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The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate data sets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new versus legacy data sets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate data sets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path toward implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches. ©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved., Code and data to reproduce the figures of this article are available on GitHub and released on Zenodo (doi:10.5281/zenodo.3165019). Definition of properties and recommendations are summarized here: http://wiki.linked.earth/PaCTS_v1.0 . This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the EarthCube Program with Grant ICER‐1541029. Feedback solicitation on the standard was facilitated by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) organization. The 2016 workshop on Paleoclimate Data Standards was hosted by the World Data Service for Paleoclimatology (WDS/NOAA‐Paleo), and the participation of international attendees was made possible by a PAGES travel grant. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

This paper presents an experimental program to evaluate the effect of sustained loading and outdoor exposure on the shear strength of precast concrete sandwich panels connected with FRP grid/rigid foam insulation as shear transfer mechanism. CFRP and GFRP grids were considered in this study along with EPS and XPS foam. The experimental program is comprised of three different studies with a total of 26 test panels using different combinations of FRP grid and foam insulation.

Probabilistic estimates of the cost and performance of future nuclear energy systems under different scenarios of government research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) spending were obtained from 30 U.S. and 30 European nuclear technology experts. We used a novel elicitation approach which combined individual and group elicitation. With no change from current RD&D funding levels, experts on average expected current (Gen. III/III+) designs to be somewhat more expensive in 2030 than they were in 2010, and they expected the next generation of designs (Gen. IV) to be more expensive still as of 2030. Projected costs of proposed small modular reactors (SMRs) were similar to those of Gen. IV systems. The experts almost unanimously recommended large increases in government support for nuclear RD&D (generally 2-3 times current spending). The majority expected that such RD&D would have only a modest effect on cost, but would improve performance in other areas, such as safety, waste management, and uranium resource utilization. The U.S. and E.U. experts were in relative agreement regarding how government RD&D funds should be allocated, placing particular focus on very high temperature reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors, fuels and materials, and fuel cycle technologies.

Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad, by Jeffrey T. Richelson. W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 318 pages, $27.95.

the world will need to produce huge quantities of energy in the 21 century to meet the needs of a growing world population, while also working to lift billions of people out of poverty. Providing this energy at a reasonable cost, without causing unmanageable climate disruption, security risks, or other environmental devastation, will be one of the century’s most daunting challenges. This challenge will be even more difficult to meet if nuclear energy does not play a substantial part. But achieving the scale of nuclear energy growth required while managing the risks of that growth will be a major challenge in itself, one that will require both technical and institutional innovations. Consider the scale of growth that is needed for nuclear energy to make a meaningful contribution to mitigating carbon emissions. One oft-cited 2004 analysis broke down the problem of shifting away from a business-as-usual energy path into seven “wedges”—different technologies that would each grow to displace a billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2050 (see Figure 1). More recent science suggests that 10 to 15 such wedges are likely to be required, as business-asusual emissions are higher than previously projected, the carbon-absorbing properties of the oceans appear to be weaker, and the atmospheric concentration of carbon required to avoid disastrous climate consequences seem to be even lower than once thought. For nuclear power to provide even one such wedge would require a

I present and describe a new software package in the R statistical programming environment for dendrochronology. R is considered the world's pre-eminent open-source statistical computing environment where users can contribute packages, which are freely available on the Internet. The dendrochronology program library in R (dplR) is able to read standard decadal-format files and allows users to perform several standard analyses including interactive detrending, chronology building, and the calculation of standard descriptive statistics. The package can also produce a variety of publication quality plots. The dplR package should make it easier for dendrochronologists to take advantage of R and use it as their primary analytic environment.

Background:Deafness is the hidden disability of childhood, and leads to poor educational and employment prospects. There is little published information on deafness in Pakistan. Profound hearing impairment is more prevalent in countries where consanguineous marriages are common, such as Pakistan. This study aimed to assess causes of childhood deafness and association with parental consanguinity, within deaf and hearing children in the Peshawar district of Pukhtoonkhwa Province, Pakistan.Methods:One hundred and forty deaf children were identified from two schools for deaf children within the Peshawar district. These children were assessed via audiology, otoscopic examination, case note review and parental history, in order to attempt to ascertain the cause of their deafness. Two hundred and twenty-one attendees at a local immunisation clinic (taken as representative of the local childhood population) were also screened for hearing impairment. Parents of both groups of children were assessed by interview and questionnaire in order to ascertain the mother and father's family relationship (i.e. whether cousins or unrelated).Results:Of the 140 deaf school pupils, 92.1 per cent were profoundly hearing impaired and 7.9 per cent were severely hearing impaired. All these children had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. A possible cause of deafness was identified in only six of these children. Parental consanguinity (i.e. first or second cousins) was established for 86.4 per cent of deaf school pupils and 59.7 per cent of immunisation clinic attendees. None of the control children were identified as having a hearing problem.Conclusion:The prevalence of parental consanguinity was significantly higher in deaf children compared with non-hearing impaired children. However, the study also confirmed a high rate of consanguinity within the general Peshawar community. In this setting, prevention of consanguineous unions is the only means of reducing levels of congenital hearing impairment. The current levels of hearing disability represent both a prominent public health problem and an important, potentially preventable childhood disability.

thousands of nuclear weapons, and enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium to make tens of thousands more, out of hostile hands. In this crisis, small groups of policy entrepreneurs launched major innovations to spur the nuclear complexes of the former rival superpowers to pursue their common interest in securing and dismantling nuclear stockpiles. Billions of dollars have now been spent pursuing these efforts, thousands of bombs’ worth of nuclear materials have been permanently destroyed, and security both for thousands of nuclear weapons and for enough nuclear material for tens of thousands more has been substantially improved. But as the Soviet collapse has receded into the past, the initial innovations have been increasingly constrained by cautious bureaucracies, continuing secrecy and mistrust, and festering political obstacles and disputes. Programs once conceived as free-wheeling, short-term crisis responses have shifted toward “business as usual” approaches—more systematized and sustainable, but far slower and less flexible. Yet the danger remains very real. Al Qaida and the jihadist network it helped to spawn have repeatedly attempted to purchase stolen nuclear material and to recruit nuclear expertise; indeed, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri met at length with two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists to discuss nuclear weapons. Government studies have repeatedly concluded that a technically capable terrorist group could plausibly make at least a crude nuclear bomb if it procures HEU or separated plutonium. The essential ingredients of nuclear weapons are stored in hundreds of buildings in more than 40 countries—some very well secured, and some with little more than a night watchman and a chain-link fence. The danger of nuclear theft is Matthew Bunn

Rule-based classification using classification tree analysis (CTA) is increasingly applied to remotely sensed data. CTA employs splitting rules to construct decision trees using training data as input. Results are then used for image classification. Software implementations of CTA offer different splitting rules and provide practitioners little guidance for their selection. We evaluated classification accuracy from four commonly used splitting rules and three types of imagery. Overall accuracies within data types varied less than 6 percent. Pairwise comparisons of kappa statistics indicated no significant differences (p-value � 0.05). Individual class accuracies, measured by user’s and producer’s accuracy, however, varied among methods. The entropy and twoing splitting rules most often accounted for the poorest performing classes. Based on analysis of the structure of the rules and the results from our three data sets, when the software provides the option, we recommend the gini and class probability rules for classification of remotely sensed data.

Background. Immunoglobulin A (IgA) in maternal milk may protect Gambian infants from early Helicobacter pylori colonization. This study sought evidence that this protection could be due to specific IgA antibodies. Methods. Sixty-five infants were screened from 12 weeks of age with [13C]-urea breath tests. Antibodies in maternal milk were measured to determine total IgA content and to detect specific IgA antibodies against crude whole-cell and recombinant H. pylori urease antigen preparations. Results. Ten children (15%) had no evidence of early H. pylori colonization, 10 (15%) had early H. pylori colonization, and 43 (66%) had mixed results. Levels of maternal circulating specific immunoglobulin G, total milk IgA, and IgA directed against crude whole-cell H. pylori antigen preparation were not significantly associated with the rate of infant H. pylori colonization. However, mothers of infants with no evidence of early colonization produced significantly higher levels of anti-recombinant urease IgA antibodies in milk than did control mothers, particularly at 8, 16, and 20 weeks postpartum (P < .01). Conclusions. These observations support the hypothesis that antibodies in mother's milk directed against H. pylori urease can protect against colonization in human infancy.

A World of Competition and Cooperation Energy technology innovation is not a U.S. phenomenon; it is a global phenomenon. All over the world, research institutions, companies, and governments alike are intensifying their investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3). In 1999, a report by the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) called for more than doubling U.S. federal spending on international ERD3 cooperation and for establishing new institutions to develop a strategy and to oversee the effort (PCAST, 1999). It recommended a wide range of international ERD3 cooperation activities over a large number of different energy technologies. The international energy landscape has been transformed since then, in particular by the rise of emerging economies such as China and India both as energy markets and as energy innovators. Overall, these changes have only made the case for such cooperation stronger. Indeed, the process of innovation has globalized, with ideas, resources, and manufacturing coming from different countries throughout the value chain (Gallagher, Gruebler, Kuhl, Nemet, & Wilson, 2012); there are now few high-tech products that do not include contributions from multiple countries. Countries and firms that attempt to go it alone in developing new energy technologies and bringing them to market are likely to be left behind by those who are sharing in the global flow of ideas and resources.

One of the greatest challenges facing human civilization is the provision of secure, affordable energy without causing catastrophic environmental damage. As the world's largest economy, and as a world leader in energy technologies, the United States is a particularly important case. In the light of increased competition from other countries (particularly China), growing concerns about the local and global environmental impacts of the energy system, an ever-present interest in energy security, and the realization that technological innovation takes place in a complex ecosystem involving a wide range of domestic and international actors, this volume provides a comprehensive and analytical assessment of the role that the U.S. government should play in energy technology innovation. It will be invaluable for policy makers in energy innovation and for researchers studying energy innovation, future energy technologies, climate-change mitigation, and innovation management. It will act as a supplementary textbook for courses on energy and innovation.

We use focal-species analysis to apply a graph-theoretic approach to landscape connectivity in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina. In doing so we demonstrate the utility of a mathematical graph as an ecological construct with respect to habitat connectivity. Graph theory is a well established mainstay of information technology and is concerned with highly efficient network flow. It employs fast algorithms and compact data structures that are easily adapted to landscape-level focal species analysis. American mink (Mustela vison) and prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea) share the same habitat but have different dispersal capabilities, and therefore provide interesting comparisons on connections in the landscape. We built graphs using GIS coverages to define habitat patches and determined the functional distance between the patches with least-cost path modeling. Using graph operations concerned with edge and node removal we found that the landscape is fundamentally connected for mink and fundamentally unconnected for prothonotary warblers. The advantage of a graph-theoretic approach over other modeling techniques is that it is a heuristic framework which can be applied with very little data and improved from the initial results. We demonstrate the use of graph theory in a metapopulation context, and suggest that graph theory as applied to conservation biology can provide leverage on applications concerned with landscape connectivity.

Background A large percentage of Liverpool Somalis have vitamin D deficiency and low calcium excretion. The dietary habits of Liverpool Somalis were investigated with respect to food items containing calcium and vitamin D. Methods A questionnaire, administered by a Somali field worker, assessed the intake of food of 60 adult (45 females and 15 males; mean age 42 years) and 10 child (seven females and three males; mean age 10 years) Somali volunteers. Questions concerned personal details, health (bone and muscle problems) and dietary habits including the frequency of consumption of food items containing substantial amounts of calcium and vitamin D. Results Most subjects reported bone and muscle pain. Eating habits reflected traditional customs. Foods containing substantial amounts of calcium and vitamin D were consumed infrequently. Milk was only consumed in tea. Those self-reporting bone pain consumed eggs, cheese and beans rarely. Conclusion The food choices of these individuals with regard to bone health is a cause for concern and indicates a likelihood of low calcium and vitamin D intake.

▪ Abstract Effective approaches to the management of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)—the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons—are fundamental to controlling nuclear proliferation and providing the basis for deep, transparent, and irreversible reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ongoing dismantlement of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are creating unprecedented stresses on the systems for managing these materials, as well as unprecedented opportunities for cooperation to improve these systems. In this article, we summarize the technical background to this situation, and the current and prospective security challenges posed by military stockpiles of these materials in the United States and Russia. We then review the programs in place to address these challenges, the progress of these programs to date, and the work remaining to be done, in five areas: (a) preventing theft and smuggling of nuclear warheads and fissile materials; (b) building a regime of monitored reductions in nuclear warhead and fissile material stockpiles; (c) ending further production of excess fissile materials; (d ) reducing stockpiles of excess fissile materials; and (e) avoiding economic collapse in the nuclear cities where substantial fractions of these materials and their guardians reside.

The combination of the FY 2010 budget request for the Department of Energy (DOE) and the portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funds likely to be available in 2010 would (assuming that they would be split evenly between FY 2010 and FY 2011) result in a doubling in funding available for energy research, development, and deployment (ERD and D) from $3.6 billion in FY 2009 to $7.2 billion in FY 2010. Without the stimulus funds, DOE ERD and D investments in FY 2010 would decrease very slightly when compared to FY 2009. Excluding the $7.5 billion for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loans in FY 2009, the FY 2010 budget request for deployment represents a 33 percent decrease from the FY 2009 levels from $520 million to $350 million. This decrease is largely due to the large amounts of funds appropriated in ARRA for DOE deployment programs, or $23.6 billion, which are three times greater than those appropriated in the FY 2009 budget. These very substantial funding amounts, coupled with the broad range of institutional innovations the administration is putting in place and movement toward putting a price on carbon emissions, will help accelerate innovation for a broad range of energy technologies. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Energy Innovation Hubs are important initiatives that could contribute to two weak points of the government's energy innovation effort, namely funding high-risk projects in transformational technologies and in companies that have not traditionally worked with the government and strengthening the integration of basic and applied research in priority areas. Increasing the funding for different types of energy storage research, providing some support for exploring opportunities in coal-to-liquids with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and coal-and-biomass-to-liquids with CCS, and reducing funding for fission RD and D are other actions that Congress could take in the short-term. Energy storage may play a crucial role in the future of the power and transportation systems, which together consume two thirds of primary energy in the United States. A recent National Academy of Science report recommended carrying out detailed scenario assessments of the penetration of unconventional fuels from coal and coal and biomass with CCS. And the research plan provided for nuclear fission does not justify spending as many funds as were requested. The proposed funding for FY 2010 and the resources from ARRA, however, do not guarantee that the United States will finally enjoy the predictable and consistent publicly-funded energy technology innovation effort that it needs. The Obama administration must put in place a comprehensive energy technology innovation strategy that will ensure that an expanded ERD3 effort is both sustainable and efficient. This commission would be charged with, inter alia, developing a strategy that optimizes the integration of the various stages of innovation (research, development, demonstration, early deployment), as well as integrates efforts across technology areas. The database upon which this analysis is based may be downloaded in Excel format at: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19119/ .

This report assesses the economics of reprocessing versus direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The breakeven uranium price at which reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from existing light-water reactors (LWRs) and recycling the resulting plutonium and uranium in LWRs would become economic is assessed, using central estimates of the costs of different elements of the nuclear fuel cycle (and other fuel cycle input parameters), for a wide range of range of potential reprocessing prices. Sensitivity analysis is performed, showing that the conclusions reached are robust across a wide range of input parameters. The contribution of direct disposal or reprocessing and recycling to electricity cost is also assessed. The choice of particular central estimates and ranges for the input parameters of the fuel cycle model is justified through a review of the relevant literature. The impact of different fuel cycle approaches on the volume needed for geologic repositories is briefly discussed, as are the issues surrounding the possibility of performing separations and transmutation on spent nuclear fuel to reduce the need for additional repositories. A similar analysis is then performed of the breakeven uranium price at which deploying fast neutron breeder reactors would become competitive compared with a once-through fuel cycle in LWRs, for a range of possible differences in capital cost between LWRs and fast neutron reactors. Sensitivity analysis is again provided, as are an analysis of the contribution to electricity cost, and a justification of the choices of central estimates and ranges for the input parameters. The equations used in the economic model are derived and explained in an appendix. Another appendix assesses the quantities of uranium likely to be recoverable worldwide in the future at a range of different possible future prices.

While this year's disaster at Japan's Fukushima Dai'ichi plant, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, was caused by the one-two punch of a huge earthquake followed by an immense tsunami—a disaster unlikely to occur in many locations—it revealed technical and institutional weaknesses that must be fixed around the world. If nuclear power is to grow on the scale required to be a significant part of the solution to global climate disruption or scarcity of fossil fuels, major steps are needed to rebuild confidence that nuclear facilities will be safe from accidents and secure against attacks ( 1 ).

Commercial London wants new air capacity. Is expansion the very least that should be done, or are the environmental costs too much to pay? The article presents views from both sides of the table. One of the view is that immediate expansion in aviation sector is necessary, but is only an interim solution to a wider problem that requires the full exploitation of cutting edge technology. On the other side it is debated that environmental problems associated with air transport expansion are growing faster than the technical solutions, creating a sustainability gap.

A cross sectional descriptive study was undertaken in the Liverpool Somali population in order to determine the prevalence of hepatitis B markers. Sessions were held at two health centres providing care for Somali households. A total of 439 subjects were screened, of whom 194 (43.3%) …

Skoyles is on target both in identifying the aviation industry as a source of safety best practices and in highlighting the crucial role of transparent and independent regulation. Nuclear organizations and other organizations managing high-consequence technologies around the world must ensure that

The forests of Russia cover a larger area and hold more carbon than the forests of any other nation and thus have the potential for a major role in global warming. Despite a systematic inventory of these forests, however, estimates of total carbon stocks vary, and spatial variations in the stocks within large aggregated units of land are unknown, thus hampering measurement of sources and sinks of carbon. We mapped the distribution of living forest biomass for the year 2000 by developing a relationship between ground measurements of wood volume at 12 sites throughout the Russian Federation and data from the MODIS satellite bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) product (MOD43B4). Based on the results of regression-tree analyses, we used the MOD43B4 product to assign biomass values to individual 500 m × 500 m cells in areas identified as forest by two satellite-based maps of land cover. According to the analysis, the total living biomass varied between 46 and 67 Pg, largely because of different estimates of forest area. Although optical data are limited in distinguishing differences in biomass in closed canopy forests, the estimates of total living biomass obtained here varied more in response to different definitions of forest than to saturation of the optical sensing of biomass.

We assess the economics of reprocessing versus direct disposal of spent fuel. The uranium price at which reprocessing spent fuel from light water reactors (LWRs) and recycling the resulting plutonium and uranium in LWRs would become economic is estimated for a range of reprocessing prices and other fuel cycle costs. The contribution of both fuel cycle options to the cost of electricity is also estimated. A similar analysis is performed to compare fast neutron reactors (FRs) with LWRs. We review available information about various fuel cycle costs, as well as the quantities of uranium likely to be recoverable at a range of future prices. We conclude that the once-through LWR fuel cycle is likely to remain significantly cheaper than recycling in either LWRs or FRs for at least the next 50 yr, even with substantial growth in nuclear power.