Sustainable Water Management in the Southwestern United States: Reality or Rhetoric?

Background: While freshwater sustainability is generally defined as the provisioning of water for both people and the environment, in practice it is largely focused only on supplying water to furnish human population growth. Symptomatic of this is the state of Arizona, where rapid growth outside of the metropolitan Phoenix-Tucson corridor relies on the same groundwater that supplies year-round flow in rivers. Using Arizona as a case study, we present the first study in the southwestern United States that evaluates the potential impact of future population growth and water demand on streamflow depletion across multiple watersheds. Methodology/Principal Findings: We modeled population growth and water demand through 2050 and used four scenarios to explore the potential effects of alternative growth and water management strategies on river flows. Under the base population projection, we found that rivers in seven of the 18 study watersheds could be dewatered due to municipal demand. Implementing alternative growth and water management strategies, however, could prevent four of these rivers from being dewatered. Conclusions/Significance: The window of opportunity to implement water management strategies is narrowing. Because impacts from groundwater extraction are cumulative and cannot be immediately reversed, proactive water management strategies should be implemented where groundwater will be used to support new municipal demand. Our approach provides a low-cost method to identify where alternative water and growth management strategies may have the most impact, and demonstrates that such strategies can maintain a continued water supply for both people and the environment

Common Atlas Format and 3D Brain Atlas Reconstructor: Infrastructure for Constructing 3D Brain Atlases

One of the challenges of modern neuroscience is integrating voluminous data of diferent modalities derived from a variety of specimens. This task requires a common spatial framework that can be provided by brain atlases. The first atlases were limited to two-dimentional presentation of structural data. Recently, attempts at creating 3D atlases have been made to offer navigation within non-standard anatomical planes and improve capability of localization of different types of data within the brain volume. The 3D atlases available so far have been created using frameworks which make it difficult for other researchers to replicate the results. To facilitate reproducible research and data sharing in the field we propose an SVG-based Common Atlas Format (CAF) to store 2D atlas delineations or other compatible data and 3D Brain Atlas Reconstructor (3dBAR), software dedicated to automated reconstruction of three-dimensional brain structures from 2D atlas data. The basic functionality is provided by (1) a set of parsers which translate various atlases from a number of formats into the CAF, and (2) a module generating 3D models from CAF datasets. The whole reconstruction process is reproducible and can easily be configured, tracked and reviewed, which facilitates fixing errors. Manual corrections can be made when automatic reconstruction is not sufficient. The software was designed to simplify interoperability with other neuroinformatics tools by using open file formats. The content can easily be exchanged at any stage of data processing. The framework allows for the addition of new public or proprietary content

Rad17 Plays a Central Role in Establishment of the Interaction between TopBP1 and the Rad9-Hus1-Rad1 Complex at Stalled Replication Forks

Rad17 is critical for the ATR-dependent activation of Chk1 during checkpoint responses. It is known that Rad17 loads the Rad9-Hus1-Rad1 (9-1-1) complex onto DNA. We show that Rad17 also mediates the interaction of 9-1-1 with the ATR-activating protein TopBP1 in Xenopus egg extracts. Studies with Rad17 mutants indicate that binding of ATP to Rad17 is essential for the association of 9-1-1 and TopBP1. Furthermore, hydrolysis of ATP by Rad17 is necessary for the loading of 9-1-1 onto DNA and the elevated, checkpoint-dependent accumulation of TopBP1 on chromatin. Significantly, a mutant 9-1-1 complex that cannot bind TopBP1 has a normal capacity to promote elevated accumulation of TopBP1 on chromatin. Taken together, we propose the following mechanism. First, Rad17 loads 9-1-1 onto DNA. Second, TopBP1 accumulates on chromatin in a manner that depends on both Rad17 and 9-1-1. Finally, 9-1-1 and TopBP1 dock in a Rad17-dependent manner before activation of Chk1

The STAR-RICH Detector

The STAR-RICH detector extends the particle idenfication capabilities of the STAR spectrometer for charged hadrons at mid-rapidity. It allows identification of pions and kaons up to ~3 GeV/c and protons up to ~5 GeV/c. The characteristics and performance of the device in the inaugural RHIC run are described

Systematic Conservation Planning in the Face of Climate Change: Bet-Hedging on the Columbia Plateau

Systematic conservation planning efforts typically focus on protecting current patterns of biodiversity. Climate change is poised to shift species distributions, reshuffle communities, and alter ecosystem functioning. In such a dynamic environment, lands selected to protect today's biodiversity may fail to do so in the future. One proposed approach to designing reserve networks that are robust to climate change involves protecting the diversity of abiotic conditions that in part determine species distributions and ecological processes. A set of abiotically diverse areas will likely support a diversity of ecological systems both today and into the future, although those two sets of systems might be dramatically different. Here, we demonstrate a conservation planning approach based on representing unique combinations of abiotic factors. We prioritize sites that represent the diversity of soils, topographies, and current climates of the Columbia Plateau. We then compare these sites to sites prioritized to protect current biodiversity. This comparison highlights places that are important for protecting both today's biodiversity and the diversity of abiotic factors that will likely determine biodiversity patterns in the future. It also highlights places where a reserve network designed solely to protect today's biodiversity would fail to capture the diversity of abiotic conditions and where such a network could be augmented to be more robust to climate-change impacts

Azimuthal di-hadron correlations in d+Au and Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 GeV from STAR

Yields, correlation shapes, and mean transverse momenta \pt{} of charged particles associated with intermediate to high-\pt{} trigger particles (2.5 < \pt < 10 \GeVc) in d+Au and Au+Au collisions at \snn=200 GeV are presented. For associated particles at higher \pt \gtrsim 2.5 \GeVc, narrow correlation peaks are seen in d+Au and Au+Au, indicating that the main production mechanism is jet fragmentation. At lower associated particle \pt < 2 \GeVc, a large enhancement of the near- (\dphi \sim 0) and away-side (\dphi \sim \pi) associated yields is found, together with a strong broadening of the away-side azimuthal distributions in Au+Au collisions compared to d+Au measurements, suggesting that other particle production mechanisms play a role. This is further supported by the observed significant softening of the away-side associated particle yield distribution at \dphi \sim \pi in central Au+Au collisions.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, updated after journal revie

Harvests of shame: enduring unfree labour in twentieth century United States, 1933-1964

This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the US Sugar Corporation in southern Florida exemplifies this link. This article draws on federal archives, government proceedings, papers of political activists and legal and labour scholarship to argue: firstly, that unfree labour has been an enduring feature of agricultural labour relations at regional level during the twentieth century, through both a transmission and a transformation of practice that had their origin in the control of black emancipated labour; secondly, that the introduction of guest workers under the H2 and Bracero programme meant a modernization in the practices of unfree labour, pivoting on the lack of citizenship rights, racial discrimination, debt at home, and threat of deportation; and, finally, that the failure to recognise forms of legal and economic deprivation and coercion as unfree labour has hurt the ability of the United States to enforce protection of human rights at home

Forward-central two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between trigger particles in the forward pseudorapidity range (2.5 2GeV/c. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B. V.Peer reviewe

Event-shape engineering for inclusive spectra and elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV

Peer reviewe

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged jet production in root s(NN)=2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions

We present measurements of the azimuthal dependence of charged jet production in central and semi-central root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the second harmonic event plane, quantified as nu(ch)(2) (jet). Jet finding is performed employing the anti-k(T) algorithm with a resolution parameter R = 0.2 using charged tracks from the ALICE tracking system. The contribution of the azimuthal anisotropy of the underlying event is taken into account event-by-event. The remaining (statistical) region-to-region fluctuations are removed on an ensemble basis by unfolding the jet spectra for different event plane orientations independently. Significant non-zero nu(ch)(2) (jet) is observed in semi-central collisions (30-50% centrality) for 20 <p(T)(ch) (jet) <90 GeV/c. The azimuthal dependence of the charged jet production is similar to the dependence observed for jets comprising both charged and neutral fragments, and compatible with measurements of the nu(2) of single charged particles at high p(T). Good agreement between the data and predictions from JEWEL, an event generator simulating parton shower evolution in the presence of a dense QCD medium, is found in semi-central collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe