A water cycle for the Anthropocene

International audienceHumor us for a minute and do an online image search of the water cycle. How many diagrams do you have to scroll through before seeing any sign of humans? What about water pollution or climate change—two of the main drivers of the global water crisis? In a recent analysis of more than 450 water cycle diagrams, we found that 85% showed no human interaction with the water cycle and 98% omitted any sign of climate change or waterpollution (Abbott et al., 2019). Additionally, 92% of diagrams depicted verdant, temperate ecosystems with abundant freshwater and 95% showed only a single river basin. It did not matter if the diagrams came from textbooks, scientific articles, or the internet, nor if they were old or new; most showed an undisturbed water cycle, free from human interference. These depictions contrast starkly with the state of the water cycle in the Anthropocene, when land conversion, human water use, and climate change affect nearly every water pool and flux (Wurtsbaugh et al., 2017; Falkenmark et al., 2019; Wine and Davison, 2019). The dimensions and scale of human interference with water are manifest in failing fossil aquifersin the world’s great agricultural regions (Famiglietti, 2014), accelerating ice discharge from the Arctic (Box et al., 2018), and instability in atmospheric rivers that support continental rainfall (Paul et al., 2016).We believe that incorrect water cycle diagrams are a symptom of a much deeper and widespread problem about how humanity relates to water on Earth. Society does not understand how the water cycle works nor how humans fit into it (Attari, 2014; Linton, 2014; Abbott et al., 2019). In response to this crisis of understanding, we call on researchers, educators, journalists, lawyers, and policy makers to change how we conceptualize and present the global water cycle. Specifically, we must teach where water comes from, what determines its availability, and how many individuals and ecosystems are in crisis because of water mismanagement, climate change, and land conversion. Because the drivers of the global water crisis are truly global, ensuring adequate water for humans and ecosystems will require coordinated efforts that extend beyond geopolitical borders and outlast the tenure of individual administrations (Keys et al., 2017; Adler, 2019). This level of coordination and holistic thinking requires widespread understanding of the water cycle and the global water crisis. Making the causes and consequences of the water crisis visible in our diagrams is atractable and important step towards the goal of a sustainable relationship with water that includes ecosystems and society

A Targeted Search for Point Sources of EeV Photons with the Pierre Auger Observatory

Simultaneous measurements of air showers with the fluorescence and surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory allow a sensitive search for EeV photon point sources. Several Galactic and extragalactic candidate objects are grouped in classes to reduce the statistical penalty of many trials from that of a blind search and are analyzed for a significant excess above the background expectation. The presented search does not find any evidence for photon emission at candidate sources, and combined p-values for every class are reported. Particle and energy flux upper limits are given for selected candidate sources. These limits significantly constrain predictions of EeV proton emission models from non-transient Galactic and nearby extragalactic sources, as illustrated for the particular case of the Galactic center region

Search for patterns by combining cosmic-ray energy and arrival directions at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Energy-dependent patterns in the arrival directions of cosmic rays are searched for using data of the Pierre Auger Observatory. We investigate local regions around the highest-energy cosmic rays with E > = 6×1019 eV by analyzing cosmic rays with energies above E > = 5×1018 eV arriving within an angular separation of approximately 15°. We characterize the energy distributions inside these regions by two independent methods, one searching for angular dependence of energy-energy correlations and one searching for collimation of energy along the local system of principal axes of the energy distribution. No significant patterns are found with this analysis. The comparison of these measurements with astrophysical scenarios can therefore be used to obtain constraints on related model parameters such as strength of cosmic-ray deflection and density of point sources

Erratum: Efficacy Management of Urolithiasis: Flexible Ureteroscopy versus Extracorporeal Shockwave Lithotripsy

<b><i>Objectives:</i></b> To evaluate the efficacy of flexible ureterscopy (fURS) and extracorporal shockwave lithotripsy (SWL) in the treatment of urolithiasis, complemented by a subgroup analysis of lower pole calyx. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Retrospective analysis of patients treated by fURS or SWL was performed by independent variables such as gender, age, nephrolith size, double-J stent (DJ stent) and stone localisation. <b><i>Results:</i></b> Out of 326 patients, 165 were treated by SWL and 161 by fURS. Complete stone removal was achieved by fURS in 83.2% and by SWL in 43.0% (p < 0.001). Asymptomatic behaviour (88-89%) and complication rate (10-11%) were nearly the same in both methods. A higher retreatment rate for SWL was necessary; otherwise, an auxillary DJ stent was performed more often preoperative before fURS. The subgroup analysis of lower pole calyx confirmed these evaluations. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Complete stone-free removal was almost 8 times higher after fURS compared to SWL. The efficacy of fURS in treatment of urolithiasis is substantially higher than the efficacy of SWL

Dominant decisions by argumentation agents

Abstract. We introduce a special family of (assumption-based argumentation) frameworks for reasoning about the bene ts of decisions. These frameworks can be used for representing the knowledge of intelligent agents that can autonomously choose the \best &quot; decisions, given subjective needs and preferences of decision-makers they \represent&quot;. We understand \best &quot; decisions as dominant ones, giving more bene ts than any other decisions. Dominant decisions correspond, within the family of argumentation frameworks considered, to admissible arguments. We also propose the use of degrees of admissibility of arguments as a heuristic to assess subjectively the value of decisions and rank them from \best&quot; (dominant) to \worst&quot;. We extend this method to provide notion of relative value of decisions where preferences over bene ts are taken into account. Finally, we show how our techniques can be successfully applied to the problem of selecting satellite images to monitor oil spills, to support electronic marketplaces for earth observation products.