Improving road safety to tackle crime

Improving road safety in cities could result in a lower rate of violent crime, according to research from UCL.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Research News

 Improving road safety in cities could result in a lower rate of violent crime, according to research from UCL.

Experts analysing crime and car accident data in Mexico City found a surprisingly high level of synchronicity between the two on a weekly cycle, suggesting that applying more resources to prevent road accidents would improve crime rates by enabling more efficient policing.

For the paper, published today in Cities as Complex Systems special issue in PLOS ONE, experts plotted the time and locations of nearly one million car accidents and 200,000 violent crimes from January 2016 to March 2020 in Mexico City, creating a 'heartbeat' - so-called because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram - of the city.

The pattern of crash and crime occurrences were similar day by day, repeating on the weekly cycle, the concept of which had previously been unexplored. Experts observed 'valleys' during the night and peaks in the evening, where at a city level, crime peaked at 7.5 times more than in the depth of valleys, and car accidents peaked at 12.3 times.

Lead author Dr Rafael Prieto Curiel (UCL CASA) explained: "Distinct parts of the city have different heartbeats in terms of crime and of crashes. A neighbourhood with bars and restaurants has a different heartbeat than a residential neighbourhood or one with offices or schools. The land-use of the region can help us explain why we observe distinct heartbeats and make projections and forecasts".

Crime and road accidents have been observed and analysed together before, but not in terms of cyclic behaviour. The team analysed both by capturing weekly occurrences of crime and accidents, using geotagged data capturing time and location. This created the heartbeat of the city.

This heartbeat was then analysed for a more specific location, relating to distance from the Mexico City Metro and other public transport stations, to create 'tiles' of the city. Nearby tiles were found to have similar heartbeats, in that they saw peaks and valleys in crime and crashes at similar times during the week. These peaks and valleys related to economic activities, such as residents commuting to work.

The team further observed that crimes and crashes reach their respective intensity peak on Friday night and valley on Tuesday morning. The mathematical method the team used can be applied to other cities.

Using the weekly cycle makes it easier to predict peaks and valleys in the near future, with potential implications on city policing. Whereas most cities have resources - albeit of differing levels - in place to tackle and prevent crime, road safety has had comparatively less resource attributed to it.

Dr Prieto Curiel added: "Focusing more on preventing road accidents would improve crime prevention in urban areas and give more resource to police tackling crime. Serious road accidents usually require the presence of police officers to divert traffic and secure the area.

"Unfortunately, due to the temporal synchronisation between crashes and crime, the times when more officers are engaged with road accidents is also when they are most needed due to the high levels of crime. Therefore, road accidents reduce the presence of police officers and could increase response time to other emergencies."

Road accidents kill more than 1.35 million people around the world each year and 50 million people suffer non-fatal injuries in a crash. Three times more people are killed by cars than all types of crime and violence combined.

Additionally, crime and road accidents are becoming a more relevant urban problem. In Mexico, some of its cities suffer nearly twice the number of crimes per capita than the national level, so most of the urban population fears crime, In the US, for example, 54% of road accident deaths in 2018 occurred in urban areas, up from less than 40% in 2000.

SwRI scientist captures evidence of dynamic seasonal activity on a Martian sand dune

Research finds that airborne dust plumes are produced by sliding blocks of dry ice each spring

SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Research News

 

IMAGE: AN SWRI-LED STUDY IDENTIFIES PLUMES OF AIRBORNE DUST EMANATING FROM SOURCES INSIDE GULLIES AT MARS' RUSSELL CRATER MEGADUNE IN THE MARTIAN SPRING. THE PLUME PHENOMENA SUPPORT THE HYPOTHESIS THAT CO2... view more 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL/MALIN SPACE SYSTEMS (CTX) & NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA (HIRISE)]

SAN ANTONIO -- Feb. 24, 2021 -- A Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) scientist examined 11 Mars years of image data to understand the seasonal processes that create linear gullies on the slopes of the megadune in the Russell crater on Mars. In early spring images, captured by two different cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, SwRI's Dr. Cynthia Dinwiddie noticed airborne plumes of dusty material associated with the linear dune gullies on the sand dune's downwind slope. These clues point to active processes involving chunks of frozen CO2, or dry ice, sliding down the sand dune, kicking up sand and dust along the way.

Russell crater, on Mars, is home to the largest known sand dune in the solar system, providing a frequently imaged locale to study modern surface activity on the Red Planet.

"For two decades, planetary scientists have had many ideas about how and when very long, narrow gullies formed on frost-affected sand dunes on Mars," said Dinwiddie, first author of a paper outlining new research that has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "Initially, scientists thought linear dune gullies were remnants of an ancient time when the climate on Mars supported liquid water on its surface. Then, repeat imaging showed that changes were happening now, when Mars is cold and arid. Several hypotheses have since been proposed, usually involving either CO2 ice or water ice."

Other scientists found imagery showing bright CO2 ice blocks at rest in dune gullies, suggesting a causal relationship between the blocks and the gullies.

"In this paper, we offer compelling new evidence that venting CO2 gas dislodges CO2 ice blocks that carve and modify linear dune gullies," Dinwiddie said. "While trace amounts of seasonally condensed water are present, it behaves like an innocent bystander, not actively participating in the processes," said coinvestigator Dr. Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey.

During the bleak Martian fall and winter, cold temperatures condense part of the CO2 atmosphere onto the dune field's surface, creating ice deposits. Previous research has shown that in the winter and early spring, the translucent slab of CO2 ice allows radiation from the Sun to heat the dark sand under the ice, causing some ice to transition to gas (or sublimate) and become pressurized in the contact zone. This pressurized CO2 gas escapes to the atmosphere via weak zones in the ice, also expelling sand and dust in a jet of gas.

The ejected material falls back to the surface and forms dark spots around the vent. This research proposes that as the season wears on, repetitive venting breaks up the slab ice into discrete blocks on steep slopes near the crest of the dune. Venting gas eventually dislodges the blocks, and sends them sliding downslope, deepening and modifying existing gullies or carving new ones.

The airborne plumes consist of fine dust disturbed by the sliding block, whereas coarse dust is redeposited near the gullies, creating a seasonal, relatively bright fringe around active gullies. The off-gassing ice blocks temporarily clean dust from the dark gully sand, resulting in telltale brightness (albedo) variations in and around gullies.

"We observe this bright fringe pattern around active gullies for a short period of time, say, the equivalent of the last three weeks of October, which is early to mid-spring in the Earth's southern hemisphere," Dinwiddie said. "Shortly after this 'spring break,' Mars' dusty atmosphere blankets the area with a more homogenous façade, disturbed only by dust devils in the late spring and summer."

SwRI led this program, with thermal modeling of ice and dust provided by Titus and the U.S. Geological Survey. A NASA Mars Data Analysis Program grant funded this 12-month pilot study of seasonal dune processes in Russell crater. Dinwiddie and Titus have proposed to extend this research to other craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars, where craters provide low-lying traps for sand to accumulate and form frost-affected dune fields.

CAPTION

These airborne plumes of dusty material located on the downwind slope of this Martian megadune were an important clue, allowing an SwRI scientist to deduce that chunks of frozen CO2, or dry ice, slide down the gullies in the spring, kicking up sand and dust. While actively sliding CO2 ice blocks cannot be observed conclusively in this image, dense clouds of debris likely conceal mobile ice blocks. HiRISE

CREDIT

NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

USAGE RESTRICTIONS

Images/videos

For more information, see https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

The new paper "Airborne Dust Plumes Lofted by Dislodged Ice Blocks at Russell Crater, Mars" can be found at the Geophysical Research Letters.

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Using a multipronged approach to investigate the diet of ancient dogs

CARL R. WOESE INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Research News

 

IMAGE: COPROLITES ARE FOUND AT ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES AND THEY PROVIDE DIETARY INSIGHT view more 

CREDIT: MALHI LAB

Coprolites, or fossilized dog feces, are often used to understand the dietary preferences of ancient civilizations. However, the samples are often contaminated, making the analysis difficult. A new study, published in Scientific Reports, uses different techniques to improve the investigation of coprolites.

"We have been interested in analyzing coprolites for many years. We have attempted to extract DNA and look at the microbiome before, but the tools were not as robust," said Ripan Malhi (GNDP/GSP/IGOH), a professor of anthropology. "As far as I know, this is the first time anyone has used multiple approaches to provide a snapshot of the daily diet, health, and the long-term trends in ancient dogs of the Americas, all in one study."

The samples were recovered from Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, Missouri. At its peak, Cahokia was a large urban center with a population greater than London or Paris. Several other investigations have shown that there is an overlap between the diet of dogs and humans, either because the dogs were fed the same food or because they ate human food scraps. Therefore, investigating coprolites also provides an insight into human health and diet.

"Initially, the residents were growing crops such as squash and sunflowers. As the city got bigger, it is believed that the diet shifted to maize. Our analysis suggests the same since we saw that some of the dogs were also eating maize," said Kelsey Witt, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and former PhD student in the Malhi lab.

The maize samples were examined using stable isotope analysis, which is used to measure different forms of carbon in a sample. Depending on the carbon concentrations, one can identify what kind of plant was consumed. The researchers also investigated the animal and plant remains in the coprolites to show that walnuts, grapes, a variety of fish, and duck were a part of the dogs' diet.

The researchers also used DNA sequencing to determine the microbiome--the community of microbes--of the coprolites. "The technique we used came out in 2020. It helped us verify whether the samples were from dogs or humans, as well as confirm general aspects of diet which can only be done by comparing the microbiomes," said Karthik Yarlagadda, a PhD student in the Malhi lab.

Although the techniques are novel and more sensitive, coprolites are still challenging to study for a number of reasons. The DNA has already passed through the digestive process in the dogs and has therefore been broken down. Furthermore, since the samples are ancient, the extracted DNA is degraded to a large extent due to weathering.

"One of the biggest challenges we faced was dealing with sample contamination," Yarlagadda said. "These samples were deposited a thousand years ago. After that, the environment changed, certain microbes died off, and new microbes took over. All these factors complicate the analysis."

The researchers are working with the Indigenous communities to further understand what the diets looked like in their ancestors. "Since there are a lot of limitations to our research, talking to community members about what their ancestors ate and how they interacted with dogs helps us understand our results better," Witt said.

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The study "Integrative analysis of DNA, macroscopic remains and stable isotopes of dog coprolites to reconstruct community diet" can be found at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82362-6. The work was sponsored by the Vice Chancellor of Research, University of Illinois, and the Illinois State Archaeological Survey.

Privacy issues and security risks in Alexa Skills

RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM

Research News

 

With the voice commands "Alexa Skills," users can load numerous extra functions onto their Amazon voice assistant. However, these Skills can often have security gaps and data protection problems, as a team of researchers from the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and North Carolina State University discovered, together with a former PhD student who started to work for Google during the project. They will present their work at the "Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS)" conference on 24 February 2021.

More than 90,000 Skills analyzed

In their study, the researchers around Christopher Lentzsch and Dr. Martin Degeling studied first-time the ecosystem of Alexa Skills. These voice commands are developed not only by the U.S. tech company Amazon itself but also by external providers. Users can download them at a store operated by Amazon directly, and in some cases, they are also activated automatically by Amazon.

The researchers obtained and analyzed 90,194 Skills from the stores in seven country platforms. They found significant deficiencies for safe use. "A first problem is that Amazon has partially activated Skills automatically since 2017. Previously, users had to agree to the use of each Skill. Now they hardly have an overview of where the answer Alexa gives them comes from and who programmed it in the first place," explains Dr. Martin Degeling from the RUB Chair of System Security. Unfortunately, it is often unclear which Skill is activated at what time. For example, if you ask Alexa for a compliment, you can get a response from 31 different providers, but it's not immediately clear which one is automatically selected. Data that is needed for the technical implementation of the commands can be unintentionally forwarded to external providers.

Publishing new Skills under a false identity

"Furthermore, we were able to prove that Skills can be published under a false identity. Well-known automotive companies, for example, make voice commands available for their smart systems. Users download these believing that the company itself has provided these Skills. But that is not always the case," says Martin Degeling. Although Amazon checks all Skills offered in a certification process, this so-called Skill squatting, i.e., the adoption of already existing provider names and functions, is often not noticeable.

"In an experiment, we were able to publish Skills in the name of a large company. Valuable information from users can be tapped here," explains the researcher. So if an automotive supplier has not yet developed a Skill for its smart system in the car to turn up or turn down the music in the car, for example, attackers would be able to do so under the supplier's name. "They can exploit users' trust in the well-known name and in Amazon to tap into personal information such as location data or user behaviour," Degeling says. Criminals, however, could not directly tap encrypted data or change commands with malicious intent in this process to manipulate the smart car, for example to open the car doors.

Circumventing Amazon's security check

The researchers also identified another security risk: "Our study also showed that the Skills could be changed by the providers afterward," explains Christopher Lentzsch from the RUB Chair of Information and Technology Management. This vulnerability places the security of the previous certification process on the part of Amazon into another perspective. "Attackers could reprogram their voice command after a while to ask for users' credit card data, for example," Lentzsch says. Amazon's testing usually catches such prompts and does not allow them - the trick of changing the program afterward can bypass this control. By trusting the abused provider name and Amazon, numerous users could be fooled by this trick.

Unsufficient data protection declarations

In addition to these security risks, the research team also identified significant lacks in the general data protection declarations for the Skills. For example, only 24.2 percent of the Skills have a so-called Privacy Policy at all, and even fewer in the particularly sensitive areas of "Kids" and "Health and Fitness." "Especially here, there should be strong improvements," Degeling says.

Amazon has confirmed some of the problems to the research team and says it is working on countermeasures.

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Technical details and the scientific paper are available from the researchers on the website http://www.alexa-skill-analysis.org.

Experts call for home battery storage to protect vulnerable during outages

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

 

Extreme weather driven by climate change is making power outages more commonplace even as the need for electricity-dependent home health equipment grows. In this context, battery storage can help protect medically vulnerable households, according to researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The article is published in the journal Futures.

For the millions reliant on electricity for home medical equipment, even short-term power outages can lead to a potentially life-threatening situation. Society's most vulnerable populations--elders, the ill, and the poor--face the greatest risks. Only a fraction of individuals who rely on medical equipment like oxygen concentrators, nebulizers, ventilators, dialysis, and sleep apnea machines has an alternative source of power to use in the event of an outage. During outages related to the 2019 Camp Fire in Northern California, vulnerable residents reported complications, including one man who awoke when his sleep apnea breathing machine failed in the middle of the night and he couldn't breathe. One woman had to spend the night in her wheelchair because her special mattress required electricity to remain inflated.

The researchers call for policies to support resilient power systems--ideally, battery storage paired with solar photovoltaics--that provide clean, reliable emergency backup power by storing electricity for use when grid power is unavailable. One model is the California Self-Generation Incentive Program, which provides incentives for residential battery storage, and includes energy storage incentives for low-income residents. Additional lessons come from a study in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, which found that residents preferred solar-powered battery backups to diesel generators due to ease of use, low cost, and an elimination of fumes that exacerbate asthma and other lung conditions.

Community facilities like senior centers, public schools, and health centers often lack backup power, too. During an emergency, vulnerable residents typically turn to these facilities for heating/cooling, refrigeration to store perishable items and temperature-regulated medicines, lighting, and outlets to charge cell phones and medical equipment. Without backup power, critical facilities ultimately must limit operations or close entirely.

"Climate change coupled with an aging energy infrastructure is driving extreme weather-related power outages, as we've seen recently in Texas," says co-author Diana Hernández, PhD, associate professor of sociomedical sciences. "The technology to improve resiliency and energy independence exists, and it needs to be made more accessible to those who could most benefit. Battery storage units, particularly those powered by the sun, are a critical tool to help vulnerable individuals and communities survive the climate crisis."

In a separate review of scientific literature published in Current Environmental Health Reports, researchers found that power outages have important health consequences ranging from carbon monoxide poisoning, temperature-related illness, gastrointestinal illness, and mortality to cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal disease hospitalizations, especially for individuals relying on electricity-dependent medical equipment. Evidence from the U.S. suggests older adults, poorer families, and individuals of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic race/ethnicity are least likely to have a three-day supply of food, drinking water, and medication, a preparedness measure for power outages.

Overall, the researchers found that more work is needed to better define and capture the relevant exposures and outcomes. "There is urgent need for data to inform disaster mitigation, preparedness, and response policies (and budgets) in an increasingly energy-reliant world," said first author Joan Casey, PhD, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School.

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Authors of the article on battery backup include corresponding author Marriele Mangoa, Clean Energy Group, Montpelier, VT; and Joan Casey and Diana Hernández at the Columbia Mailman School. The research was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Authors of the literature review include Joan Casey, Mihoka Fukurai, and Diana Hernández at Columbia Mailman School; and Satchit Balsari and Mathew V. Kiang at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston. The research was supported by National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences grants (ES027023, ES009089) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA051534).

The GovLab at NYU Tandon releases report on the impact of online communities

https://virtual-communities.thegovlab.org

NYU TANDON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

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BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, February 24, 2021 -The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering released a report, "The Power of Virtual Communities," which examines the role online groups play in creating opportunities for people to build new kinds of meaningful communities they often could not form in real space.

This first-of-its-kind research was built on interviews with 50 Facebook community leaders in 17 countries, 26 global experts from academia and industry, unique access to Facebook's underlying research and an original global survey conducted by YouGov of 15,000 people in 15 countries who are currently members of online and in-person communities, which found that in 11 of those countries the majority of people said that the most meaningful communities to which they belong are primarily online.

"Around the world, people who are otherwise voiceless in physical space are becoming powerful leaders of groups that confer a true sense of meaning and belonging for their members," said Beth Simone Noveck, director of The GovLab. "This brief report, which tells the stories of several of those leaders and how they govern global communities is, we hope, the beginning of greater and much needed study of online groups and their impact on social and political life."

Many of these Facebook groups cut across traditional social groupings and bring together people around a shared trait or interest:

Female IN (FIN), created as a safe space for women in the Nigerian diaspora to discuss and seek support for problems associated with such challenges as relationship struggles, health issues, abuse, grief and loss. Female IN grew by word-of-mouth into a 1.8 million-person community with members in more than 100 countries.

Surviving Hijab encourages its 920,000 female members to take up or continue wearing the Muslim head covering in the face of political and social criticism.

Blind PenPals enables its 7,000 blind and visually impaired members to share stories and advice.

Canterbury Residents Group acts as a public square in the British city of Canterbury and has 38,000 members, about the same size as the city's population.

Subtle Asian Traits, which began as a modest initiative among nine young Australians of Chinese background to share funny memes about their Asian heritage, has expanded to a group of 1.82 million people who discuss and share the experience of growing up Asian in mostly majority-White societies.

The GovLab's report findings note that:

• Membership in online communities confers a strong sense of community, the lack of physical proximity notwithstanding.
• Online groups are a still fluid form of human organization that in many cases attract members and leaders who are marginalized in the physical societies they inhabit, and who use the platform to build new kinds of communities that would be difficult to form otherwise.
• Many of these groups have counter-cultural norms and are what political scientists might call "cross-cleavage" communities. These groups cut across traditional social groupings, and bring together people normally divided by geography around a shared trait or interest.
• The flexible affordances of online platforms have enabled new kinds of leaders to emerge in these groups with unique skills in moderating often divisive dialogues, sometimes among millions of members.
• Most groups are run as a labor of love; many leaders are neither trained nor paid and the rules that govern their internal operations are often uncodified and the hosting platform - in this case Facebook - holds significant power over their operations and future.
• These groups, some of which have huge memberships, remain emergent and largely unrecognized: they are outside traditional power structures, institutions and forms of governance.
• More research is needed to understand whether and how these groups will operate as genuine communities over the long term, especially given the tensions that derive from conducting public life on a private platform such as Facebook, and how such groups and their leaders can be supported to ensure they provide maximum voice, participation and benefit to their members

Further, results from the YouGov survey and the interviews with group leaders indicated that the three most essential traits and behaviors for leaders to exhibit were welcoming differences of opinions, being visible and communicating well, and acting ethically at all times.

This report, published in six languages, further shines a light on the role leaders have and why it is important to further support them in running their community.

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You can download the full report and the executive summary here. You can also view a panel discussion about the report's implications and the future of digital community building here.

About The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering

The Governance Lab's mission is to improve people's lives by changing the way we govern. Our goal at The GovLab is to strengthen the ability of institutions -- including but not limited to governments -- and people to work more openly, collaboratively, effectively, and legitimately to make better decisions and solve public problems. We believe that increased availability and use of data, new ways to leverage the capacity, intelligence, and expertise of people in the problem-solving process, combined with new advances in technology and science, can transform governance. For more information, visit thegovlab.org.

About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute. A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences as part of a global university, with close connections to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. NYU Tandon is rooted in a vibrant tradition of entrepreneurship, intellectual curiosity, and innovative solutions to humanity's most pressing global challenges. Research at Tandon focuses on vital intersections between communications/IT, cybersecurity, and data science/AI/robotics systems and tools and critical areas of society that they influence, including emerging media, health, sustainability, and urban living. We believe diversity is integral to excellence, and are creating a vibrant, inclusive, and equitable environment for all of our students, faculty and staff. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

Tool that more efficiently analyzes ocean color data will become part of NASA program

Stevens uses machine learning-driven techniques to develop a long-awaited tool that better reveals the health of Earth's oceans and the impacts of climate change

STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE GOAL OF OC-SMART IS TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF GLOBAL OCEAN COLOR PRODUCTS RETRIEVED FROM SATELLITE SENSORS, ESPECIALLY UNDER COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. THE TOP IMAGE SHOWS OC-SMART'S PERFORMANCE IN... view more 

CREDIT: STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a new machine learning-powered platform, known as OC-SMART, that can process ocean color in satellite images 10 times faster than the world's leading platform. The work, which will be adopted by NASA, is one of the first machine learning-based platforms in ocean color analysis that can process both coastal and open ocean regions globally to reveal data on sea health and the impact of climate change.

The work, led by Knut Stamnes, a physics professor at Stevens, and spearheaded by Yongzhen Fan Ph.D. '16, a visiting physics scholar in Stamnes' lab, solves a 30-year-old problem in retrieving data from both coastal regions and open ocean areas. For decades, NASA's SeaDAS platform exceled at analyzing ocean color from open ocean with clean air, but it frequently recovered inaccurate results from coastal areas and inland waters such as the Great Lakes, where the complex interplay among the atmosphere, sea, light, reflections, and air particulates made analysis difficult.

"It is vital to study coastal areas and inland waters," said Stamnes, an expert on radiative transfer whose work appears in the December 2020 issue of Remote Sensing of Environment. "Even though these areas make up a small fraction of the world in terms of mass, it's where we live and where all the biological activity happens."

The OC-SMART platform, or Ocean Color-Simultaneous Marine and Aerosol Retrieval Tool, adds to SeaDAS' capabilities by taking data from satellite imagery and processing them through special algorithms, which are built on powerful machine learning techniques and extensive simulations of radiative transfer. In this project, radiative transfer is defined as the complex flow of electromagnetic energy between the ocean and the atmosphere. This process impacts how ocean color is perceived and analyzed by SeaDAS, the world's leading platform for processing ocean color from satellite images for decades.

The OC-SMART software will now be incorporated into NASA's SeaDAS platform. Final products of the software include useful data on chlorophyll concentrations and the presence of phytoplankton and pollution, all helpful indicators of the ocean's state. Notably, Stamnes said, OC-SMART will be adapted to the upcoming NASA PACE mission scheduled to launch in 2023. Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, is a NASA Earth-observing satellite mission that will continue and advance observations of global ocean color, biogeochemistry, and ecology, as well as the carbon cycle, aerosols and clouds.

"OC-SMART is a general, all-purpose, easy to use platform," said Wei Li, a physicist at Stevens who worked on the project and has been contacted by several researchers in other countries since the software became publicly available.

The European Space Agency has a platform similar to OC-SMART, but it focuses mainly on European coastal areas and not worldwide. A tool that could process coastal as well as open ocean regions globally was needed, said Nan Chen, a physicist at Stevens who was also involved in the project.

"For years, scientists were having difficulty processing ocean color in coastal regions and places that experience heavy pollution or other air particles such as sandstorms," Fan, the lead author, added. "That's why we developed OC-SMART in order to solve these problems."

The OC-SMART comes at a time when there is growing interest in analyzing ocean color in coastal areas, said Stamnes. OC-SMART is also one of the first tools in ocean color analysis to use machine learning, which has only begun to make inroads into oceanography.

"There are satellites now in orbit that are giving us more information on what's going on around the coasts and in places like the big lakes," said Stamnes. "So, this opens new areas of research. And with machine learning, it's a whole new game."

Study identifies strengths and challenges of responding to dual disasters

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER

Research News

 

New Orleans, LA -- A new study of how the 2020 major hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic affected each other as well as disaster response found that although prior experience enabled community-based organizations to respond to the pandemic, the pandemic is also creating new challenges to preparing for and responding to natural disasters. The research is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, available here.

"Two major crises hit Louisiana and coastal communities in the Southeastern United States in 2020 - a significant increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes, and the COVID-19 pandemic," says Benjamin Springgate, MD, MPH, Chief of Community & Population Medicine at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 representatives of community-based programs in southern Louisiana. The participants ranged in age from 28 to 70. The majority (61.5%) were non-Hispanic white; 30.8% were Black; one participant (3.8%) was Latinx and one participant (3.8%) was Vietnamese. Three-fourths of the participants lived in Orleans Parish, and most represented local-level organizations. Participants represented 24 community-based agencies and organizations that provide a wide variety of services, including environmental and social justice issues impacting underserved communities, community health promotion, health and mental health services, disaster preparedness and recovery, funding of community initiatives, community development, faith-based services, affordable housing, child welfare advocacy and support, and criminal justice reform.

"Local leaders noted that due to the pandemic, it is now harder to plan for evacuations in the event of a hurricane," adds Dr. Springgate. "Organizations find it is also more difficult to provide in-person client services and challenging to plan for providing food and other resources to residents who may shelter in place during a storm."

The analysis also identified several strengths based on disaster preparedness experience and capabilities.

"Local organizations identified several strengths based on their disaster preparedness experience - particularly that based on prior experience with hurricanes, they already had a framework for how to respond and adapt to the novel challenges presented by COVID," Dr. Springgate notes.

The analysis shows that the increase in demand for disaster-related services has been accompanied by a decrease in the availability of services due to a decline in available financial resources as well as the constraints on services delivery imposed by protocols designed to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The authors conclude that despite the anticipated challenges to delivering services in response to a natural disaster, the networks of partnerships and prior experiences with disaster preparedness and response, along with certain features of the community that have fostered resilience to adverse events, represent key assets in coping with the pandemic and with the current hurricane season. Though limited to a particular setting with extensive experience with climate-related disasters and preparedness and response, the lessons for interaction with a pandemic context may have important implications for approaches in other areas to consider enhancing preparedness and response resources, training and partnerships.

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Other LSU Health New Orleans authors include Dr. Ashley Wennerstrom, Olivia Sugarman, Carter Pesson, Jessica E. Seay, and Caroline N. Stallard. Other authors were Lawrence A. Palinkas from the University of Southern California, Jill Hancock from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Diana Meyers from St. Anna's Episcopal Church, Arthur Johnson from Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, Mara Polk from National Alliance on Metal Illness-New Orleans, and Kenneth B. Wells from the University of California, Los Angeles.

This research was supported by a grant from the National Academy of Sciences' Gulf Research Program (NCT03977844, B. Springgate, PI).

LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's flagship health sciences university, LSU Health New Orleans includes a School of Medicine with branch campuses in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSU Health New Orleans faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSU Health New Orleans research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSU Health New Orleans faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu, http://www.twitter.com/LSUHealthNO, or http://www.facebook.com/LSUHSC.

SEE https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/naomi-klein-the-shock-doctrine.pdf

 

Record-high Arctic freshwater will flow to Labrador Sea, affecting local and global oceans

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News

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IMAGE: A SIMULATED RED DYE TRACER RELEASED FROM THE BEAUFORT GYRE IN THE ARTIC OCEAN (CENTER TOP) SHOWS FRESHWATER TRANSPORT THROUGH THE CANADIAN ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO, ALONG BAFFIN ISLAND TO THE WESTERN... view more 

CREDIT: FRANCESCA SAMSEL AND GREG ABRAM

Freshwater is accumulating in the Arctic Ocean. The Beaufort Sea, which is the largest Arctic Ocean freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40% over the past two decades. How and where this water will flow into the Atlantic Ocean is important for local and global ocean conditions.

A study from the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this freshwater travels through the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, rather than through the wider marine passageways that connect to seas in Northern Europe. The open-access study was published Feb. 23 in Nature Communications.

"The Canadian Archipelago is a major conduit between the Arctic and the North Atlantic," said lead author Jiaxu Zhang, a UW postdoctoral researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies. "In the future, if the winds get weaker and the freshwater gets released, there is a potential for this high amount of water to have a big influence in the Labrador Sea region."

The finding has implications for the Labrador Sea marine environment, since Arctic water tends to be fresher but also rich in nutrients. This pathway also affects larger oceanic currents, namely a conveyor-belt circulation in the Atlantic Ocean in which colder, heavier water sinks in the North Atlantic and comes back along the surface as the Gulf Stream. Fresher, lighter water entering the Labrador Sea could slow that overturning circulation.

CAPTION

This map shows the study region of the Beaufort Gyre and nearby waters, with colors showing the average surface salinity for 1983-2008. Labels show the Labrador Sea's exit region, Nares Strait, Lancaster Sound, Davis Strait and Fram Strait.

CREDIT

Zhang et al./Nature Communications

"We know that the Arctic Ocean has one of the biggest climate change signals," said co-author Wei Cheng at the UW-based Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Atmosphere Studies. "Right now this freshwater is still trapped in the Arctic. But once it gets out, it can have a very large impact."

Fresher water reaches the Arctic Ocean through rain, snow, rivers, inflows from the relatively fresher Pacific Ocean, as well as the recent melting of Arctic Ocean sea ice. Fresher, lighter water floats at the top, and clockwise winds in the Beaufort Sea push that lighter water together to create a dome.

When those winds relax, the dome will flatten and the freshwater gets released into the North Atlantic.

"People have already spent a lot of time studying why the Beaufort Sea freshwater has gotten so high in the past few decades," said Zhang, who began the work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "But they rarely care where the freshwater goes, and we think that's a much more important problem."

Using a technique Zhang developed to track ocean salinity, the researchers simulated the ocean circulation and followed the Beaufort Sea freshwater's spread in a past event that occurred from 1983 to 1995.

Their experiment showed that most of the freshwater reached the Labrador Sea through the Canadian Archipelago, a complex set of narrow passages between Canada and Greenland. This region is poorly studied and was thought to be less important for freshwater flow than the much wider Fram Strait, which connects to the Northern European seas.

In the model, the 1983-1995 freshwater release traveled mostly along the North American route and significantly reduced the salinities in the Labrador Sea -- a freshening of 0.2 parts per thousand on its shallower western edge, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and of 0.4 parts per thousand inside the Labrador Current.

The volume of freshwater now in the Beaufort Sea is about twice the size of the case studied, at more than 23,300 cubic kilometers, or more than 5,500 cubic miles. This volume of freshwater released into the North Atlantic could have significant effects. The exact impact is unknown. The study focused on past events, and current research is looking at where today's freshwater buildup might end up and what changes it could trigger.

"A freshwater release of this size into the subpolar North Atlantic could impact a critical circulation pattern, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which has a significant influence on Northern Hemisphere climate," said co-author Wilbert Weijer at Los Alamos National Lab.

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This research was funded by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and NOAA. Other authors are Mike Steele at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and Tarun Verma and Milena Veneziani at Los Alamos National Lab.

For more information, contact Zhang at jiaxuzh@uw.edu

CAPTION

The Beaufort Gyre is a clockwise wind pattern in the western Arctic Ocean that causes freshwater to accumulate at the ocean's surface. When those winds relax, the freshwater drains not through Fram Strait, but through the narrow channels of the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador.

CREDIT

University of Washington