System for Contributing and Discovering Derived Mission and Science Data

A system was developed to provide a new mechanism for members of the mission community to create and contribute new science data to the rest of the community. Mission tools have allowed members of the mission community to share first order data (data that is created by the mission s process in command and control of the spacecraft or the data that is captured by the craft itself, like images, science results, etc.). However, second and higher order data (data that is created after the fact by scientists and other members of the mission) was previously not widely disseminated, nor did it make its way into the mission planning process

Supporting Parental Decisions About Genomic Sequencing for Newborn Screening: The NC NEXUS Decision Aid

Advances in genomic sequencing technology have raised fundamental challenges to the traditional ways genomic information is communicated. These challenges will become increasingly complex and will affect a much larger population in the future if genomics is incorporated into standard newborn screening practice. Clinicians, public health officials, and other stakeholders will need to agree on the types of information that they should seek and communicate to parents. Currently, few evidence-based and validated tools are available to support parental informed decision-making. These tools will be necessary as genomics is integrated into clinical practice and public health systems. In this article we describe how the North Carolina Newborn Exome Sequencing for Universal Screening study is addressing the need to support parents in making informed decisions about the use of genomic testing in newborn screening. We outline the context for newborn screening and justify the need for parental decision support. We also describe the process of decision aid development and the data sources, processes, and best practices being used in development. By the end of the study, we will have an evidenced-based process and validated tools to support parental informed decision-making about the use of genomic sequencing in newborn screening. Data from the study will help answer important questions about which genomic information ought to be sought and communicated when testing newborns

An Extensible, User- Modifiable Framework for Planning Activities

This software provides a development framework that allows planning activities for the Mars Science Laboratory rover to be altered at any time, based on changes of the Activity Dictionary. The Activity Dictionary contains the definition of all activities that can be carried out by a particular asset (robotic or human). These definitions (and combinations of these definitions) are used by mission planners to give a daily plan of what a mission should do. During the development and course of the mission, the Activity Dictionary and actions that are going to be carried out will often be changed. Previously, such changes would require a change to the software and redeployment. Now, the Activity Dictionary authors are able to customize activity definitions, parameters, and resource usage without requiring redeployment. This software provides developers and end users the ability to modify the behavior of automatically generated activities using a script. This allows changes to the software behavior without incurring the burden of redeployment. This software is currently being used for the Mars Science Laboratory, and is in the process of being integrated into the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) mission, as well as the International Space Station

Australian forested wetlands under climate change:Collapse or proliferation?

Climatically driven perturbations (e.g. intense drought, fire, sea surface temperature rise) can bring ecosystems that are already stressed by long-term climate change and other anthropogenic impacts to a point of collapse. Recent reviews of the responses of Australian ecosystems to climate change and associated stressors have suggested widespread ecosystem collapse is occurring across multiple biomes. Two commonly cited case studies concern forested wetland ecosystems: mangrove forest dieback in northern Australia (2015-16) and riverine forest dieback in the south-east of the continent (2002-09). We present an alternative interpretation that emphasises the dominant signal of climate change effects, rather than the interdecadal signal of climate variability that drives wetland forest dynamics. For both the south-east Australian riverine forests and mangroves of northern Australia, aerial extent remains greater after dieback than in the early 1990s. We interpret dieback and defoliation in both systems as a dry phase response and provide evidence of a current and near-future climate change trajectory of increased areal extent and cover (i.e. tree colonisation and range infilling). In both case studies, climate change-driven increases in tree cover and extent are occurring at the expense of wetland grasslands and the important ecosystem functions they support

A Shell-Neutral Modeling Approach Yields Sustainable Oyster Harvest Estimates: A Retrospective Analysis of the Louisiana State Primary Seed Grounds

A numerical model is presented that defines a sustainability criterion as no net loss of shell, and calculates a sustainable harvest of seed (\u3c75 mm) and sack or market oysters (\u3e= 75 mm). Stock assessments of the Primary State Seed Grounds conducted east of the Mississippi from 2009 to 2011 show a general trend toward decreasing abundance of sack and seed oysters. Retrospective simulations provide estimates of annual sustainable harvests. Comparisons of simulated sustainable harvests with actual harvests show a trend toward unsustainable harvests toward the end of the time series. Stock assessments combined with shell-neutral models can be used to estimate sustainable harvest and manage cultch through shell planting when actual harvest exceeds sustainable harvest. For exclusive restoration efforts (no fishing allowed), the model provides a metric for restoration success namely, shell accretion. Oyster fisheries that remove shell versus reef restorations that promote shell accretion, although divergent in their goals, are convergent in their management; both require vigilant attention to shell budgets

Impacts of extreme environmental disturbances on piping plover survival are partially moderated by migratory connectivity

Effective conservation for listed migratory species requires an understanding of how drivers of population decline vary spatially and temporally, as well as knowledge of range-wide connectivity between breeding and nonbreeding areas. Environmental conditions distant from breeding areas can have lasting effects on the demography of migratory species, yet these consequences are often the least understood. Our objectives were to 1) evaluate associations between survival and extreme environmental disturbances at nonbreeding areas, including hurricanes, harmful algal blooms, and oil spills, and 2) estimate migratory connectivity between breeding and nonbreeding areas of midcontinental piping plovers (Charadrius melodus). We used capture and resighting data from 5067 individuals collected between 2002 and 2019 from breeding areas across the midcontinent, and nonbreeding areas throughout the Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic coasts of North America. We developed a hidden Markov multistate model to estimate seasonal survival and account for unobservable geographic locations. Hurricanes and harmful algal blooms were negatively associated with nonbreeding season survival, but we did not detect a similarly negative relationship with oil spills. Our results indicated that individuals from separate breeding areas mixed across nonbreeding areas with low migratory connectivity. Mixing among individuals in the nonbreeding season may provide a buffering effect against impacts of extreme events on any one breeding region. Our results suggest that understanding migratory connectivity and linking seasonal threats to population dynamics can better inform conservation strategies for migratory shorebirds

Turning Transfer Inside Out: The Affordances of Virtual Worlds and Mobile Devices in Real World Contexts for Teaching About Causality Across Time and Distance in Ecosystems

Reasoning about ecosystems includes consideration of causality over temporal and spatial distances; yet learners typically focus on immediate time frames and local contexts. Teaching students to reason beyond these boundaries has met with some success based upon tests that cue students to the types of reasoning required. Virtual worlds offer an opportunity to assess what students actually do in a simulated context. Beyond this, mobile devices make it possible to scaffold and assess learning in the real world. Situating learning outside, in the target contexts, bypasses many of the challenges of transfer. A study investigated the learning of fifth and sixth graders (n = 38) while they used a virtual world called EcoMUVE, designed to support learning of ecosystems concepts and complex causal dynamics, and mobile broadband device (MBDs) components, designed to assess and support learning and transfer in a real pond ecosystem. The experiences of two classes were contrasted as reference populations; one class participated in the MBD experience first, followed by the learning components in EcoMUVE; the other participated in EcoMUVE first, followed by the MBD components. Rich and triangulated data was collected to illuminate how students experienced and responded to the curriculum components. Both classes made learning gains in EcoMUVE. Students who completed EcoMUVE prior to their MBD experience transferred concepts to their pond explorations. Both classes made learning gains at the pond following the MBD support and revealed more expert reasoning about the importance of change over time and distant drivers in ecosystem dynamics

Evaluating parents’ decisions about next-generation sequencing for their child in the NC NEXUS (North Carolina Newborn Exome Sequencing for Universal Screening) study: a randomized controlled trial protocol

Abstract Background Using next-generation sequencing (NGS) in newborn screening (NBS) could expand the number of genetic conditions detected pre-symptomatically, simultaneously challenging current precedents, raising ethical concerns, and extending the role of parental decision-making in NBS. The NC NEXUS (Newborn Exome Sequencing for Universal Screening) study seeks to assess the technical possibilities and limitations of NGS-NBS, devise and evaluate a framework to convey various types of genetic information, and develop best practices for incorporating NGS-NBS into clinical care. The study is enrolling both a healthy cohort and a cohort diagnosed with known disorders identified through recent routine NBS. It uses a novel age-based metric to categorize a priori the large amount of data generated by NGS-NBS and interactive online decision aids to guide parental decision-making. Primary outcomes include: (1) assessment of NGS-NBS sensitivity, (2) decision regret, and (3) parental decision-making about NGS-NBS, and, for parents randomized to have the option of requesting them, additional findings (diagnosed and healthy cohorts). Secondary outcomes assess parents’ reactions to the study and to decision-making. Methods/design Participants are parents and children in a well-child cohort recruited from a prenatal clinic and a diagnosed cohort recruited from pediatric clinics that treat children with disorders diagnosed through traditional NBS (goal of 200 children in each cohort). In phase 1, all parent participants use an online decision aid to decide whether to accept NGS-NBS for their child and provide consent for NGS-NBS. In phase 2, parents who consent to NGS-NBS are randomized to a decision arm or control arm (2:1 allocation) and learn their child’s NGS-NBS results, which include conditions from standard (non-NGS) NBS plus other highly actionable childhood-onset conditions. Parents in the decision arm use a second decision aid to make decisions about additional results from their child’s sequencing. In phase 3, decision arm participants learn additional results they have requested. Online questionnaires are administered at up to five time points. Discussion NC NEXUS will use a rigorous interdisciplinary approach designed to collect rich data to inform policy, practice, and future research. Trial registration clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02826694 . Registered on 11 July, 2016

The Accretion History of AGN: A Newly Defined Population of Cold Quasars

Quasars are the most luminous of active galactic nuclei (AGN), and are perhaps responsible for quenching star formation in their hosts. The Stripe 82X catalog covers 31.3 deg$^2$ of the Stripe 82 field, of which the 15.6 deg$^2$ covered with XMM-Newton is also covered by Herschel/SPIRE. We have 2500 X-ray detected sources with multi-wavelength counterparts, and 30% of these are unobscured quasars, with $L_X > 10^{44}\,$erg/s and $M_B < -23$. We define a new population of quasars which are unobscured, have X-ray luminosities in excess of $10^{44}\,$erg/s, have broad emission lines, and yet are also bright in the far-infrared, with a 250$\mu$m flux density of $S_{\rm 250}>30$mJy. We refer to these Herschel-detected, unobscured quasars as "Cold Quasars". A mere 4% (21) of the X-ray- and optically-selected unobscured quasars in Stripe 82X are detected at 250$\mu$m. These Cold Quasars lie at $z\sim1-3$, have $L_{\rm IR}>10^{12}\,L_\odot$, and have star formation rates of $\sim200-1400\,M_\odot$/yr. Cold Quasars are bluer in the mid-IR than the full quasar population, and 72% of our Cold Quasars have WISE W3 $<$ 11.5 [Vega], while only 19% of the full quasar sample meets this criteria. Crucially, Cold Quasars have on average $\sim9\times$ as much star formation as the main sequence of star forming galaxies at similar redshifts. Although dust-rich, unobscured quasars have occasionally been noted in the literature before, we argue that they should be considered as a separate class of quasars due to their high star formation rates. This phase is likely short-lived, as the central engine and immense star formation consume the gas reservoir. Cold Quasars are type-1 blue quasars that reside in starburst galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap