ALBERT

Description: The Pluto system was recently explored by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, making closest approach on 14 July 2015. Pluto's surface displays diverse landforms, terrain ages, albedos, colors, and composition gradients. Evidence is found for a water-ice crust, geologically young surface units, surface ice convection, wind streaks, volatile transport, and glacial flow. Pluto's atmosphere is highly extended, with trace hydrocarbons, a global haze layer, and a surface pressure near 10 microbars. Pluto's diverse surface geology and long-term activity raise fundamental questions about how small planets remain active many billions of years after formation. Pluto's large moon Charon displays tectonics and evidence for a heterogeneous crustal composition; its north pole displays puzzling dark terrain. Small satellites Hydra and Nix have higher albedos than expected.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Stern, S A -- Bagenal, F -- Ennico, K -- Gladstone, G R -- Grundy, W M -- McKinnon, W B -- Moore, J M -- Olkin, C B -- Spencer, J R -- Weaver, H A -- Young, L A -- Andert, T -- Andrews, J -- Banks, M -- Bauer, B -- Bauman, J -- Barnouin, O S -- Bedini, P -- Beisser, K -- Beyer, R A -- Bhaskaran, S -- Binzel, R P -- Birath, E -- Bird, M -- Bogan, D J -- Bowman, A -- Bray, V J -- Brozovic, M -- Bryan, C -- Buckley, M R -- Buie, M W -- Buratti, B J -- Bushman, S S -- Calloway, A -- Carcich, B -- Cheng, A F -- Conard, S -- Conrad, C A -- Cook, J C -- Cruikshank, D P -- Custodio, O S -- Dalle Ore, C M -- Deboy, C -- Dischner, Z J B -- Dumont, P -- Earle, A M -- Elliott, H A -- Ercol, J -- Ernst, C M -- Finley, T -- Flanigan, S H -- Fountain, G -- Freeze, M J -- Greathouse, T -- Green, J L -- Guo, Y -- Hahn, M -- Hamilton, D P -- Hamilton, S A -- Hanley, J -- Harch, A -- Hart, H M -- Hersman, C B -- Hill, A -- Hill, M E -- Hinson, D P -- Holdridge, M E -- Horanyi, M -- Howard, A D -- Howett, C J A -- Jackman, C -- Jacobson, R A -- Jennings, D E -- Kammer, J A -- Kang, H K -- Kaufmann, D E -- Kollmann, P -- Krimigis, S M -- Kusnierkiewicz, D -- Lauer, T R -- Lee, J E -- Lindstrom, K L -- Linscott, I R -- Lisse, C M -- Lunsford, A W -- Mallder, V A -- Martin, N -- McComas, D J -- McNutt, R L Jr -- Mehoke, D -- Mehoke, T -- Melin, E D -- Mutchler, M -- Nelson, D -- Nimmo, F -- Nunez, J I -- Ocampo, A -- Owen, W M -- Paetzold, M -- Page, B -- Parker, A H -- Parker, J W -- Pelletier, F -- Peterson, J -- Pinkine, N -- Piquette, M -- Porter, S B -- Protopapa, S -- Redfern, J -- Reitsema, H J -- Reuter, D C -- Roberts, J H -- Robbins, S J -- Rogers, G -- Rose, D -- Runyon, K -- Retherford, K D -- Ryschkewitsch, M G -- Schenk, P -- Schindhelm, E -- Sepan, B -- Showalter, M R -- Singer, K N -- Soluri, M -- Stanbridge, D -- Steffl, A J -- Strobel, D F -- Stryk, T -- Summers, M E -- Szalay, J R -- Tapley, M -- Taylor, A -- Taylor, H -- Throop, H B -- Tsang, C C C -- Tyler, G L -- Umurhan, O M -- Verbiscer, A J -- Versteeg, M H -- Vincent, M -- Webbert, R -- Weidner, S -- Weigle, G E 2nd -- White, O L -- Whittenburg, K -- Williams, B G -- Williams, K -- Williams, S -- Woods, W W -- Zangari, A M -- Zirnstein, E -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Oct 16;350(6258):aad1815. doi: 10.1126/science.aad1815.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA. astern@boulder.swri.edu. ; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80303, USA. ; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center, Space Science Division, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. ; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX 28510, USA. ; Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA. ; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. ; Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA. ; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723, USA. ; Universitat der Bundeswehr Munchen, Neubiberg 85577, Germany. ; Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA. ; KinetX Aerospace, Tempe, AZ 85284, USA. ; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, La Canada Flintridge, CA 91011, USA. ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. ; University of Bonn, Bonn D-53113, Germany. ; NASA Headquarters (retired), Washington, DC 20546, USA. ; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. ; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. ; NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546, USA. ; Rheinisches Institut fur Umweltforschung an der Universitat zu Koln, Cologne 50931, Germany. ; Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. ; Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. ; Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA. ; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. ; National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, AZ 26732, USA. ; NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35812, USA. ; Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. ; Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. ; University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. ; Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX 77058, USA. ; Michael Soluri Photography, New York, NY 10014, USA. ; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. ; Roane State Community College, Jamestown, TN 38556, USA. ; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. ; Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26472913" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Estimates of extinction risk for Amazonian plant and animal species are rare and not often incorporated into land-use policy and conservation planning. We overlay spatial distribution models with historical and projected deforestation to show that at least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. If confirmed, these results would increase the number of threatened plant species on Earth by 22%. We show that the trends observed in Amazonia apply to trees throughout the tropics, and we predict that most of the world’s 〉40,000 tropical tree species now qualify as globally threatened. A gap analysis suggests that existing Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories will protect viable populations of most threatened species if these areas suffer no further degradation, highlighting the key roles that protected areas, indigenous peoples, and improved governance can play in preventing large-scale extinctions in the tropics in this century.

Description: The Gorkha earthquake (magnitude 7.8) on 25 April 2015 and later aftershocks struck South Asia, killing ~9000 people and damaging a large region. Supported by a large campaign of responsive satellite data acquisitions over the earthquake disaster zone, our team undertook a satellite image survey of the earthquakes' induced geohazards in Nepal and China and an assessment of the geomorphic, tectonic, and lithologic controls on quake-induced landslides. Timely analysis and communication aided response and recovery and informed decision-makers. We mapped 4312 coseismic and postseismic landslides. We also surveyed 491 glacier lakes for earthquake damage but found only nine landslide-impacted lakes and no visible satellite evidence of outbursts. Landslide densities correlate with slope, peak ground acceleration, surface downdrop, and specific metamorphic lithologies and large plutonic intrusions.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kargel, J S -- Leonard, G J -- Shugar, D H -- Haritashya, U K -- Bevington, A -- Fielding, E J -- Fujita, K -- Geertsema, M -- Miles, E S -- Steiner, J -- Anderson, E -- Bajracharya, S -- Bawden, G W -- Breashears, D F -- Byers, A -- Collins, B -- Dhital, M R -- Donnellan, A -- Evans, T L -- Geai, M L -- Glasscoe, M T -- Green, D -- Gurung, D R -- Heijenk, R -- Hilborn, A -- Hudnut, K -- Huyck, C -- Immerzeel, W W -- Liming, Jiang -- Jibson, R -- Kaab, A -- Khanal, N R -- Kirschbaum, D -- Kraaijenbrink, P D A -- Lamsal, D -- Shiyin, Liu -- Mingyang, Lv -- McKinney, D -- Nahirnick, N K -- Zhuotong, Nan -- Ojha, S -- Olsenholler, J -- Painter, T H -- Pleasants, M -- Pratima, K C -- Yuan, Q I -- Raup, B H -- Regmi, D -- Rounce, D R -- Sakai, A -- Donghui, Shangguan -- Shea, J M -- Shrestha, A B -- Shukla, A -- Stumm, D -- van der Kooij, M -- Voss, K -- Xin, Wang -- Weihs, B -- Wolfe, D -- Lizong, Wu -- Xiaojun, Yao -- Yoder, M R -- Young, N -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Jan 8;351(6269):aac8353. doi: 10.1126/science.aac8353. Epub 2015 Dec 16.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. kargel@hwr.arizona.edu dshugar@uw.edu uharitashya1@udayton.edu. ; Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. ; School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Tacoma, Tacoma, WA, USA. kargel@hwr.arizona.edu dshugar@uw.edu uharitashya1@udayton.edu. ; Department of Geology, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA. kargel@hwr.arizona.edu dshugar@uw.edu uharitashya1@udayton.edu. ; Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, Prince George, BC, Canada. ; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. ; Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. ; Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. ; Institute of Environmental Engineering, Federal Institute of Technology-ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. ; NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA. ; International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal. ; NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA. ; GlacierWorks, Marblehead, MA, USA. ; The Mountain Institute, Elkins, WV, USA. ; U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA. ; Central Department of Geology, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal. ; Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada. ; CVA Engineering, Suresnes, France. ; Earthquake Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Pasadena, CA, USA. ; ImageCat, Long Beach, CA, USA. ; Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands. ; State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics, Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. ; U.S. Geological Survey, Golden, CO, USA. ; Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway. ; Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA. ; Cold and Arid Regions of Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China. ; School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. ; Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. ; School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China. ; Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. ; Department of Geology, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA. ; Arizona Remote Sensing Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. ; National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. ; Himalayan Research Center, Kathmandu, Nepal. ; Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. ; Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun, India. ; MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates-GSI, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. ; Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. ; College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, China. ; Geography Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA. ; Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Steward, Alaska Region, Anchorage, AK, USA. ; College of Geographical Science and Environment, Northwest Normal University, China. ; Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA. ; Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26676355" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, during the second of its Deep Dip campaigns, made comprehensive measurements of martian thermosphere and ionosphere composition, structure, and variability at altitudes down to ~130 kilometers in the subsolar region. This altitude range contains the diffusively separated upper atmosphere just above the well-mixed atmosphere, the layer of peak extreme ultraviolet heating and primary reservoir for atmospheric escape. In situ measurements of the upper atmosphere reveal previously unmeasured populations of neutral and charged particles, the homopause altitude at approximately 130 kilometers, and an unexpected level of variability both on an orbit-to-orbit basis and within individual orbits. These observations help constrain volatile escape processes controlled by thermosphere and ionosphere structure and variability.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Bougher, S -- Jakosky, B -- Halekas, J -- Grebowsky, J -- Luhmann, J -- Mahaffy, P -- Connerney, J -- Eparvier, F -- Ergun, R -- Larson, D -- McFadden, J -- Mitchell, D -- Schneider, N -- Zurek, R -- Mazelle, C -- Andersson, L -- Andrews, D -- Baird, D -- Baker, D N -- Bell, J M -- Benna, M -- Brain, D -- Chaffin, M -- Chamberlin, P -- Chaufray, J-Y -- Clarke, J -- Collinson, G -- Combi, M -- Crary, F -- Cravens, T -- Crismani, M -- Curry, S -- Curtis, D -- Deighan, J -- Delory, G -- Dewey, R -- DiBraccio, G -- Dong, C -- Dong, Y -- Dunn, P -- Elrod, M -- England, S -- Eriksson, A -- Espley, J -- Evans, S -- Fang, X -- Fillingim, M -- Fortier, K -- Fowler, C M -- Fox, J -- Groller, H -- Guzewich, S -- Hara, T -- Harada, Y -- Holsclaw, G -- Jain, S K -- Jolitz, R -- Leblanc, F -- Lee, C O -- Lee, Y -- Lefevre, F -- Lillis, R -- Livi, R -- Lo, D -- Ma, Y -- Mayyasi, M -- McClintock, W -- McEnulty, T -- Modolo, R -- Montmessin, F -- Morooka, M -- Nagy, A -- Olsen, K -- Peterson, W -- Rahmati, A -- Ruhunusiri, S -- Russell, C T -- Sakai, S -- Sauvaud, J-A -- Seki, K -- Steckiewicz, M -- Stevens, M -- Stewart, A I F -- Stiepen, A -- Stone, S -- Tenishev, V -- Thiemann, E -- Tolson, R -- Toublanc, D -- Vogt, M -- Weber, T -- Withers, P -- Woods, T -- Yelle, R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Nov 6;350(6261):aad0459. doi: 10.1126/science.aad0459.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉CLaSP Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. bougher@umich.edu. ; Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University. of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. ; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA. ; NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA. ; Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. ; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. ; CNRS/Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, Toulouse, France. University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France. ; Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden. ; NASA/Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA. ; National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, VA, USA. ; Laboratoire Atmospheres, Milieux, Observations Spatiales /CNRS, Verrieres-le-Buisson, France. ; Department of Astronomy, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. ; CLaSP Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. ; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. ; Computational Physics, Springfield, VA, USA. ; Department of Physics, Wright State University, Fairborn, OH, USA. ; Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. ; Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. ; Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. ; Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26542579" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Coupling between the lower and upper atmosphere, combined with loss of gas from the upper atmosphere to space, likely contributed to the thin, cold, dry atmosphere of modern Mars. To help understand ongoing ion loss to space, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft made comprehensive measurements of the Mars upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind during an interplanetary coronal mass ejection impact in March 2015. Responses include changes in the bow shock and magnetosheath, formation of widespread diffuse aurora, and enhancement of pick-up ions. Observations and models both show an enhancement in escape rate of ions to space during the event. Ion loss during solar events early in Mars history may have been a major contributor to the long-term evolution of the Mars atmosphere.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Jakosky, B M -- Grebowsky, J M -- Luhmann, J G -- Connerney, J -- Eparvier, F -- Ergun, R -- Halekas, J -- Larson, D -- Mahaffy, P -- McFadden, J -- Mitchell, D F -- Schneider, N -- Zurek, R -- Bougher, S -- Brain, D -- Ma, Y J -- Mazelle, C -- Andersson, L -- Andrews, D -- Baird, D -- Baker, D -- Bell, J M -- Benna, M -- Chaffin, M -- Chamberlin, P -- Chaufray, Y-Y -- Clarke, J -- Collinson, G -- Combi, M -- Crary, F -- Cravens, T -- Crismani, M -- Curry, S -- Curtis, D -- Deighan, J -- Delory, G -- Dewey, R -- DiBraccio, G -- Dong, C -- Dong, Y -- Dunn, P -- Elrod, M -- England, S -- Eriksson, A -- Espley, J -- Evans, S -- Fang, X -- Fillingim, M -- Fortier, K -- Fowler, C M -- Fox, J -- Groller, H -- Guzewich, S -- Hara, T -- Harada, Y -- Holsclaw, G -- Jain, S K -- Jolitz, R -- Leblanc, F -- Lee, C O -- Lee, Y -- Lefevre, F -- Lillis, R -- Livi, R -- Lo, D -- Mayyasi, M -- McClintock, W -- McEnulty, T -- Modolo, R -- Montmessin, F -- Morooka, M -- Nagy, A -- Olsen, K -- Peterson, W -- Rahmati, A -- Ruhunusiri, S -- Russell, C T -- Sakai, S -- Sauvaud, J-A -- Seki, K -- Steckiewicz, M -- Stevens, M -- Stewart, A I F -- Stiepen, A -- Stone, S -- Tenishev, V -- Thiemann, E -- Tolson, R -- Toublanc, D -- Vogt, M -- Weber, T -- Withers, P -- Woods, T -- Yelle, R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Nov 6;350(6261):aad0210. doi: 10.1126/science.aad0210.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. bruce.jakosky@lasp.colorado.edu. ; NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA. ; University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. ; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. ; University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA. ; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. ; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. ; University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. ; CNRS-Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP), Toulouse, France. University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France. ; Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden. ; NASA/Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA. ; National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, VA, USA. ; Laboratoire atmospheres, milieux et observations spatiales (LATMOS)-CNRS, Paris, France. ; Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. ; University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. ; Computational Physics, Inc., Boulder, CO, USA. ; Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA. ; University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. ; Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. ; Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA. ; North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26542576" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 96 (2015): 1257–1279, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00015.1.

Description: Lateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for smaller-scale stirring processes. Here, the authors describe a major oceanographic field experiment aimed at observing and understanding the processes responsible for stirring at scales of 0.1–10 km. Stirring processes of varying intensity were studied in the Sargasso Sea eddy field approximately 250 km southeast of Cape Hatteras. Lateral variability of water-mass properties, the distribution of microscale turbulence, and the evolution of several patches of inert dye were studied with an array of shipboard, autonomous, and airborne instruments. Observations were made at two sites, characterized by weak and moderate background mesoscale straining, to contrast different regimes of lateral stirring. Analyses to date suggest that, in both cases, the lateral dispersion of natural and deliberately released tracers was O(1) m2 s–1 as found elsewhere, which is faster than might be expected from traditional shear dispersion by persistent mesoscale flow and linear internal waves. These findings point to the possible importance of kilometer-scale stirring by submesoscale eddies and nonlinear internal-wave processes or the need to modify the traditional shear-dispersion paradigm to include higher-order effects. A unique aspect of the Scalable Lateral Mixing and Coherent Turbulence (LatMix) field experiment is the combination of direct measurements of dye dispersion with the concurrent multiscale hydrographic and turbulence observations, enabling evaluation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed dispersion at a new level.

Description: The bulk of this work was funded under the Scalable Lateral Mixing and Coherent Turbulence Departmental Research Initiative and the Physical Oceanography Program. The dye experiments were supported jointly by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation Physical Oceanography Program (Grants OCE-0751653 and OCE-0751734).

Description: 2016-02-01

Description: The evolution of eusociality is one of the major transitions in evolution, but the underlying genomic changes are unknown. We compared the genomes of 10 bee species that vary in social complexity, representing multiple independent transitions in social evolution, and report three major findings. First, many important genes show evidence of neutral evolution as a consequence of relaxed selection with increasing social complexity. Second, there is no single road map to eusociality; independent evolutionary transitions in sociality have independent genetic underpinnings. Third, though clearly independent in detail, these transitions do have similar general features, including an increase in constrained protein evolution accompanied by increases in the potential for gene regulation and decreases in diversity and abundance of transposable elements. Eusociality may arise through different mechanisms each time, but would likely always involve an increase in the complexity of gene networks.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kapheim, Karen M -- Pan, Hailin -- Li, Cai -- Salzberg, Steven L -- Puiu, Daniela -- Magoc, Tanja -- Robertson, Hugh M -- Hudson, Matthew E -- Venkat, Aarti -- Fischman, Brielle J -- Hernandez, Alvaro -- Yandell, Mark -- Ence, Daniel -- Holt, Carson -- Yocum, George D -- Kemp, William P -- Bosch, Jordi -- Waterhouse, Robert M -- Zdobnov, Evgeny M -- Stolle, Eckart -- Kraus, F Bernhard -- Helbing, Sophie -- Moritz, Robin F A -- Glastad, Karl M -- Hunt, Brendan G -- Goodisman, Michael A D -- Hauser, Frank -- Grimmelikhuijzen, Cornelis J P -- Pinheiro, Daniel Guariz -- Nunes, Francis Morais Franco -- Soares, Michelle Prioli Miranda -- Tanaka, Erica Donato -- Simoes, Zila Luz Paulino -- Hartfelder, Klaus -- Evans, Jay D -- Barribeau, Seth M -- Johnson, Reed M -- Massey, Jonathan H -- Southey, Bruce R -- Hasselmann, Martin -- Hamacher, Daniel -- Biewer, Matthias -- Kent, Clement F -- Zayed, Amro -- Blatti, Charles 3rd -- Sinha, Saurabh -- Johnston, J Spencer -- Hanrahan, Shawn J -- Kocher, Sarah D -- Wang, Jun -- Robinson, Gene E -- Zhang, Guojie -- DP1 OD006416/OD/NIH HHS/ -- Howard Hughes Medical Institute/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Jun 5;348(6239):1139-43. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa4788. Epub 2015 May 14.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Biology, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA. karen.kapheim@usu.edu wangj@genomics.org.cn generobi@illinois.edu zhanggj@genomics.org.cn. ; China National GeneBank, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518083, China. ; China National GeneBank, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518083, China. Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 1350, Denmark. ; Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. Center for Computational Biology, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. ; Center for Computational Biology, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Biology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY 14456, USA. ; Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Department of Human Genetics, Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. ; Department of Human Genetics, Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. ; U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Red River Valley Agricultural Research Center, Biosciences Research Laboratory, Fargo, ND 58102, USA. ; Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain. ; Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. ; Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland. ; Institute of Biology, Department Zoology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany. Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences Organismal Biology Research Group, London E1 4NS, UK. ; Institute of Biology, Department Zoology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany. Department of Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital Halle, Ernst Grube Strasse 40, D-06120 Halle (Saale), Germany. ; Institute of Biology, Department Zoology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany. ; Institute of Biology, Department Zoology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, D-06099 Halle (Saale), Germany. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. ; Department of Entomology, University of Georgia, Griffin, GA 30223, USA. ; Center for Functional and Comparative Insect Genomics, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. ; Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Ribeirao Preto, Universidade de Sao Paulo, 14040-901 Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil. Departamento de Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciencias Agrarias e Veterinarias, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 14884-900 Jaboticabal, SP, Brazil. ; Departamento de Genetica e Evolucao, Centro de Ciencias Biologicas e da Saude, Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, 13565-905 Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil. ; Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Ribeirao Preto, Universidade de Sao Paulo, 14040-901 Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil. ; Departamento de Genetica, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirao Preto, Universidade de Sao Paulo, 14049-900 Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil. ; Departamento de Biologia Celular e Molecular e Bioagentes Patogenicos, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirao Preto, Universidade de Sao Paulo, 14049-900 Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil. ; USDA-ARS Bee Research Lab, Beltsville, MD 20705 USA. ; Department of Biology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA. ; Department of Entomology, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Ohio State University, Wooster, OH 44691, USA. ; Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. ; Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Department of Population Genomics, Institute of Animal Husbandry and Animal Breeding, University of Hohenheim, Germany. ; Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada. Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institue, Ashburn, VA 20147, USA. ; Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. ; Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. ; China National GeneBank, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518083, China. Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark. Princess Al Jawhara Center of Excellence in the Research of Hereditary Disorders, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia. Macau University of Science and Technology, Avenida Wai long, Taipa, Macau 999078, China. Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. karen.kapheim@usu.edu wangj@genomics.org.cn generobi@illinois.edu zhanggj@genomics.org.cn. ; Carl R. WoeseInstitute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Center for Advanced Study Professor in Entomology and Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. karen.kapheim@usu.edu wangj@genomics.org.cn generobi@illinois.edu zhanggj@genomics.org.cn. ; China National GeneBank, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518083, China. Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, Universitetsparken 15, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. karen.kapheim@usu.edu wangj@genomics.org.cn generobi@illinois.edu zhanggj@genomics.org.cn.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25977371" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Air quality and heat are strong health drivers, and their accurate assessment and forecast are important in densely populated urban areas. However, the sources and processes leading to high concentrations of main pollutants, such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and fine and coarse particulate matter, in complex urban areas are not fully understood, limiting our ability to forecast air quality accurately. This paper introduces the Clean Air for London (ClearfLo; www.clearflo.ac.uk) project’s interdisciplinary approach to investigate the processes leading to poor air quality and elevated temperatures. Within ClearfLo, a large multi-institutional project funded by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), integrated measurements of meteorology and gaseous, and particulate composition/loading within the atmosphere of London, United Kingdom, were undertaken to understand the processes underlying poor air quality. Long-term measurement infrastructure installed at multiple levels (street and elevated), and at urban background, curbside, and rural locations were complemented with high-resolution numerical atmospheric simulations. Combining these (measurement–modeling) enhances understanding of seasonal variations in meteorology and composition together with the controlling processes. Two intensive observation periods (winter 2012 and the Summer Olympics of 2012) focus upon the vertical structure and evolution of the urban boundary layer; chemical controls on nitrogen dioxide and ozone production—in particular, the role of volatile organic compounds; and processes controlling the evolution, size, distribution, and composition of particulate matter. The paper shows that mixing heights are deeper over London than in the rural surroundings and that the seasonality of the urban boundary layer evolution controls when concentrations peak. The composition also reflects the seasonality of sources such as domestic burning and biogenic emissions.

Description: Emerging application areas such as air pollution in megacities, wind energy, urban security, and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles have intensified scientific and societal interest in mountain meteorology. To address scientific needs and help improve the prediction of mountain weather, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded a research effort—the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program—that draws the expertise of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multinational group of researchers. The program has four principal thrusts, encompassing modeling, experimental, technology, and parameterization components, directed at diagnosing model deficiencies and critical knowledge gaps, conducting experimental studies, and developing tools for model improvements. The access to the Granite Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Testbed of the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as well as to a suite of conventional and novel high-end airborne and surface measurement platforms, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate phenomena of time scales from a few seconds to a few days, covering spatial extents of tens of kilometers down to millimeters. This article provides an overview of the MATERHORN and a glimpse at its initial findings. Orographic forcing creates a multitude of time-dependent submesoscale phenomena that contribute to the variability of mountain weather at mesoscale. The nexus of predictions by mesoscale model ensembles and observations are described, identifying opportunities for further improvements in mountain weather forecasting.

Description: Accurate prediction of the functional effect of genetic variation is critical for clinical genome interpretation. We systematically characterized the transcriptome effects of protein-truncating variants, a class of variants expected to have profound effects on gene function, using data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) and Geuvadis projects. We quantitated tissue-specific and positional effects on nonsense-mediated transcript decay and present an improved predictive model for this decay. We directly measured the effect of variants both proximal and distal to splice junctions. Furthermore, we found that robustness to heterozygous gene inactivation is not due to dosage compensation. Our results illustrate the value of transcriptome data in the functional interpretation of genetic variants.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537935/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉   〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537935/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Rivas, Manuel A -- Pirinen, Matti -- Conrad, Donald F -- Lek, Monkol -- Tsang, Emily K -- Karczewski, Konrad J -- Maller, Julian B -- Kukurba, Kimberly R -- DeLuca, David S -- Fromer, Menachem -- Ferreira, Pedro G -- Smith, Kevin S -- Zhang, Rui -- Zhao, Fengmei -- Banks, Eric -- Poplin, Ryan -- Ruderfer, Douglas M -- Purcell, Shaun M -- Tukiainen, Taru -- Minikel, Eric V -- Stenson, Peter D -- Cooper, David N -- Huang, Katharine H -- Sullivan, Timothy J -- Nedzel, Jared -- GTEx Consortium -- Geuvadis Consortium -- Bustamante, Carlos D -- Li, Jin Billy -- Daly, Mark J -- Guigo, Roderic -- Donnelly, Peter -- Ardlie, Kristin -- Sammeth, Michael -- Dermitzakis, Emmanouil T -- McCarthy, Mark I -- Montgomery, Stephen B -- Lappalainen, Tuuli -- MacArthur, Daniel G -- 090532/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- 090532/Z/09/Z/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- 095552/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- 095552/Z/11/Z/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- 098381/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- DA006227/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- HHSN261200800001E/CA/NCI NIH HHS/ -- HHSN261200800001E/PHS HHS/ -- HHSN268201000029C/HL/NHLBI NIH HHS/ -- HHSN268201000029C/PHS HHS/ -- MH090936/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- MH090937/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- MH090941/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- MH090948/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- MH090951/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- P30 DK020595/DK/NIDDK NIH HHS/ -- R01 GM104371/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH090941/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH101810/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH101814/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH101820/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01GM104371/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- R01MH090941/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01MH101810/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01MH101814/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- U01 HG007593/HG/NHGRI NIH HHS/ -- U01HG007593/HG/NHGRI NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 May 8;348(6235):666-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1261877.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. rivas@well.ox.ac.uk tlappalainen@nygenome.org macarthur@atgu.mgh.harvard.edu. ; FInstitute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. ; Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA. ; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. Analytical and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. ; Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Biomedical Informatics Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. ; Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. ; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. ; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. Analytical and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai Hospital, NY, USA. ; Department of Genetic Medicine and Development,University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Institute for Genetics and Genomics in Geneva (iGE3), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland. ; Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. ; Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai Hospital, NY, USA. Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, USA. ; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. Analytical and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai Hospital, NY, USA. Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, USA. ; Institute of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Heath Park, Cardiff, UK. ; Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. ; Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. ; Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. National Institute for Scientific Computing (LNCC), Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ; Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Oxford Center for Diabetes Endocrinology and Metabolism, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. ; Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Department of Genetic Medicine and Development,University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Institute for Genetics and Genomics in Geneva (iGE3), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland. New York Genome Center, New York, NY, USA. Department of Systems Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. rivas@well.ox.ac.uk tlappalainen@nygenome.org macarthur@atgu.mgh.harvard.edu. ; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. Analytical and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. rivas@well.ox.ac.uk tlappalainen@nygenome.org macarthur@atgu.mgh.harvard.edu.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25954003" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉