dust-storm development, (4) a direct comparison of near-simultaneous Viking and ground-based observations, (5) the annual formation and dissipation of polar frost caps, and (6) evidence concerning possible present-day volcanism or venting. A list of publications pertaining to the appropriate projects is included

Computerized analytical technique for design and analysis of a Sabatier reactor subsystem Final engineering report

Mathematical model for computerized evaluation of Sabatier reaction kinetics in oxygen recovery from carbon dioxid

The Effects of Paid Family Leave in California on Labor Market Outcomes

Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97), we examine the effects of California's paid family leave program (CA-PFL) on mothers' and fathers' use of leave during the period surrounding child birth, and on the timing of mothers' return to work, the probability of eventually returning to pre-childbirth jobs, and subsequent labor market outcomes. Our results show that CA-PFL raised leave-taking by around three weeks for the average mother and approximately one week for the average father. The timing of the increased leave use immediately after birth for men and around the time that temporary disability insurance benefits are exhausted for women is consistent with causal effects of CA-PFL. Rights to paid leave are also associated with higher work and employment probabilities for mothers nine to twelve months after birth, possibly because they increase job continuity among those with relatively weak labor force attachments. We also find positive effects of California's program on hours and weeks of work during their child's second year of life and possibly also on wages

Improving predictive power of physically based rainfall-induced shallow landslide models: a probabilistic approach

Distributed models to forecast the spatial and temporal occurrence of rainfall-induced shallow landslides are based on deterministic laws. These models extend spatially the static stability models adopted in geotechnical engineering, and adopt an infinite-slope geometry to balance the resisting and the driving forces acting on the sliding mass. An infiltration model is used to determine how rainfall changes pore-water conditions, modulating the local stability/instability conditions. A problem with the operation of the existing models lays in the difficulty in obtaining accurate values for the several variables that describe the material properties of the slopes. The problem is particularly severe when the models are applied over large areas, for which sufficient information on the geotechnical and hydrological conditions of the slopes is not generally available. To help solve the problem, we propose a probabilistic Monte Carlo approach to the distributed modeling of rainfall-induced shallow landslides. For the purpose, we have modified the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-Based Regional Slope-Stability Analysis (TRIGRS) code. The new code (TRIGRS-P) adopts a probabilistic approach to compute, on a cell-by-cell basis, transient pore-pressure changes and related changes in the factor of safety due to rainfall infiltration. Infiltration is modeled using analytical solutions of partial differential equations describing one-dimensional vertical flow in isotropic, homogeneous materials. Both saturated and unsaturated soil conditions can be considered. TRIGRS-P copes with the natural variability inherent to the mechanical and hydrological properties of the slope materials by allowing values of the TRIGRS model input parameters to be sampled randomly from a given probability distribution. [..]Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 9 tables. Revised version; accepted for publication in Geoscientific Model Development on 13 February 201

Development of fuel cell electrodes, Electrode improvement and life testing, tasks 1 and 3 Final report, 30 Jun. 1966 - 30 Apr. 1968

Volt-ampere characteristics improvement and life testing of electrodes for hydrogen oxygen fuel cell

Parameter estimation in pair hidden Markov models

This paper deals with parameter estimation in pair hidden Markov models (pair-HMMs). We first provide a rigorous formalism for these models and discuss possible definitions of likelihoods. The model being biologically motivated, some restrictions with respect to the full parameter space naturally occur. Existence of two different Information divergence rates is established and divergence property (namely positivity at values different from the true one) is shown under additional assumptions. This yields consistency for the parameter in parametrization schemes for which the divergence property holds. Simulations illustrate different cases which are not covered by our results.Comment: corrected typo