Approaches for advancing scientific understanding of macrosystems

The emergence of macrosystems ecology (MSE), which focuses on regional- to continental-scale ecological patterns and processes, builds upon a history of long-term and broad-scale studies in ecology. Scientists face the difficulty of integrating the many elements that make up macrosystems, which consist of hierarchical processes at interacting spatial and temporal scales. Researchers must also identify the most relevant scales and variables to be considered, the required data resources, and the appropriate study design to provide the proper inferences. The large volumes of multi-thematic data often associated with macrosystem studies typically require validation, standardization, and assimilation. Finally, analytical approaches need to describe how cross-scale and hierarchical dynamics and interactions relate to macroscale phenomena. Here, we elaborate on some key methodological challenges of MSE research and discuss existing and novel approaches to meet them

Proposal for Austere Light Attack Aircraft – Project Aardvark

The WickedAir senior design team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville is developing the preliminary design of an aircraft for the AIAA Undergraduate Team Aircraft Design Competition. The RFP calls for an affordable light attack aircraft capable of executing missions currently only feasible with attack helicopters. The aircraft must be able to operate from short austere fields and accommodate a crew of two. Additional design goals include enhanced survivability and the ability for deploying a variety of weapons including an integrated gun for ground targets. The aircraft must accomplish an attack mission with a full weapons load and a long-range ferry mission with a 60% weapons load. Through evaluation of existing attack aircraft and helicopters and initial trade studies, the team has produced a conceptual design for the ZA-13 “Aardvark”. The 12,000 lbf Aardvark has twin turboprop engines mounted on a 6.9 aspect ratio swept wing. Two sponsons offer weapons attachment points similar to those of a helicopter. This design offers low speed performance, a high payload capacity, and a short takeoff length. Specific consideration was given to the effects of foreign object debris and particulate matter pollution with regards to the lifespan and vulnerability of the aircraft in various austere environments. This paper summarizes the detailed design, cost analysis, and mission capabilities behind the current aircraft

Approaches to advance scientific understanding of macrosystems ecology

The emergence of macrosystems ecology (MSE), which focuses on regional- to continental-scale ecological pat- terns and processes, builds upon a history of long-term and broad-scale studies in ecology. Scientists face the difficulty of integrating the many elements that make up macrosystems, which consist of hierarchical processes at interacting spatial and temporal scales. Researchers must also identify the most relevant scales and variables to be considered, the required data resources, and the appropriate study design to provide the proper inferences. The large volumes of multi-thematic data often associated with macrosystem studies typically require valida- tion, standardization, and assimilation. Finally, analytical approaches need to describe how cross-scale and hierarchical dynamics and interactions relate to macroscale phenomena. Here, we elaborate on some key methodological challenges of MSE research and discuss existing and novel approaches to meet them

Testing Above- and Below-Canopy Representations of Turbulent Fluxes in an Energy Balance Snowmelt Model

Turbulent fluxes of sensible and latent heat are important processes in the surface energy balance that drives snowmelt. Modeling these fluxes in a forested environment is complicated because of the canopy effects on the wind field. This paper presents and tests a turbulent flux model developed to represent these processes in an energy balance snowmelt model. The goal is to model these processes using the readily available inputs of canopy height and leaf area index in a way that minimizes the number of parameters, state variables, and assumptions about hard to quantify processes. Selected periods from 9 years of eddy-covariance (EC) measurements at Niwot Ridge, Colorado, were used to evaluate the effectiveness of this modeling approach. The model was able to reproduce the above-canopy sensible and latent heat fluxes reasonably with the correlation higher for sensible heat than latent heat. The modeled values of the below-canopy latent heat fluxes also matched the EC-measured values. The model captured the nighttime below-canopy sensible heat flux quite well, but there were discrepancies in daytime sensible heat flux possibly due to mountain slope circulation not quantifiable in this kind of model. Despite the uncertainties in the below-canopy sensible heat fluxes, the results are encouraging and suggest that reasonable predictions of turbulent flux energy exchanges and subsequent vapor losses from snow in forested environments can be obtained with a parsimonious single-layer representation of the canopy. The model contributes an improved physically based capability for predicting the snow accumulation and melt in a forested environment

Highly Volcanic Exoplanets, Lava Worlds, and Magma Ocean Worlds:An Emerging Class of Dynamic Exoplanets of Significant Scientific Priority

Highly volcanic exoplanets, which can be variously characterized as 'lava worlds', 'magma ocean worlds', or 'super-Ios' are high priority targets for investigation. The term 'lava world' may refer to any planet with extensive surface lava lakes, while the term 'magma ocean world' refers to planets with global or hemispherical magma oceans at their surface. 'Highly volcanic planets', including super-Ios, may simply have large, or large numbers of, active explosive or extrusive volcanoes of any form. They are plausibly highly diverse, with magmatic processes across a wide range of compositions, temperatures, activity rates, volcanic eruption styles, and background gravitational force magnitudes. Worlds in all these classes are likely to be the most characterizable rocky exoplanets in the near future due to observational advantages that stem from their preferential occurrence in short orbital periods and their bright day-side flux in the infrared. Transit techniques should enable a level of characterization of these worlds analogous to hot Jupiters. Understanding processes on highly volcanic worlds is critical to interpret imminent observations. The physical states of these worlds are likely to inform not just geodynamic processes, but also planet formation, and phenomena crucial to habitability. Volcanic and magmatic activity uniquely allows chemical investigation of otherwise spectroscopically inaccessible interior compositions. These worlds will be vital to assess the degree to which planetary interior element abundances compare to their stellar hosts, and may also offer pathways to study both the very young Earth, and the very early form of many silicate planets where magma oceans and surface lava lakes are expected to be more prevalent. We suggest that highly volcanic worlds may become second only to habitable worlds in terms of both scientific and public long-term interest.Comment: A white paper submitted in response to the National Academy of Sciences 2018 Exoplanet Science Strategy solicitation, from the NASA Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC) of the Goddard Space Flight Center. 6 pages, 0 figure

The daily association between affect and alcohol use: a meta-analysis of individual participant data

Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associations between affect and alcohol use. We included individual participant data from 69 studies (N = 12,394), which used daily and momentary surveys to assess affect and the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. Results indicate that people are not more likely to drink on days they experience high negative affect, but are more likely to drink and drink heavily on days high in positive affect. People self-reporting a motivational tendency to drink-to-cope and drink-to-enhance consumed more alcohol, but not on days they experienced higher negative and positive affect. Results were robust across different operationalizations of affect, study designs, study populations, and individual characteristics. These findings challenge the long-held belief that people drink more alcohol following increases in negative affect. Integrating these findings under different theoretical models and limitations of this field of research, we collectively propose an agenda for future research to explore open questions surrounding affect and alcohol use.The present study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Grant MOP-115104 (Roisin M. O’Connor), Canadian Institutes of Health Research Grant MSH-122803 (Roisin M. O’Connor), John A. Hartford Foundation Grant (Paul Sacco), Loyola University Chicago Research Support Grant (Tracy De Hart), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Grant T03OH008435 (Cynthia Mohr), National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant F31AA023447 (Ryan W. Carpenter), NIH Grant R01AA025936 (Kasey G. Creswell), NIH Grant R01AA025969 (Catharine E. Fairbairn), NIH Grant R21AA024156 (Anne M. Fairlie), NIH Grant F31AA024372 (Fallon Goodman), NIH Grant R01DA047247 (Kevin M. King), NIH Grant K01AA026854 (Ashley N. Linden-Carmichael), NIH Grant K01AA022938 (Jennifer E. Merrill), NIH Grant K23AA024808 (Hayley Treloar Padovano), NIH Grant P60AA11998 (Timothy Trull), NIH Grant MH69472 (Timothy Trull), NIH Grant K01DA035153 (Nisha Gottfredson), NIH Grant P50DA039838 (Ashley N. Linden-Carmichael), NIH Grant K01DA047417 (David M. Lydon-Staley), NIH Grant T32DA037183 (M. Kushner), NIH Grant R21DA038163 (A. Moore), NIH Grant K12DA000167 (M. Potenza, Stephanie S. O’Malley), NIH Grant R01AA025451 (Bruce Bartholow, Thomas M. Piasecki), NIH Grant P50AA03510 (V. Hesselbrock), NIH Grant K01AA13938 (Kristina M. Jackson), NIH Grant K02AA028832 (Kevin M. King), NIH Grant T32AA007455 (M. Larimer), NIH Grant R01AA025037 (Christine M. Lee, M. Patrick), NIH Grant R01AA025611 (Melissa Lewis), NIH Grant R01AA007850 (Robert Miranda), NIH Grant R21AA017273 (Robert Miranda), NIH Grant R03AA014598 (Cynthia Mohr), NIH Grant R29AA09917 (Cynthia Mohr), NIH Grant T32AA07290 (Cynthia Mohr), NIH Grant P01AA019072 (P. Monti), NIH Grant R01AA015553 (J. Morgenstern), NIH Grant R01AA020077 (J. Morgenstern), NIH Grant R21AA017135 (J. Morgenstern), NIH Grant R01AA016621 (Stephanie S. O’Malley), NIH Grant K99AA029459 (Marilyn Piccirillo), NIH Grant F31AA022227 (Nichole Scaglione), NIH Grant R21AA018336 (Katie Witkiewitz), Portuguese State Budget Foundation for Science and Technology Grant UIDB/PSI/01662/2020 (Teresa Freire), University of Washington Population Health COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant (J. Kanter, Adam M. Kuczynski), U.S. Department of Defense Grant W81XWH-13-2-0020 (Cynthia Mohr), SANPSY Laboratory Core Support Grant CNRS USR 3413 (Marc Auriacombe), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant (N. Galambos), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant (Andrea L. Howard)

A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity.Peer reviewe

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity