2,055 research outputs found
Bostonia. Volume 3
Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs
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Understanding representations of uncertainty, an eye-tracking study â Part 1: The effect of anchoring
Geoscience communicators must think carefully about how
uncertainty is represented and how users may interpret these
representations. Doing so will help communicate risk more effectively, which
can elicit appropriate responses. Communication of uncertainty is not just a
geosciences problem; recently, communication of uncertainty has come to the
forefront over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the lessons learned
from communication during the pandemic can be adopted across geosciences as
well. To test interpretations of environmental forecasts with uncertainty,
a decision task survey was administered to 65 participants who saw different
hypothetical forecast representations common to presentations of
environmental data and forecasts: deterministic, spaghetti plot with and
without a median line, fan plot with and without a median line, and box plot
with and without a median line. While participants completed the survey,
their eye movements were monitored with eye-tracking software. Participants'
eye movements were anchored to the median line, not focusing on possible
extreme values to the same extent as when no median line was present.
Additionally, participants largely correctly interpreted extreme values from
the spaghetti and fan plots, but misinterpreted extreme values from the box
plot, perhaps because participants spent little time fixating on the key.
These results suggest that anchoring lines, such as median lines, should
only be used where users should be guided to particular values and where
extreme values are not as important in data interpretation. Additionally,
fan or spaghetti plots should be considered instead of box plots to reduce
misinterpretation of extreme values. Further study on the role of expertise
and the change in eye movements across the graph area and key is explored in more detail in the companion paper to this study (Williams et al., 2023; hereafter Part 2).</p
Northern winter climate change: assessment of uncertainty in CMIP5 projections related to stratosphere-troposphere coupling
Journal ArticlePublished versionFuture changes in the stratospheric circulation could have an important impact on northern winter tropospheric climate change, given that sea level pressure (SLP) responds not only to tropospheric circulation variations but also to vertically coherent variations in troposphere-stratosphere circulation. Here we assess northern winter stratospheric change and its potential to influence surface climate change in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-Phase 5 (CMIP5) multimodel ensemble. In the stratosphere at high latitudes, an easterly change in zonally averaged zonal wind is found for the majority of the CMIP5 models, under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario. Comparable results are also found in the 1% CO2 increase per year projections, indicating that the stratospheric easterly change is common feature in future climate projections. This stratospheric wind change, however, shows a signi fi cant spread among the models. By using linear regression, we quantify the impact of tropical upper troposphere warming, polar amplification, and the stratospheric wind change on SLP. We find that the intermodel spread in stratospheric wind change contributes substantially to the intermodel spread in Arctic SLP change. The role of the stratosphere in determining part of the spread in SLP change is supported by the fact that the SLP change lags the stratospheric zonally averaged wind change. Taken together, these findings provide further support for the importance of simulating the coupling between the stratosphere and the troposphere, to narrow the uncertainty in the future projection of tropospheric circulation changes
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Understanding representations of uncertainty, an eye-tracking study â Part 2: The effect of expertise
As the ability to make predictions regarding uncertainty information
representing natural hazards increases, an important question for those
designing and communicating hazard forecasts is how visualizations of
uncertainty influence understanding amongst the intended, potentially
varied, target audiences. End-users have a wide range of differing expertise
and backgrounds, possibly influencing the decision-making process they
undertake for a given forecast presentation. Our previous, Part 1 study
(Mulder et al., 2023) examined how the presentation of uncertainty
information influenced end-user decision making. Here, we shift the focus to
examine the decisions and reactions of participants with differing areas of expertise
(meteorology, psychology, and graphic-communication students) when presented
with varied hypothetical forecast representations (boxplot, fan plot, or
spaghetti plot with and without median lines) using the same eye-tracking
methods and experiments. Participants made decisions about a fictional
scenario involving the choices between ships of different sizes in the face
of varying ice thickness forecasts. Eye movements to the graph area and key
and how they changed over time (early, intermediate, and later viewing
periods) were examined. More fixations (maintained gaze on one location)
and more fixation time were spent on the graph and key during early and
intermediate periods of viewing, particularly for boxplots and fan plots.
The inclusion of median lines led to less fixations being made on all graph
types during early and intermediate viewing periods. No difference in eye
movement behaviour was found due to expertise; however, those with greater
expertise were more accurate in their decisions, particularly during more
difficult scenarios. Where scientific producers seek to draw users to the
central estimate, an anchoring line can significantly reduce cognitive load,
leading both experts and non-experts to make more rational decisions. When
asking users to consider extreme scenarios or uncertainty, different prior
expertise can lead to significantly different cognitive loads for processing
information, with an impact on one's ability to make appropriate decisions.</p
Upper Limits on a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has performed a third science run with much improved sensitivities of all three interferometers. We present an analysis of approximately 200 hours of data acquired during this run, used to search for a stochastic background of gravitational radiation. We place upper bounds on the energy density stored as gravitational radiation for three different spectral power laws. For the flat spectrum, our limit of Ω_0<8.4Ă10^(-4) in the 69â156 Hz band is ~10^5 times lower than the previous result in this frequency range
Multimodel climate and variability of the stratosphere
The stratospheric climate and variability from simulations of sixteen chemistryâclimate models is evaluated. On average the polar night jet is well reproduced though its variability is less well reproduced with a large spread between models. Polar temperature biases are less than 5 K except in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) lower stratosphere in spring. The accumulated area of low temperatures responsible for polar stratospheric cloud formation is accurately reproduced for the Antarctic but underestimated for the Arctic. The shape and position of the polar vortex is well simulated, as is the tropical upwelling in the lower stratosphere. There is a wide model spread in the frequency of major sudden stratospheric warnings (SSWs), late biases in the breakup of the SH vortex, and a weak annual cycle in the zonal wind in the tropical upper stratosphere. Quantitatively, âmetricsâ indicate a wide spread in model performance for most diagnostics with systematic biases in many, and poorer performance in the SH than in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Correlations were found in the SH between errors in the final warming, polar temperatures, the leading mode of variability, and jet strength, and in the NH between errors in polar temperatures, frequency of major SSWs, and jet strength. Models with a stronger QBO have stronger tropical upwelling and a colder NH vortex. Both the qualitative and quantitative analysis indicate a number of common and longâstanding model problems, particularly related to the simulation of the SH and stratospheric variability
Rhesus TRIM5α disrupts the HIV-1 capsid at the inter-hexamer interfaces
TRIM proteins play important roles in the innate immune defense against retroviral infection, including human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1). Rhesus macaque TRIM5α (TRIM5αrh) targets the HIV-1 capsid and blocks infection at an early post-entry stage, prior to reverse transcription. Studies have shown that binding of TRIM5α to the assembled capsid is essential for restriction and requires the coiled-coil and B30.2/SPRY domains, but the molecular mechanism of restriction is not fully understood. In this study, we investigated, by cryoEM combined with mutagenesis and chemical cross-linking, the direct interactions between HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) assemblies and purified TRIM5αrh containing coiled-coil and SPRY domains (CC-SPRYrh). Concentration-dependent binding of CC-SPRYrh to CA assemblies was observed, while under equivalent conditions the human protein did not bind. Importantly, CC-SPRYrh, but not its human counterpart, disrupted CA tubes in a non-random fashion, releasing fragments of protofilaments consisting of CA hexamers without dissociation into monomers. Furthermore, such structural destruction was prevented by inter-hexamer crosslinking using P207C/T216C mutant CA with disulfide bonds at the CTD-CTD trimer interface of capsid assemblies, but not by intra-hexamer crosslinking via A14C/E45C at the NTD-NTD interface. The same disruption effect by TRIM5αrh on the inter-hexamer interfaces also occurred with purified intact HIV-1 cores. These results provide insights concerning how TRIM5α disrupts the virion core and demonstrate that structural damage of the viral capsid by TRIM5α is likely one of the important components of the mechanism of TRIM5α-mediated HIV-1 restriction. © 2011 Zhao et al
Limits on Gravitational-Wave Emission from Selected Pulsars Using LIGO Data
We place direct upper limits on the amplitude of gravitational waves from 28 isolated radio pulsars by a coherent multidetector analysis of the data collected during the second science run of the LIGO interferometric detectors. These are the first direct upper limits for 26 of the 28 pulsars. We use coordinated radio observations for the first time to build radio-guided phase templates for the expected gravitational-wave signals. The unprecedented sensitivity of the detectors allows us to set strain upper limits as low as a few times 10^(-24). These strain limits translate into limits on the equatorial ellipticities of the pulsars, which are smaller than 10^(-5) for the four closest pulsars
Bostonia. Volume 9
Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs
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