Calculations of atmospheric transmittance in the 11 micrometer window for estimating skin temperature from VISSR infrared brightness temperatures

An algorithm for calculating the atmospheric transmittance in the 10 to 20 micro m spectral band from a known temperature and dewpoint profile, and then using this transmittance to estimate the surface (skin) temperature from a VISSR observation in the 11 micro m window is presented. Parameterizations are drawn from the literature for computing the molecular absorption due to the water vapor continuum, water vapor lines, and carbon dioxide lines. The FORTRAN code is documented for this application, and the sensitivity of the derived skin temperature to variations in the model's parameters is calculated. The VISSR calibration uncertainties are identified as the largest potential source of error

A spectral filter for ESMR's sidelobe errors

Fourier analysis was used to remove periodic errors from a series of NIMBUS-5 electronically scanned microwave radiometer brightness temperatures. The observations were all taken from the midnight orbits over fixed sites in the Australian grasslands. The angular dependence of the data indicates calibration errors consisted of broad sidelobes and some miscalibration as a function of beam position. Even though an angular recalibration curve cannot be derived from the available data, the systematic errors can be removed with a spectral filter. The 7 day cycle in the drift of the orbit of NIMBUS-5, coupled to the look-angle biases, produces an error pattern with peaks in its power spectrum at the weekly harmonics. About plus or minus 4 K of error is removed by simply blocking the variations near two- and three-cycles-per-week

Has the effect of parents’ education on child’s education changed over time?

This paper examines whether the expansion of higher education has reduced inequality by providing more opportunities for students from less privileged backgrounds to attend university or further entrenched existing inequalities. Drawing on Maximally Maintained Inequality theory and Relative Risk Aversion theory, I use logistic regressions to analyse data collected by three nationally representative, crosssectional surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005 (N= 4463) to examine the association between parents’ education and child’s education. Having a universityeducated parent is used as a proxy for membership of the privileged class based on the assumption that children of university-educated parents are more likely to take advantage of opportunities to acquire higher education. University-educated parents are also better placed to provide extra tuition and to assist their children negotiate the education system. I find that although the expansion of higher education has had some impact, having a university-educated parent continues to exert a direct effect on an individual’s propensity to graduate from university.Higher Education, Inequality, Mobility

Towards the true tree: Bioinformatic approaches in the phylogenetics and molecular evolution of the Endopterygota

In this thesis, I use bioinformatic approaches to address new and existing issues surrounding large-scale phylogenetic analysis. A phylogenetic analysis pipeline is developed to aid an investigation of the suitability of integrating Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit 1 (cox1) into phylogenetic supermatrices. In the first two chapters I assess the effect of varying cox1 sample size within a large variable phylogenetic context. As well as intuitive results on increased quality with greater taxon sampling, there are clear monophyly patters relating to local taxonomic sampling. Specifically, more monophyletic resampled taxa in cases when fewer consubfamilials are represented, with a tendency for these to remain unchanged in the degree of monophyly when rarefied. Sampling analyses are extended in chapter two using a mined Scarabaeoidea multilocus dataset, where taxa from given loci are used to improve existing matrices. Improvement in phylogenetic signal is best achieved by targeting cox1 to existing taxa, which suggests minimum parameters for cox1 adoption in large-scale phylogenetics. In chapter 3 I address recently-arisen issues related to phyloinformatic analysis of sequence-delineated matrices. There is ongoing work on setting species boundaries by sequence variation alone, but incongruence results in methodological issues upon integrating multiple loci delineated in this way. In the final chapter I assess the impact of heterogeneous substitution rates on large scale cox1 datasets. Although the number of heterogeneous sites in Coleoptera cox1 is substantial, their presence is found to be beneficial, as their removal negatively impacts the ability of the alignment to generate the 'known' topology. The homoplasy and heterogeneous characteristics of cox1 have not substantially impacted its utility, thus the cox1 datasets have potential to play a substantial role in the tree-of-life

Evidence and Perceptions of Inequality in Australia

Following the increasing impact of globalising economic forces world wide Australia, like many other liberal democracies, moved to adopt neoliberal economic policies with an emphasis on increasing deregulation of economic markets. The economic changes instituted since the 1980s have fundamentally restructured the economy and created a more flexible labour market. Jobs growth has been concentrated in industries that rely heavily on casual and part-time workers. Consequently, the proportion of all jobs that are permanent and full-time has declined. In this paper, we are interested in how these changes have affected the level of income and wealth inequality within Australian society. Although there is a general agreement amongst researchers that there has not been a significant increase in inequality in regard to either income or wealth between the 1980s and the 2000s, some researchers argue that earnings inequality has increased. There is also evidence of a mismatch between objective measures of inequality and the perceptions of the Australian people, with a significant majority of respondents in a national survey conducted in 2005 believing that Australia had become a more divided and less fair society since the 1980s. The present paper examines these disparities and attempts to account for them.Social inequality, neoliberalism, attitudes

Approach to Sounding on the VAS Processor

The key features of the sounding software laboratory being installed on the VAS Processor at NASA/GSFC are outlined. Emphasis is on the support data and personal guidance that a meteorological researcher must provide to attune a physically modeled VAS sounding to his experiment. The fundamental aim of the sounding-support effort is to provide a system which makes use of: radiation transfer models based upon laboratory data, analytic inversion schemes, human guidance for quality control, statistically conditioned retrieval methods, and current ancillary data

A half-open door: pathways for VET award holders into Australian universities

Effective pathways from vocational education and training (VET) to higher education help to alleviate skill shortages as well as increase access to higher qualifications and lifetime earnings for people holding VET awards. Nationally, the proportion of students admitted to higher education on the basis of a VET award is now around 10%. However, there is considerable variation in the rates of admission between different higher education institutions. The authors investigate the extent to which these differences were the product of factors associated with specific fields of study or the result of factors related to the university, such as institutional policies and practices

TOMS ozone data compared at mesoscale resolution to tropopause heights from the AVE radiosonde network and to VAS radiances over the south-central United States

Observations from 1982 are being compared between the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), the Atmospheric Variability Experiment (AVE), and the VISSR Atmospheric Sounder (VAS) across Texas and Oklahoma. TOMS data show a significant ozone maximum over northeastern Texas. AVE radiosonde analysis shows tropopause heights with the highest pressure (lowest altitudes) over central Oklahoma accompanied by a mid-level jet across northern Mexico exiting above the Texas-Gulf coast. Corresponding VAS radiances show a dry slot in the middle tropopause across central Texas accompanied by a secondary slot over Oklahoma. The maxima are separated by 100 to 500 km. The impact of TOMS data on tropopause analysis is preliminarily seen as insignificant because TOMS data is not registered with respect to AVE tropopause heights

Low-level water vapor fields from the VISSR atmospheric sounder (VAS) split window channels at 11 and 12 microns

A series of high-resolution water vapor fields were derived from the 11 and 12 micron channels of the VISSR Atmospheric Sounder (VAS) on GOES-5. The low-level tropospheric moisture content was separated from the surface and atmospheric radiances by using the differential adsorption across the 'split window' along with the average air temperature from imbedded radiosondes. Fields of precipitable water are presented in a time sequence of five false color images taken over the United States at 3-hour intervals. Vivid subsynoptic and mesoscale patterns evolve at 15 km horizontal resolution over the 12-hour observing period. Convective cloud formations develop from several areas of enhanced low-level water vapor, especially where the vertical water vapor gradient relatively strong. Independent verification at radiosonde sites indicates fairly good absolute accuracy, and the spatial and temporal continuity of the water vapor features indicates very good relative accuracy. Residual errors are dominated by radiometer noise and unresolved clouds