Provoking debate and learning lessons: it is early days, but what does the Performance Improvement Framework challenge us to think about?

Governed, designed and funded by the three central agencies, but delivered by the State Services Commission, the Performance Improvement Framework (PIF) is now three years old. Twenty-one reviews have been published. Four are currently under way, including the first PIF re-review. Three agencies have completed follow-up reviews. In addition, over 250 state servants have attended a PIF self-review workshop. Also, several new products and services are in development, including a PIF cluster model. Finally, the PIF agency model is in the middle of a two-stage upgrade, that reflects the ambition and new performance expectations at the heart of the advice of the Better Public Services Advisory Group (Better Public Services Advisory Group, 2011).&nbsp

Detectability of CO2 flux signals by a space‐based lidar mission

Satellite observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) offer novel and distinctive opportunities for improving our quantitative understanding of the carbon cycle. Prospective observations include those from space‐based lidar such as the active sensing of CO2 emissions over nights, days, and seasons (ASCENDS) mission. Here we explore the ability of such a mission to detect regional changes in CO2 fluxes. We investigate these using three prototypical case studies, namely, the thawing of permafrost in the northern high latitudes, the shifting of fossil fuel emissions from Europe to China, and changes in the source/sink characteristics of the Southern Ocean. These three scenarios were used to design signal detection studies to investigate the ability to detect the unfolding of these scenarios compared to a baseline scenario. Results indicate that the ASCENDS mission could detect the types of signals investigated in this study, with the caveat that the study is based on some simplifying assumptions. The permafrost thawing flux perturbation is readily detectable at a high level of significance. The fossil fuel emission detectability is directly related to the strength of the signal and the level of measurement noise. For a nominal (lower) fossil fuel emission signal, only the idealized noise‐free instrument test case produces a clearly detectable signal, while experiments with more realistic noise levels capture the signal only in the higher (exaggerated) signal case. For the Southern Ocean scenario, differences due to the natural variability in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation climatic mode are primarily detectable as a zonal increase.Key PointsDetectability of regional changes in CO2 fluxes by space‐based lidarPermafrost thawing flux perturbation readily detectable by ASCENDS‐like missionSouthern Ocean ENSO‐related flux variability detectable as zonal changePeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110893/1/jgrd51945.pd

Detectability of CO2 Flux Signals by a Space-Based Lidar Mission

Satellite observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) offer novel and distinctive opportunities for improving our quantitative understanding of the carbon cycle. Prospective observations include those from space-based lidar such as the Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) mission. Here we explore the ability of such a mission to detect regional changes in CO2 fluxes. We investigate these using three prototypical case studies, namely the thawing of permafrost in the Northern High Latitudes, the shifting of fossil fuel emissions from Europe to China, and changes in the source-sink characteristics of the Southern Ocean. These three scenarios were used to design signal detection studies to investigate the ability to detect the unfolding of these scenarios compared to a baseline scenario. Results indicate that the ASCENDS mission could detect the types of signals investigated in this study, with the caveat that the study is based on some simplifying assumptions. The permafrost thawing flux perturbation is readily detectable at a high level of significance. The fossil fuel emission detectability is directly related to the strength of the signal and the level of measurement noise. For a nominal (lower) fossil fuel emission signal, only the idealized noise-free instrument test case produces a clearly detectable signal, while experiments with more realistic noise levels capture the signal only in the higher (exaggerated) signal case. For the Southern Ocean scenario, differences due to the natural variability in the ENSO climatic mode are primarily detectable as a zonal increase

On the ability of space-based passive and active remote sensing observations of CO2 to detect flux perturbations to the carbon cycle

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 123 (2018): 1460–1477, doi:10.1002/2017JD027836.Space-borne observations of CO2 are vital to gaining understanding of the carbon cycle in regions of the world that are difficult to measure directly, such as the tropical terrestrial biosphere, the high northern and southern latitudes, and in developing nations such as China. Measurements from passive instruments such as GOSAT and OCO-2, however, are constrained by solar zenith angle limitations as well as sensitivity to the presence of clouds and aerosols. Active measurements such as those in development for the Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons (ASCENDS) mission show strong potential for making measurements in the high-latitude winter and in cloudy regions. In this work we examine the enhanced flux constraint provided by the improved coverage from an active measurement such as ASCENDS. The simulation studies presented here show that with sufficient precision, ASCENDS will detect permafrost thaw and fossil fuel emissions shifts at annual and seasonal time scales, even in the presence of transport errors, representativeness errors, and biogenic flux errors. While OCO-2 can detect some of these perturbations at the annual scale, the seasonal sampling provided by ASCENDS provides the stronger constraint.NASA Grant Numbers: NNX15AJ27G, NNX15AH13G2018-07-2

Quantifying the Observability of CO2 Flux Uncertainty in Atmospheric CO2 Records Using Products from Nasa's Carbon Monitoring Flux Pilot Project

NASAs Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Flux Pilot Project (FPP) was designed to better understand contemporary carbon fluxes by bringing together state-of-the art models with remote sensing datasets. Here we report on simulations using NASAs Goddard Earth Observing System Model, version 5 (GEOS-5) which was used to evaluate the consistency of two different sets of observationally constrained land and ocean fluxes with atmospheric CO2 records. Despite the strong data constraint, the average difference in annual terrestrial biosphere flux between the two land (NASA Ames CASA and CASA-GFED) models is 1.7 Pg C for 2009-2010. Ocean models (NOBM and ECCO2-Darwin) differ by 35 in their global estimates of carbon flux with particularly strong disagreement in high latitudes. Based upon combinations of terrestrial and ocean fluxes, GEOS-5 reasonably simulated the seasonal cycle observed at northern hemisphere surface sites and by the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) while the model struggled to simulate the seasonal cycle at southern hemisphere surface locations. Though GEOS-5 was able to reasonably reproduce the patterns of XCO2 observed by GOSAT, it struggled to reproduce these aspects of AIRS observations. Despite large differences between land and ocean flux estimates, resulting differences in atmospheric mixing ratio were small, typically less than 5 ppmv at the surface and 3 ppmv in the XCO2 column. A statistical analysis based on the variability of observations shows that flux differences of these magnitudes are difficult to distinguish from natural variability, regardless of measurement platform

Genetic and Neuroanatomic Factors that Influence Executive Functions in Aging

In the present set of experiments, we investigated the effects of age and COMT genotypes on traditional measures of executive functions, e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; Hart et al., 1988), a battery of executive functions based on the 3 factor model (shifting, updating, inhibition) described by Miyake et al. (2000) and developed at the University of Arizona (Alexander et al., 2012), and two fMRI tasks of executive functions (shifting, updating). The results of experiment 1 showed that COMT influenced performance on several traditional measures of executive functions, with Met homozygotes outperforming Val homozygotes. However, on the WCST we did not observe less perseverative errors in Met carriers as reported previously (Barnett, Jones, Robbins, & Muller, 2007; Bruder et al., 2005; Malhotra et al., 2002; Nagel et al., 2008). According to Miyake et al. (2000), however, such tasks as the WCST may actually involve multiple executive processes, making it difficult to tease apart the different types of executive functions being measured. Furthermore, COMT may be sensitive to some aspects of executive functions and not others. To this end, in experiment 2 we investigated associations between COMT and measures of executive functions from each of the 3 domains described in Miyake et al. (2000). According to the models proposed by Bilder et al. (2004) and Cools and D’Esposito (2011), the Val allele promotes cognitive flexibility, while the Met allele promotes cognitive stability. Contrary to what we expected, Met homozygotes actually performed better than Met/Val heterozygotes but no better than Val homozygotes on one measure of updating (flexibility). Upon closer examination of the processes involved in the updating task, however, the results may not necessarily be contradictory as the task may have required greater stability than previously thought. In the fMRI experiment, although behavioral performance was largely similar between age groups and COMT genotypes on the fMRI tasks, we observed differences in activation such that younger adults and Met homozygotes showed higher levels of activation relative to older adults and Val carriers, respectively. Our results suggest that these higher levels of activation may have been relied upon to maintain similar levels of performance. Additionally, across the 3 experiments the effects of COMT indicate that an overall Met advantage cannot be assumed. Rather, the benefits of one allele compared to the other should be investigated in terms of the specific cognitive processes involved in the task at hand. Thus, it is important for future studies to continue characterizing the unity and diversity of executive functions and investigate factors that may influence these patterns behaviorally and neurally, such as age and genetics

Remembering things without context: development matters

Spatial context supports memory retrieval in adults. To understand the development of these effects, context effects on object recognition were tested in neurotypical children ages 3 years to adulthood (n 3–6 years = 34, n 10–16 years = 32, n college age = 22) and individuals with Down syndrome (DS) ages 10–29 years (n = 21). Participants engaged in an object recognition task; objects were presented in scenes and either remained in that same scene or were removed at test. In some groups (<4.5 years and with DS) context effects were present even though object recognition was poor. After 4.5 years, children demonstrated memory flexibility, while later in adolescence context effects reemerged, showing nonlinearity in the development of these effects

Age-Modulated Associations between KIBRA, Brain Volume, and Verbal Memory among Healthy Older Adults

The resource modulation hypothesis suggests that the influence of genes on cognitive functioning increases with age. The KIBRA single nucleotide polymorphism rs17070145, associated with episodic memory and working memory, has been suggested to follow such a pattern, but few studies have tested this assertion directly. The present study investigated the relationship between KIBRA alleles (T carriers vs. CC homozygotes), cognitive performance, and brain volumes in three groups of cognitively healthy adults-middle aged (ages 52-64, n = 38), young old (ages 65-72, n = 45), and older old (ages 73-92, n = 62)-who were carefully matched on potentially confounding variables including apolipoprotein epsilon 4 status and hypertension. Consistent with our prediction, T carriers maintained verbal memory performance with increasing age while CC homozygotes declined. Voxel-based morphometric analysis of magnetic resonance images showed an advantage for T carriers in frontal white matter volume that increased with age. Focusing on the older old group, this advantage for T carriers was also evident in left lingual gyrus gray matter and several additional frontal white matter regions. Contrary to expectations, neither KIBRA nor the interaction between KIBRA and age predicted hippocampal volumes. None of the brain regions investigated showed a CC homozygote advantage. Taken together, these data suggest that KIBRA results in decreased verbal memory performance and lower brain volumes in CC homozygotes compared to T carriers, particularly among the oldest old, consistent with the resource modulation hypothesis.Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute; Arizona Alzheimer's Research Consortium; Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship; National Science Foundation Graduate Research FellowshipOpen Access Journal.UA Open Access Publishing Fund.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]