ALSEP termination report

The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) final report was prepared when support operations were terminated September 30, 1977, and NASA discontinued the receiving and processing of scientific data transmitted from equipment deployed on the lunar surface. The ALSEP experiments (Apollo 11 to Apollo 17) are described and pertinent operational history is given for each experiment. The ALSEP data processing and distribution are described together with an extensive discussion on archiving. Engineering closeout tests and results are given, and the status and configuration of the experiments at termination are documented. Significant science findings are summarized by selected investigators. Significant operational data and recommendations are also included

Financial Therapy and Planning for Families with Special Needs Children

This study examines factors associated with the likelihood of having a plan that includes a special needs trust among families that have disabled minor children. Descriptive analyses indicate that the top two reasons families provide for not having a plan are the inability to save and no perceived need. Among families that do indicate having a plan, most do not include a special needs trust. Multivariate analyses reveal that professional involvement (financial, legal, and mental health professionals) is a key factor to increasing the likelihood of having a plan with a special needs trust. Families that have met with a financial advisor are 23 times more likely, and families who are encouraged to create a plan by a mental health professional are almost three times more likely, to have a plan that includes a special needs trust. Results from this study suggest that financial therapists are uniquely positioned to educate and ensure that appropriate plans are in place to provide for the future of children with special needs

Measuring Attitudes towards Public Spending using a Multivariate Tax Summary Experiment

It is difficult to measure public views on tradeoffs between spending priorities because public understanding of existing government spending is limited and the budgetary problem is complicated. We present a new measurement strategy using UK taxpayer summaries as the baseline for a continuous treatment, multivariate choice experiment. The experiment proposes deficit neutral bundles of changes in spending and taxation, allowing us to investigate attitudes towards modifications to the existing budget. We then use a structural choice model to estimate public preferences over 13 spending categories and the taxation level, on average and as a function of respondent attributes. We find that the UK public favours paying more in tax to finance large spending increases across major budget categories; that spending preferences are multidimensional; and that younger people prefer lower levels of taxation and spending than older people. Finally, we report a pre-registered out-of-sample validation of the estimates from the experiment

Stable aerobic and anaerobic coexistence in anoxic marine zones

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Zakem, E. J., Mahadevan, A., Lauderdale, J. M., & Follows, M. J. Stable aerobic and anaerobic coexistence in anoxic marine zones. ISME Journal, 14, (2019): 288–301, doi: 10.1038/s41396-019-0523-8.Mechanistic description of the transition from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism is necessary for diagnostic and predictive modeling of fixed nitrogen loss in anoxic marine zones (AMZs). In a metabolic model where diverse oxygen- and nitrogen-cycling microbial metabolisms are described by underlying redox chemical reactions, we predict a transition from strictly aerobic to predominantly anaerobic regimes as the outcome of ecological interactions along an oxygen gradient, obviating the need for prescribed critical oxygen concentrations. Competing aerobic and anaerobic metabolisms can coexist in anoxic conditions whether these metabolisms represent obligate or facultative populations. In the coexistence regime, relative rates of aerobic and anaerobic activity are determined by the ratio of oxygen to electron donor supply. The model simulates key characteristics of AMZs, such as the accumulation of nitrite and the sustainability of anammox at higher oxygen concentrations than denitrification, and articulates how microbial biomass concentrations relate to associated water column transformation rates as a function of redox stoichiometry and energetics. Incorporating the metabolic model into an idealized two-dimensional ocean circulation results in a simulated AMZ, in which a secondary chlorophyll maximum emerges from oxygen-limited grazing, and where vertical mixing and dispersal in the oxycline also contribute to metabolic co-occurrence. The modeling approach is mechanistic yet computationally economical and suitable for global change applications.We are grateful for the thorough and thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers. We also thank Andrew Babbin for helpful comments. EJZ was supported by the Simons Foundation (Postdoctoral Fellowship in Marine Microbial Ecology). AM was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR #N000-14-15-1-2555). JML was supported by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF #OCE-1259388). MJF was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF #3778) and the Simons Foundation: the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (SCOPE #329108) and the Simons Collaboration on Computational Biogeochemical Modeling of Marine Ecosystems (CBIOMES #549931)

Combining market and nonmarket food sources provides rural households with more options to achieve better diets in Southern Benin

This study examines the relative contributions to dietary diversity of the diversity of plant and domesticated animal species which rural households produce or collect, i.e., nonmarket food sources, versus the diversity of foods purchased in markets. Although opinions differ in the literature as to their relative importance, clarifying how different sources of food contribute to the dietary diversity of rural households in the developing world is important to inform policies and interventions to improve their food security and dietary quality. This case study was carried out among a random sample of 654 rural households in southern Benin during two seasons: when food is plentiful after harvest; and when food is scarcer between harvests. We collected data on crops, wild plants, and domesticated animals utilized by households, the number of markets they visited, and the diet of a mother in the household, with a structured 24-hour food frequency questionnaire. We hypothesize that the number of markets visited is an indicator of the diversity of foods available in the markets they have access to, and thus shows the contribution of markets as food sources. Results support this hypothesis and show that households that produced more plant and domesticated animal species and those that visited more markets had more diversified diets. Obtaining diverse foods from multiple sources provides households with more options to achieve better diets. These results suggest a need for a more holistic approach that recognizes the complementarities between market and nonmarket sources of foods. This approach should build on the diversity of species rural households already utilize, and on the ways they interact with markets

On the Temperature Dependence of the Lifetime of Thermally Isolated Metastable Clusters

The temperature dependence of the lifetime of the thermally isolated metastable N8 cubane up to its decay into N2 molecules has been calculated by the molecular dynamics method. It has been demonstrated that this dependence significantly deviates from the Arrhenius law. The applicability of the finite heat bath theory to the description of thermally isolated atomic clusters has been proved using statistical analysis of the results obtained.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

A dynamic network approach for the study of human phenotypes

The use of networks to integrate different genetic, proteomic, and metabolic datasets has been proposed as a viable path toward elucidating the origins of specific diseases. Here we introduce a new phenotypic database summarizing correlations obtained from the disease history of more than 30 million patients in a Phenotypic Disease Network (PDN). We present evidence that the structure of the PDN is relevant to the understanding of illness progression by showing that (1) patients develop diseases close in the network to those they already have; (2) the progression of disease along the links of the network is different for patients of different genders and ethnicities; (3) patients diagnosed with diseases which are more highly connected in the PDN tend to die sooner than those affected by less connected diseases; and (4) diseases that tend to be preceded by others in the PDN tend to be more connected than diseases that precede other illnesses, and are associated with higher degrees of mortality. Our findings show that disease progression can be represented and studied using network methods, offering the potential to enhance our understanding of the origin and evolution of human diseases. The dataset introduced here, released concurrently with this publication, represents the largest relational phenotypic resource publicly available to the research community.Comment: 28 pages (double space), 6 figure