A Path to Graduation: An Evaluation of Degree Planning Resources at Western Oregon University

Evidence suggests that additional registration tools may improve graduation and retention rates in higher education institutions like Western Oregon University (WOU). The tools that WOU currently employs to support students and advisors could be enhanced to benefit students, advisors, departments, and consequently, the university as a whole. With the guidance of the Student Success and Advising Office and the Office of the Registrar, I conducted research in order to better understand the degree pathway planning needs of students and advisors. Using formal software implementation techniques to elicit software requirements, I evaluated the potential benefits and challenges of available degree pathway planning tools to students, advisors, and administrators. I hope that information generated from this project may be of use to the Office of the Registrar in the process of implementing new systems throughout the continuous improvement of the registration process at WOU. Furthermore, I hope that the recommendations from this research will be a valuable contribution to the university’s mission and its strategic planning initiative, Forward Together. I hope that this project will inspire and inform a successful software implementation and be an asset to the university in its plan to promote student success

Mixing processes and exchanges in the tropical and the subtropical UT/LS

International audienceBoth in situ measurements and satellite observations indicate evidence of mixing in the upper troposphere (UT) and the lower-stratosphere (LS). In this study, the measurements performed during the Pre-AVE and Costa-Rica AVE campaigns are analysed with diffusive back-trajectories to assess mixing properties in the tropical and the subtropical UT/LS. A description of cross-tropopause pathways and mixing time scales is provided. In the subtropics, Troposphere-Stratosphere mixing processes are found to differ in the vicinity of the tropopause and at higher altitudes. Below 350 K, the mixing line observed during Pre-AVE is shown to result from fast and local cross-tropopause irreversible exchange, involving two initially distant air masses with distinct chemical compositions. For measurements located above 350 K, mixing of the tropospheric air in the subtropical stratosphere occurs over a period of a month, the origins of the tropospheric source being localised in the tropical UT and the tropical boundary layer. In the tropics, quantitative reconstructions of CO and O3 profiles above 360 K are obtained for one month back-trajectories calculations, pointing out that long term mixing is essential to determine the chemical composition in the tropical ascent. In particular, the existence of two-way meridional irreversible exchanges between 360 and 450 K is found to export tropical air in the subtropical stratosphere and to entrain old stratospheric air in the tropical ascent. Calculations of the Lagrangian mean age of air is shown to be in qualitative agreement with the CO2 observations and diabatic calculations

Kolmogorov's law for two-dimensional electron-magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

The analogue of the Kolmogorov's four-fifths law is derived for two-dimensional, homogeneous, isotropic EMHD turbulence in the energy cascade inertial range. Direct numerical simulations for the freely decaying case show that this relation holds true for different values of the adimensional electron inertial length scale, $d_e$. The energy spectrum is found to be close to the expected Kolmogorov spectrum.Comment: 9 pages RevTeX, 3 PostScript figure

Laboratory experiments on multipolar vortices in a rotating fluid

The instability properties of isolated monopolar vortices have been investigated experimentally and the corresponding multipolar quasisteady states have been compared with semianalytical vorticity-distributed solutions to the Euler equations in two dimensions. A novel experimental technique was introduced to generate unstable monopolar vortices whose nonlinear evolution resulted in the formation of multipolar vortices. Dye-visualization and particle imaging techniques revealed the existence of tripolar, quadrupolar, and pentapolar vortices. Also evidence was found of the onset of hexapolar and heptapolar vortices. The observed multipolar vortices were found to be unstable and generally broke up into multipolar vortices of lesser complexity. The characteristic flow properties of the quadrupolar vortex were in close agreement with the semianalytical model solutions. Higher-order multipolar vortices were observed to be susceptible to strong inertial oscillations. © 2010 American Institute of Physic

The IS_MIRRI21 H2020 Project: Implementing the MIRRI-ERIC

The IS_MIRRI21 project running from 2020-2023 aims to implement the Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI) and secure its long-term sustainability. The mission of MIRRI is to serve Bioscience and Bioindustry by providing (a) a broad range of high-quality biological resources and associated data, (b) long-term sustainability of microbial biodiversity, and (c) knowledge and professional development. This mission will be achieved by offering users from academia, governmental laboratories and the private sector access to a portfolio of microbial Biological Resource Centres´ (mBRCs), services, expertise, education and training build-up and synergistically on the top of mBRCs proficiencies. To accelerate innovative research processes in life sciences and biotechnology using microorganisms, or their derivatives, IS_MIRRI21 has set up MIRRIs single-entry point portal to promote its services, resources, expertise and knowledge transfer activities, as well as to provide access to partners´ resource associated data made interoperable for data searching and data mining. The continuously increasing knowledge will be transferred to users via expert clusters (e.g., for legal framework, for biosecurity, to support training and education programs, information and cut edge technology, etc.). It will promote cross-disciplinary and innovative solutions (industry and academic) research collaboration through the transnational access offer in different microbial topics defined in pipeline services. With this project, MIRRI has become an ERIC in June 2022, and is a Landmark in the Health & Food domain of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) Roadmap. It is still working to consolidate its operation and enlarge the membership and European coverage and beyond.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dispersive stabilization of the inverse cascade for the Kolmogorov flow

It is shown by perturbation techniques and numerical simulations that the inverse cascade of kink-antikink annihilations, characteristic of the Kolmogorov flow in the slightly supercritical Reynolds number regime, is halted by the dispersive action of Rossby waves in the beta-plane approximation. For beta tending to zero, the largest excited scale is proportional to the logarithm of one over beta and differs strongly from what is predicted by standard dimensional phenomenology which ignores depletion of nonlinearity.Comment: 4 pages, LATEX, 3 figures. v3: revised version with minor correction

Vorticity statistics in the two-dimensional enstrophy cascade

We report the first extensive experimental observation of the two-dimensional enstrophy cascade, along with the determination of the high order vorticity statistics. The energy spectra we obtain are remarkably close to the Kraichnan Batchelor expectation. The distributions of the vorticity increments, in the inertial range, deviate only little from gaussianity and the corresponding structure functions exponents are indistinguishable from zero. It is thus shown that there is no sizeable small scale intermittency in the enstrophy cascade, in agreement with recent theoretical analyses.Comment: 5 pages, 7 Figure

Response of stratospheric water vapor and ozone to the unusual timing of El Niño and the QBO disruption in 2015–2016

This is the final version. Available from European Geosciences Union via the DOI in this record.The stratospheric circulation determines the transport and lifetime of key trace gases in a changing climate, including water vapor and ozone, which radiatively impact surface climate. The unusually warm El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event aligned with a disrupted Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) caused an unprecedented perturbation to this circulation in 2015–2016. Here, we quantify the impact of the alignment of these two phenomena in 2015–2016 on lower stratospheric water vapor and ozone from satellite observations. We show that the warm ENSO event substantially increased water vapor and decreased ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. The QBO disruption significantly decreased global lower stratospheric water vapor and tropical ozone from early spring to late autumn. Thus, this QBO disruption reversed the lower stratosphere moistening triggered by the alignment of the warm ENSO event with westerly QBO in early boreal winter. Our results suggest that the interplay of ENSO events and QBO phases will be crucial for the distributions of radiatively active trace gases in a changing future climate, when increasing El Niño-like conditions and a decreasing lower stratospheric QBO amplitude are expected.European CommissionEuropean CommissionNatural Environment Research Council (NERC)Helmholtz Associatio

Effect of gravity wave temperature fluctuations on homogeneous ice nucleation in the tropical tropopause layer

The impact of high-frequency fluctuations of temperature on homogeneous nucleation of ice crystals in the vicinity of the tropical tropopause is investigated using a bin microphysics scheme for air parcels. The imposed temperature fluctuations come from measurements during isopycnic balloon flights near the tropical tropopause. The balloons collected data at high frequency, guaranteeing that gravity wave signals are well resolved.With the observed temperature time series, the numerical simulations with homogeneous freezing show a full range of ice number concentration (INC) as previously observed in the tropical upper troposphere. In particular, a low INC may be obtained if the gravity wave perturbations produce a non-persistent cooling rate (even with large magnitude) such that the absolute change in temperature remains small during nucleation. This result is explained analytically by a dependence of the INC on the absolute drop in temperature (and not on the cooling rate). This work suggests that homogeneous ice nucleation is not necessarily inconsistent with observations of low INCs.</p

Response of stratospheric water vapor and ozone to the unusual timing of El Niño and the QBO disruption in 2015–2016

The stratospheric circulation determines the transport and lifetime of key trace gases in a changing climate, including water vapor and ozone, which radiatively impact surface climate. The unusually warm El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event aligned with a disrupted Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) caused an unprecedented perturbation to this circulation in 2015–2016. Here, we quantify the impact of the alignment of these two phenomena in 2015–2016 on lower stratospheric water vapor and ozone from satellite observations. We show that the warm ENSO event substantially increased water vapor and decreased ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. The QBO disruption significantly decreased global lower stratospheric water vapor and tropical ozone from early spring to late autumn. Thus, this QBO disruption reversed the lower stratosphere moistening triggered by the alignment of the warm ENSO event with westerly QBO in early boreal winter. Our results suggest that the interplay of ENSO events and QBO phases will be crucial for the distributions of radiatively active trace gases in a changing future climate, when increasing El Niño-like conditions and a decreasing lower stratospheric QBO amplitude are expected