The Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) Project accessed Mercer Subglacial Lake using environmentally clean hot-water drilling to examine interactions among ice, water, sediment, rock, microbes and carbon reservoirs within the lake water column and underlying sediments. A ~0.4 m diameter borehole was melted through 1087 m of ice and maintained over ~10 days, allowing observation of ice properties and collection of water and sediment with various tools. Over this period, SALSA collected: 60 L of lake water and 10 L of deep borehole water; microbes >0.2 μm in diameter from in situ filtration of ~100 L of lake water; 10 multicores 0.32–0.49 m long; 1.0 and 1.76 m long gravity cores; three conductivity–temperature–depth profiles of borehole and lake water; five discrete depth current meter measurements in the lake and images of ice, the lake water–ice interface and lake sediments. Temperature and conductivity data showed the hydrodynamic character of water mixing between the borehole and lake after entry. Models simulating melting of the ~6 m thick basal accreted ice layer imply that debris fall-out through the ~15 m water column to the lake sediments from borehole melting had little effect on the stratigraphy of surficial sediment cores.

To design and optimize arrays of vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) for maximal power density and minimal wake losses, a careful consideration of the inherently three-dimensional structure of the wakes of these turbines in real operating conditions is needed. Accordingly, a new volumetric particle-tracking velocimetry method was developed to measure three-dimensional flow fields around full-scale VAWTs in field conditions. Experiments were conducted at the Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy (FLOWE) in Lancaster, CA, using six cameras and artificial snow as tracer particles. Velocity and vorticity measurements were obtained for a 2 kW turbine with five straight blades and a 1 kW turbine with three helical blades, each at two distinct tip-speed ratios and at Reynolds numbers based on the rotor diameter $D$ between $1.26 \times 10^{6}$ and $1.81 \times 10^{6}$. A tilted wake was observed to be induced by the helical-bladed turbine. By considering the dynamics of vortex lines shed from the rotating blades, the tilted wake was connected to the geometry of the helical blades. Furthermore, the effects of the tilted wake on a streamwise horseshoe vortex induced by the rotation of the turbine were quantified. Lastly, the implications of this dynamics for the recovery of the wake were examined. This study thus establishes a fluid-mechanical connection between the geometric features of a VAWT and the salient three-dimensional flow characteristics of its near-wake region, which can potentially inform both the design of turbines and the arrangement of turbines into highly efficient arrays.

This paper summarizes a multi-state, multi-year study assessing the potential for local agriculture in northern New England. While largely rural, this region's agricultural sector differs greatly from the rest of the United States, and demand for locally produced food has been increasing. To assess this unique economic landscape, researchers and Cooperative Extension at the Universities of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont investigated four key areas: (1) local food capacities, (2) constraints to agricultural expansion, (3) consumer preferences for local and organic produce, and (4) the role of intermediaries as alternative local food outlets. The project included input from local farmers, Extension members, restaurants, and the general public. We present the four research areas in a sequential, overlapping fashion. The timing of our research was such that each step in the process informed the next and can be used as a template for assessing a region's potential for local agricultural production.

Food waste has been recognized as an economic issue for at least a century and is gaining tremendous traction in academia as well as in discourse about public policy. The goal of our study is to examine the evolution of food waste over the last several decades at the United States and global levels. We first review the methodologies that have been used to estimate the magnitude of food waste so that the quality of the data can be evaluated. Though with limitations, existing data generally show that for many regions of the world, including the United States, pre-consumer food loss and waste as a share of total supply has been stable in recent decades. However, the aggregate share wasted masks important changes over time. We provide some evidence that food waste has shifted downstream in recent decades, i.e., from producers and processors to retailers and consumers. Through a reflection on the trends in major socioeconomic factors, we hypothesize that this downstream shift has been driven by increases in household incomes, improvements in technology, and changes in culture and institutions.

We document that a firm’s culture, specifically, its religiosity, affects its cost of debt. Firms in higher-religiosity counties have higher credit ratings and lower debt costs. The impact of religiosity is stronger for firms with greater information asymmetry and during recessions. Further, religiosity has additional explanatory power for the cost of bank loans (but not the cost of public bonds) beyond its impact through ratings. This supports the argument that banks have superior abilities in pricing soft information, such as corporate culture. Finally, the impact of religiosity is stronger when the lender is a small bank.

We report the discovery of the ultra-luminous quasi-stellar object SMSS J215728.21−360215.1 with magnitude z = 16.9 and W4 = 7.42 at redshift 4.75. Given absolute magnitudes of M145, AB = −29.3, M300, AB = −30.12, and logLbol/Lbol, ⊙ = 14.84, it is the quasi-stellar object with the highest unlensed UV-optical luminosity currently known in the Universe. It was found by combining proper-motion data from Gaia DR2 with photometry from SkyMapper DR1 and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. In the GAIA database, it is an isolated single source and thus unlikely to be strongly gravitationally lensed. It is also unlikely to be a beamed source as it is not discovered in the radio domain by either NRAO-VLA Sky Survey or Sydney University Molonglo Southern Survey. It is classed as a weak-emission-line quasi-stellar object and possesses broad absorption line features. A lightcurve from ATLAS spanning the time from 2015 October to 2017 December shows little sign of variability.

Pioneering author and media critic, Dr. Jack Shaheen devoted his life to identifying and contesting damaging stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims in American media and pop culture. Arabs and Muslims were offered up as cartoon caricatures—dagger wielding, evil, ridiculous, hypersexualized, inhumane and incompetent “others.” Dr. Shaheen quickly recognized their shared genealogy to the portrayals of other racialized groups including Jews, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and African Americans. Always in the spirit of engaged dialogue, he was outspoken in defense of any group that was wrongfully stereotyped and vilified.

Hundreds of penetrant risk loci have been identified across different neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), and these often involve rare (<1% frequency) copy number variations (CNVs), which can involve one or more genes. Monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs are long thought to share 100% of their genomic information. However, genetic differences in the form of postzygotic somatic variants have been reported recently both in typically developing (TD) and in clinically discordant MZ pairs. We sought to investigate the contribution of rare CNVs in 100 twin pairs enriched for NDD phenotypes with a particular focus on postzygotic CNVs in MZ pairs discordant for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using the Illumina Infinium PsychArray. In our sample, no postzygotic de novo CNVs were found in 55 MZ twin pairs, including the 13 pairs discordant for ASD. We did detect a higher rate of CNVs overlapping genes involved in disorders of the nervous system, such as a rare deletion affecting HNRNPU, in MZ pairs discordant and concordant for ASD in comparison with TD pairs (p = .02). Our results are in concordance with earlier findings that postzygotic de novo CNV events are typically rare in genomic DNA derived from saliva or blood, and suggests that the discordance of NDDs in our sample of twins is not explained by discordant CNVs. Still, studies investigating postzygotic variation in MZ discordant twins using DNA from different tissues and single cells and higher resolution genomics are needed in the future.

The CMP challenges for advanced technology nodes are discussed. Global and local uniformity challenges and their cumulative effects are presented. Uniformity improvements for advanced node integration were achieved through slurry, pad and platen optimization, innovative integration schemes, the reduction of incoming variation and the reduction of cumulative effects. We discuss reduction of typical CMP defect types. Defects resulting from simple mechanisms (foreign material, polish residues) and those resulting from chemical and physical interactions (corrosion, chemical attack, scratches, physical migration) and strategies for control are studied. Defectivity reduction measures include new post-CMP clean chemicals, new slurries and pads and reduction of incoming defectivity. Finally we discuss an observed tradeoff between good defectivity and good uniformity.

Femtosecond laser direct writing (FsLDW) in transparent materials is a laser-based precise three-dimensional (3D) micro/nanofabrication method that has shown great potential for applications. The advantages of FsLDW originate in the nonlinear nature of absorption in the multiphoton absorption process. Over the past few years, transparent material micro/nanofabrication using FsLDW has seen several developments in materials and applications. Specifically, two-photon polymerization has been widely used as a precision direct-writing process for fabrication of polymeric 3D micro/nanostructures; internal/surface ablation of polymer 3D structures based on multiphoton absorption has been demonstrated and developed as a promising subtractive manufacturing technique; and femtosecond laser multiphoton modification in glass has been intensively studied for refractive-index change and generation of nanogratings and microvoids. This article describes the latest research on FsLDW in polymers and glasses with specific applications for large-dimension fabrication, microelectromechanical systems, microphotonics, and microfluidics.

Approximately half of the variation in wellbeing measures overlaps with variation in personality traits. Studies of non-human primate pedigrees and human twins suggest that this is due to common genetic influences. We tested whether personality polygenic scores for the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) domains and for item response theory (IRT) derived extraversion and neuroticism scores predict variance in wellbeing measures. Polygenic scores were based on published genome-wide association (GWA) results in over 17,000 individuals for the NEO-FFI and in over 63,000 for the IRT extraversion and neuroticism traits. The NEO-FFI polygenic scores were used to predict life satisfaction in 7 cohorts, positive affect in 12 cohorts, and general wellbeing in 1 cohort (maximal N = 46,508). Meta-analysis of these results showed no significant association between NEO-FFI personality polygenic scores and the wellbeing measures. IRT extraversion and neuroticism polygenic scores were used to predict life satisfaction and positive affect in almost 37,000 individuals from UK Biobank. Significant positive associations (effect sizes <0.05%) were observed between the extraversion polygenic score and wellbeing measures, and a negative association was observed between the polygenic neuroticism score and life satisfaction. Furthermore, using GWA data, genetic correlations of -0.49 and -0.55 were estimated between neuroticism with life satisfaction and positive affect, respectively. The moderate genetic correlation between neuroticism and wellbeing is in line with twin research showing that genetic influences on wellbeing are also shared with other independent personality domains.