Adjustment of weather radar estimates using observed precipitation has been an accepted procedure for decades. Ground observations of precipitation typically come from rain gauges, but can also include data from diverse networks of sensors, with different levels of reliability. This study presents a standardized framework for evaluating adjustment algorithms using synthetically constructed, but realistic, rain grids and weather radar rainfall. Ground observation points are randomly placed throughout the synthetic storm domain and the precipitation for each sensor is extracted from the true rain. Then a subset of the sensors are defined as unreliable, and a log-normal error factor is applied at those locations. This double network of rain sensors could be applicable, for example, when rainfall is derived from signal attenuation between commercial microwave link (CML) antennas. Past research has tested CML observations as a source of precipitation data and validated various radar adjustment algorithms. However, a comprehensive evaluation of adjustment algorithms using accurate gauge data mixed with CML observations at different densities is lacking. Five adjustment algorithms are applied to the synthetic radar grid: Mean Field Bias (MFB), a Multiplicative algorithm, Mixed (additive and multiplicative), Conditional Merge (CondMerge) and Kriging with External Drift (KED). Generation of the synthetic framework, and application of the adjustment algorithms is repeated for 150 realizations. Comparison of coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error and linear regression for all adjustment procedures over all realizations indicates the following results. Only MFB and KED adjustments performed well when using accurate gauges. The kriging based KED was able to achieve good adjustment also with the addition of error-prone sensors. CondMerge and the Mixed and Multiplicative, however, resulted in poorer adjustments.
We study the formation of large-amplitude standing ion acoustic waves (SIAWs) by nonlinear phase-locking (autoresonance) with a weak, chirped frequency standing ponderomotive drive. These waves comprise a nonlinear two-phase solution, with each phase locked to one of the two traveling waves comprising the drive. The autoresonance in the system is guaranteed provided that the driving amplitude exceeds a threshold. The phenomenon is illustrated via water bag simulations within a nonlinear ion fluid model and analyzed using Whitham's averaged variational principle. The local ion and electron densities in the autoresonant SIAWs may significantly exceed the initial unperturbed plasma density and are only limited by kinetic wave-breaking.
Current literature suggests that wheat production models are limited either to wide-scale or plot-based predictions ignoring pattern of habitat conditions and surficial hydrological processes. We present here a high-spatial resolution (50 m) non-calibrated GIS-based wheat production model for predictions of aboveground wheat biomass (AGB) and grain yield (GY). The model is an integration of three sub-models, each simulating elemental processes relevant for wheat growth dynamics in water-limited environments: (1) HYDRUS-1D, a finite element model that simulates one-dimensional movement of water in the soil profile; (2) a two-dimensional GIS-based surface runoff model; and (3) a one-dimensional process-driven mechanistic wheat growth model. By integrating the three sub-models, we aimed to achieve a more accurate spatially continuous water balance simulation with a better representation of root zone soil water content (SWC) impacts on plant development. High-resolution grid-based rainfall data from a meteorological radar system were used as input to HYDRUS-1D. Twenty-two commercial wheat fields in Israel were used to validate the model in two seasons (2010/11 and 2011/12). Results show that root zone SWC was accurately simulated by HYDRUS-1D in both seasons, particularly at the top 10-cm soil layer. Observed vs simulated AGB and GY were highly correlated with R2 = 0.93 and 0.72 (RMSE = 171 g m−2 and 70 g m−2) having low biases of -41 g m−2 (8%) and 52 g m−2 (10%), respectively. Model sensitivity test showed that HYDRUS-1D was mainly driven by spatial variability in the input soil characteristics while the integrated wheat production model was mostly affected by rainfall spatial variability indicating the importance of using accurate high-resolution rainfall data as model input. Using the integrated model, we predict decreases in AGB and GY of c. 10.5% and c. 12%, respectively, for 1 °C of warming and c. 7.7% and c. 7.3% for 5% reduction in rainfall amount in our study sites. The suggested model could be used by scientists to better understand the causes of spatial and temporal variability in wheat production and the consequences of future scenarios such as climate change.
Protein misfolding is a recurring phenomenon that cells must manage; otherwise misfolded proteins can aggregate and become toxic should they persist. To counter this burden, cells have evolved protein quality control (PQC) mechanisms that manage misfolded proteins. Two classes of systems that function in PQC are chaperones that aid in protein folding and ubiquitin?protein ligases that ubiquitinate misfolded proteins for proteasomal degradation. How folding and degradative PQC systems interact and coordinate their respective functions is not yet fully understood. Previous studies of PQC degradation pathways in the endoplasmic reticulum and cytosol have led to the prevailing idea that these pathways require the activity of Hsp70 chaperones. Here, we find that involvement of the budding yeast Hsp70 chaperones Ssa1 and Ssa2 in nuclear PQC degradation varies with the substrate. In particular, nuclear PQC degradation mediated by the yeast ubiquitin?protein ligase San1 often involves Ssa1/Ssa2, but San1 substrate recognition and ubiquitination can proceed without these Hsp70 chaperone functions in vivo and in vitro. Our studies provide new insights into the variability of Hsp70 chaperone involvement with a nuclear PQC degradation pathway.Protein misfolding is a recurring phenomenon that cells must manage; otherwise misfolded proteins can aggregate and become toxic should they persist. To counter this burden, cells have evolved protein quality control (PQC) mechanisms that manage misfolded proteins. Two classes of systems that function in PQC are chaperones that aid in protein folding and ubiquitin?protein ligases that ubiquitinate misfolded proteins for proteasomal degradation. How folding and degradative PQC systems interact and coordinate their respective functions is not yet fully understood. Previous studies of PQC degradation pathways in the endoplasmic reticulum and cytosol have led to the prevailing idea that these pathways require the activity of Hsp70 chaperones. Here, we find that involvement of the budding yeast Hsp70 chaperones Ssa1 and Ssa2 in nuclear PQC degradation varies with the substrate. In particular, nuclear PQC degradation mediated by the yeast ubiquitin?protein ligase San1 often involves Ssa1/Ssa2, but San1 substrate recognition and ubiquitination can proceed without these Hsp70 chaperone functions in vivo and in vitro. Our studies provide new insights into the variability of Hsp70 chaperone involvement with a nuclear PQC degradation pathway.
In Fantasies of Self-Mourning Ruben Borg describes the formal features of a posthuman, cyborgian imaginary at work in modernism. The book’s central claim is that modernism invents the posthuman as a way to think through the contradictions of its historical moment. Borg develops a posthumanist critique of the concept of organic life based on comparative readings of Pirandello, Woolf, Beckett, and Flann O’Brien, alongside discussions of Alfred Hitchcock, Chris Marker, Béla Tarr, Ridley Scott and Mamoru Oshii. The argument draws together a cluster of modernist narratives that contemplate the separation of a cybernetic eye from a human body, or call for a tearing up of the body understood as a discrete organic unit capable of synthesizing desire and sense perception.
The last decade has witnessed the development of methodologies for the post‐flood documentation of both hydrogeomorphological and social response to extreme precipitation. These investigations are particularly interesting for the case of flash floods, whose space–time scales make their observations by conventional hydrometeorological monitoring networks particularly challenging. Effective flash flood documentation requires post‐flood survey strategies encompassing accurate radar estimation of rainfall, field and remote‐sensing observations of the geomorphic processes, indirect reconstruction of peak discharges—as well eyewitness interviews. These latter can give valuable information on both flood dynamics and the related individual and collective responses. This study describes methods for post‐flood surveys based on interdisciplinary collaborations between natural and social scientists. These surveys may help to better understand the links between hydrometeorological dynamics and geomorphic processes as well as the relationship between flood dynamics and behavioral response in the context of fast space–time changes of flooding conditions. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Methods Science of Water > Hydrological Processes A flash flood and its forensic analysis.
Christian Baden. 2019. “Framing the news.” In The Handbook of Journalism Studies, edited by Karin Wahl- Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch, 2nd ed., Pp. 229-245. Routledge. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This chapter reviews the ample scholarship on framing the news in light of what it can contribute to understanding the specific role and contribution of journalists. Journalists are framers. Within the journalistic news production process, one of the key decisions that every journalist needs to make time and again concerns what “aspects of a perceived reality” to foreground; what “connection among them” to weave; and thus what meaning to provide “to an unfolding strip of events”. In academic scholarship, the framing of journalistic news has also received an immense amount of attention. One difficulty in assessing the role of journalism within this public process of negotiating frames derives from the relative scarcity of research directly addressing journalistic framing practices. Owing to the power of news frames to shape public opinion and political agendas, scholars have accumulated a huge body of literature scrutinizing the specific frames used for covering virtually any kind of issue.
This article discusses the concepts of borders and boundaries by analyzing the medical treatment provided in Israel to Syrian casualties, in field hospitals along the border zone between Israel and Syria but also in public hospitals elsewhere in the country. At these hospitals, security personnel and IDF soldiers guard the wards where the Syrian patients receive treatment, which rapidly transforms the surroundings into a cooperative medical/ security environment. The Israeli medical staff and the Syrian casualties also develop their own special relationships during the treatment periods. A boundary zone emerges, in which security and medicine, as well as enemies and allies, interact through the provision of medical aid. In this process, security arenas adapt to the humanitarian aid agenda, while civilian medical spheres are readily transformed into security spaces. In the intersection of the two elements, boundaries between the civilian and the military, and between medicine and security, become blurred. Moreover, boundaries between enemies also shift, as Syrians and Israelis begin to view each other as friends - and even as family. Whereas the concepts of bordering or border-making refer to establishing distinctions between spaces or groups, we suggest using the concept of the “boundary zone” to describe the new space that here creates a bridge between two different (medical and security) spheres of expertise and two different peoples.
Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal and Karen De Clercq. 2019. “From negative cleftto external negator.” In Breitbarth, Anne, Elisabeth Witzenhausen, Miriam Bouzouita & Lieven Danckaert (eds.). Cycles in Language Change, Pp. 228-248. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Abstract
This chapter discusses the syntax and the semantics of the negator lāw in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (henceforth JBA) through the lens of the diachronic emergence of this negator. The new negator lāw is a sentential external negator, whose syntactic and semantic properties is discussed alongside a diachronic study concerning its origin. Syntactically, we propose that lāw, like negative DPs/PPs in English (Haegeman 2000) and Sicilian neca (Cruschina 2010; Garzonio and Poletto 2015) is merged in SpecFocP in the extended CP-domain from where it takes wide scope. Semantically, lāw takes propositional scope and expresses the meaning of external negation, equivalent to the independent clause: ‘it is not the case’. Diachronically, lāw, as a single-morpheme external negation, developed from a cleft whose matrix clause negates the content of the embedded clause. Following work by Bar-Asher Siegal (2015b), we argue that the syntactic reanalysis of lāw is triggered by a phonological process of univerbation between the regular negator lā in clefts with the agreement clitic. This syntactic reanalysis involves a morphological univerbation of lāw (Andersen 1987). The main claim of this chapter is that the syntactic and the semantic characteristics of this negator can be better understood in the light of its historical origin. Moreover, this is an interesting example of how a similar semantic interpretation can be associated with two different syntactic structures, thus allowing a syntactic reanalysis. This type of development is not part of the Jespersen Cycle or Croft’s cycle, but constitutes the development of a non-standard negator next to the standard negator. It is demonstrated that a similar development can be observed for the Sicilian negator neca as well (cf. Garzonio and Poletto 2015).
Common fragile sites (CFSs) are specific genomic regions in normal chromosomes that exhibit genomic instability under DNA replication stress. As replication stress is an early feature of cancer development, CFSs are involved in the signature of genomic instability found in malignant tumors. The landscape of CFSs is tissue-specific and differs under different replication stress inducers. Nevertheless, the features underlying CFS sensitivity to replication stress are shared. Here, we review the events generating replication stress and discuss the unique characteristics of CFS regions and the cellular responses aimed to stabilizing these regions.
