Book Review: Make Space: How to set the stage for creative collaboration.

This is a book review of Make Space: How to set the stage for creative collaboration, by Doorley and Witthoft, briefly reviewing the main points of the book and suggesting related readings

Personal README Files: User Manuals for Library Staff

Presentation given at the Designing for Digital Conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday, March 9, 2020.Teams at three libraries are using personal README files to improve communication. As README files tell you how to use software, personal README files tell you how best to interact with teammates. Presenters will share the hows, whys and benefits of incorporating personal README files into your team's practice.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154114/1/Personal README Files- User Manuals for Library Staff.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154114/2/Personal README Files- User Manuals for Library Staff (with speaker notes).pdfDescription of Personal README Files- User Manuals for Library Staff.pdf : Presentation slidesDescription of Personal README Files- User Manuals for Library Staff (with speaker notes).pdf : Presentation slides with speaker note

A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity.Peer reviewe

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity

Global Oceans, BAMS State of the Climate in 2021, Chapter 3

Patterns of variability in ocean properties are often closely related to large-scale climate pattern indices, and 2021 is no exception. The year 2021 started and ended with La Niña conditions, charmingly dubbed a “double-dip” La Niña. Hence, stronger-than-normal easterly trade winds in the tropical south Pacific drove westward surface current anomalies in the equatorial Pacific; reduced sea surface temperature (SST) and upper ocean heat content in the eastern tropical Pacific; increased sea level, upper ocean heat content, and salinity in the western tropical Pacific; resulted in a rim of anomalously high chlorophyll-a (Chla) on the poleward and westward edges of the anomalously cold SST wedge in the eastern equatorial Pacific; and increased precipitation over the Maritime Continent. The Pacific decadal oscillation remained strongly in a negative phase in 2021, with negative SST and upper ocean heat content anomalies around the eastern and equatorial edges of the North Pacific and positive anomalies in the center associated with low Chla anomalies. The South Pacific exhibited similar patterns. Fresh anomalies in the northeastern Pacific shifted towards the west coast of North America. The Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) was weakly negative in 2021, with small positive SST anomalies in the east and nearly-average anomalies in the west. Nonetheless, upper ocean heat content was anomalously high in the west and lower in the east, with anomalously high freshwater flux and low sea surface salinities (SSS) in the east, and the opposite pattern in the west, as might be expected during a negative phase of that climate index. In the Atlantic, the only substantial cold anomaly in SST and upper ocean heat content persisted east of Greenland in 2021, where SSS was also low, all despite the weak winds and strong surface heat flux anomalies into the ocean expected during a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. These anomalies held throughout much of 2021. An Atlantic and Benguela Niño were both evident, with above-average SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial Atlantic and the west coast of southern Africa. Over much of the rest of the Atlantic, SSTs, upper ocean heat content, and sea level anomalies were above average. Anthropogenic climate change involves long-term trends, as this year’s chapter sidebars emphasize. The sidebars relate some of the latest IPCC ocean-related assessments (including carbon, the section on which is taking a hiatus from our report this year). This chapter estimates that SST increased at a rate of 0.16–0.19°C decade−1 from 2000 to 2021, 0–2000-m ocean heat content warmed by 0.57–0.73 W m−2 (applied over Earth’s surface area) from 1993 to 2021, and global mean sea level increased at a rate of 3.4 ± 0.4 mm yr−1 from 1993 to 2021. Global mean SST, which is more subject to interannual variations than ocean heat content and sea level, with values typically reduced during La Niña, was ~0.1°C lower in 2021 than in 2020. However, from 2020 to 2021, annual average ocean heat content from 0 to 2000 dbar increased at a rate of ~0.95 W m−2, and global sea level increased by ~4.9 mm. Both were the highest on record in 2021, and with year-on-year increases substantially exceeding their trend rates of recent decades

Virtual Environments at NCSU Libraries

'Virtual Environments' Breakout session from the Living the Future 8 Conference, April 23-24, 2012, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ.This item is part of the Living the Future collection. For more information about items in this collection, please email [email protected]

GroupFinder: A Hyper-Local Group Study Coordination System

GroupFinder is a system designed to help users working in groups let each other know where they are, what they are working on, and when they started. Students can use the GroupFinder system to arrange meetings within the library. GroupFinder also works with the phpScheduleIt room reservation system used to reserve group study rooms at the D.H. Hill Library at NCSU. Information from GroupFinder is presented on the GroupFinder web site, the mobile web site and on electronic bulletin boards within the library. How GroupFinder was developed from the initial concept through the implementation is covered in the article

The role of zooplankton grazing on harmful cyanobacteria blooms in Vancouver Lake, WA

Harmful algal blooms in urban aquatic systems are an increasing problem, both regionally and worldwide. Since 2007 we have been investigating the factors that influence seasonal cyanobacteria blooms in Vancouver Lake – a large, shallow, urban lake in the lower Columbia River flood plain. Over two years (2008-09) we conducted bi-weekly experiments during summer/fall to measure cyanobacteria and algal growth rates, and the grazing rates of both small (200 μm “mesozooplankton”) pelagic consumers, to assess how zooplankton grazing may have influenced the magnitude and timing of cyanobacteria blooms. In spring of both 2008 and 2009 algal growth rates were maximal and microzooplankton grazing rates were relatively low. By contrast, from mid-June to mid-July of both years (immediately preceding the cyanobacteria blooms), algal growth rates were strongly negative, suggesting conditions for algal growth had substantially degraded. Algal growth rates rapidly increased to maximal rates at the beginning of the cyanobacteria bloom, and remained high during the bloom from late July to early September of both 2008 and 2009. However zooplankton grazing rates also increased markedly as the bloom progressed, such that by the end of the blooms grazing rates were comparable to algal growth rates. This suggests grazers may have contributed to the rapid decline in cyanobacteria abundance by September/October. These experimental results demonstrate that zooplankton grazing may play an important role in the development and decline of cyanobacteria blooms in large, shallow turbid lakes