A collaboratively derived environmental research agenda for Galapagos

Galápagos is one of the most pristine archipelagos in the world and its conservation relies upon research and sensible management. In recent decades both the interest in, and the needs of, the islands have increased, yet the funds and capacity for necessary research have remained limited. It has become, therefore, increasingly important to identify areas of priority research to assist decision-making in Galápagos conservation. This study identified 50 questions considered priorities for future research and management. The exercise involved the collaboration of policy makers, practitioners and researchers from more than 30 different organisations. Initially, 360 people were consulted to generate 781 questions. An established process of preworkshop voting and three rounds to reduce and reword the questions, followed by a two-day workshop, was used to produce the final 50 questions. The most common issues raised by this list of questions were human population growth, climate change and the impact of invasive alien species. These results have already been used by a range of organisations and politicians and are expected to provide the basis for future research on the islands so that its sustainability may be enhanced. </jats:p

Measuring the Neutrino Cross Section Using 8 years of Upgoing Muon Neutrinos Observed with IceCube

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory detects neutrinos at energies orders of magnitude higher than those available to current accelerators. Above 40 TeV, neutrinos traveling through the Earth will be absorbed as they interact via charged current interactions with nuclei, creating a deficit of Earth-crossing neutrinos detected at IceCube. The previous published results showed the cross section to be consistent with Standard Model predictions for 1 year of IceCube data. We present a new analysis that uses 8 years of IceCube data to fit the ν$_{μ}$ absorption in the Earth, with statistics an order of magnitude better than previous analyses, and with an improved treatment of systematic uncertainties. It will measure the cross section in three energy bins that span the range 1 TeV to 100 PeV. We will present Monte Carlo studies that demonstrate its sensitivity

Recent Progress in Solar Atmospheric Neutrino Searches with IceCube

Cosmic-rays interacting with nucleons in the solar atmosphere produce a cascade of particles that give rise to a flux of high-energy neutrinos and gamma-rays. Fermi has observed this gamma-ray flux; however, the associated neutrino flux has escaped observation. In this contribution, we put forward two strategies to detect these neutrinos, which, if seen, would push forward our understanding of the solar atmosphere and provide a new testing ground of neutrino properties. First, we will extend the previous analysis, which used high-energy through-going muon events collected in the years of maximum solar activity and yielded only flux upper limits, to include data taken during the solar minima from 2018 to 2020. Extending the analysis to the solar minima is important as the gamma-ray data collected during past solar cycles indicates a possible enhancement in the high-energy neutrino flux. Second, we will incorporate sub-TeV events and include contributions from all neutrino flavors. These will improve our analysis sensitivity since the solar atmospheric spectrum is soft and, due to oscillation, contains significant contributions of all neutrino flavors. As we will present in this contribution, these complementary strategies yield a significant improvement in sensitivity, making substantial progress towards observing this flux