bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bayesian calibration of coarse-grained forces: Efficiently addressing transferability
Authors: Patrone Paul N. , Rosch Thomas W. , Phelan Frederick R.
Published: May 2016

Generating and calibrating forces that are transferable across a range of state-points remains a challenging task in coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics. In this work, we present a coarse-graining workflow, inspired by ideas from uncertainty quantification and numerical analysis, to address this problem. The key idea behind our approach is to introduce a Bayesian correction algorithm that uses functional derivatives of CG simulations to rapidly and inexpensively recalibrate initial estimates f0 of forces anchored by standard methods such as force-matching. Taking density-temperature relationships as a running example, we demonstrate that this algorithm, in concert with various interpolation schemes, can be used to efficiently compute physically reasonable force curves on a fine grid of state-points. Importantly, we show that our workflow is robust to several choices available to the modeler, including the interpolation schemes and tools used to construct f0. In a related vein, we also demonstrate that our approach can speed up coarse-graining by reducing the number of atomistic simulations needed as inputs to standard methods for generating CG forces.
Effect of layer thickness on device response of silicon heavily supersaturated with sulfur
Authors: Hutchinson David , Mathews Jay , Sullivan Joseph T. , Akey Austin , Aziz Michael J. , Buonassisi Tonio , Persans Peter , Warrender Jeffrey M.
Published: May 2016

We report on a simple experiment in which the thickness of a hyperdoped silicon layer, supersaturated with sulfur by ion implantation followed by pulsed laser melting and rapid solidification, is systematically varied at constant average sulfur concentration, by varying the implantation energy, dose, and laser fluence. Contacts are deposited and the external quantum efficiency (EQE) is measured for visible wavelengths. We posit that the sulfur layer primarily absorbs light but contributes negligible photocurrent, and we seek to support this by analyzing the EQE data for the different layer thicknesses in two interlocking ways. In the first, we use the measured concentration depth profiles to obtain the approximate layer thicknesses, and, for each wavelength, fit the EQE vs. layer thickness curve to obtain the absorption coefficient of hyperdoped silicon for that wavelength. Comparison to literature values for the hyperdoped silicon absorption coefficients [S.H. Pan et al. Applied Physics Letters 98, 121913 (2011)] shows good agreement. Next, we essentially run this process in reverse; we fit with Beer’s law the curves of EQE vs. hyperdoped silicon absorption coefficient for those wavelengths that are primarily absorbed in the hyperdoped silicon layer, and find that the layer thicknesses obtained from the fit are in good agreement with the original values obtained from the depth profiles. We conclude that the data support our interpretation of the hyperdoped silicon layer as providing negligible photocurrent at high S concentrations. This work validates the absorption data of Pan et al. [Applied Physics Letters 98, 121913 (2011)], and is consistent with reports of short mobility-lifetime products in hyperdoped layers. It suggests that for optoelectronic devices containing hyperdoped layers, the most important contribution to the above band gap photoresponse may be due to photons absorbed below the hyperdoped layer.
Methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions from pigs housed on litter and from stockpiling of spent litter
Authors: Phillips F. A. , Wiedemann S. G. , Naylor T. A. , McGahan E. J. , Warren B. R. , Murphy C. M. , Parkes S. , Wilson J.
Published: May 2016

Mitigation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is a target area for the Australian Government and the pork industry. The present study measured methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ammonia (NH3) from a deep-litter piggery and litter stockpile over two trials in southern New South Wales, to compare emissions from housing pigs on deep litter with those of pigs from conventional housing with uncovered anaerobic effluent-treatment ponds. Emissions were measured using open-path Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, in conjunction with a backward Lagrangian stochastic model. Manure excretion was determined by mass balance and emission factors (EFs) were developed to report emissions relative to volatile solids and nitrogen (N) input. Nitrous oxide emissions per animal unit (1 AU = 500 kg liveweight) from deep-litter sheds were negligible in winter, and 8.4 g/AU.day in summer. Ammonia emissions were 39.1 in winter and 52.2 g/AU.day in summer, while CH4 emissions were 16.1 and 21.6 g/AU.day in winter and summer respectively. Emission factors averaged from summer and winter emissions showed a CH4 conversion factor of 3.6%, an NH3-N EF of 10% and a N2O-N EF of 0.01 kg N2O-N/kg N excreted. For the litter stockpile, the simple average of summer and winter showed an EF for NH3-N of 14%, and a N2O-N EF of 0.02 kg N2O-N/kg-N of spent litter added to the stockpile. We observed a 66% and 80% decrease in emissions from the manure excreted in litter-based housing with litter stockpiling or without litter stockpiling, compared with conventional housing with an uncovered anaerobic effluent-treatment pond. This provides a sound basis for mitigation strategies that utilise litter-based housing as an alternative to conventional housing with uncovered anaerobic effluent-treatment ponds.
Facilitating feral camel removal in Australia through commercial use
Authors: Virtue J. G. , Gee P. D. , Secomb N. M. , O'Leary P. R. , Grear B. P.
Published: May 2016

Approximately 16.5% of feral camel removal under the Australian Feral Camel Management Project (AFCMP) was by commercial means, via mustering for transport to abattoir (9.3%) and pet-meating in the field (7.2%). The challenges of commercial use of feral camels as a removal method include: variable density, mobility and distribution of the feral camel population; achieving landholder collaboration; accessibility to remote areas by road; availability of yard infrastructure and trucking capacity; and distance to slaughter facilities and end-markets. However, the AFCMP recognised commercial use as important to some Aboriginal communities, bringing a range of economic and social benefits as well as environmental outcomes in terms of reduced feral camel density. To facilitate mustering offtake, a removal assistance scheme was developed, whereby a formal landholder agreement was entered into with various legal requirements, including animal welfare. The agreement incentivised removal of both sexes: payments were for cow camels received at abattoir, but with a concurrent requirement for approximately equal sexes to be delivered to abattoir in an annual contract period. Additional project costs included contract development and oversight, landholder engagement, training and animal welfare auditing. Pet-meating, by way of ground culling and in-field butchering for meat storage in mobile refrigeration units, was also supported by the AFCMP via measures to increase harvest efficiency such as satellite tracking, aerial spotting and improved road access. However, pet-meating ceased mid-project due to changed industry demands. Post-AFCMP, mustering operations continue to service market demand for camel meat. The camel industry is also looking to camel farming to ensure greater continuity and quality of supply than can be achieved through wild harvest.
Optimization of pineapple pulp residue hydrolysis for lipid production by Rhodotorula glutinis TISTR5159 using as biodiesel feedstock
Authors: Tinoi Jidapha , Rakariyatham Nuansri
Published: May 2016

The higher lipid productivity of Rhodotorula glutinis TISTR5159 was achieved by optimizing the pineapple pulp hydrolysis for releasing the high sugars content. The sequential simplex method operated by varied; solid-to-liquid ratio, sulfuric acid concentration, temperature, and hydrolysis time were successfully applied and the highest sugar content (83.2 g/L) evaluated at a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:10.8, 3.2% sulfuric acid, 105 °C for 13.9 min. Moreover, the (NH4)2SO4 supplement enhanced the lipid productivity and gave the maximum yields of biomass and lipid of 15.2 g/L and 9.15 g/L (60.2%), respectively. The C16 and C18 fatty acids were found as main components included oleic acid (55.8%), palmitic acid (16.6%), linoleic acid (11.9%), and stearic acid (7.8%). These results present the possibility to convert the sugars in pineapple pulp hydrolysate to lipids. The fatty acid profile was also similar to vegetable oils. Thus, it could be used as potential feedstock for biodiesel production.
Syndapin promotes pseudocleavage furrow formation by actin organization in the syncytialDrosophilaembryo
Authors: Sherlekar Aparna , Rikhy Richa
Published: May 2016

Coordinated membrane and cytoskeletal remodeling activities are required for membrane extension in processes such as cytokinesis and syncytial nuclear division cycles in Drosophila. Pseudocleavage furrow membranes in the syncytial Drosophila blastoderm embryo show rapid extension and retraction regulated by actin-remodeling proteins. The F-BAR domain protein Syndapin (Synd) is involved in membrane tubulation, endocytosis, and, uniquely, in F-actin stability. Here we report a role for Synd in actin-regulated pseudocleavage furrow formation. Synd localized to these furrows, and its loss resulted in short, disorganized furrows. Synd presence was important for the recruitment of the septin Peanut and distribution of Diaphanous and F-actin at furrows. Synd and Peanut were both absent in furrow-initiation mutants of RhoGEF2 and Diaphanous and in furrow-progression mutants of Anillin. Synd overexpression in rhogef2 mutants reversed its furrow-extension phenotypes, Peanut and Diaphanous recruitment, and F-actin organization. We conclude that Synd plays an important role in pseudocleavage furrow extension, and this role is also likely to be crucial in cleavage furrow formation during cell division.
Dense granule trafficking inToxoplasma gondiirequires a unique class 27 myosin and actin filaments
Authors: Heaslip Aoife T. , Nelson Shane R. , Warshaw David M.
Published: May 2016

The survival of Toxoplasma gondii within its host cell requires protein release from secretory vesicles, called dense granules, to maintain the parasite’s intracellular replicative niche. Despite the importance of DGs, nothing is known about the mechanisms underlying their transport. In higher eukaryotes, secretory vesicles are transported to the plasma membrane by molecular motors moving on their respective cytoskeletal tracks (i.e., microtubules and actin). Because the organization of these cytoskeletal structures differs substantially in T. gondii, the molecular motor dependence of DG trafficking is far from certain. By imaging the motions of green fluorescent protein–tagged DGs in intracellular parasites with high temporal and spatial resolution, we show through a combination of molecular genetics and chemical perturbations that directed DG transport is independent of microtubules and presumably their kinesin/dynein motors. However, directed DG transport is dependent on filamentous actin and a unique class 27 myosin, TgMyoF, which has structural similarity to myosin V, the prototypical cargo transporter. Actomyosin DG transport was unexpected, since filamentous parasite actin has yet to be visualized in vivo due in part to the prevailing model that parasite actin forms short, unstable filaments. Thus our data uncover new critical roles for these essential proteins in the lytic cycle of this devastating pathogen.
Managing Surface-Level Diversity as a Business Imperative
Authors: Gilbert Jacqueline A.
Published: May 2016

Organizational diversity is regarded positively, but haphazardly embraced. The absence of a cultural mandate at work (one which includes an emphasis on managing differences) can result in minority assimilation, and in either unintended bullying or in intentional abuse. Declining stock price, loss of goodwill, inability to recruit qualified candidates, and internal havoc marked by perpetuation of firm dysfunction may occur. These outcomes are especially alarming in the face of transformative population growth, in which minorities are predicted to become the demographic majority within the United States.

Inattention to employee misconduct prevents firms from experiencing enhanced productivity. Encouraging civil behavior is thus essential to engendering camaraderie in a diverse workforce, in which incivilities, or micro-inequities, are disproportionately targeted at minority groups. Management modeling of appropriate behavior (and swift action toward perpetrators for non-compliance) are necessary to achieve human capital integration.
Global Diversity Management
Authors: Syed Jawad , Tariq Memoona
Published: May 2016

Diversity management refers to organizational policies and practices aimed at recruiting, retaining, and managing employees of diverse backgrounds and identities, while creating a culture in which everybody is equally enabled to perform and achieve organizational and personal objectives. In a globalized world, there is a need for contextual and transnational approaches to utilize the benefits that global diversity may bring as well as the challenges that organizations may face in managing a diverse workforce. In particular, it is important to take into account how diversity is theorized and managed in non-Western contexts, for example in BRICS countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Muslim-majority countries. The literature confirms the need for organizational efforts to be focused on engaging with and managing a heterogeneous workplace in ways that not only yield sustainable competitive advantage but also are contextually and socially responsible. Organizations today are expected to take positive action, beyond legal compliance, to ensure equal access, employment and promotion opportunities, and also to ensure that diversity programs make use of employee differences, and contribute to local as well as global communities.
Media and Emotion
Authors: Nabi Robin L.
Published: May 2016

Emotion has been incorporated into media effects research in multiple ways, which can be broadly summarized as considering emotion as a predictor of media selection, an outcome of media exposure, and a mediator of other psychological and behavioral outcomes resulting from media exposure. Specifically, evidence suggests that the desire for particular feeling states influences the media that people choose to consume. Much research also considers the feeling states resulting from exposure, including fright reactions and enjoyment. Finally, there are well-established lines of inquiry into how emotional responses to media influence the processing of those messages in terms of attention, processing depth, and cognitive and behavioral outcomes. More contemporary research is extending these research programs, examining how emotional media messages are socially shared with others as well as the positive emotional effects that may emerge in response to media exposure.
Public Pedagogy and Manufactured Identities in the Age of the Selfie Culture
Authors: Giroux Henry A.
Published: May 2016

Education in society occurs across both formal and informal spheres of communication exchange. It extends from schools to diverse cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media, alternative screen cultures, the Internet, and other spaces actively involved in the construction of knowledge, values, modes of identification, and agency itself. The modern era is shaped by a public pedagogy rooted in neoliberal capitalism that embraces consumer culture as the primary mechanism through which to express personal agency and identity. Produced and circulated through a depoliticizing machinery of fear and consumption, the cultural focus on the pursuit of individual desires rather than public responsibilities has led to a loss of public memory, democratic dissent, and political identity. As the public sphere collapses into the realm of the private, the bonds of mutual dependence have been shredded along with the public spheres that make such bonds possible. Freedom is reduced to a private matter divorced from the obligations of social life and politics only lives in the immediate. The personal has become the only sphere of politics that remains.

The rise of the selfie as a mode of public discourse and self-display demands critical scrutiny in terms of how it is symptomatic of the widespread shift toward market-driven values and a surveillance culture, increasingly facilitated by ubiquitous, commercial forms of digital technology and social media. Far from harmless, the unexamined “selfie” can be viewed as an example of how predatory technology-based capitalism socializes people in a way that encourages not only narcissism and anti-social indifference, but active participation in a larger authoritarian culture defined by a rejection of social bonds and cruelty toward others. As with other forms of cultural and self-expression, the selfie—when placed in alternative, collective frameworks—can also become a tool for engaging in struggles over meaning. Possibilities for social change that effectively challenges growing inequality, atomization, and injustice under neoliberalism can only emerge from the creation of new, broad-ranging sites of pedagogy capable of building new political communities and drawing attention to anti-democratic structures throughout the broader society.
Transcription for Conversation Analysis
Authors: Bolden Galina B. , Hepburn Alexa
Published: May 2016

The transcription system for Conversation Analysis (CA) was originally developed by Gail Jefferson, one of the founders of CA, in the 1960s. Jefferson’s transcription conventions aim to represent on paper what had been captured in field audio recordings in ways that would preserve and bring to light the interactionally relevant elements of the recorded talk. Conversation analytic research has demonstrated that various features of the delivery of talk and other bodily conduct are basic to how interlocutors carry out social actions in interaction with others. Without the CA transcription system it is impossible to identify these features, as it represents talk and other conduct in ways that capture the rich subtlety of their delivery. Jefferson’s system of conventions evolved side by side with, and was informed by the results of, interaction analysis, which has shown there are many significant aspects of talk that interactants treat as relevant but that are entirely missed in simple orthographic representation.

Conversation analysts’ insistence on capturing not only what is said but also details of how something is said, including interactants’ visible behaviors, is based on the assumption that “no order of detail in interaction can be dismissed a priori as disorderly, accidental, or irrelevant” (according to John Heritage in 1984). Conversation analytic transcripts need to be detailed enough to facilitate the analyst’s quest to discover and describe orderly practices of social action in interaction.
The Right To Be Forgotten
Authors: Carter Edward L.
Published: May 2016

The right to be forgotten is an emerging legal concept allowing individuals control over their online identities by demanding that Internet search engines remove certain results. The right has been supported by the European Court of Justice, some judges in Argentina, and data-protection regulators in several European countries, among others. The right is primarily grounded in notions of privacy and data protection but also relates to intellectual property, reputation, and right of publicity. Scholars and courts cite, as an intellectual if not legal root for the right to be forgotten, the legal principle that convicted criminals whose sentences are completed should not continually be publicly linked with their crimes.

Critics contend that the right to be forgotten stands in conflict with freedom of expression and can lead to revisionist history. Scholars and others in the southern cone of South America, in particular, have decried the right to be forgotten because it could allow perpetrators of mass human rights abuses to cover up or obscure their atrocities. On the other hand, those in favor of the right to be forgotten say that digital technology preserves memory unnaturally and can impede forgiveness and individual progress. The right to be forgotten debate is far from resolved and poses difficult questions about access to, and control of, large amounts of digital information across national borders. Given the global nature of the Internet and the ubiquity of certain powerful search engines, the questions at issue are universal, but solutions thus far have been piecemeal.

Although a 2014 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) garnered much attention, the right to be forgotten has been largely shaped by a 1995 European Union Directive on Data Protection. In 2016, the EU adopted a new General Data Protection Regulation that will take effect in 2018 and could have a major impact because it contains an explicit right to be forgotten (also called right to erasure). The new regulation does not focus on the theoretical or philosophical justification for a right to be forgotten, and it appears likely the debate over the right in the EU and beyond will not be resolved even when the new rule takes effect.
Visual Rhetoric
Authors: García Zazil Reyes
Published: May 2016

The growing field of visual rhetoric explores the communicative and persuasive power of the visual artifacts that surround us. This relatively new branch of rhetoric emerged in the late 20th century, disrupting a discipline that was traditionally concerned with the spoken and written word.

The artifacts studied through the lens of visual rhetoric comprise visual images and objects that are human created and culturally meaningful. They include two-dimensional images, such as political cartoons and video advertising, and three-dimensional objects such as museums and murals. Visual rhetoric can also include the analysis of embodied performance and thus examine the body as argument.

Although much of the scholarship focuses on the power of images in shaping people’s understanding of the world, there is also a recognition of the power of looking. Meaning does not reside in the images around us; we participate in its construction. To better understand visual rhetoric, it is important to review its emergence as an area of study, its definitions, and some of the recurring themes in the scholarship.
Science and Communication
Authors: Condit Celeste M. , Railsback L. Bruce
Published: May 2016

Whether understood as a set of procedures, statements, or institutions, the scope and character of science has changed through time and area of investigation. The prominent current definition of science as systematic efforts to understand the world on the basis of empirical evidence entails several characteristics, each of which has been deeply investigated by multidisciplinary scholars in science studies. The aptness of these characteristics as defining elements of science has been examined both in terms of their sufficiency as normative ideals and with regard to their fit as empirical descriptors of the actual practices of science. These putative characteristics include a set of commitments to (1) the goal of developing maximally general, empirically based explanations certified through falsification procedures, predictive power, and/or fruitfulness and application, (2) meta-methodologies of hypothesis testing and quantification, and (3) relational norms including communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism, and originality. The scope of scientific practice has been most frequently identified with experimentation, observation, and modeling. However, data mining has recently been added to the scientific repertoire, and genres of communication and argumentation have always been an unrecognized but necessary component of scientific practices. The institutional home of science has also changed through time. The dominant model of the past three centuries has housed science predominantly in universities. However, science is arguably moving toward a “post-academic” era.
Stuart Hall and Communication Studies
Authors: Miller Toby
Published: May 2016

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born, British-based theorist, critic, and activist, who flourished between the late 1950s and his death in 2014. Known both for his theoretical and empirical work on culture and communication and for his role as a public intellectual, Hall produced scholarly writings and charismatic teaching that were matched by his columns and interviews in magazines and newspapers and appearances on television and radio.
Persuasive Health Message Design
Authors: Harrington Nancy Grant
Published: May 2016

The study of persuasive health messages—their design, dissemination, and impact—is ubiquitous in the communication discipline. Words, sounds, and images—alone or in combination—can move people to change their minds and their bodies. Micro-level topics surround questions of message content (argumentation scheme, evidence, qualifying language, and figurative language), structure (message sidedness, standpoint articulation, inoculation, and sequential strategies), and format (channel and audiovisual effects). Macro-level topics in this area include message sensation value, narrative, framing, emotional appeals, and tailoring. Central theoretical frameworks used to guide message design research, include health behavior change theories, information processing theories, and theories/frameworks for message design. In addition, some of the methodoligical issues inherent in message design research are questions of analysis, validity, and measurement. Four streams of past scholarship that inform persuasive health message design research: Greek rhetoric, mass communication research begun during World War II, the development of health communication as a research focus within the communication discipline, and the development of computer and telecommunications technology. Directions and challenges for future research include the need for a clear, coherent, and comprehensive taxonomy to classify message characteristics and attention to several methodological issues.
Movements and Resistance in the United States, 1800 to the Present
Authors: Triece Mary E.
Published: May 2016

A study of social movements advances a people’s history of the United States, providing a window into the ways ordinary people often took extraordinary measures to make laws, workplace conditions, the educational system, the quality of home life, and public spaces more open and responsive to the needs and concerns of marginalized groups. With the rise of industrial capitalism in the early 1800s came a host of social ills that prompted individuals to form organizations that enabled them to operate as a force for social change. As the Native American Chief Sitting Bull is purported to have said, “As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but together we form a mighty fist.”

The 1800s through the early 21st century provides numerous examples of people acting together as a mighty fist. As early as 1824, workers in textile mills in the Northeast United States enacted work stoppages and strikes in reaction to wage cuts and deplorable working conditions. The movement to abolish slavery in the mid-1800s provided a way for disenfranchised black men and women, such as the eloquent Frederick Douglass and Maria Stewart, as well as white women, to speak and organize publically. In the area of labor, female and black workers, excluded from the more formal organizing of trade unions through the American Federation of Labor, organized their own labor meetings (e.g., the National Labor Convention of the Colored Men of the United States), unions (e.g., the Women’s Trade Union League), and strikes (e.g., the Uprising of 20,000). By the late1800s through the 1930s, American socialism and the Communist Party, USA, influenced the philosophy and tactics employed by labor activists, many of whom were factory girls who played a formidable role in mass walk-outs in the Progressive Era. Struggles for workplace and civil rights continued throughout the 20th century to undo Jim Crow and segregation, to advocate for civil rights, to advance the rights of women in the workplace, and more recently, to fight for the rights of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender communities, undocumented workers, and immigrants, and to fight against the police repression of black and brown communities and against imperialism and globalization. Activists’ tools for resistance have been as diverse as their causes and include petitioning formal legislative bodies, picketing and rallying, engaging in work stoppages, occupation of public spaces (e.g., sit-downs, walk-outs, occupying squares and parks), and most recently, using social media platforms, blogs, and other forms of Internet activism to facilitate empowerment of marginalized groups and progressive social change.

The Internet has provided an important tool for facilitating international connections of solidarity in struggle. Although what follows focuses specifically on movements in the United States from roughly the 1800s to the present, efforts should continue to focus on the ways movements join forces across and around the globe.
Forgiveness Communication and Health
Authors: Kelley Douglas L. , Wolf Bianca M. , Broberg Shelby E.
Published: May 2016

Research on forgiveness and its health-related effects has steadily increased since the late 20th century. Most of the forgiveness-health literature demonstrates that forgiveness indirectly influences health through a variety of psychosocial affective factors. Common distinctions in this research are reflected in studies focused on reduction of negative affect and, thus, negative health effects, and studies focused on preventative and health-promoting implications of forgiveness (e.g., increased positive affect). While a lack of clarity exists regarding health implications stemming from reductions in unforgiveness (as distinct from increases in forgiving responses), current research supports the notion that forgiveness, as opposed to unforgiveness, affects psychological, physical, and relational health in overridingly beneficial ways. More specifically, forgiveness, and/or the moderation of unforgiveness, is associated with the exhibition of positive affect (e.g., sympathy, empathy, and optimism), improved self-esteem, higher life satisfaction, and better mental health ratings. Physical health effects of forgiveness include enhanced bioregulation in response to transgression stressors, as well as better self-rated health status and the exhibition of positive health behaviors. Limitations in the current literature most commonly relate to disparate definitional, methodological, and interpretative issues typical of transdisciplinary forgiveness and health research. Current trends and future directions for forgiveness-health research include consideration of additional variables thought to be associated with forgiveness processes, including religiosity, empathy, and social support. Additionally, research that focuses on communicative and relational aspects of health and well-being is warranted. Suggestions for research opportunities in forgiveness-health research framed by a communicative lens are offered.
Climate Change and Carbon Cycle Feedbacks
Authors: Friedlingstein Pierre
Published: May 2016

Climate and carbon cycle are tightly coupled on many time scales, from the interannual to the multimillennial. Observation always shows a positive feedback between climate and the carbon cycle: elevated atmospheric CO2 leads to warming, but warming is expected to further release of carbon to the atmosphere, enhancing the atmospheric CO2 increase. Earth system models do represent these climate–carbon cycle feedbacks, always simulating a positive feedback over the 21st century; that is, climate change will lead to loss of carbon from the land and ocean reservoirs. These processes partially offset the increases in land and ocean carbon sinks caused by rising atmospheric CO2. As a result, more of the emitted anthropogenic CO2 will remain in the atmosphere. There is, however, a large uncertainty on the magnitude of this feedback. Recent studies now help to reduce this uncertainty. On short, interannual, time scales, El Niño years record larger-than-average atmospheric CO2 growth rate, with tropical land ecosystems being the main drivers. These climate–carbon cycle anomalies can be used as emerging constraint on the tropical land carbon response to future climate change. On a longer, centennial, time scale, the variability of atmospheric CO2 found in records of the last millennium can be used to constrain the overall global carbon cycle response to climate. These independent methods confirm that the climate–carbon cycle feedback is positive, but probably more consistent with the lower end of the comprehensive models range, excluding very large climate–carbon cycle feedbacks.
North Atlantic Oscillation
Authors: Hanna Edward , Cropper Thomas E.
Published: May 2016

Many variations in the weather in the European and North Atlantic regions are linked with changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO is measured using a south-minus-north index of atmospheric surface pressure variation across the North Atlantic and is closely connected with changes in the North Atlantic atmospheric polar jet stream and wider changes in atmospheric circulation. The physical, human, and biological impacts of NAO changes extend well beyond weather and climate, with major economic, social, and environmental effects. The NAO index based on barometric pressure records now extends as far back as 1850, based on recent work. Although there are few significant overall trends in monthly or seasonal NAO (i.e., for the whole record), there are many shorter-term multidecadal variations. A prominent increase in the NAO between the 1960s and 1990s was widely noted in previous work and was thought to be related to human-induced greenhouse gas forcing. However, since then this trend has reversed, with a significant decrease in the summer NAO since the 1990s and a striking increase in variability of the winter—especially December—NAO that has resulted in four of the six highest and two of the five lowest NAO Decembers occurring during 2004–2015 in the 116-year record, with accompanying more variable year-to-year winter weather conditions over the United Kingdom. These NAO changes are related to an increasing trend in the Greenland Blocking Index (GBI; equals high pressure over Greenland) in summer and a significantly more variable GBI in December. Such NAO and related jet stream and blocking changes are not generally present in the current generation of global climate models, although recent process studies offer insights into their possible causes. Several plausible climate forcings and feedbacks, including changes in the sun’s energy output and the Arctic amplification of global warming with accompanying reductions in sea ice, may help explain the recent NAO changes. Recent research also suggests significant skill in being able to make seasonal NAO predictions and therefore long-range weather forecasts for up to several months ahead for northwest Europe. However, global climate models remain unclear on longer-term NAO predictions for the remainder of the 21st century.
Moral Reasoning, Intuitions, and Perceptions of Climate Change
Authors: Markowitz Ezra
Published: May 2016

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article.

Climate change is often perceived by individuals as a scientific, environmental, economic and/or technical issue. Until recently, the moral and ethical dimensions of the issue have appeared to resonate less strongly with many members of the public. Yet for over two decades, climate ethicists and others have argued strenuously that climate change is, perhaps at its core, a moral and ethical issue. What explains this apparent disconnect between normative and subjective perspectives on the moral core of climate change? Research has identified a set of key psychological and cultural mechanisms that influence and at times inhibit individual moral reasoning about climate change and, often, inhibit perceptions of climate change as a moral issue. Moral reasoning and intuitions about climate change in turn influence public engagement with and support for responses to the problem. The research to date suggests several new questions for scholars to examine further, and it offers implications for effective public communication and engagement.
Social Capital and Climate Change Adaptation
Authors: Aldrich Daniel P. , Page-Tan Courtney M. , Paul Christopher J.
Published: May 2016

Anthropogenic climate change increasingly disrupts livelihoods, floods coastal urban cities and island nations, and exacerbates extreme weather events. There is near-universal consensus among scientists that in order to reverse or at least mitigate climate disruptions, limits must be imposed on anthropogenic sources of climate-forcing emissions and adaptation to changing global conditions will be necessary. Yet adaptation to current and future climate change at the individual, community, and national levels vary widely from merely coping, to engaging in adaptive change, to transformative shifts. Some of those affected simply cope with lower crop yields, flooded streets, and higher cooling bills. Others incrementally adapt to new environmental conditions, for example, by raising seawalls or shifting from one crop to another better suited for a hotter environment. The highest—and perhaps least likely—type of change involves transformation, radically altering practices with an eye toward the future. Transformative adaptation may involve a livelihood change or permanent migration; it might require shuttering whole industries and rethinking industrial policy at the national level. Entire island nations such as Fiji, for example, are considering relocating from vulnerable locations to areas better suited to rising sea levels.

A great deal of research has shown how social capital (the bonding, bridging, and linking connections to others) provides information on trustworthiness, facilitates collective action, and connects us to external resources during disasters and crises. We know far less about the relationship between social capital and adaptation behaviors in terms of the choices that people make to accommodate changing environmental conditions. A number of unanswered but critical questions remain: How precisely does social capital function in climate change adaptation? To what degree does strong bonding social capital substitute for successful adaptation behaviors for individuals or groups? Which combinations of social factors make coping, adapting, and transforming most likely? How can social capital help migrating populations maintain cultural identity under stress? How can local networks be integrated into higher-level policy interventions to improve adaptation? Which political and social networks contribute to transformative responses to climate change at local, regional, and international levels? This article serves as a comprehensive literature review, overview of empirical findings to date, and a research agenda for the future.
Agenda Building, Narratives, and Attention Cycles in Climate Change News Coverage
Authors: Shanahan James
Published: May 2016

Social scientists and media critics have often been befuddled about how and why news coverage of important issues takes the shapes that it does. While some issues seem to behave according to well-established patterns, others don’t. The issue of climate change is one that has been explained in numerous ways, often from a cyclical perspective. This perspective suggests that news attention naturally varies up and down, often cued by certain focusing events that draw attention for a time, after which attention wanes again. These observations are usually matched with the perspective that attention should normatively not be cyclical, that the issue is one that deserves continuous attention until it is resolved.

All of this is in the context that there are significant doubts about the objective role of newsmakers in this process. Climate change is an issue that has cut across a period of news evolution in which objectively neutral news has become even less prominent than it once was, if it ever was. News outlets with specific ideological agendas, a plethora of bloggers and websites with an axe to grind, and a variety of conspiracy theories about climate have obscured how news can even hope to cover this issue. With “belief” in climate change now becoming an important token of how one identifies oneself politically, we can wonder whether the issue can ever receive a fair hearing from a scientific perspective.
Source Influence on Journalistic Decisions and News Coverage of Climate Change
Authors: Anderson Alison
Published: May 2016

Across many parts of the globe the relationship between journalists and news sources has been transformed by digital technologies, increased reliance on public relations practitioners, and the rise of citizen journalism. With fewer gatekeepers, and the growing influence of digital and social media, identifying whose voices are authoritative in making sense of complex climate science proves an increasing challenge. An increasing array of news sources are vying for their particular perspective to be established including scientists, government, industry, environmental NGOs, individual citizens and, more recently, celebrities. The boundaries between audience, consumer and producer are less defined and the distinction between ‘factual’ and ‘opinion-based’ reporting has become more blurred.

All these developments suggest the need for a more complex account of the myriad influences on journalistic decisions. More research needs to examine behind-the-scenes relations between sources and journalists, and the efforts of news sources to frame the issues or seek to silence news media attention. Also although we now know a great deal more about marginalized sources and their communication strategies we know relatively little about those of powerful multinational corporate organizations, governments and lobby groups. The shifting media environment and the networked nature of information demand a major rethinking of early media-centric approaches to examining journalist/source relations as applied to climate change. The metaphors of ‘network’ and field’ capture the diverse linkages across different spheres better than the Hierarchy of Influences model.
Communicating Sea Level Rise
Authors: Akerlof Karen , Covi Michelle , Rohring Elizabeth
Published: May 2016

Three quarters of the world’s large cities are located on coasts. As climate change causes oceans to warm and expand, and triggers vast influxes of water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, by the end of the 21st century, as many as 650 million people globally may be below sea levels or subject to recurrent flooding. Human beings have always faced threats from coastal storms and flooding, but never have so many of us and so much of our societal infrastructure been in harm’s way. With entire nations facing forced emigration, international online media are framing sea level rise as a human rights concern. Yet sea level rise suffers from generally low media attention and salience as a public issue. Coastal communities tasked with developing adaptation strategies are approaching engagement through new forms of risk visualization and models of environmental decision making. As a subfield of climate communication that addresses a variety of other anthropogenic and natural phenomena, sea level rise communication also calls upon the less politicized field of natural hazards risk communication. This review explores media analyses, audience research, and evaluation of communication outreach and engagement, finding many remaining gaps in our understanding of sea level rise communication.
Climate Change Communication in Denmark
Authors: Eskjær Mikkel Fugl
Published: May 2016

Climate-change communication in Denmark was initially related to a broader environmental agenda and to discussions surrounding U.N. charters on sustainability, reflecting a traditional strong Scandinavian commitment to U.N. institutions. Although climate-change communication has since developed into an independent field among academics and environmentalists, some of the earlier links to questions of sustainability and development have been preserved.

Consequently, climate-change communication has been studied in a variety of public arenas in addition to the media system. These venues include parliamentary debates, regional discussions of renewable energy systems, cultural and artistic representations, as well as commercial and strategic discourses on green technologies—the latter representing an important Danish export market. Thus, climate-change communication is studied in several academic disciplines involving both quantitative and qualitative research strategies.

Media representations of climate change comprise the largest area of research on climate-change communication and have been investigated by media, communication, and journalism studies. Climate-change reporting is marked by substantial public consensus concerning the scientific evidence of climate change and the moral obligations of the industrialized world. It reflects a Scandinavian culture based on political corporatism in both the political system and the media system, which under normal circumstances results in a moderate rather than polarized public debate. Outright climate-change denial has consequently been marginal, although the controversies generated by Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, on how to prioritize climate change in relation to other global problems, can be regarded as the Danish equivalent to climate skepticism.

Another characteristic of Danish climate change communication is the imprint left by the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15), which was experienced as particularly traumatic in the host country. Like most countries, Denmark experienced a sharp decline in climate change coverage in the aftermath of COP15. However, whereas other countries have slowly picked up the intensity of media reporting following COP15, a similar increase has not materialized in Denmark, illustrating how a failed climate (and media) event can have lasting effects on a nation’s climate change communication.