Atlas of Anchorage Community Indicators

The Anchorage Community Indicators (ACI) project is designed to make information (extracted from data) accessible so that conversations about the health and well-being of Anchorage may become more completely informed. Policy makers, social commentators, service delivery systems, and scholars often stake out positions based on anecdotal evidence or hunches when, in many instances, solid, empirical evidence could be compiled to support or challenge these opinions.The Atlas of Anchorage Community Indicators makes empirical information about neighborhoods widely accessible to many different audiences. The initial selection of indicators for presentation in the Atlas was inspired by Peter Blau and his interest in measures of heterogeneity (diversity) and inequality and by the work of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. In both cases the measures they developed were well-conceptualized and validated. The Atlas presents community indicators at the census block group level derived from data captured in the 2000 U.S. Census and the 2005 Anchorage Community Survey. All maps in the Atlas are overlaid by Community Council boundaries to facilitate comparisons across maps.Introduction / COMMUNITY COUNCIL BOUNDARY MAPS / Eagle River Community Councils / North Anchorage Community Councils / South Anchorage Community Councils / Girdwood Community Councils / CENSUS-DERIVES INDICATORS AT BLOCK GROUP LEVEL / 1. Concentrated Affluence / 2. Concentrated Disadvantage / 3. Housing Density / 4. Immigrant Concentration / 5. Index of Concentration at Extremes / 6. Industrial Heterogeneity / 7. Multiform Disadvantage / 8. Occupational Heterogeneity / 9. Population Density / 10. Racial Heterogeneity / 11. Ratio of Adults to Children / 12. Residential Stability / 13. Income Inequality // APPENDIX: ACI Technical Report: Initial Measures Derived from Censu

Genetic Manipulation of Carotenoid Biosynthesis in the Green Sulfur Bacterium Chlorobium tepidum

The green sulfur bacterium Chlorobium tepidum is a strict anaerobe and an obligate photoautotroph. On the basis of sequence similarity with known enzymes or sequence motifs, nine open reading frames encoding putative enzymes of carotenoid biosynthesis were identified in the genome sequence of C. tepidum, and all nine genes were inactivated. Analysis of the carotenoid composition in the resulting mutants allowed the genes encoding the following six enzymes to be identified: phytoene synthase (crtB/CT1386), phytoene desaturase (crtP/CT0807), ζ-carotene desaturase (crtQ/CT1414), γ-carotene desaturase (crtU/CT0323), carotenoid 1′,2′-hydratase (crtC/CT0301), and carotenoid cis-trans isomerase (crtH/CT0649). Three mutants (CT0180, CT1357, and CT1416 mutants) did not exhibit a discernible phenotype. The carotenoid biosynthetic pathway in C. tepidum is similar to that in cyanobacteria and plants by converting phytoene into lycopene using two plant-like desaturases (CrtP and CrtQ) and a plant-like cis-trans isomerase (CrtH) and thus differs from the pathway known in all other bacteria. In contrast to the situation in cyanobacteria and plants, the construction of a crtB mutant completely lacking carotenoids demonstrates that carotenoids are not essential for photosynthetic growth of green sulfur bacteria. However, the bacteriochlorophyll a contents of mutants lacking colored carotenoids (crtB, crtP, and crtQ mutants) were decreased from that of the wild type, and these mutants exhibited a significant growth rate defect under all light intensities tested. Therefore, colored carotenoids may have both structural and photoprotection roles in green sulfur bacteria. The ability to manipulate the carotenoid composition so dramatically in C. tepidum offers excellent possibilities for studying the roles of carotenoids in the light-harvesting chlorosome antenna and iron-sulfur-type (photosystem I-like) reaction center. The phylogeny of carotenogenic enzymes in green sulfur bacteria and green filamentous bacteria is also discussed