The national defense boost in rural America

Rural areas ; Rural development ; Defense contracts

Booms and busts in household wealth: implications for Tenth District states

The U.S. stock market and housing market--the two largest sources of U.S. household wealth--have had sizable booms and busts in recent years. This volatility has influenced national consumption trends and had important consequences for states. Some states have become relatively wealthier, affecting both the short- and long-term consumption spending potential of their residents. ; Understanding how wealth changes affect state economies could be especially important in 2011 and 2012 given the recent resumption of home price declines in much of the country. Research has shown that consumption can be more sensitive to changes in housing wealth than other types of wealth. While the home price collapse in 2007-09 hurt the Tenth District less than the nation, home price fundamentals in several District states may be more similar to the nation over the next couple of years. ; Wilkerson and Williams examine recent changes in household wealth in Tenth District states and explore how the region is positioned heading forward.

Minorities in the Tenth District: are they ready for the jobs of the future?

Employment ; Minorities - Employment ; Federal Reserve District, 10th

The Tenth District's defining industries: how are they changing?

The economy of the Tenth Federal Reserve District has become increasingly more services-based in recent years. While this transformation has lessened many of the historical differences with the rest of the nation, the regional economy still remains distinct, especially in some states. Wyoming, for instance, still has the most unique industrial structure in the country. And Nebraska, New Mexico, and Oklahoma still rank among the top third of states with economies that differ from the rest of the nation. ; What industries make the Tenth District so different, and what can they tell us about the future of the regional economy? ; Wilkerson and Williams examine the “defining” industries of the region. They find that the performance of a relatively small group of these industries track closely with overall job growth in each state. In other words, states whose defining industries have prospered in recent years have grown quickly overall, while states whose defining industries have struggled have grown sluggishly. Thus, identifying a state’s defining industries and understanding how they are changing can provide vital context for policymakers seeking to improve prospects for growth—as well as help identify the types of economic shocks that might threaten the region in the future.Federal Reserve District, 10th

The export potential of Tenth District states

After collapsing during the financial and economic crisis, exports have grown rapidly in the nation and across much of the Tenth Federal Reserve District. Despite some risks, most economic forecasts for national exports point to continued robust growth. An export boom, however, could have disparate effects across the country, given sizable differences in the volume, composition, and trends of state exports. ; Wilkerson and Williams assess the export potential of the Tenth District. They find that future export growth in the district is likely to be strong, although most states are likely to benefit less from the expected boom than the nation as a whole. Most states in the district have smaller export sectors than the nation and slightly less favorable export industry mixes. There are exceptions, though, and most district states have an adequate mix of trading partners. And, as in the past, other factors will play a role in the district’s export potential.

Investigation of the behavior of ventilated supercavities

The topic of supercavitation is of considerable interest to drag reduction and/or speed augmentation in marine vehicles. Supercavitating vehicles need to be supplied with an artificial cavity through ventilation until they accelerate to conditions at which a natural supercavity can be sustained. A study has been carried out in the high-speed water tunnel at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory to investigate some aspects of the flow physics of such a supercavitating vehicle. During the present experimental work, the ventilated supercavity formed behind a sharp-edged disk was investigated utilizing several different configurations. Results regarding cavity shape, cavity closure and ventilation requirements versus cavitation number and Froude number are presented. Additionally, effects related to flow choking in a water tunnel test section are discussed. Results obtained are similar in character to previously reported results, but differ significantly in measured values. Cavity shape, particularly aft of the maximum cavity diameter, is found to be a strong function of the model support scheme chosen.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84292/1/CAV2009-final111.pd

Effects of surface characteristics on hydrofoil cavitation

This was an exploratory research project aimed at capitalizing on our recent research experience with unsteady partially cavitating flows. Earlier work identified the significant and unexpected effect of surface properties and water quality on the dynamics of these flows. The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of using hydrophobic surfaces to control or minimize unwanted vibration and unstable operation in the partially cavitating regime. A candidate shape, denoted as the Cav2003 hydrofoil, was selected on the basis of theoretical analysis for a given range of contact angle. We manufactured three hydrofoils of identical cross section, but different surface characteristics. Three different surfaces were studied: anodized aluminium (hydrophilic), Teflon (hydrophobic), and highly polished stainless steel (hydrophobic). Contact angle was measured with a photographic technique developed by three of the undergraduates working on the project. Studies were made in both weak and strong water. Significant surface effects were found, but were unexpected in the sense that they did not correlate with measured contact angles.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84293/1/CAV2009-final112.pd

Leveraging arbitrary mobile sensor trajectories with shallow recurrent decoder networks for full-state reconstruction

Sensing is one of the most fundamental tasks for the monitoring, forecasting and control of complex, spatio-temporal systems. In many applications, a limited number of sensors are mobile and move with the dynamics, with examples including wearable technology, ocean monitoring buoys, and weather balloons. In these dynamic systems (without regions of statistical-independence), the measurement time history encodes a significant amount of information that can be extracted for critical tasks. Most model-free sensing paradigms aim to map current sparse sensor measurements to the high-dimensional state space, ignoring the time-history all together. Using modern deep learning architectures, we show that a sequence-to-vector model, such as an LSTM (long, short-term memory) network, with a decoder network, dynamic trajectory information can be mapped to full state-space estimates. Indeed, we demonstrate that by leveraging mobile sensor trajectories with shallow recurrent decoder networks, we can train the network (i) to accurately reconstruct the full state space using arbitrary dynamical trajectories of the sensors, (ii) the architecture reduces the variance of the mean-square error of the reconstruction error in comparison with immobile sensors, and (iii) the architecture also allows for rapid generalization (parameterization of dynamics) for data outside the training set. Moreover, the path of the sensor can be chosen arbitrarily, provided training data for the spatial trajectory of the sensor is available. The exceptional performance of the network architecture is demonstrated on three applications: turbulent flows, global sea-surface temperature data, and human movement biomechanics.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Assessing Intra-Event Phosphorus Dynamics in Drainage Water Using Phosphate Stable Oxygen Isotopes

Quantifying fluxes and pathways of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) in tile-drained landscapes has been hampered by a lack of measurements that are sensitive to P fate and transport processes. One potential tool to help understand these dynamics is the oxygen isotope signature of phosphate (δ18OPO4); however, its potential benefits and limitations are not well understood for intra-event dynamics at the field scale. The objectives of this study were to quantify intra-event variability of δ18OPO4 signatures in tile drainage water and assess the efficacy of δ18OPO4 to elucidate mechanisms and flow pathways controlling DRP transport to tile drains. We collected water samples during a summer storm event from a subsurface (tile)-drained field located in west-central Ohio and analyzed for δ18OPO4 of DRP. Supplementary water quality measurements, hydrologic modeling, and soil temperature data were used to help understand intra-event δ18OPO4 dynamics. Results of the soil extraction analysis from our study site highlight that the soil water-extractable P (WEP) pool was not in equilibrium with long-term, temperature-dependent water isotope values. This result suggests that P-rich soils may, at least partially, retain their original source signature, which has significant implications for identifying hotspots of P delivery in watershed-scale applications. Results of the storm event analysis highlight that equilibration of leached DRP in soil water creates a gradient between isotopic compositions of pre-event shallow subsurface sources, pre-event deep subsurface sources, and the WEP tied up in surface soils. The current study represents the first intra-event analysis of δ18OPO4 and highlights the potential for phosphate oxygen isotopes as a novel tool to improve understanding of P fate and transport in artificially drained agroecosystems

Elevated estuary water temperature drives fish gut dysbiosis and increased loads of pathogenic vibrionaceae

Marine water temperatures are increasing globally, with eastern Australian estuaries warming faster than predicted. There is growing evidence that this rapid warming of coastal waters is increasing the abundance and virulence of pathogenic members of the Vibrionaceae, posing a significant health risk to both humans and aquatic organisms. Fish disease, notably outbreaks of emerging pathogens in response to environmental perturbations such as heatwaves, have been recognised in aquaculture settings. Considerably less is known about how rising sea surface temperatures will impact the microbiology of wild fish populations, particularly those within estuarine systems that are more vulnerable to warming. We used a combination of Vibrio-specific quantitative PCR and amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA and hsp60 genes to examine seawater and fish (Pelates sexlineatus) gut microbial communities across a quasi-natural experimental system, where thermal pollution from coal-fired power stations creates a temperature gradient of up to 6 °C, compatible with future predicted temperature increases. At the warmest site, fish hindgut microbial communities were in a state of dysbiosis characterised by shifts in beta diversity and a proliferation (71.5% relative abundance) of the potential fish pathogen Photobacterium damselae subsp. damselae. Comparable patterns were not identified in the surrounding seawater, indicating opportunistic proliferation within estuarine fish guts under thermal stress. A subsequent evaluation of predicted future warming-related risk due to pathogenic Vibrionaceae in temperate estuarine fish demonstrated that warming is likely to drive opportunistic pathogen increases in the upper latitudinal range of this estuarine fish, potentially impacting adaptations to future warming. These findings represent a breakthrough in our understanding of the dynamics of emerging pathogens in populations of wild aquatic organisms within environments likely to experience rapid warming under future climate change