Spirituality, Faith, and Mild Alzheimer\u27s Disease

There is some evidence for a positive association between spirituality, cognitive, and behavioral functioning in people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, to our knowledge there is no published data to date that provides an explanatory model for these findings. Twenty-eight individuals with mild AD received in-depth interviews and measures of cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and spiritual functioning to gain insight into this question in this mixed methods study. Findings revealed that people with mild AD can actively engage in meaningful discussion about how spirituality influences their experience of living with AD; that they remain deeply devoted to a relationship with the transcendent (i.e., God, higher power, spirit) and their spiritual communities; that they value and benefit from the sacred aspects of their day-to-day lives; and that their core spiritual values, beliefs, and practices can be activated to help them adapt to the uncertainty of living with AD. Additionally, persons with AD who are experiencing spiritual struggle tend to experience a greater degree of anxiety, depression, and behavioral changes as compared to those who do not, suggesting that spiritual struggle is a risk factor for poorer outcomes in this population. Implications for future research, clinical practice, and community care are provided including how researchers and clinicians can effectively adapt traditional measures of spirituality for use with this population; the importance of integrating spirituality into the assessment and treatment of people with AD; and the role spiritual communitie

Landsat-7 ETM+ Radiometric Calibration Status

Now in its 17th year of operation, the Enhanced Thematic Mapper + (ETM+), on board the Landsat-7 satellite, continues to systematically acquire imagery of the Earth to add to the 40+ year archive of Landsat data. Characterization of the ETM+ on-orbit radiometric performance has been on-going since its launch in 1999. The radiometric calibration of the reflective bands is still monitored using on-board calibration devices, though the Pseudo-Invariant Calibration Sites (PICS) method has proven to be an effect tool as well. The calibration gains were updated in April 2013 based primarily on PICS results, which corrected for a change of as much as -0.2%/year degradation in the worst case bands. A new comparison with the SADE database of PICS results indicates no additional degradation in the updated calibration. PICS data are still being tracked though the recent trends are not well understood. The thermal band calibration was updated last in October 2013 based on a continued calibration effort by NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab and Rochester Institute of Technology. The update accounted for a 0.31 W/sq m/ sr/micron bias error. The updated lifetime trend is now stable to within + 0.4K

Digital Signal Processing Group

Contains an introduction and reports on nineteen research projects.U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-77-C-0266)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-81-K-0742)National Science Foundation (Grant ECS80-07102)Bell Laboratories FellowshipAmoco Foundation FellowshipU.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-77-C-0196)Schlumberger-Doll Research Center FellowshipToshiba Company FellowshipVinton Hayes FellowshipHertz Foundation Fellowshi

Digital Signal Processing

Contains an introduction and reports on fifteen research projects.U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00O14-81-K-0742)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-77-C-0266)National Science Foundation (Grant ECS80-07102)National Science Foundation (Grant ECS84-07285)Amoco Foundation FellowshipSanders Associates, Inc.Advanced Television Research ProgramM.I.T. Vinton Hayes FellowshipHertz Foundation Fellowshi

Digital Signal Processing

Contains introduction and reports on seventeen research projects.U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-81-K-0742)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-77-C-0266)National Science Foundation (Grant ECS80-07102)Bell Laboratories FellowshipAmoco Foundation FellowshipSchlumberger-Doll Research Center FellowshipSanders Associates, Inc.Toshiba Company FellowshipM.I.T. Vinton Hayes FellowshipHertz Foundation Fellowshi

Ecosystem Overfishing in the Ocean

Fisheries catches represent a net export of mass and energy that can no longer be used by trophic levels higher than those fished. Thus, exploitation implies a depletion of secondary production of higher trophic levels (here the production of mass and energy by herbivores and carnivores in the ecosystem) due to the removal of prey. The depletion of secondary production due to the export of biomass and energy through catches was recently formulated as a proxy for evaluating the ecosystem impacts of fishing–i.e., the level of ecosystem overfishing. Here we evaluate the historical and current risk of ecosystem overfishing at a global scale by quantifying the depletion of secondary production using the best available fisheries and ecological data (i.e., catch and primary production). Our results highlight an increasing trend in the number of unsustainable fisheries (i.e., an increase in the risk of ecosystem overfishing) from the 1950s to the 2000s, and illustrate the worldwide geographic expansion of overfishing. These results enable to assess when and where fishing became unsustainable at the ecosystem level. At present, total catch per capita from Large Marine Ecosystems is at least twice the value estimated to ensure fishing at moderate sustainable levels

Oil Palm Research in Context: Identifying the Need for Biodiversity Assessment

Oil palm cultivation is frequently cited as a major threat to tropical biodiversity as it is centered on some of the world's most biodiverse regions. In this report, Web of Science was used to find papers on oil palm published since 1970, which were assigned to different subject categories to visualize their research focus. Recent years have seen a broadening in the scope of research, with a slight growth in publications on the environment and a dramatic increase in those on biofuel. Despite this, less than 1% of publications are related to biodiversity and species conservation. In the context of global vegetable oil markets, palm oil and soyabean account for over 60% of production but are the subject of less than 10% of research. Much more work must be done to establish the impacts of habitat conversion to oil palm plantation on biodiversity. Results from such studies are crucial for informing conservation strategies and ensuring sustainable management of plantations

An Empirical Strategy for Characterizing Bacterial Proteomes across Species in the Absence of Genomic Sequences

Global protein identification through current proteomics methods typically depends on the availability of sequenced genomes. In spite of increasingly high throughput sequencing technologies, this information is not available for every microorganism and rarely available for entire microbial communities. Nevertheless, the protein-level homology that exists between related bacteria makes it possible to extract biological information from the proteome of an organism or microbial community by using the genomic sequences of a near neighbor organism. Here, we demonstrate a trans-organism search strategy for determining the extent to which near-neighbor genome sequences can be applied to identify proteins in unsequenced environmental isolates. In proof of concept testing, we found that within a CLUSTAL W distance of 0.089, near-neighbor genomes successfully identified a high percentage of proteins within an organism. Application of this strategy to characterize environmental bacterial isolates lacking sequenced genomes, but having 16S rDNA sequence similarity to Shewanella resulted in the identification of 300–500 proteins in each strain. The majority of identified pathways mapped to core processes, as well as to processes unique to the Shewanellae, in particular to the presence of c-type cytochromes. Examples of core functional categories include energy metabolism, protein and nucleotide synthesis and cofactor biosynthesis, allowing classification of bacteria by observation of conserved processes. Additionally, within these core functionalities, we observed proteins involved in the alternative lactate utilization pathway, recently described in Shewanella