Land-sea Thermal Contrast in Relation With Summer Monsoon Onset Over the Chao Phraya River Basin

An earlier onset of the Southeast Asian summer monsoon (SAM) was observed over the Chao Phraya River basin in Thailand using Thai Meteorological Department (TMD)-derived high-resolution merged rainfall from 1981 to 2016. As the SAM is precipitous, its variability depends on many local and global factors, such as thermal conditions over the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and Tibetan Plateau (TbT). Despite tremendous studies in the past, the role of thermal heat contrast over SAM is still not fully understood. Using the observation and reanalysis datasets, it was found that the absolute value of total heat over the BoB was higher. However, the interannual variability in total heat is higher over the TbT. Significant changes in surface temperature (±1.5°C), air thickness (±20 meters) and geopotential height found over the TbT were associated with early (late) SAM onset. The results also suggested that the significant changes in air thickness were influenced by the surface temperature difference over the TbT, and the changes in the integrated apparent heat source and integrated apparent moisture sink were up to ± 100 Wm−2, which resulted in stronger (weaker) convective activities over the BoB and mainland of the Indochina Peninsula during early (late) SAM onset. At the intraseasonal timescale, the instance MJO found over the Indian Ocean and Western Hemisphere at 4 to 10 days span during early SAM onset. An opposite scenario is found for a late SAM onset years with MJO location over Western Pacific and Maritime continent.

Premature rejection in science: The case of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

The progress of science has sometimes been unjustifiably delayed by the premature rejection of a hypothesis for which substantial evidence existed and which later achieved consensus. Continental drift, meteorite impact cratering, and anthropogenic global warming are examples from the first half of the twentieth century. This article presents evidence that the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) is a twenty-first century case. The hypothesis proposes that the airburst or impact of a comet ∼12,850 years ago caused the ensuing ∼1200-year-long Younger Dryas (YD) cool period and contributed to the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna in the Western Hemisphere and the disappearance of the Clovis Paleo-Indian culture. Soon after publication, a few scientists reported that they were unable to replicate the critical evidence and the scientific community at large came to reject the hypothesis. By today, however, many independent studies have reproduced that evidence at dozens of YD sites. This article examines why scientists so readily accepted the early false claims of irreproducibility and what lessons the premature rejection of the YDIH holds for science.

Clohesyomyces symbioticus sp. nov., a fungal endophyte associated with roots of water smartweed (Persicaria amphibia)

The widespread aquatic plant Persicaria amphibia (water smartweed, Polygonaceae) occurs in both flooded aquatic habitats and moist terrestrial environments. Its physiological versatility and wide geographic range highlight its resilience to stress and make the species intriguing for the study of fungal endophytes. Endophytes occur within living plant tissues and are known from diverse aquatic, marine, and terrestrial plants, where they often mitigate plant responses to stress. As part of a study evaluating endophyte communities associated with aquatic plants in lentic waters of Arizona, USA, we isolated a distinctive clade of endophytes from healthy, living roots of seasonally inundated P. amphibia, which we describe here on the basis of morphology and evidence from four loci as new species Clohesyomyces symbioticus (Lindgomycetaceae, Pleosporales, Dothideomycetes, Ascomycota). Clohesyomyces has long been considered a monotypic genus comprising the saprobic species C. aquaticus, presently known from submerged wood in freshwater systems in Asia and Australia. Description of Clohesyomyces symbioticus highlights the occurrence of endophytism in this genus and expands its geographic scope to the western hemisphere.

Language in the Americas: Out of Beringia

Linguistically, the Western Hemisphere harbors a great typologicaldiversity, by some estimates, the greatest in the world. Controversyregarding classification aside, much work lies ahead to identify themovements up through to include the final leg of the journey ofmodern humans, in terms of distance travelled from our continent oforigin, to Tierra del Fuego. This article will briefly summarize theadvances that the language sciences have made in describing thesemigrations and the languages that accompanied them, to then discussviable proposals for collaboration with other fields. Such an interdisciplinaryprogram of study is necessary because the tools of linguisticsdo not suffice. Continuing work on the processes of origin, dispersionand convergence will help us better understand fundamentalproperties of language. Research on the description of individuallanguages and how they can be classified will contribute to thisunderstanding. For speakers and students of the American languages,these advances will also contribute to the recovery of the culturalheritage that is associated with historical language change.

Psix striaticeps (Dodd) (Hymenoptera, Scelionidae): an Old World parasitoid of stink bug eggs arrives in Florida, USA

Psix striaticeps (Dodd) is an egg-parasitoid wasp previously known only from the Old World. We report this species from twelve counties in Florida, which are the first records in the Western Hemisphere. It was collected in yellow cylinder traps and reared from the eggs of three stink bug species: Nezara viridula L., Chinavia marginata (Palisot de Beauvois), and Piezodorus guildinii (Westwood). A COI barcode analysis found a 100% match between the Floridian population and a specimen from South Africa. The prospects of using Ps. striaticeps as a biological control agent against exotic stink bugs are discussed.

An Archive of Diaspora at the “Jerusalem on the Ohio”

This chapter introduces another model of total archives, Jacob Rader Marcus’s American Jewish Archives, founded in 1947 at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. The AJA offers a counterpart to the Jerusalem archives considered in chapter 2. In the course of his time directing the AJA, from 1947 to 1995, Marcus developed another type of total archive, but one that represented an ideal of diaspora and dispersion as Jewish values and archival virtues. The process of gathering archives to Cincinnati reflected Marcus’s personal perspective on the history of America’s Jews, in particular by looking at it from a western-hemisphere perspective, through his efforts to gather materials from the earliest Jewish settlements in the Caribbean and South America. In addition, he created an archive of copies, looking to gather as much as he could in duplicate rather than in the original.

Systematics of Hypnea (Cystocloniaceae, Rhodophyta) from coastal North Carolina, with a first report of Calliblepharis saidana from the United States Atlantic Coast

Complete and/or partial DNA sequences for the plastid-encoded rbcL gene and the 5′ end of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI-5P) gene were used to re-examine the systematics of Hypnea species (Cystocloniaceae, Rhodophyta) from North Carolina, USA. These data, combined with light microscopic observations, indicate that two species (Hypnea cryptica and H. musciformis sensu stricto) are present in nearshore waters of coastal North Carolina. Molecular and morphological analyses with topotype material of Hypnea volubilis from North Carolina offshore waters revealed that it and Calliblepharis saidana are conspecific. Hypnea volubilis is proposed as a heterotypic synonym of C. saidana. This is the first report of Calliblepharis from the United States Atlantic coast and only the second report from the western hemisphere.

Can Latin America AML effectiveness impact corruption prevention?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF’s) recommendations in Latin America in the fight against Money Laundering (ML) through the Immediate Outcomes 4 (Preventive Measures) and 6 (Financial Intelligence) and the relationship between anti-money laundering (AML) effectiveness and anti-corruption measures. Design/methodology/approach Through quantitative and quality methods measure the performance of the Immediate Outcomes’ levels in compliance with the established FATF’ standards; The objective is to analyze progress in the prevention and identification of ML. Findings The authors discuss the relationship between AML effectiveness and anti-corruption measures starting with the analysis of the best-ranked country in these indicators (IO4 and IO6). Research limitations/implications Mutual evaluations require a long process, which is why the authors do not have all the updated data for all the Latin American countries; only the updated Immediate Outcomes data up to September 16, 2021, are taken. This paper is part of the Research Project “The impacts of corruption in the Western Hemisphere and regional responses.” Originality/value Through a multidisciplinary analysis, the Immediate Results evaluation model is prioritized to measure the effectiveness of the methods applied in Latin America through the IO4 and IO6. The model that presents the best effectiveness is selected and the successes that this country is applying over its peers are analyzed. From this analysis, a quantitative and qualitative analysis can be appreciated.

Anthropogenic aerosol effects on tropospheric circulation and sea surface temperature (1980–2020): separating the role of zonally asymmetric forcings

Anthropogenic aerosols (AAs) induce global and regional tropospheric circulation adjustments due to the radiative energy perturbations. The overall cooling effects of AA, which mask a portion of global warming, have been the subject of many studies but still have large uncertainty. The interhemispheric contrast in AA forcing has also been demonstrated to induce a major shift in atmospheric circulation. However, the zonal redistribution of AA emissions since start of the 20th century, with a notable decline in the Western Hemisphere (North America and Europe) and a continuous increase in the Eastern Hemisphere (South Asia and East Asia), has received less attention. Here we utilize four sets of single-model initial-condition large-ensemble simulations with various combinations of external forcings to quantify the radiative and circulation responses due to the spatial redistribution of AA forcing during 1980–2020. In particular, we focus on the distinct climate responses due to fossil-fuel-related (FF) aerosols emitted from the Western Hemisphere (WH) versus the Eastern Hemisphere (EH). The zonal (west to east) redistribution of FF aerosol emission since the 1980s leads to a weakening negative radiative forcing over the WH mid-to-high latitudes and an enhancing negative radiative forcing over the EH at lower latitudes. Overall, the FF aerosol leads to a northward shift of the Hadley cell and an equatorward shift of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) jet stream. Here, two sets of regional FF simulations (Fix_EastFF1920 and Fix_WestFF1920) are performed to separate the roles of zonally asymmetric aerosol forcings. We find that the WH aerosol forcing, located in the extratropics, dominates the northward shift of the Hadley cell by inducing an interhemispheric imbalance in radiative forcing. On the other hand, the EH aerosol forcing, located closer to the tropics, dominates the equatorward shift of the NH jet stream. The consistent relationship between the jet stream shift and the top-of-atmosphere net solar flux (FSNTOA) gradient suggests that the latter serves as a rule-of-thumb guidance for the expected shift of the NH jet stream. The surface effect of EH aerosol forcing (mainly from low- to midlatitudes) is confined more locally and only induces weak warming over the northeastern Pacific and North Atlantic. In contrast, the WH aerosol reduction leads to a large-scale warming over NH mid-to-high latitudes that largely offsets the cooling over the northeastern Pacific due to EH aerosols. The simulated competing roles of regional aerosol forcings in driving atmospheric circulation and surface temperature responses during the recent decades highlight the importance of considering zonally asymmetric forcings (west to east) and also their meridional locations within the NH (tropical vs. extratropical).

An image dataset of cleared, x-rayed, and fossil leaves vetted to plant family for human and machine learning

Leaves are the most abundant and visible plant organ, both in the modern world and the fossil record. Identifying foliage to the correct plant family based on leaf architecture is a fundamental botanical skill that is also critical for isolated fossil leaves, which often, especially in the Cenozoic, represent extinct genera and species from extant families. Resources focused on leaf identification are remarkably scarce; however, the situation has improved due to the recent proliferation of digitized herbarium material, live-plant identification applications, and online collections of cleared and fossil leaf images. Nevertheless, the need remains for a specialized image dataset for comparative leaf architecture. We address this gap by assembling an open-access database of 30,252 images of vouchered leaf specimens vetted to family level, primarily of angiosperms, including 26,176 images of cleared and x-rayed leaves representing 354 families and 4,076 of fossil leaves from 48 families. The images maintain original resolution, have user-friendly filenames, and are vetted using APG and modern paleobotanical standards. The cleared and x-rayed leaves include the Jack A. Wolfe and Leo J. Hickey contributions to the National Cleared Leaf Collection and a collection of high-resolution scanned x-ray negatives, housed in the Division of Paleobotany, Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.; and the Daniel I. Axelrod Cleared Leaf Collection, housed at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley. The fossil images include a sampling of Late Cretaceous to Eocene paleobotanical sites from the Western Hemisphere held at numerous institutions, especially from Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (late Eocene, Colorado), as well as several other localities from the Late Cretaceous to Eocene of the Western USA and the early Paleogene of Colombia and southern Argentina. The dataset facilitates new research and education opportunities in paleobotany, comparative leaf architecture, systematics, and machine learning.