Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are narrow corridors of intense water vapor transport, shaping precipitation, floods, and economies. Temporal clustering of ARs tripled losses compared to isolated events, yet the reasons behind this clustering remain unclear. AR orientation further modulates hydrological impacts through terrain interaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe quantitative characterization and prediction of localized severe weather events that emerge as coherences generated by the highly non-linear interacting multivariate dynamics of global weather systems poses a significant challenge whose solution is increasingly important in the face of climate change where weather extremes are on the rise. As weather measurement systems (multiband satellite, radar, etc) continue to dramatically improve, increasingly complex time-dependent multivariate 3D datasets offer the potential to inform such problems but pose an increasingly daunting computational challenge. Here we describe the application to global weather systems of a novel computational method called the Entropy Field Decomposition (EFD) capable of efficiently characterizing coherent spatiotemporal structures in non-linear multivariate interacting physical systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGovernment policies have stimulated the Western Australian (WA) mining industry to position itself as a significant global supplier of critical minerals, including lithium and rare earths. In WA the lithology that supports these minerals is often associated with elevated concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) and the increase in the number of mining operations pursuing the minerals has witnessed a commensurate increase in the number of workers potentially exposed to the radiation emitted from the NORMs. The regulatory framework for radiation protection in WA mining operations underwent significant change with the implementation of the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 and Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulations 2022 which both came into effect on the 31 of March 2022.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany self-motivated and goal-directed behaviours display highly flexible, approximately 4 hour ultradian (shorter than a day) oscillations. Despite lacking direct correspondence to physical cycles in the environment, these ultradian rhythms may be involved in optimizing functional interactions with the environment and reflect intrinsic neural dynamics. Current evidence supports a role of mesostriatal dopamine (DA) in the expression and propagation of ultradian rhythmicity, however, the biochemical processes underpinning these oscillations remain to be identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Image Process
November 2023
Cover crops (CCs) were found to improve soil health by increasing plant diversity and ground cover. They may also improve water supply for cash crops by reducing evaporation and increasing soil water storage capacity. However, their influence on plant-associated microbial communities, including symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), is less well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtmospheric rivers (ARs) generate most of the economic losses associated with flooding in the western United States and are projected to increase in intensity with climate change. This is of concern as flood damages have been shown to increase exponentially with AR intensity. To assess how AR-related flood damages are likely to respond to climate change, we constructed county-level damage models for the western 11 conterminous states using 40 years of flood insurance data linked to characteristics of ARs at landfall.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMathematical models have been used extensively in chronobiology to explore characteristics of biological clocks. In particular, for human circadian studies, the Kronauer model has been modified multiple times to describe rhythm production and responses to sensory input. This phenomenological model comprises a single set of parameters which can simulate circadian responses in humans under a variety of environmental conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operates Prado Dam in southern California for flood risk management and to capture stormwater for groundwater recharge. USACE and the Orange County Water District (OCWD) have collaborated for over 30 years to temporarily store Santa Ana River (SAR) stormflow at Prado Dam for groundwater recharge in the Orange County Groundwater Basin (Basin). USACE, OCWD, and other stakeholders are assessing Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO) at Prado Dam as a new operational approach to capture additional supplies of SAR water for groundwater recharge without affecting Prado Dam's primary flood risk management purpose.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the 2019-20 reporting period, 19 mining operations in Western Australia were identified as having workers who were likely to be exposed to ionising radiation stemming from naturally occurring radioactive materials, 17 of which, known hereinafter as reporting entities (REs), were required to submit an annual report of the dose estimates of their workforce to the mining regulatory authority. In 2018 the International Commission for Radiological Protection published the revision of the dose coefficients (DCs) for occupational intakes of radionuclides of the uranium-238 and thorium-232 decay series, in ICRP-137 and ICRP-141. The 2019-20 annual reports are the first to apply the revised DCs to estimate worker doses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study complements a previous study that combined household survey data with weights of curbside separated organics in the residential sector (Parizeau et al., 2015). Our findings reinforce the need for the collection of detailed observational data in household food waste audits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study presents the Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks-Dynamic Infrared Rain Rate (PDIR-Now) near-real-time precipitation dataset. This dataset provides hourly, quasi-global, infrared-based precipitation estimates at 0.04° × 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Circadian clocks in the hippocampus (HPC) align memory processing with appropriate time of day. Our study was aimed at ascertaining the specificity of glycogen synthase kinase 3-beta (GSK3β)- and glucocorticoid (GC)-dependent pathways in the entrainment of clocks in individual HPC regions, CA1-3, and dentate gyrus (DG).
Methods: The role of GCs was addressed in vivo by comparing the effects of adrenalectomy (ADX) and subsequent dexamethasone (DEX) supplementation on clock gene expression profiles (Per1, Per2, Nr1d1, and Bmal1).
Modification of the Per2 clock gene in mPer2Luc reporter mice significantly alters circadian function. Behavioral period in constant dark is lengthened, and dissociates into two distinct components in constant light. Rhythms exhibit increased bimodality, enhanced phase resetting to light pulses, and altered entrainment to scheduled feeding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of recent revisions to the dose coefficients published in ICRP-137 and ICRP-141 for members of theTh,U andU decay series on radiation doses received by Western Australian mine workers via the inhalation of insoluble dusts containing long-lived alpha particle emitting radionuclides.Whilst some dose coefficients for individual members of the decay series have decreased, the nett effect is that the sum of all dose coefficients in all three decay series have increased as a result of the revisions. The increase is inversely related to Activity Median Aerodynamic Diameter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNaturally occurring radionuclides (NORs) are encountered in varying concentrations in a wide range of commodities that are mined and processed in Western Australia (WA), including mineral sands, coal, phosphate ores, sandblasting materials, and the production of bauxite, titanium dioxide pigment, copper, zinc, lead, tin, tantalum and the refining of zircon.Because they have the potential for workers to receive annual doses in excess of 1 mSv, 14 mining operations in WA are required to submit an annual report of worker doses to the regulatory authority. This research provides a summary of the workforce demographics and radiation doses reported by mining operations for the 2018-19 reporting period in order to establish a benchmark against which to compare future worker exposures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRadiat Prot Dosimetry
December 2020
In the 1990, radon and radon progeny was reported to contribute approximately 70% of the average 1.4 + 1.0-mSv annual dose across 26 Western Australian underground non-uranium mines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtmospheric rivers (ARs) are narrow regions of strong horizontal water vapor transport that play important roles in the global water cycle, weather, and hydrology. Motivated by challenges in simulating ARs with state-of-the-art global models, this paper diagnoses model errors with a focus on relative contributions of moisture convergence, evaporation, and precipitation to AR column-integrated water vapor (IWV) budget. Using 20-year simulations by 24 global weather/climate models, budget terms are calculated for four AR sectors: postfrontal, frontal, prefrontal, and pre-AR, with biases assessed against two reanalysis products.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAtmospheric rivers (ARs) are extratropical storms that produce extreme precipitation on the west coasts of the world's major landmasses. In the United States, ARs cause significant flooding, yet their economic impacts have not been quantified. Here, using 40 years of data from the National Flood Insurance Program, we show that ARs are the primary drivers of flood damages in the western United States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVisible light is the principal stimulus for resetting the mammalian central circadian pacemaker. Circadian phase resetting is most sensitive to short-wavelength (blue) visible light. We examined the effects of removing short-wavelengths < 500 nm from polychromatic white light using optical filters on circadian phase resetting in rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe above article from British Journal of Pharmacology, published online as an Accepted Article on 19 August 2019 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been withdrawn by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor-in-Chief Professor Amrita Ahluwalia, and John Wiley & Sons Limited. The withdrawal has been agreed owing to new findings that necessitate re-interpretation of the results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDaily precipitation in California has been projected to become less frequent even as precipitation extremes intensify, leading to uncertainty in the overall response to climate warming. Precipitation extremes are historically associated with Atmospheric Rivers (ARs). Sixteen global climate models are evaluated for realism in modeled historical AR behavior and contribution of the resulting daily precipitation to annual total precipitation over Western North America.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of variety (Nantes and Imperator), soil fertility status (high and low) and agronomic treatments on yield and quality traits of carrot composition and sensory factors. The treatments compared synthetic nitrogen at conventionally recommended amounts with compost-sourced nitrogen (high and low rates) and a range of amendments (compost, compost tea, micronutrients and foliar treatments). Additionally, we intended to identify factors affecting polyacetylene accumulation in carrots, owing to the growing interest in their health effects and paucity of agronomic information on their bioaccumulation in carrots.
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