Seasonality and buoyancy suppression of turbulence in the Bay of Bengal

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters, 46(8), (2019):4346-4355, doi:10.1029/2018GL081577.A yearlong record from moored current, temperature, conductivity, and four mixing meters (χpods) in the northernmost international waters of the Bay of Bengal quantifies upper‐ocean turbulent diffusivity of heat (Kt) and its response to the Indian monsoon. Data indicate (1) pronounced intermittency in turbulence at semidiurnal, diurnal, and near‐inertial timescales, (2) strong turbulence above 25‐m depth during the SW (summer) and NE (winter) monsoon relative to the transition periods (compare Kt > 10−4 m2/s to Kt  ∼ 10−5 m2/s, and (3) persistent suppression of turbulence (Kt < 10−5 m2/s) for 3 to 5 months in the latter half of the SW monsoon coincident with enhanced near‐surface stratification postarrival of low‐salinity water from the Brahmaputra‐Ganga‐Meghna delta and monsoonal precipitation. This suppression promotes maintenance of the low‐salinity surface waters within the interior of the bay preconditioning the upper northern Indian Ocean for the next year's monsoon.This work was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Grants N00014‐14‐1‐0236 and N00014‐17‐1‐2472, and the Ocean Mixing and Monsoon program of the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences. The deployment of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution mooring and RW and JTF were supported by ONR Grant N00014‐13‐1‐0453. The deployment and recovery of the mooring were carried out by RV Sagar Nidhi and RV Sagar Kanya, respectively, with the help of the crew and science parties. Thanks to National Institute of Ocean Technology (India) for buoy support. The authors acknowledge invaluable discussions with Johannes Becherer, Deepak Cherian, and Sally Warner at CEOAS, OSU, and Dipanjan Chaudhuri, J Sree Lekha, and Debasis Sengupta at CAOS, IISc. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed reviews, which have helped sharpen many aspects of this paper. Data can be accessed as described in section S2.2019-10-0

Modification of upper-ocean temperature structure by subsurface mixing in the presence of strong salinity stratification

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 29, no. 2 (2016): 62–71, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2016.39.The Bay of Bengal has a complex upper-ocean temperature and salinity structure that is, in places, characterized by strong salinity stratification and multiple inversions in temperature. Here, two short time series from continuously profiling floats, equipped with microstructure sensors to measure subsurface mixing, are used to highlight implications of complex hydrography on upper-ocean heat content and the evolution of sea surface temperature. Weak mixing coupled with the existence of subsurface warm layers suggest the potential for storage of heat below the surface mixed layer over relatively long time scales. On the diurnal time scale, these data demonstrate the competing effects of surface heat flux and subsurface mixing in the presence of thin salinity-stratified mixed layers with temperature inversions. Pre-existing stratification can amplify the sea surface temperature response through control on the vertical extent of heating and cooling by surface fluxes. In contrast, subsurface mixing entrains relatively cool water during the day and relatively warm water during the night, damping the response to daytime heating and nighttime cooling at the surface. These observations hint at the challenges involved in improving monsoon prediction at longer, intraseasonal time scales as models may need to resolve upper-ocean variability over short time and fine vertical scales.This work was funded by Office of Naval Research grants N00014-14-1-0236 (ELS, JNM), N00014-13-1-0483 (DLR), N00014-13-1- 0453 (JTF), and N00014-12-1-0938 (SKV, AG)

Submesoscale processes at shallow salinity fronts in the Bay of Bengal : observations during the winter monsoon

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 479-509, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0283.1.Lateral submesoscale processes and their influence on vertical stratification at shallow salinity fronts in the central Bay of Bengal during the winter monsoon are explored using high-resolution data from a cruise in November 2013. The observations are from a radiator survey centered at a salinity-controlled density front, embedded in a zone of moderate mesoscale strain (0.15 times the Coriolis parameter) and forced by winds with a downfront orientation. Below a thin mixed layer, often ≤10 m, the analysis shows several dynamical signatures indicative of submesoscale processes: (i) negative Ertel potential vorticity (PV); (ii) low-PV anomalies with O(1–10) km lateral extent, where the vorticity estimated on isopycnals and the isopycnal thickness are tightly coupled, varying in lockstep to yield low PV; (iii) flow conditions susceptible to forced symmetric instability (FSI) or bearing the imprint of earlier FSI events; (iv) negative lateral gradients in the absolute momentum field (inertial instability); and (v) strong contribution from differential sheared advection at O(1) km scales to the growth rate of the depth-averaged stratification. The findings here show one-dimensional vertical processes alone cannot explain the vertical stratification and its lateral variability over O(1–10) km scales at the radiator survey.S. Ramachandran acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through award OCE 1558849 and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17- 1-2355. A. Tandon acknowledges support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17-1-2355. J. T. Farrar and R. A. Weller were supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0453, to collect the UCTD data and process theUCTD and shipboard meteorological data. J. Nash, J. Mackinnon, and A. F. Waterhouse acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0503 and N00014-14-1-0455. E. Shroyer acknowledges support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-14-10236 and N00014-15- 12634. A. Mahadevan acknowledges support fromthe U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-10451. A. J. Lucas and R. Pinkel acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0489.2018-08-2

Sex and the Single Gametophyte: Revising the Homosporous Vascular Plant Life Cycle in Light of Contemporary Research

Homosporous vascular plants are typically depicted as extreme inbreeders, with bisexual gametophytes that produce strictly homozygous sporophytes. This view is promulgated in textbook life cycles despite ample evidence that natural populations of most species regularly outcross. We review research on a variety of mechanisms, including genetic load, asynchronous production of eggs and sperm, and pheromonal control of gamete production, that actively promote heterozygosity in ferns and lycophytes. Evolution of the land plants cannot be reconstructed without accurate depictions of the unique life cycle that has helped make ferns the second most diverse lineage of vascular plants on Earth. With revised illustrations and definitions, we provide scientists, educators, and students with a contemporary understanding of fern and lycophyte reproduction, revealing them as evolutionarily dynamic and exploiting a wide range of mating systems

Individual common variants exert weak effects on the risk for autism spectrum disorders.

While it is apparent that rare variation can play an important role in the genetic architecture of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), the contribution of common variation to the risk of developing ASD is less clear. To produce a more comprehensive picture, we report Stage 2 of the Autism Genome Project genome-wide association study, adding 1301 ASD families and bringing the total to 2705 families analysed (Stages 1 and 2). In addition to evaluating the association of individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we also sought evidence that common variants, en masse, might affect the risk. Despite genotyping over a million SNPs covering the genome, no single SNP shows significant association with ASD or selected phenotypes at a genome-wide level. The SNP that achieves the smallest P-value from secondary analyses is rs1718101. It falls in CNTNAP2, a gene previously implicated in susceptibility for ASD. This SNP also shows modest association with age of word/phrase acquisition in ASD subjects, of interest because features of language development are also associated with other variation in CNTNAP2. In contrast, allele scores derived from the transmission of common alleles to Stage 1 cases significantly predict case status in the independent Stage 2 sample. Despite being significant, the variance explained by these allele scores was small (Vm&lt; 1%). Based on results from individual SNPs and their en masse effect on risk, as inferred from the allele score results, it is reasonable to conclude that common variants affect the risk for ASD but their individual effects are modest

Publisher Correction:Voices of biotech leaders (Nature Biotechnology, (2021), 39, 6, (654-660), 10.1038/s41587-021-00941-4)

In the version of this article initially published, an author name was given as Abasi Ene Abong. The correct name is Abasi Ene-Obong. Also, the affiliation for Sebastian Giwa was given as Elevian, Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab, Allston, MA, USA. The correct affiliations are Biostasis Research Institute, Berkeley, CA, USA; Sylvatica Biotech, North Charleston, SC, USA; and Humanity Bio, Kensington, CA, USA. An affiliation for Jeantine Lunshof was given as Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. The correct affiliation is Wyss Institute for Biological Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA. The errors have been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the article

Voices of biotech leaders

Nature Biotechnology asks a selection of leaders from across biotech to look at the future of the sector and make some predictions for the coming years.</p

Voices of biotech leaders

Nature Biotechnology asks a selection of leaders from across biotech to look at the future of the sector and make some predictions for the coming years

ASIRI : an ocean–atmosphere initiative for Bay of Bengal

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 97 (2016): 1859–1884, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00197.1.Air–Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI) is an international research effort (2013–17) aimed at understanding and quantifying coupled atmosphere–ocean dynamics of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) with relevance to Indian Ocean monsoons. Working collaboratively, more than 20 research institutions are acquiring field observations coupled with operational and high-resolution models to address scientific issues that have stymied the monsoon predictability. ASIRI combines new and mature observational technologies to resolve submesoscale to regional-scale currents and hydrophysical fields. These data reveal BoB’s sharp frontal features, submesoscale variability, low-salinity lenses and filaments, and shallow mixed layers, with relatively weak turbulent mixing. Observed physical features include energetic high-frequency internal waves in the southern BoB, energetic mesoscale and submesoscale features including an intrathermocline eddy in the central BoB, and a high-resolution view of the exchange along the periphery of Sri Lanka, which includes the 100-km-wide East India Coastal Current (EICC) carrying low-salinity water out of the BoB and an adjacent, broad northward flow (∼300 km wide) that carries high-salinity water into BoB during the northeast monsoon. Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) observations during the decaying phase of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) permit the study of multiscale atmospheric processes associated with non-MJO phenomena and their impacts on the marine boundary layer. Underway analyses that integrate observations and numerical simulations shed light on how air–sea interactions control the ABL and upper-ocean processes.This work was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) in an ONR Departmental Research Initiative (DRI), Air–Sea Interactions in Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI), and in a Naval Research Laboratory project, Effects of Bay of Bengal Freshwater Flux on Indian Ocean Monsoon (EBOB). ASIRI–RAWI was funded under the NASCar DRI of the ONR. The Indian component of the program, Ocean Mixing and Monsoons (OMM), was supported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences of India.2017-04-2