Prioritizing US Geological Survey science on salinization and salinity in candidate and selected priority river basins.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) is selecting and prioritizing basins, known as Integrated Water Science basins, for monitoring and intensive study. Previous efforts to aid in this selection process include a scientifically defensible and quantitative assessment of basins facing human-caused water resource challenges (Van Metre et al. in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 192(7), 458 2020).

Divergences in color perception between deep neural networks and humans.

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are increasingly proposed as models of human vision, bolstered by their impressive performance on image classification and object recognition tasks. Yet, the extent to which DNNs capture fundamental aspects of human vision such as color perception remains unclear. Here, we develop novel experiments for evaluating the perceptual coherence of color embeddings in DNNs, and we assess how well these algorithms predict human color similarity judgments collected via an online survey.

Life at the Frozen Limit: Microbial Carbon Metabolism Across a Late Pleistocene Permafrost Chronosequence.

Permafrost is an extreme habitat yet it hosts microbial populations that remain active over millennia. Using permafrost collected from a Pleistocene chronosequence (19 to 33 ka), we hypothesized that the functional genetic potential of microbial communities in permafrost would reflect microbial strategies to metabolize permafrost soluble organic matter (OM) over geologic time. We also hypothesized that changes in the metagenome across the chronosequence would correlate with shifts in carbon chemistry, permafrost age, and paleoclimate at the time of permafrost formation.

On my own terms.

Carol Conaway prepared this excerpt from her political memoir-in-progress. She examines her experiences as an African American lesbian living her dream of becoming a Jew. The work focuses on how she navigated her initial naïveté about the prejudices she encountered in response to her combination of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and mental illness.

Microbial survival strategies in ancient permafrost: insights from metagenomics.

In permafrost (perennially frozen ground) microbes survive oligotrophic conditions, sub-zero temperatures, low water availability and high salinity over millennia. Viable life exists in permafrost tens of thousands of years old but we know little about the metabolic and physiological adaptations to the challenges presented by life in frozen ground over geologic time. In this study we asked whether increasing age and the associated stressors drive adaptive changes in community composition and function.