Alien Registration- Hawkins, Luke A. (Houlton, Aroostook County)

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Paper Session I-A - Planning for the Performance of Future Space Bases

The United States Air Force and the Department of Defense are moving toward normalizing space operations, from specialized one-of-a-kind launch to standardized launch, much as they provide airlift today. Normalized launch will enhance our capability to meet contingency operations responsive to the rapidly changing world geopolitical situation. The current space infrastructure will not fully support future launch operation concepts. We must be more sensitive to environmental concerns, and improved performance standards are needed for future space facilities* The Air Force is taking the lead in bringing together the worldwide space community in developing a process for performance planning of future space bases

Real-time RFI Mitigation in Radio Astronomy

As the use of wireless technology has increased around the world, Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) has become more and more of a problem for radio astronomers. Preventative measures exist to limit the presence of RFI, and programs exist to remove it from saved data, but the use of algorithms to detect and remove RFI as an observation is occurring is much less common. Such a method would be incredibly useful for observations in which the data must undergo several rounds of processing before being saved, as in pulsar timing studies. Strategies for real-time mitigation have been discussed and tested with simulated data, but ideally the results of any approach would be validated by a detailed comparison of the final data products with and without mitigation applied. The goal of this project is to develop an RFI mitigation approach based on strategies suggested by Buch et al.(2016) and to test this program on real data from the observation of pulsar J1713+0747 at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. We use a Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) filter to identify interference in the observation and replace the compromised data with random Gaussian noise to match a characteristic radio signal from space. In order to verify our results, we analyze the pulsar’s timing residuals obtained both from the mitigated data and from data processed through offline RFI removal software. Comparing the two, our preliminary findings indicate that our program is able to significantly improve the quality of timing results from the observation

Banner News

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Poorest countries experience earlier anthropogenic emergence of daily temperature extremes

Understanding how the emergence of the anthropogenic warming signal from the noise of internal variability translates to changes in extreme event occurrence is of crucial societal importance. By utilising simulations of cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and temperature changes from eleven earth system models, we demonstrate that the inherently lower internal variability found at tropical latitudes results in large increases in the frequency of extreme daily temperatures (exceedances of the 99.9th percentile derived from pre-industrial climate simulations) occurring much earlier than for mid-to-high latitude regions. Most of the world's poorest people live at low latitudes, when considering 2010 GDP-PPP per capita; conversely the wealthiest population quintile disproportionately inhabit more variable mid-latitude climates. Consequently, the fraction of the global population in the lowest socio-economic quintile is exposed to substantially more frequent daily temperature extremes after much lower increases in both mean global warming and cumulative CO2 emissions

The Maunder minimum and the Little Ice Age: an update from recent reconstructions and climate simulations

The Maunder minimum (MM) was a period of extremely low solar activity from approximately AD 1650 to 1715. In the solar physics literature, the MM is sometimes associated with a period of cooler global temperatures, referred to as the Little Ice Age (LIA), and thus taken as compelling evidence of a large, direct solar influence on climate. In this study, we bring together existing simulation and observational studies, particularly the most recent solar activity and paleoclimate reconstructions, to examine this relation. Using northern hemisphere surface air temperature reconstructions, the LIA can be most readily defined as an approximately 480 year period spanning AD 1440–1920, although not all of this period was notably cold. While the MM occurred within the much longer LIA period, the timing of the features are not suggestive of causation and should not, in isolation, be used as evidence of significant solar forcing of climate. Climate model simulations suggest multiple factors, particularly volcanic activity, were crucial for causing the cooler temperatures in the northern hemisphere during the LIA. A reduction in total solar irradiance likely contributed to the LIA at a level comparable to changing land use

New archaeological discoveries in north-central Timor-Leste indicate sociocultural adaptations to landscape change during the Holocene

During the Holocene, Wallacea saw dramatic sociocultural changes during the Pre-ceramic, Neolithic, Metal-age, and Colonial periods, as well as climatic and associated environmental changes that affected the landscapes and ecologies of islands. These environmental and cultural processes appear to have influenced human socioeconomic adaptations throughout the archipelago. Here, we present new anthropological and archaeological data demonstrating the effects of these processes. Excavations at the cave site of Hatu Saur on the north coast of Timor-Leste have revealed a deep archaeological sequence that dates from ca. 10,500 years until the present. The site contains extensive assemblages of faunal remains, as well as stone artifacts, revealing settlement patterns that were influenced by sea level change and estuarine infilling after 7 ka. The sequence encompasses the beginning of the Neolithic in Timor-Leste, some 3500 years ago, and the period from ca. 700 years ago when outside influences, including Chinese and Makassar traders and Dutch and Portuguese colonization, greatly affected the indigenous culture and economy on the island of Timor, reflected in the material culture remains from Hatu Saur. The archaeological findings complement related anthropological research in the region that highlights unique local mythologies of settlement origins and their contested histories

Informationの多変数解析への応用について

The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), at ca. 55.8 Ma, is one of the most studied instances of past greenhouse gas-induced global warming. As such, it provides a rich opportunity to examine the impact of such global change on local climates. The effects of increased continental and sea surface temperatures on local precipitation and humidity during the PETM remain poorly constrained and studies reveal complex, regional differences; whilst some localities appear to experience a net increase in humidity, others exhibit the opposite. Crucially, there are few records of hydrological change from tropical regions. Recent onshore drilling expeditions in Tanzania have yielded expanded sedimentary sections, deposited in a marine environment, that span much of the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene and show exceptionally good preservation of both calcareous microfossils and organic matter. The PETM interval has previously been constrained by both biostratigraphy and carbon isotopic records and spans ca. 7 m of section. Lipid distributions, including various terrestrial, marine and bacterial biomarkers and their hydrogen isotopic compositions, as well as mineralogy, were used to examine East African vegetation and hydrological responses to the global change occurring at the PETM. Although total organic carbon contents decrease, the concentrations of both higher plant (n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids) and soil bacterial (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers) biomarkers increase dramatically at the onset of the PETM negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE), suggesting an increased discharge of fluvial sedimentary organic matter. Similarly, mineralogical indicators of terrestrial input – including Ti/Al and Si/Al ratios, quartz contents and, notably, the proportion of kaolinite – also increase at the onset of the CIE. However, higher plant leaf wax n-alkanes (C27, C29 and C31) become more deuterium-enriched throughout the same interval, suggesting a more arid and/or hotter, rather than a more humid, environment. This evidence collectively suggests an East African early PETM climate characterised by overall hot and arid conditions punctuated by intense, perhaps seasonal, precipitation events. These data match observations from other locations at mid-latitudes, suggesting that the humid climate often suggested for the PETM was not globally widespread

Development of a framework for the co-production and prototyping of public health interventions

BACKGROUND: Existing guidance for developing public health interventions does not provide information for researchers about how to work with intervention providers to co-produce and prototype the content and delivery of new interventions prior to evaluation. The ASSIST + Frank study aimed to adapt an existing effective peer-led smoking prevention intervention (ASSIST), integrating new content from the UK drug education resource Talk to Frank ( www.talktofrank.com ) to co-produce two new school-based peer-led drug prevention interventions. A three-stage framework was tested to adapt and develop intervention content and delivery methods in collaboration with key stakeholders to facilitate implementation. METHODS: The three stages of the framework were: 1) Evidence review and stakeholder consultation; 2) Co-production; 3) Prototyping. During stage 1, six focus groups, 12 consultations, five interviews, and nine observations of intervention delivery were conducted with key stakeholders (e.g. Public Health Wales [PHW] ASSIST delivery team, teachers, school students, health professionals). During stage 2, an intervention development group consisting of members of the research team and the PHW ASSIST delivery team was established to adapt existing, and co-produce new, intervention activities. In stage 3, intervention training and content were iteratively prototyped using process data on fidelity and acceptability to key stakeholders. Stages 2 and 3 took the form of an action-research process involving a series of face-to-face meetings, email exchanges, observations, and training sessions. RESULTS: Utilising the three-stage framework, we co-produced and tested intervention content and delivery methods for the two interventions over a period of 18 months involving external partners. New and adapted intervention activities, as well as refinements in content, the format of delivery, timing and sequencing of activities, and training manuals resulted from this process. The involvement of intervention delivery staff, participants and teachers shaped the content and format of the interventions, as well as supporting rapid prototyping in context at the final stage. CONCLUSIONS: This three-stage framework extends current guidance on intervention development by providing step-by-step instructions for co-producing and prototyping an intervention's content and delivery processes prior to piloting and formal evaluation. This framework enhances existing guidance and could be transferred to co-produce and prototype other public health interventions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN14415936 , registered retrospectively on 05 November 2014