Air conditioning (AC) systems cool and dehumidify air. The process deposits moisture on the cooling coils, creating an environment conducive to microbial growth. We know very little, however, about the microbes that grow on AC units or how these microbes affect and interact with the microbial populations of the buildings they cool. This grant supports Jordan Peccia, associate professor of environmental engineering at Yale, who will lead a multidisciplinary team in a pilot study examining how the microbial and chemical emissions of commercial air conditioning units impact the microbiome of occupied spaces. Over two years, Peccia and his team will characterize the bacterial and fungal communities present on the cooling coil surfaces of commercial air conditioners, estimate the microbial volatile organic compound (MVOC) emission rates from commercial AC units, and quantify the influence that AC emissions have on the indoor air and surface microbiome of occupied spaces. The team will initially sample 40 different commercial air conditioning units and use these samples to examine how microbial population structure is affected by a host of environmental variables, including outdoor climate, coil moisture, and coil temperature. They will then measure AC microbial emission rates and the characteristics of emitted microbes to study how these correlate with the surface and air microbiome composition in the buildings these units cool.

This grant funds a study by Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University and Alan Auerbach of the University of California, Berkeley that will measure the work disincentives facing older Americans arising from our country’s almost 40 major fiscal programs and provisions. Kotlikoff and Auerbach will study the combined effects of all these programs to understand the marginal tax rate on income earned by older workers at different ages and to assess their combined potential to limit the work and incomes of the elderly. Using detailed data from several public datasets and advanced financial analysis software, the research team will test several hypotheses, including whether there are high median net marginal tax rates on the labor supply of the elderly at all levels of remaining lifetime resources; whether there exists a large dispersion in net marginal tax rates even holding remaining resources fixed, whether there are significant increases in sustainable living standards associated with the elderly working longer, and whether major impacts of the fiscal system on the elderly’s labor supply can be reduced with revenue-neutral fiscal reforms that preserve fiscal progressivity.

This grant supports an initiative by Andy Taylor at the University of Aberdeen, in collaboration with Urmas Kхljalg at the University of Tartu in Estonia, that aims to significantly expand the UNITE database, a key resource used by mycologists in the genomic identification of fungi. The UNITE database contains genetic sequences of known fungi, which allows researchers to identify unknown fungi collected at field sites by matching the genetic sequences of collected samples to the master samples in the database. Unfortunately, the UNITE database lacks reliable standard sequence data on many of the fungi commonly found in indoor and built environments, which deprives researchers working on the microbiology of the built environment of a powerful tool for taxonomic identification. Over the next two years, Taylor and Kхljalg will target and sequence previously unsequenced fungal strains relevant to human and built environments, hold two sequence annotation workshops that aim to improve the quality of available sequence data, and develop metadata standards and protocols that will enable better inter-database comparison of collected fungal data.

Studies show that cognitive abilities tend to decline postretirement, and that continuation of work or work-like activity can slow cognitive decline. What is less well understood, however, is exactly which activities are most conducive to maintaining cognitive productivity. This grant funds efforts by Ursula Staudinger, director of the Columbia University Center on Aging, to understand whether and to what degree activities that involve novel information processing play a role in arresting cognitive decline.   Combining aspects of three well-respected longitudinal studies, the Health and Retirement Study, the Midlife in America Study, and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, Staudinger and her team will catalog the work and leisure activities of respondents and characterize the ways in which these activities involve the processing of new information. Comparing these activities with health data on cognitive decline will then permit an estimation of the role novel processing plays in sustaining mental productivity. The resulting research promises to provide important new evidence that will help us better understand how to optimize cognitive aging and identify the individuals or groups whose activity patterns place them at particular risk for cognitive decline.

This grant funds research by UCLA economist Kathleen McGarry that examines how providing eldercare affects the labor market activities of adult sons and daughters. Using descriptive analyses, multivariate regressions, and structural modeling on data drawn from the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study, McGarry and her team will study changes in employment, hours worked, wages, and benefits (including health insurance and pension wealth) of adult caregivers in order to assess how caregiving activities affect financial well-being in later life. They will also draw comparisons across genders between the types of care, the number of hours of care, and the effect on labor market behaviors. Of particular interest is whether having a parent in need increases the labor market attachment of men while decreasing the labor force attachment of women. The experimental sample will have over 3,000 couples in which both spouses have living parents, allowing the UCLA team to investigate the transfer of resources to a husband’s parents compared to a wife’s parents. Preliminary analyses for the provision of parental assistance by married couples suggests that greater financial transfers flow to the husband’s parents and greater time transfers to the wife’s parents. There are several potential explanations for this pattern—including differences in the opportunity cost of time for the husband and wife, household bargaining models, and preference for providing care to a parent of the same gender as the adult child. Additional modeling work will allow the team to simulate the effects of various policy measures on caregiving and labor market outcomes, including public financial support for caregivers and low-cost long-term care insurance. The work promises to increase our understanding of the economics of marriage and the family and its implications for the older work force.

The Age Boom Academy at the Columbia Aging Center is a well-respected forum for learning about up-to-date scholarly research regarding the economic, social, and health issues raised by increased longevity. This grant provides three years of support to the Academy to house and develop a platform for improving journalistic understanding of the aging of the U.S. work force. With Sloan support, the Academy will hold a yearly workshop that brings journalists together with leading researchers to discuss the best current scientific thinking about issues related to aging and work. Issues to be addressed include reimagining work and retirement transitions; health expectancy, life expectancy, and work trajectories; and aging and human capital investment. At least 60 journalists are expected to attend the yearly academies, where they will be able to ask questions, develop relationships with scientists in the field, and learn about new and groundbreaking research. The result will be a press corps more empowered to cover issues related to the aging work force.

This grant provides two years of funding for a series of initiatives by SSFILM to support and nurture films and filmmakers that tackle scientific or technological themes or feature scientists, mathematicians, or engineers as major characters. Three distinct but interrelated activities are supported. The first is a filmmaker fund for screenwriters working on science and technology films, with one winning screenwriter the first year and two in the second. Each filmmaker will receive a $35,000 grant and a two-month residency at the Film House, SSFILMS’s newly built artist residency facility. In addition to residency, supported screenwriters will have their work presented in staged readings both at the Festival and at other events around the country. Second, SSFILM will host an annual film prize for the best science- or technology-themed film submitted. Selected by an independent panel of filmmakers and scientists, the winning film will be announced in December at a high-profile screening event aimed at attracting critical notice. Third, SFFILMwill partner with The Black List, an influential annual industry survey of the best unproduced screenplays, to send a Sloan-supported screenwriter to its coveted annual screenwriting workshop. The collection of activities represents an exciting new partnership for the Sloan Film Festival program, which builds bridges between the film industry and Silicon Valley’s active and energetic science and technology culture.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents the largest reform to the U.S. health care system since the 1965 introduction of Medicare and Medicaid. Questions arise as to the possible effects of this significant health care change on the labor market behavior of near-elderly workers (workers aged 59 to 64, who are not yet eligible for Medicare). This grant supports a study by Mark Duggan and his colleague Gopi Shah Goda that examines the likely effects of the ACA on labor outcomes for these near elderly. Duggan and Goda will address several questions about the ACA, including how the ACA affects the employment, labor force participation, self-employment, wages, hours of work, and related labor market outcomes of older workers; which provisions of the ACA contribute to the estimated effects; and how these effects vary over time and by gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, and health.

This grant provides continued support for a program at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama (CMU) that exposes top dramatic writing students to science and technology and awards prizes to student screenwriters who write science- or technology-themed scripts. The CMU program includes a fall symposium that brings scientists to the drama school to introduce students to recent developments in a variety of scientific disciplines; a year-long screenwriting workshop that meets weekly and focuses on the challenges and opportunities posed by incorporating science into dramatic or comedic narratives, a mentorship program that pairs film students with working scientists to help them depict science accurately in their work, an annual screenwriting competition that awards $17,500 to the two best science-themed scripts submitted, and yearly showcases in Los Angeles and New York that bring student filmmakers into contact with leading producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry. Grant funds provide core support for these activities for another two years.

Funds from this grant provide three years of support to the Boston College Center on Aging & Work for the operation and expansion of a multidisciplinary research network that links together scholars working on issues related to the aging work force. To date, nearly 90 scholars from 15 disciplines across 14 countries have joined the network, sharing the latest news, research results, data, and ideas for further scholarship. Grant funds will support expansion of the network’s membership to 150 members globally, a survey to track member priorities, the launch of a summer research institute in 2016, a one-day member conference to be held at the annual meeting of the 2017 Gerontological Society of America, and the development of a long-term sustainability plan for the network.