The governance of formal university–industry interactions: understanding the rationales for alternative models

This article develops a conceptual framework to explain the economic rationale underpinning the choice of different modes of governance of formal university–industry interactions: personal contractual interactions, where the contract regulating the collaboration involves a firm and an individual academic researcher, and institutional interactions, where the relationship between the firm and the academic is mediated by the university. Although institutional interactions, for numerous reasons, have become more important, both governance modes are currently being implemented. We would argue that they have some important specificities that need to be understood if university–industry knowledge transfer is to be managed effectively and efficiently

An evaluation of clouds and precipitation in convection-permitting forecasts for South Africa

Since 2016, the South African Weather Service (SAWS) has been running convective-scale simulations to assist with forecast operations across southern Africa. These simulations are run with a tropical configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (UM), nested in the Met Office global model, but without data assimilation. For November 2016, convection-permitting simulations at 4.4-km and 1.5-km grid length are compared against a simulation at 10-km grid length with convection parametrization (the current UM global atmosphere configuration) to identify the benefits of increasing model resolution for forecasting convection across southern Africa. The simulations are evaluated against satellite rainfall estimates, CloudSat vertical cloud profiles, and SAWS radar data. In line with previous studies using the UM, on a monthly time scale, the diurnal cycle of convection and the distribution of rainfall rates compare better against observations when convection-permitting model configurations are used. The SAWS radar network provides a three-dimensional composite of radar reflectivity for northeast South Africa at 6-minute intervals, allowing the evaluation of the vertical development of precipitating clouds and of the timing of the onset of deep convection. Analysis of four case study days indicates that the 4.4-km simulations have a later onset of convection than the 1.5-km simulations, but there is no consistent bias of the simulations against the radar observations across the case studies

Large contribution of supercooled liquid clouds to the solar radiation budget of the Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean is a critical region for global climate, yet large cloud and solar radiation biases over the Southern Ocean are a long-standing problem in climate models and are poorly understood, leading to biases in simulated sea surface temperatures. This study shows that supercooled liquid clouds are central to understanding and simulating the Southern Ocean environment. A combination of satellite observational data and detailed radiative transfer calculations is used to quantify the impact of cloud phase and cloud vertical structure on the reflected solar radiation in the Southern Hemisphere summer. It is found that clouds with supercooled liquid tops dominate the population of liquid clouds. The observations show that clouds with supercooled liquid tops contribute between 27% and 38% to the total reflected solar radiation between 40° and 70°S, and climate models are found to poorly simulate these clouds. The results quantify the importance of supercooled liquid clouds in the Southern Ocean environment and highlight the need to improve understanding of the physical processes that control these clouds in order to improve their simulation in numerical models. This is not only important for improving the simulation of present-day climate and climate variability, but also relevant for increasing confidence in climate feedback processes and future climate projections

The Met Office Global Coupled model 2.0 (GC2) configuration

The latest coupled configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (Global Coupled configuration 2, GC2) is presented. This paper documents the model components which make up the configuration (although the scientific description of these components is detailed elsewhere) and provides a description of the coupling between the components. The performance of GC2 in terms of its systematic errors is assessed using a variety of diagnostic techniques. The configuration is intended to be used by the Met Office and collaborating institutes across a range of timescales, with the seasonal forecast system (GloSea5) and climate projection system (HadGEM) being the initial users. In this paper GC2 is compared against the model currently used operationally in those two systems. Overall GC2 is shown to be an improvement on the configurations used currently, particularly in terms of modes of variability (e.g. mid-latitude and tropical cyclone intensities, the Madden–Julian Oscillation and El Niño Southern Oscillation). A number of outstanding errors are identified with the most significant being a considerable warm bias over the Southern Ocean and a dry precipitation bias in the Indian and West African summer monsoons. Research to address these is ongoing

Strong dependence of atmospheric feedbacks on mixed‐phase microphysics and aerosol‐cloud interactions in HadGEM3

We analyze the atmospheric processes that explain the large changes in radiative feedbacks between the two latest climate configurations of the Hadley Centre Global Environmental model. We use a large set of atmosphere‐only climate‐change simulations (amip and amip‐p4K) to separate the contributions to the differences in feedback parameter from all the atmospheric model developments between the two latest model configurations. We show that the differences are mostly driven by changes in the shortwave cloud radiative feedback in the midlatitudes, mainly over the Southern Ocean. Two new schemes explain most of the differences: the introduction of a new aerosol scheme; and the development of a new mixed‐phase cloud scheme. Both schemes reduce the strength of the pre‐existing shortwave negative cloud feedback in the midlatitudes. The new aerosol scheme dampens a strong aerosol‐cloud interaction, and it also suppresses a negative clear‐sky shortwave feedback. The mixed‐phase scheme increases the amount of cloud liquid water path (LWP) in the present‐day and reduces the increase in LWP with warming. Both changes contribute to reducing the negative radiative feedback of the increase of LWP in the warmer climate. It also enhances a strong, pre‐existing, positive cloud fraction feedback. We assess the realism of the changes by comparing present‐day simulations against observations, and discuss avenues that could help constrain the relevant processes

Cloud feedbacks in extratopical cyclones: insight from long-term satellite data and high-resolution global simulations

A negative extratropical shortwave cloud feedback driven by changes in cloud optical depth is a feature of global climate models (GCMs). A robust positive trend in observed liquid water path (LWP) over the last two decades across the warming Southern Ocean supports the negative shortwave cloud feedback predicted by GCMs. This feature has been proposed to be due to transitions from ice to liquid with warming. To gain insight into the shortwave cloud feedback we examine extratropical cyclone variability and the response of extratropical cyclones to transient warming in GCM simulations. Multi-Sensor Advanced Climatology Liquid Water Path (MAC-LWP) microwave observations of cyclone properties from the period 1992–2015 are contrasted with GCM simulations, with horizontal resolutions ranging from 7 km to hundreds of kilometers. We find that inter-cyclone variability in LWP in both observations and models is strongly driven by the moisture flux along the cyclone's warm conveyor belt (WCB). Stronger WCB moisture flux enhances the LWP within cyclones. This relationship is replicated in GCMs, although its strength varies substantially across models. It is found that more than 80 % of the enhancement in Southern Hemisphere (SH) extratropical cyclone LWP in GCMs in response to a transient 4 K warming can be predicted based on the relationship between the WCB moisture flux and cyclone LWP in the historical climate and their change in moisture flux between the historical and warmed climates. Further, it is found that that the robust trend in cyclone LWP over the Southern Ocean in observations and GCMs is consistent with changes in the moisture flux. We propose two cloud feedbacks acting within extratropical cyclones: a negative feedback driven by Clausius–Clapeyron increasing water vapor path (WVP), which enhances the amount of water vapor available to be fluxed into the cyclone, and a feedback moderated by changes in the life cycle and vorticity of cyclones under warming, which changes the rate at which existing moisture is imported into the cyclone. Both terms contribute to increasing LWP within the cyclone. While changes in moisture flux predict cyclone LWP trends in the current climate and the majority of changes in LWP in transient warming simulations, a portion of the LWP increase in response to climate change that is unexplained by increasing moisture fluxes may be due to phase transitions. The variability in LWP within cyclone composites is examined to understand what cyclonic regimes the mixed-phase cloud feedback is relevant to. At a fixed WCB moisture flux cyclone LWP increases with increasing sea surface temperature (SST) in the half of the composite poleward of the low and decreases in the half equatorward of the low in both GCMs and observations. Cloud-top phase partitioning observed by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) indicates that phase transitions may be driving increases in LWP in the poleward half of cyclones

Self-ordered TiO2 quantum dot array prepared via anodic oxidation

The template-based methods belong to low-cost and rapid preparation techniques for various nanostructures like nanowires, nanotubes, and nanodots or even quantum dots [QDs]. The nanostructured surfaces with QDs are very promising in the application as a sensor array, also called 'fluorescence array detector.' In particular, this new sensing approach is suitable for the detection of various biomolecules (DNA, proteins) in vitro (in clinical diagnostics) as well as for in vivo imaging

Critical Role of VCP/p97 in the Pathogenesis and Progression of Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma

Valosin-containing protein (VCP)/p97 is an AAA ATPase molecular chaperone that regulates vital cellular functions and protein-processing. A recent study indicated that VCP expression levels are correlated with prognosis and progression of non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). We not only verified these findings but also identified the specific role of VCP in NSCLC pathogenesis and progression.Our results show that VCP is significantly overexpressed in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) as compared to normal tissues and cell lines (p<0.001). Moreover, we observed the corresponding accumulation of ubiquitinated-proteins in NSCLC cell lines and tissues as compared to the normal controls. VCP inhibition by si/shRNA or small-molecule (Eeyarestatin I, EerI) significantly (p<0.05, p<0.00007) suppressed H1299 proliferation and migration but induced (p<0.00001) apoptosis. Cell cycle analysis by flow cytometry verified this data and shows that VCP inhibition significantly (p<0.001, p<0.003) induced cell cycle arrest in the G0/G1 phases. We also found that VCP directly regulates p53 and NFκB protein levels as a potential mechanism to control tumor cell proliferation and progression. Finally, we evaluated the therapeutic potential of VCP inhibition and observed significantly reduced NSCLC tumor growth in both in vitro and xenograft murine (athymic-nude) models after EerI treatment (p<0.05).Thus, targeting VCP in NSCLC may provide a novel strategy to restore p53 and NFκB levels and ameliorate the growth and tumorigenicity, leading to improved clinical outcomes

Finding needles in haystacks: linking scientific names, reference specimens and molecular data for Fungi

DNA phylogenetic comparisons have shown that morphology-based species recognition often underestimates fungal diversity. Therefore, the need for accurate DNA sequence data, tied to both correct taxonomic names and clearly annotated specimen data, has never been greater. Furthermore, the growing number of molecular ecology and microbiome projects using high-throughput sequencing require fast and effective methods for en masse species assignments. In this article, we focus on selecting and re-annotating a set of marker reference sequences that represent each currently accepted order of Fungi. The particular focus is on sequences from the internal transcribed spacer region in the nuclear ribosomal cistron, derived from type specimens and/or ex-type cultures. Re-annotated and verified sequences were deposited in a curated public database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), namely the RefSeq Targeted Loci (RTL) database, and will be visible during routine sequence similarity searches with NR_prefixed accession numbers. A set of standards and protocols is proposed to improve the data quality of new sequences, and we suggest how type and other reference sequences can be used to improve identification of Fungi

The Met Office Global Coupled model 3.0 and 3.1 (GC3.0 & GC3.1) configurations

The Global Coupled 3 (GC3) configuration of the Met Office Unified Model is presented. Amongst other applications, GC3 is the basis of the United Kingdom's submission to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6). This paper documents the model components that make up the configuration (although the scientific description of these components are in companion papers), and details the coupling between them. The performance of GC3 is assessed in terms of mean biases and variability in long climate simulations using present-day forcing. The suitability of the configuration for predictability on shorter timescales (weather and seasonal forecasting) is also briefly discussed. The performance of GC3 is compared against GC2, the previous Met Office coupled model configuration, and against an older configuration (HadGEM2-AO) which was the submission to CMIP5. In many respects, the performance of GC3 is comparable with GC2, however there is a notable improvement in the Southern Ocean warm sea surface temperature bias which has been reduced by 75%, and there are improvements in cloud amount and some aspects of tropical variability. Relative to HadGEM2-AO, many aspects of the present-day climate are improved in GC3 including tropospheric and stratospheric temperature structure, most aspects of tropical and extra-tropical variability and top-of-atmosphere & surface fluxes. A number of outstanding errors are identified including a residual asymmetric sea surface temperature bias (cool northern hemisphere, warm Southern Ocean), an overly strong global hydrological cycle and insufficient European blocking