Assessing agricultural risk management using historic crop insurance loss data over the Ogallala Aquifer

Much of the agricultural production in the Ogallala Aquifer region relies on groundwater for irrigation. In addition to declining water levels, weather and climate-driven events affect crop yields and revenues. Crop insurance serves as a risk management tool to mitigate these perils. Here, we seek to understand what long-term crop insurance loss data can tell us about agricultural risk management in the Ogallala. We assess patterns and trends in crop insurance loss data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency. Indemnities, or insurance payments, totaled $22 billion from 1989–2017 for the 161 counties that overlie the Ogallala Aquifer. We focused on the top ten weather and climate-driven causes of crop loss for the Ogallala, which comprised at least 92% of total indemnities. Drought, hail, and heat were the leading causes of crop loss for the region, and varied over space and time. For example, drought is a significant cause of loss across all seasons, while hail is more prevalent in the spring and summer. Spatially heterogeneous patterns emerged showing larger hail indemnities in the northern Ogallala versus larger drought indemnities in the southern portion. We performed a Mann-Kendall trend analysis of county-level annual loss cost values (the ratio of indemnities to liabilities). Drought and excess moisture showed significant increasing loss cost trends in the western counties of the Ogallala. In contrast, hail showed significant decreasing trends in the northern and eastern portions. These results suggest the northern counties of the Ogallala may perceive hail as a greater risk, and may be better equipped to handle drought losses as compared with the southern Ogallala. Crop insurance loss data play a role in integrating long-term trends with near-term management practices, and providing relevant risk information in producers’ operational to tactical decision making processes

The deglacial history of surface and intermediate water of the Bering Sea

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B. V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 52 (2005): 2163-2173, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2005.07.004.The lithology of deglacial sediments from the Bering Sea includes intervals of laminated or dysaerobic sediments. These intervals are contemporaneous with the occurrence of laminated sediments from the California margin and Gulf of California, which suggests widespread low-oxygen conditions at intermediate depths in the North Pacific Ocean. The cause could be reduced intermediate water ventilation, increased organic carbon flux, or a combination of the two. We infer abrupt decreases of planktonic foraminifer δ18O at 14,400 y BP and 11,650 y BP, which may be a combination of both freshening and warming. On the Shirshov Ridge, the abundance of sea-ice diatoms of the genus Nitzschia reach local maxima twice during the deglaciation, the latter of which may be an expression of the Younger Dryas. These findings expand the extent of the expression of deglacial millennial-scale climate events to include the northernmost Pacific.The Oak Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts, and the WHOI Academic Programs Office provided support for Mea Cook. This project was funded by NSF grant OPP-9912122

Do público e do privado: uma perspectiva de género sobre uma dicotomia moderna

Neste texto propomos uma interpretação crítica da dicotomia histórica entre público e privado como dinâmica fundamental da modernidade. A partir de uma perspectiva de género, discutimos as fronteiras construídas entre espaço coletivo de cidadania e de sociabilidade e espaço individual de intimidade e desigualdade. Argumentamos a favor de uma relação de cumplicidade, ainda que tensa, entre as duas esferas, observando que a vida privada foi, em grande medida, moldada pelas mudanças operadas na vida pública. Recorrendo a diferentes definições de "público", notamos que, à medida que as sociabilidades tradicionais, essencialmente masculinas, estudadas entre outros por Ariès ou Sennett, sofriam uma erosão, crescia o sentimento de intimidade, aumentando igualmente a inclusão do privado no público através do alargamento da cidadania, em consequência das lutas travadas na esfera pública por vários movimentos de emancipação, como o operário ou o feminista. À medida que a pessoa era retirada da comunidade, do clã, do grupo de parentesco, em que eram "naturais" as desigualdades, no sentido aristotélico do termo, ia-se reencontrando progressivamente como indivíduo portador de cidadania. Se o espaço privado se tornou central na definição de uma identidade, ele é também crescentemente atravessado por mecanismos públicos de regulação. Nesse sentido, o movimento de ascensão do privado, que nas últimas décadas tem ocupado espaço de debate, deve ser cuidadosamente reinterpretado

Response of a CMS HGCAL silicon-pad electromagnetic calorimeter prototype to 20-300 GeV positrons

The Compact Muon Solenoid Collaboration is designing a new high-granularity endcap calorimeter, HGCAL, to be installed later this decade. As part of this development work, a prototype system was built, with an electromagnetic section consisting of 14 double-sided structures, providing 28 sampling layers. Each sampling layer has an hexagonal module, where a multipad large-area silicon sensor is glued between an electronics circuit board and a metal baseplate. The sensor pads of approximately 1 cm$^2$ are wire-bonded to the circuit board and are readout by custom integrated circuits. The prototype was extensively tested with beams at CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron in 2018. Based on the data collected with beams of positrons, with energies ranging from 20 to 300 GeV, measurements of the energy resolution and linearity, the position and angular resolutions, and the shower shapes are presented and compared to a detailed Geant4 simulation

Performance of the CMS High Granularity Calorimeter prototype to charged pion beams of 20−-300 GeV/c

The upgrade of the CMS experiment for the high luminosity operation of the LHC comprises the replacement of the current endcap calorimeter by a high granularity sampling calorimeter (HGCAL). The electromagnetic section of the HGCAL is based on silicon sensors interspersed between lead and copper (or copper tungsten) absorbers. The hadronic section uses layers of stainless steel as an absorbing medium and silicon sensors as an active medium in the regions of high radiation exposure, and scintillator tiles directly readout by silicon photomultipliers in the remaining regions. As part of the development of the detector and its readout electronic components, a section of a silicon-based HGCAL prototype detector along with a section of the CALICE AHCAL prototype was exposed to muons, electrons and charged pions in beam test experiments at the H2 beamline at the CERN SPS in October 2018. The AHCAL uses the same technology as foreseen for the HGCAL but with much finer longitudinal segmentation. The performance of the calorimeters in terms of energy response and resolution, longitudinal and transverse shower profiles is studied using negatively charged pions, and is compared to GEANT4 predictions. This is the first report summarizing results of hadronic showers measured by the HGCAL prototype using beam test data.Comment: To be submitted to JINS

Co-limitation towards lower latitudes shapes global forest diversity gradients

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most recognized global patterns of species richness exhibited across a wide range of taxa. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in the past two centuries to explain LDG, but rigorous tests of the drivers of LDGs have been limited by a lack of high-quality global species richness data. Here we produce a high-resolution (0.025° × 0.025°) map of local tree species richness using a global forest inventory database with individual tree information and local biophysical characteristics from ~1.3 million sample plots. We then quantify drivers of local tree species richness patterns across latitudes. Generally, annual mean temperature was a dominant predictor of tree species richness, which is most consistent with the metabolic theory of biodiversity (MTB). However, MTB underestimated LDG in the tropics, where high species richness was also moderated by topographic, soil and anthropogenic factors operating at local scales. Given that local landscape variables operate synergistically with bioclimatic factors in shaping the global LDG pattern, we suggest that MTB be extended to account for co-limitation by subordinate drivers

High-depth African genomes inform human migration and health

The African continent is regarded as the cradle of modern humans and African genomes contain more genetic variation than those from any other continent, yet only a fraction of the genetic diversity among African individuals has been surveyed1. Here we performed whole-genome sequencing analyses of 426 individuals—comprising 50 ethnolinguistic groups, including previously unsampled populations—to explore the breadth of genomic diversity across Africa. We uncovered more than 3 million previously undescribed variants, most of which were found among individuals from newly sampled ethnolinguistic groups, as well as 62 previously unreported loci that are under strong selection, which were predominantly found in genes that are involved in viral immunity, DNA repair and metabolism. We observed complex patterns of ancestral admixture and putative-damaging and novel variation, both within and between populations, alongside evidence that Zambia was a likely intermediate site along the routes of expansion of Bantu-speaking populations. Pathogenic variants in genes that are currently characterized as medically relevant were uncommon—but in other genes, variants denoted as ‘likely pathogenic’ in the ClinVar database were commonly observed. Collectively, these findings refine our current understanding of continental migration, identify gene flow and the response to human disease as strong drivers of genome-level population variation, and underscore the scientific imperative for a broader characterization of the genomic diversity of African individuals to understand human ancestry and improve health

High-depth African genomes inform human migration and health

The African continent is regarded as the cradle of modern humans and African genomes contain more genetic variation than those from any other continent, yet only a fraction of the genetic diversity among African individuals has been surveyed1. Here we performed whole-genome sequencing analyses of 426 individuals—comprising 50 ethnolinguistic groups, including previously unsampled populations—to explore the breadth of genomic diversity across Africa. We uncovered more than 3 million previously undescribed variants, most of which were found among individuals from newly sampled ethnolinguistic groups, as well as 62 previously unreported loci that are under strong selection, which were predominantly found in genes that are involved in viral immunity, DNA repair and metabolism. We observed complex patterns of ancestral admixture and putative-damaging and novel variation, both within and between populations, alongside evidence that Zambia was a likely intermediate site along the routes of expansion of Bantu-speaking populations. Pathogenic variants in genes that are currently characterized as medically relevant were uncommon—but in other genes, variants denoted as ‘likely pathogenic’ in the ClinVar database were commonly observed. Collectively, these findings refine our current understanding of continental migration, identify gene flow and the response to human disease as strong drivers of genome-level population variation, and underscore the scientific imperative for a broader characterization of the genomic diversity of African individuals to understand human ancestry and improve health