High resolution vertical profiles of wind, temperature and humidity obtained by computer processing and digital filtering of radiosonde and radar tracking data from the ITCZ experiment of 1977

Results are presented from computer processing and digital filtering of radiosonde and radar tracking data obtained during the ITCZ experiment when coordinated measurements were taken daily over a 16 day period across the Panama Canal Zone. The temperature relative humidity and wind velocity profiles are discussed

Data analysis and archival

The purpose of this task is the acquisition, distribution, archival, and analysis of data collected during and in support of the Upper Atmospheric Research Program (UARP) field experiments. Meteorological and U2 data from the 1984 Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange Project (STEP) was analyzed to determine characteristics of internal atmospheric waves. CDROM's containing data from the 1987 STEP, 1987 Airborne Antarctic Ozone Expedition (AAOE), and the 1989 Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Expedition (AASE) were produced for archival and distribution of those data sets. The AASE CDROM contains preliminary data and a final release is planned for February 1990. Comparisons of data from the NASA ER-2 Meteorological Measurement System (MMS) with radar tracking and radiosonde data show good agreement. Planning for a Meteorological Support Facility continues. We are investigating existing and proposed hardware and software to receive, manipulate, and display satellite imagery and standard meteorological analyses, forecasts, and radiosonde data

Aircraft deployment, and airborne arctic stratospheric expedition

The Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Expedition had two primary objectives: to study the production and loss mechanisms of ozone in the north polar stratosphere and to study the effect on ozone distribution of the Arctic Polar Vortex and of the cold temperatures associated with the formation of Polar Stratospheric Clouds. Two specially instrumented NASA aircraft were flown over the Arctic region. Each aircraft flew to acquire data on the meteorological, chemical and cloud physical phenomena that occur in the polar stratosphere during winter. The chemical processes which occur in the polar stratosphere during winter were also observed and studied. The data acquired are being analyzed

Physiological Bases of Children\u27s Preferences for Picture Sequences

No abstract provided by author

An investigation of memory specificity and generalization in young children and adults

Optimal behavior in familiar and novel contexts depends on retrieval and consideration of past experiences. In adults, hippocampus supports retrieval of prior memories based on partially overlapping cues (Mack & Preston, 2016). Given that the hippocampus develops through childhood and adolescence (Keresztes et al., 2017), in the present research we investigated developmental differences in flexible memory retrieval during new experiences. Four-year-olds (N=15) and adults (N=20) learned a series of common object-novel shape associations. Following learning, participants were cued with a shape and tasked with retrieving the target object associate. On half of the trials, participants were cued with an identical shape from learning. On the remaining trials, participants were cued with a similar but non-identical shape morph, enabling examination of whether participants can flexibly generalize across similar but non-identical experiences to retrieve related memories. Accuracy and response times were measured for adults, and accuracy was measured for children. Both adults and children demonstrated reliable retrieval when cued with similar yet non-identical shapes. Whereas adults showed slower and less accurate retrieval for the non-identical versus identical cues, children showed no differences in retrieval as a function of cue similarity. These findings have important implications for our understanding of how mnemonic specificity and generalization interact across development. In particular, our findings suggest that mnemonic generalization in early childhood is a consequence of less detailed memory representation. Conversely, the more mature form of generalization evidenced in adulthood is accomplished through dual processing of the commonalities and specific differences between similar yet non-identical experiences.Neuroscienc

Physiological Bases of Children\u27s Preferences for Picture Sequences

No abstract provided by author

Global Night-Time Lights for Observing Human Activity

We present a concept for a small satellite mission to make systematic, global observations of night-time lights with spatial resolution suitable for discerning the extent, type and density of human settlements. The observations will also allow better understanding of fine scale fossil fuel CO2 emission distribution. The NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey recommends more focus on direct observations of human influence on the Earth system. The most dramatic and compelling observations of human presence on the Earth are the night light observations taken by the Defence Meteorological System Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Beyond delineating the footprint of human presence, night light data, when assembled and evaluated with complementary data sets, can determine the fine scale spatial distribution of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Understanding fossil fuel carbon emissions is critical to understanding the entire carbon cycle, and especially the carbon exchange between terrestrial and oceanic systems

Stepwise evolution of Elk-1 in early deuterostomes

Metazoans have multiple ETS paralogues with overlapping or indiscriminate biological functions. Elk- 1, one of three mammalian Ternary Complex Factors (TCFs), is a well-conserved, ETS domain-containing transcriptional regulator of mitogen-responsive genes that operates in concert with Serum Response Factor (SRF). Nonetheless, its genetic role remains unresolved because the elk-1 gene could be deleted from the mouse genome seemingly without adverse effect. Here we have explored the evolution of Elk-1 to gain insight into its conserved biological role. We identified antecedent Elk-1 proteins in extant early metazoans and used amino acid sequence alignments to chart the appearance of domains characteristic of human Elk-1. We then performed biochemical studies to determine whether putative domains apparent in the Elk-1 protein of a primitive hemichordate were functionally orthologous to those of human Elk-1. Our findings imply the existence of primordial Elk-1 proteins in primitive deuterostomes that could operate as mitogen-responsive ETS transcription factors but not as TCFs. The role of TCF was acquired later, but presumably prior to the whole genome duplications in the basal vertebrate lineage. Thus its evolutionary origins link Elk-1 to the appearance of mesoderm