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The Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 49

Suzanne K. Moses News

Take a look at the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 49.

Volume 49 opens with a biography: “An Appreciation of the Life and Work of William C. Reynolds” by Moin and Homsy. Written by people who knew Reynolds and his work very well, it’s full of fond memories and appreciation for a teacher and friend. I especially liked this paragraph:

As a scientist, Reynolds was the ultimate independent thinker, a self-starter, do-it-yourselfer, a hands-on problem solver, and, in the most favorable sense of the term, a micromanager. In following his own intuition, Bill might have reinvented the proverbial wheel, but in the process he found novel and exciting ideas and designs that enriched the engineering field and inspired the people around him. He was a true believer in the familiar maxim (which he repeated quite often) that “if you want it done right, you had better do it yourself.” He designed his own house and once told one of us (G.M.H.) who was undertaking a similar venture that “sure, you’ll make mistakes, but they will be your mistakes.” Not a natural delegator, he immersed himself in many diverse projects with boundless energy and indefatigable enthusiasm. In the words of his son Russell, Bill felt that “anything worth doing was worth overdoing.”

cloud-top

One of my favorite things to do on planes is to stare at the tops of clouds because they look so very solid from up there. Reading Mellado’s article “Cloud-Top Entrainment in Stratocumulus Clouds,” I learned a lot about what happens at that top boundary layer between clear sky and cloud. As with most topics in the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, it’s very complicated and equation heavy. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned is that what seems like a clear boundary isn’t: “the boundary of a cloud is an elusive concept: Clouds are dilute and disperse suspensions of droplets in moist air, and what looks like a sharp boundary from far away is a transition region scattered with cloud filaments of various sizes and various microphysical properties.” So now on planes I’ll have a completely new series of things to distract me as I stare at clouds.

When I first encountered the article “Vapor Bubbles” by Prosperetti, I was surprised to discover that something I think of as ordinary is actually tremendously complicated:

…geysers, hydrothermal vents, and volcanic eruptions are all phenomena intimately associated with vapor bubbles. The destruction caused by boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions (BLEVEs) is occasionally featured in the media. The phenomenon occurs when a liquid-filled tank is accidentally exposed to fire, which causes the pressure to rise so much that the tank ruptures. A rarefaction wave propagating in the liquid causes rapid vaporization, which results in an even stronger pressure buildup with a violent dispersion of the tank’s contents.

That’s something to remember when watching the fire creep ever closer to the tanker truck in the next blockbuster!

Finally, Stevens & Meneveau’s article “Flow Structure and Turbulence in Wind Farms” gave me a different way of thinking about wind energy. I’m a fan of wind farming in general, but had never given much thought to the ways the turbulent flow coming from the turbine could affect the rest of the turbines. It’s really interesting how it impacts decisions about wind farm layout.

Suzanne K. Moses is Annual Reviews’ Senior Electronic Content Coordinator. For 15+ years, she has played a central role in the publication of Annual Reviews’ online articles. Not a single page is posted online without first being proofed and quality checked by Suzanne.

The Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 9

Suzanne K. Moses News

Explore the table of contents for Annual Review of Marine Science Volume 9.

I’d like to advise you to go immediately and read every article in the new volume of the Annual Review of Marine Science, but realistically I know nobody is going to have that kind of time. So the challenge is how to give you a feel for the volume without mentioning every article? I’m going to have to go with what interests me and there are a couple of articles I can point to that pinged higher on my radar.

ma9-fukushimaStarting with the big story – Buesseler et al.’s “Fukushima Daiichi–Derived Radionuclides in the Ocean: Transport, Fate, and Impacts.” I followed the Fukushima disaster pretty closely at the time, and have even read some follow-up articles afterward, but somehow I managed to avoid thinking about the effects of all that radiation on the water. This article does a great job of laying out the timeline of the disaster and following the ways the radiation made it into the surrounding water.

There are four major sources of FDNPP – derived radionuclides to the environment (Figure 1). The largest and earliest source was the initial venting and explosive releases of gases and volatile radionuclides to the atmosphere, which led to fallout on both land and the ocean. Atmospheric fallout peaked around March 15; transport models suggested that more than 80% of the fallout was on the ocean surface, with the highest deposition in coastal waters near the FDNPPs, although there are no atmospheric fallout data over the ocean to measure this directly. Subsequent to the atmospheric fallout was the somewhat smaller direct discharge of contaminated material to the ocean during emergency cooling efforts at the FDNPPs that resulted in runoff over land, enhanced flow of contaminated groundwater, and stagnant water leakage from the basement of the reactor buildings into the ocean. This secondary release process peaked around April 6, 2011….

Next, I recommend a somewhat lighter subject, Malanotte-Rizzoli’s “Venice and I: How a City Can Determine the Fate of a Career.” When I consider our autobiographies, I often think about how one decision can influence an entire career. Here we have a scientist whose sees her career as being shaped by one city:

Apart from sections obviously focused on the scientific milestones of my career, what else should I write about myself? Should I focus on being a female scientist in the late 1960s in a fully male‐dominated world? Should I focus on comparing the academic and research environments in the United States and Italy and what they would offer to a woman at the beginning of her career?….Then a simple fact struck me: The reason I moved from theoretical physics to physical oceanography at the beginning of my career was simply the city in which I grew up—Venice. Venice was the cornerstone of my career at the beginning and has again become a major cornerstone in recent years.

Finally, I can’t leave out Law’s article “Plastics in the Marine Environment” because it’s too important. This article does an excellent job of laying out the questions about plastics in the ocean and providing some groundwork for the answers:

Ultimately, stakeholders and policymakers want to know how big the problem is, how widespread the harm is, and what the best prevention or mitigation strategies are. Scientific inquiry into these questions is not new, but systematic study of the sources, pathways, transformations, impacts, and sinks of plastics in the marine environment has rapidly accelerated only in the last decade.

 

Suzanne K. Moses is Annual Reviews’ Senior Electronic Content Coordinator. For 15+ years, she has played a central role in the publication of Annual Reviews’ online articles. Not a single page is posted online without first being proofed and quality checked by Suzanne.

Vision Science: How Do We See in 3D?

Liz Allen News

How do we see in 3D when we start with a 2D projection on our retinas? How can a flat painting give the illusion of depth and perspective?

In the video describing his latest article in Annual Reviews, Andrew Welchman, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, explains how our neurons put all this information together to produce 3D views.

Read the full article from the Annual Review of Vision Science.

Vera Rubin, Who Proved Dark Matter’s Existence, Dies

Suzanne K. Moses News

screen-shot-2017-01-03-at-13-54-41Dr. Rubin stood as a constant reminder of the sexism that is still such a problem in many scientific fields. There were petitions and protests and demands that she be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her discoveries, and now she never will be.

This is how the autobiographical article she wrote for the 2011 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics begins:

My life has been an interesting voyage. I became an astronomer because I could not imagine living on Earth and not trying to understand how the Universe works. My scientific career has revolved around observing the motions of stars within galaxies and the motions of galaxies within the Universe. In 1965, if you were very lucky and interested in using telescopes, you could walk into a research laboratory that was building instruments that reduced exposure times by a factor of 10 and end up making remarkable discoveries. Women generally required more luck and perseverance than men did.

The full text is available for free:

Runners-Up for Person of the Year: CRISPR Scientists

Liz Allen News , , ,

Time Magazine named U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump its 2016 Person of the Year, but amongst the runners-up are the scientists who identified the mechanisms and developed the technique of gene editing using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), as well as those who are attempting to find direct applications in human health.

The implications are significant for the treatment of diseases with genetic components. If gene sequences can be altered, they can also be corrected to eliminate the risk of illnesses such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s Disease. They can also be used in the treatment of certain cancers. The technique is all the more revolutionary because it is cheap, very accurate, and easy to use.

While many of the scientists involved in these discoveries co-signed a letter urging caution in the use of CRISPR, wary as they are of genome modifications that could be passed on to offspring, this new technology also offers a lot of hope for many diseases that have not yet found a cure.

Jennifer Doudna, of the University of California at Berkeley, along with Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute, developed a way to simplify this technology and apply it to all kinds of DNA. Feng Zhang, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed it was possible to use it on human DNA. Carl June, of the University of Pennsylvania, is now attempting to harness CRISPR to treat cancer.

Congratulations to all of them.

Browse Dr. Doudna’s articles for Annual Reviews:

Read Dr. June’s articles for Annual Reviews:

U.S. Public Opinion and the Environment

Liz Allen News

Two authors scheduled to write for the 2017 Annual Review of Political Science signed a piece in the Washington Post exploring how much resistance U.S. President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s appointee to the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) may face.

Citing work they have done for the next volume of our journal, Political Scientists Patrick J. Egan, of New York University, and Megan Mullin, of Duke University, show that of all the issues, the environment is where the political divide between Republicans and Democrats is starkest. While polarization has been growing between left and right, they most disagree on spending to protect the environment, above the reduction of poverty, childcare, schools, and science.

They conclude that President-Elect Trump’s nominee for the EPA, Scott Pruitt, while being the most conservative appointment for the agency since 1981, will probably not see much political resistance for his agenda to reduce regulation to curb climate change.

MIT Astrophysicist Sara Seager Profiled in NYTimes

Liz Allen News

Sara Seager, astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and contributing author of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, was interviewed in The New York Times Magazine of Dec. 7, 2016.aa480631-f16

Dr. Seager’s work has taken her to seek exoplanets—planets that orbit stars outside our own solar system—and, more specifically, exoplanets that would share characteristics with Earth. A rocky planet that would be far enough from its star that its water would be liquid and life on it possible.

Her research allowed for the discovery of the first exoplanet atmosphere. Using light, she is able to identify the elements and gases that exist in these atmospheres. The ultimate goal, she says, is to determine whether we are alone in the universe.

Read Dr. Seager’s article for the 2010 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics:

Seven Annual Reviews Authors Win Breakthrough Prizes

Liz Allen News , , , , , ,

The 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to Kip S. Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), and Rainer Weiss, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They lead the LIGO Project with CalTech’s Ronald W.P. Drever, also a recipient of the prize, and they share this honor with the other 1012 who were part of this research. Together they were the first to detect the gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein.

Find Dr. Thorne’s article in the 1972 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics:

Find Dr. Weiss’ article in the 1980 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics:

Five Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences were awarded in 2017, to the following laureates:

• Stephen Elledge, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “for elucidating how eukaryotic cells sense and respond to damage in their DNA and providing insights into the development and treatment of cancer.”

Dr. Elledge is scheduled to write an article for the 2017 Annual Review of Cancer Biology.

• Harry F. Noller, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, “for discovering the centrality of RNA in forming the active centers of the ribosome, the fundamental machinery of protein synthesis in all cells, thereby connecting modern biology to the origin of life and also explaining how many natural antibiotics disrupt protein synthesis.”

Find Dr. Noller’s articles in the Annual Review of Biochemistry:

• Roeland Nusse, of Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, “for pioneering research on the Wnt pathway, one of the crucial intercellular signaling systems in development, cancer and stem cell biology.”

Find Dr. Nusse’s articles in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology:

• Yoshinori Ohsumi, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, “for elucidating autophagy, the recycling system that cells use to generate nutrients from their own inessential or damaged components.” This comes two months after Dr. Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Find Dr. Ohsumi’s articles in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology:

• Huda Y. Zoghbi, of the Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, “for discoveries of the genetic causes and biochemical mechanisms of spinocerebellar ataxia and Rett syndrome, findings that have provided insight into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neurological diseases.”

Find Dr. Zoghby’s articles in the Annual Review of Neuroscience, the Annual Review of Physiology, and the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics:

How Social Science Can Help Shape Election Law

Liz Allen News

In this video, Richard Holden, Professor of Economics at UNSW Australia Business School, and author of this comprehensive review, sheds light on the democratic process and the surprising factors that influence how people vote.

The review presents existing social-science research that helps us think through the voting process, including how electoral boundaries are drawn, the redistricting process, what might explain the high incumbent reelection rate in the United States, and how geography influences voting. All this has particular relevance in today’s context of highly polarized and partisan politics that encourages nefarious practices like gerrymandering to win votes. Professor Holden’s review suggests that social science can be a powerful tool to inform election law and support a healthy and transparent democratic process in an increasingly complex political climate.

Learn more with this article, which we’ve made freely available:

Free Trade and the U.S. Election

Liz Allen News , , ,

2908273630_bd93cee6f3_zAs we approach the end of the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, we explore one of the most heatedly discussed issues: international trade and the various trade deals the country has entered.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s nominee, has been criticized by Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee, for her support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994 between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico by her husband, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton. During her tenure as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, she spoke in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed deal between 12 countries of the Pacific Rim that has become a priority for the current administration.

Secretary Clinton now says NAFTA didn’t live up to its potential and will need to be renegotiated—a promise made by the Obama campaign in 2008, which his administration didn’t keep. She also says that the latest version of the TPP, which would cover 40% of the global economy with approximately 800 million consumers, doesn’t meet her “high bar” for “creat[ing] American jobs, rais[ing] wages and advanc[ing] our national security.”

Another proposed deal in the early stages of the negotiating process is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), between the European Union and the United States, covering a third of global trade.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has built his platform on a blanket rejection of free trade.

As the political tide seems to have turned toward protectionism, World Trade Organization Director General Roberto Azevedo has expressed concern about the anti-trade rhetoric on both sides of this campaign. With election day looming, what can we learn about trade deals, regional and global, and their long-term effects on participating economies, specifically on poverty, the environment, and public health? Do they result in net gains or net losses?

Learn more with these five articles, which we’ve made freely available:

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