Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to beat his country’s 2010 climate targets
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday an annual hike of his country’s carbon tax by Can$15 (US$12) per tonne after 2022, and billions in new investments to try to beat its climate target.
The price on carbon pollution introduced last year is already set to rise incrementally to Can$50 per tonne in 2022.
After 2022, Trudeau said, annual increases in the tax under the revised climate plan would jump from Can$10 to Can$15.
By 2030, the price is to reach Can$170 per tonne—from the current Can$30 per tonne—enough, according to officials, to increase the price of gasoline by nearly 28 cents a litre.
“There is no vaccine against a polluted planet. It’s up to us to act because there is a real cost to pollution,” Trudeau said.
The government’s updated climate plan includes 64 new measures and Can$15 billion in investments for building energy efficiency retrofits, boosting uses of transit and electric cars, as well as modernizing Canada’s electrical grid.
Canada had pledged under the Paris Agreement to the cut its CO2 emission by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
In a briefing document, the government said it is “confident Canada can achieve reductions within the range of 32 to 40 percent below 2005 levels in 2030.”
Trudeau’s government on Thursday unveiled draft legislation that it said would allow the country to be carbon neutral by 2050, but his opponents dismissed the initiative as “smoke and mirrors.”
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Canada aims to beat 2030 climate target, says Trudeau (2020, December 12)
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In this Dec. 10, 2020, photo released by Blue Sky Rescue of Zhong County, a drone equipped with a flamethrower burns a wasp nest at a village in Zhong county near Chongqing municipality in southwestern China. A drone has been converted into the flying flamethrower in central China in a fiery campaign to eradicate more than 100 wasp nests. (Blue Sky Rescue of Zhong County via AP)
A drone has been converted into a flying flamethrower in central China in a fiery campaign to eradicate more than 100 wasp nests.
Blue Sky Rescue, a volunteer group that conducts search and rescue and other emergency work, have teamed up with villagers in Zhong county near the city of Chongqing.
They raised 80,000 yuan ($12,200) to buy a drone and equip it with a gasoline tank and an arm-length nozzle.
Videos released by Blue Sky show a recent mission by the six-arm drone. It hovers above a hive as large as a suitcase before swooping down. The drone operator flips the ignition switch, and the drone spits bursts of fire onto the hive.
“The burning ashes of the wasp’s nest gradually peeled off and fell, and the surrounding residents applauded and praised the rescue team,” said an article on a local news app run by state-owned Chongqing TV.
The article quotes a resident thanking Blue Sky for helping the village: “Now we don’t have to worry about being stung by a wasp.”
Blue Sky said it has destroyed 11 hives so far. There are more than 100 to go.
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Flamethrower drone incinerates wasp nests in China (2020, December 12)
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According to many medical experts, reduced social mobility—defined here as social contact and travel within and among communities—is a necessary factor to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Joshua Clinton, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, led a team of researchers to analyze data from more than one million US adults, determining that partisanship is a stronger determinant of social mobility behaviors than the relative prevalence of COVID-19 cases in the community. The research, “Partisan Pandemic: How Partisanship and Public HealthConcerns Affect Individuals’ Social Mobility During COVID-19”, will be published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Science Advances on Dec 12, 2020.
Between March and April 2020—the first month of the pandemic—Democrats and Republicans both indicated increased concern about COVID-19 and a commitment to reduced social mobility. However, in April, the percentage of Republicans who indicated they were “very or somewhat worried about COVID-19” began to decline while remaining stable among Democrats. The reduced concern about the pandemic among Republicans correlated with a faster return to social activities, regardless of the rate of infections in their communities.
By September, Republicans were engaged in nearly double the number of social activities per day than Democrats. Clinton asserts that stronger political leadership may help reduce social mobility among Republicans, considered by public health experts as a necessary step for reducing transmission and controlling the pandemic.
More information:
Partisan pandemic: How partisanship and public health concerns affect individuals’ social mobility during COVID-19, Science Advances 11 Dec 2020:
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Researchers discover strong correlation between partisanship and social mobility during COVID-19 pandemic (2020, December 11)
retrieved 12 December 2020
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The rise of populist movements is changing political systems around the world. As support for these “anti-elite” movements intensifies, many are scrambling to understand whether economic decline and intensifying inter-group conflict are playing a role.
A model developed by a team of researchers—including Nolan McCarty of Princeton University—shows how group polarization, rising inequality, and economic decline may be strongly connected.
The model develops a theory that group polarization tends to soar in times of economic duress and rising inequality. Yet, even after financial conditions improve, these divisions may remain deeply rooted.
This is why strengthened social safety nets are needed to help minimize conflict across social, ethnic, and racial groups, the researchers argue in Science Advances.
“Times arise when national unity is needed, like we’re seeing now with COVID-19, but we shouldn’t wait for a public health crisis or war to bring people together. Policymakers and those in government should act now by investing in and protecting social safety nets that can prevent widening social and political divisions,” said McCarty, who is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
The authors’ model provides a theory to understand the root causes of the political polarization we see in the world today and what we can do to bring societies back together. Credit: Hertie School
McCarty worked on the model with Alexander Stewart of the University of Houston and Joanna Bryson of the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. Using models of cultural evolution and evolutionary game theory, the team designed their model to examine people’s willingness to interact with people outside their own social group.
The model is based on a few assumptions—the first being that an individual’s economic success is tied to interactions with others and the performance of the underlying economy. They also assume that people tend to mimic the behavior of seemingly “successful” people so that social behaviors can spread through the public.
Lastly they assume that interactions within social in-group behavior is generally less risky with lower rewards while interactions with out-group members are more risky, but entail greater upside. This means that when economic conditions become more challenging, people will tend to prefer the safe bet of interacting with their own kind and avoid interactions with outsiders. As such behavior is mimicked, the interactions across groups declines precipitously.
Is it possible to predict when political polarization might lead to major social and civil conflicts? Credit: Hertie School
The model may be helpful in explaining political trends seen around the world. First, the model supports theories arguing that economic shocks embolden those far-right movements predicated vilifying social out-groups. For example, the Great Depression and Global Financial Crisis both led to increased support for right-wing populists in a number of countries including the United States, and the United Kingdom.
When it comes to inequality, most models suggest that a significant wealth gap tends to empower those on the left, as they will seek income redistribution. The researchers’ new model doesn’t necessarily show such a shift, but instead a general move away from interactions across social identity groups. Since cross-group interactions are economically valuable, society gets poorer.
Why is it hard to rid a society of polarization once it exists, even after economic conditions improve? Credit: Hertie School
“Rather than continue the unproductive debate over whether ‘economic anxiety’ or group conflict is most responsible for our deeply divided politics, scholars should spend more effort considering the debilitating feedback between economics and identity,” said McCarty.
The paper, “Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline,” first appeared online in Science Advances on Dec. 11, 2020.
More information:
A.J. Stewart at University of Houston in Houston, TX el al., “Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline,” Science Advances (2020). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup … .1126/sciadv.abd4201
Citation:
Polarization increases with economic decline, becoming cripplingly contagious (2020, December 11)
retrieved 12 December 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-polarization-economic-decline-cripplingly-contagious.html
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Construction of the Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island, the first offshore wind farm in the United States. It began commercial operations in December 2016. Credit: NOAA Fisheries
Conservation of fish and other marine life migrating from warming ocean waters will be more effective and also protect commercial fisheries if plans are made now to cope with climate change, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Science Advances.
“Sticking our heads in the sand doesn’t work,” said lead author Malin Pinsky, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Effective ocean planning that accounts for climate change will lead to better safeguards for marine fish and commercial fisheries with few tradeoffs.”
As the ocean becomes busier with shipping, energy development, fishing, conservation, recreation and other uses, planning efforts that set aside parts of the ocean for such uses have begun on all seven continents. But these efforts typically do not plan ahead for the impacts of climate change despite establishing plans that can last for many decades.
With ocean waters warming, many commercially valuable fish species could move hundreds of miles northward toward colder water in the years ahead. Such movement is already underway—in some cases dramatically—substantially disrupting fisheries and exacerbating international fisheries conflicts.
Fishing communities like this one in Newfoundland are among the many human activities affected by the climate-driven redistribution of marine species. Credit: Malin Pinsky
Researchers led by Pinsky focused on the costs and benefits of planning ahead for the impacts of climate change on marine species. They simulated the ocean planning process in the United States and Canada for conservation zones, fishing zones and wind and wave energy development zones. Then they looked at nearly 12,000 different projections for where 736 species around North America will move during the rest of this century. They also looked at potential tradeoffs between meeting conservation and sustainable fishing goals now versus in 80 years.
“We were worried that planning ahead would require setting aside a lot more of the ocean for conservation or for fishing, but we found that was not the case,” Pinsky said. “Instead, fishing and conservation areas can be set up like hopscotch boxes so fish and other animals can shift from one box into another as they respond to climate change. We found that simple changes to ocean plans can make them much more robust to future changes. Planning ahead can help us avoid conflicts between, for example, fisheries and wind energy or conservation and fisheries.”
While the study focused on long-term changes, many fisheries decisions are focused on near-term changes—one to a few years ahead, Pinsky said. So the scientists are now testing whether they can forecast near-term shifts in where species are found so fisheries can adapt more easily to species on the move.
While climate change will severely disrupt many human activities and “complete climate-proofing is impossible, proactively planning for long-term ocean change across a wide range of sectors is likely to provide substantial benefits,” the study says.
More information:
M.L. Pinsky at Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, NJ el al., “Ocean planning for species on the move provides substantial benefits and requires few tradeoffs,” Science Advances (2020). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup … .1126/sciadv.abb8428
Citation:
Effective planning ahead protects fish and fisheries (2020, December 11)
retrieved 12 December 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-effective-fish-fisheries.html
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Root nodules, each containing billions of Rhizobiaceae bacteria. Credit: Public Domain
Legumes, unlike most land plants, can form a root nodule symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia. The anatomy of the nodule in legume plants was described in the 17th century, and nodule cells were found to host endosymbiotic rhizobia for nitrogen fixation in the 19th century.
The legume cortex is developmentally distinct from the cortex of non-legumes: It can de-differentiate in response to phytohormones or symbiotic signals from rhizobia, thereby enabling de novo organogenesis of nodules to accommodate nitrogen-fixing rhizobia. Nevertheless, why symbiotic nitrogen fixation is restricted to relatively few plant species, mainly in legumes, has remained unknown.
In a study published online in Nature, a research group led by Prof. Wang Ertao from CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the ancient SHORTROOT-SCARECROW (SHR-SCR) stem cell program in cortical cells of the legume Medicago truncatula specifies their distinct fate for novel nodule organogenesis.
To identify potential genetic pathway reprogramming events that underlie the cortical cell division response in legumes, the researchers generated EGFP-β-Glucuronidase reporters (promoter:EGFP-GUS) for M. truncatula and A. thaliana genes and found that the MtSCR reporter was highly expressed in M. truncatula endodermis, cortex and epidermis, which is in sharp contrast to A. thaliana AtSCR. Genetic data showed that nodule formations in scr and scr/scl23 mutants were greatly reduced and SCR expression in root cortex is required for cortical cell division during nodule initiation.
Besides, the researchers found that MtSHR1/2 mRNA expression is restricted to the stele, similar to the expression pattern of AtSHR in A. thaliana. Intriguingly, MtSHR-GUS fusion proteins accumulated GUS staining beyond the stele and endodermis, in the epidermis and cortex. Genetic data showed that cortical cell-specific accumulation of MtSHRs is required for cortical cell division during nodule initiation. Rhizobia spot inoculation and cytokinin treatment showed that cortical cell expressed MtSHR-MtSCR controls M. truncatula root cortical cells division ability.
Further studies revealed that rhizobial signals lead to the accumulation of MtSHR-MtSCR in cortical cells and nodule primordia. Ubiquitously overexpressed MtSHR in M. truncatula hairy roots promote cortical cell division and form pseudo-nodules without rhizobia inoculation. These data together demonstrate that the ancient SHR-SCR stem cell program specifies legume cortical cell fate for novel nodule organogenesis.
More information:
Wentao Dong et al. An SHR–SCR module specifies legume cortical cell fate to enable nodulation, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-3016-z
Citation:
‘Exciting biology’ reveals central event of evolution of rhizobial endosymbiosis (2020, December 10)
retrieved 11 December 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-biology-reveals-central-event-evolution.html
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Autophagy-derived serine feeds into mitochondrial one-carbon metabolism,supporting the initiation of mitochondrial protein synthesis and allowing rapid adaptation torespiratory growth. Credit: Tokyo Tech
Cells must utilize nutrient resources as efficiently as possible in order to ensure survival. This involves an intricate balance between the synthesis and degradation of cellular components, the latter of which can be used to liberate metabolites from unneeded components during periods of stress. Autophagy is a key intracellular degradation pathway that is triggered under such conditions. Autophagy captures and transports cellular material to a special compartment called the vacuole (or lysosome in animal cells), where they are degraded to produce basic metabolites such as amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. These metabolites can then be returned to the cytoplasm for reuse by the cell.
How exactly are these autophagy-derived metabolites used? While scientists have found that this recycling is important, where metabolites are needed in the cell is not known.
To address this question, researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Japan, and Monash University, Australia, including the 2016 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi, set out to identify how autophagy-derived metabolites are used by cells. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.
Dr. Alexander I. May, lead author on the paper, explains: “We wanted to gain a better understanding of the physiology of autophagy, which is a long-standing question in the field of autophagy research. We transferred mutant yeast cells, which are incapable of autophagy, from a glucose medium to an ethanol medium, forcing these cells to adapt to respiratory growth in a way that’s very easy to observe. This change to respiration requires a huge increase in mitochondrial function and therefore involves remodeling of the bulk of the cell’s metabolic machinery. We found that autophagy-defective yeast took longer to adapt to respiratory growth than the normal yeast cells do, and we worked backwards from this observation to uncover why.”
The team then looked in further detail at cells undergoing the transition from fermentation, when yeast cells break down glucose to ethanol in the cytosol to obtain energy, to respiration, during which other carbohydrates are utilized to make energy in mitochondria. They discovered that this transition triggers autophagy, suggesting that cells need to recycle metabolites to adapt to respiration.
What autophagy-derived metabolites help facilitate respiratory growth? To find out, the group first searched for nutrients that may be recycled by autophagy to support growth, individually adding metabolites to autophagy-defective mutant cultures and testing whether each metabolite was able to help cells adapt to respiration and thereby support normal growth. It turned out that the amino acid serine is able to rescue the delayed adaptation of autophagy mutant cells to respiratory growth.
The authors then asked how serine helps cells start respiration. Serine feeds into an important mitochondrial metabolic pathway called one-carbon metabolism. This pathway is plays a central role in the initiation of protein synthesis in mitochondria. While few in number, these proteins are absolutely critical for mitochondrial respiration. Dr. May and colleagues showed that key markers of mitochondrial one-carbon metabolism were perturbed in autophagy mutant cells, and that adding serine to these cells restored one-carbon metabolism and mitochondrial protein synthesis.
Explaining the outcomes of this study, Dr. May says: “In yeast adapting to respiratory growth, autophagy plays a central role in providing serine to mitochondria, which otherwise experience a critical shortfall in serine. Serine is used by numerous pathways in the cell in addition to mitochondrial respiration, suggesting that competition exists between these pathways. On a more conceptual level, our findings indicate that autophagy provides key adaptive pathways with sufficient precursors, thereby allowing the most efficient deployment of cellular resources during their adaptation to environmental fluctuations. This is critical when the concentration of important metabolites is reduced during periods of stress such as the glycolytic to respiratory transition, when competition between cellular pathways for limited resources acts as a bottleneck on growth”
In addition to furthering our fundamental understanding of autophagy, this study establishes a yet-unknown link between autophagy and one-carbon metabolism, which is known to play an important role in cancer cell metabolism. The results may provide medical researchers developing therapeutic strategies with a new tool to attack cancer cells.
More information:
Alexander I. May et al, Autophagy facilitates adaptation of budding yeast to respiratory growth by recycling serine for one-carbon metabolism, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18805-x
Citation:
Amino acid recycling in cells: Autophagy helps cells adapt to changing conditions (2020, December 10)
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A team of international researchers, led by Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in Penn State’s Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has developed a self-powered, stretchable system that will be used in wearable health-monitoring and diagnostic devices. Credit: Penn State College of Engineering
A stretchable system that can harvest energy from human breathing and motion for use in wearable health-monitoring devices may be possible, according to an international team of researchers, led by Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in Penn State’s Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics.
The research team, with members from Penn State and Minjiang University and Nanjing University, both in China, recently published its results in Nano Energy.
According to Cheng, current versions of batteries and supercapacitors powering wearable and stretchable health-monitoring and diagnostic devices have many shortcomings, including low energy density and limited stretchability.
“This is something quite different than what we have worked on before, but it is a vital part of the equation,” Cheng said, noting that his research group and collaborators tend to focus on developing the sensors in wearable devices. “While working on gas sensors and other wearable devices, we always need to combine these devices with a battery for powering. Using micro-supercapacitors gives us the ability to self-power the sensor without the need for a battery.”
An alternative to batteries, micro-supercapacitors are energy storage devices that can complement or replace lithium-ion batteries in wearable devices. Micro-supercapacitors have a small footprint, high power density, and the ability to charge and discharge quickly. However, according to Cheng, when fabricated for wearable devices, conventional micro-supercapacitors have a “sandwich-like” stacked geometry that displays poor flexibility, long ion diffusion distances and a complex integration process when combined with wearable electronics.
This led Cheng and his team to explore alternative device architectures and integration processes to advance the use of micro-supercapacitors in wearable devices. They found that arranging micro-supercapacitor cells in a serpentine, island-bridge layout allows the configuration to stretch and bend at the bridges, while reducing deformation of the micro-supercapacitors—the islands. When combined, the structure becomes what the researchers refer to as “micro-supercapacitors arrays.”
“By using an island-bridge design when connecting cells, the micro-supercapacitor arrays displayed increased stretchability and allowed for adjustable voltage outputs,” Cheng said. “This allows the system to be reversibly stretched up to 100%.”
By using non-layered, ultrathin zinc-phosphorus nanosheets and 3-D laser-induced graphene foam—a highly porous, self-heating nanomaterial—to construct the island-bridge design of the cells, Cheng and his team saw drastic improvements in electric conductivity and the number of absorbed charged ions. This proved that these micro-supercapacitor arrays can charge and discharge efficiently and store the energy needed to power a wearable device.
The researchers also integrated the system with a triboelectric nanogenerator, an emerging technology that converts mechanical movement to electrical energy. This combination created a self-powered system.
“When we have this wireless charging module that’s based on the triboelectric nanogenerator, we can harvest energy based on motion, such as bending your elbow or breathing and speaking,” Cheng said. “We are able to use these everyday human motions to charge the micro-supercapacitors.”
By combining this integrated system with a graphene-based strain sensor, the energy-storing micro-supercapacitor arrays—charged by the triboelectric nanogenerators—are able to power the sensor, Cheng said, showing the potential for this system to power wearable, stretchable devices.
More information:
Cheng Zhang et al, High-energy all-in-one stretchable micro-supercapacitor arrays based on 3D laser-induced graphene foams decorated with mesoporous ZnP nanosheets for self-powered stretchable systems, Nano Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.105609
Citation:
Stretchable micro-supercapacitors to self-power wearable devices (2020, December 8)
retrieved 11 December 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-stretchable-micro-supercapacitors-self-power-wearable-devices.html
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Women applying to jobs in male-dominated fields often try to overcome sexism by altering their cover letters to sound less feminine. But that practice might actually be hurting their chances of landing a job, a new study out of U of T Mississauga reveals.
Examining real cover letters to a variety of actual jobs and analyzing applications to an MBA program, Joyce He, a Ph.D. candidate at U of T’s Rotman School of Management, found that women applying for jobs in male-dominated fields would respond to anticipated bias by using less feminine language to deliberately manage gender impressions. While they did not use more masculine language, they did try to conceal their femininity.
That would mean avoiding words that are stereotypically associated with women, which include sensitive, interpersonal, empathetic, helpful, warm and friendly. Examples of words that people associate with masculinity, meanwhile, include competitive, ambitious, confident, outspoken and entrepreneurial.
Notably, words identified as masculine hold higher value in the business world. That’s why associations are made with respect to gender and probability of success, says Sonia Kang, an associate professor at U of T Mississauga’s Department of Management and co-author of the study published in Academy of Management.
“When we see those kinds of words, it’s a cue not only to the fact that this is going to be a man, but also this person is going to be better suited to this particular position,” explains Kang. “That’s why language in all these application materials is so important. They cue to more than just identity.”
He adds that research suggests women’s identity is devalued when they apply for male-dominated jobs and they tend to anticipate discrimination or bias in the selection process.
“They need to hide the devalued part, the feminine side, which is why they use this strategy,” she says, adding that men do not engage in the same behavior when applying for female-dominated roles.
But these attempts by women applicants to manage gender impressions can actually backfire because they clash with deeply entrenched cultural stereotypes.
He explains that there’s an unspoken rule regarding how men and women should act. “Men should behave competitively and dominantly, and women should behave more friendly and communal,” she says. “When you go against the rules or expectations, women especially can receive this backlash or penalty.”
She notes that women who behave counter-stereotypically are seen as more competent but also less likable, which in turn means they are less likely to be hired or even promoted.
This is related to the double-bind women face, Kang continues. She explains that stereotypes suggest men should be in charge because they’re assertive and decisive and get things done. When women take on that role, they’re seen as competent but are less likely to be liked. At the same time, women contend with the stereotype that they should be more nurturing and communal. When women act in line with those gendered stereotypes, they end up being liked but are seen as less competent.
“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Kang says, adding men don’t have to navigate the same no-win situation. “If (men) are super confident, people don’t care if they’re likable.”
He says that the onus shouldn’t be on women (or minorities) to try to navigate the different biases in the labor market. The onus should be on organizations to reduce bias, which is the root of the problem.
He is now shifting her research focus to design interventions that help de-bias the selection process, saying there’s promising new work focused on systemic problems that target the environment, which is a more powerful way to change behavior. That can include anonymized evaluations or reviewing applications in sets instead of individually.
But systemic solutions take a long time to implement and job seekers can’t wait.
Kang suggests women forced to contend with existing biases in the labor market should approach job applications like an experiment and find what works for them and is successful. That might mean changing how different activities are presented or how a person writes about themself.
“The work really shows it doesn’t help to pretend to be something you’re not,” Kang says. “I know it sounds pithy but be yourself is the takeaway here.”
More information:
Joyce C. He et al. Covering in Cover Letters: Gender and Self-Presentation in Job Applications, Academy of Management Journal (2020). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.1280
Citation:
Female job seekers using le
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Fig. 1. The study area and the distribution of observation sites. The ten yellow points represent the independent sites used for frequency distribution validation, and the white points represent the points for gridding. The yellow dotted rectangle is the interpolation extent. Credit: LI Hongyi
An accurate gridded precipitation dataset is essential for a better understanding of climate change, and hydrological and ecological processes on the Tibetan Plateau. However, the precipitation observation network in this region is sparse. The observed precipitation is susceptible to complex meteorological and orographic conditions, limiting the accuracy of the gridded precipitation dataset. The variety of precipitation instruments in the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas has also seriously affected the correction of measured precipitation.
By compensating the precipitation undercatch from different kinds of instruments around the Tibetan Plateau and optimizing the precipitation frequency distribution in the interpolation scheme, a research team from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources (NIEER) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a new precipitation dataset.
The dataset uses the observed precipitation of 159 stations as the data source (Fig. 1) and corrects the gauge undercatch. Then by comparing six commonly used interpolation schemes using precipitation frequency error as the evaluation standard, the optimal interpolation scheme suitable for the Tibetan Plateau is obtained.
In addition, a set of daily gridded precipitation dataset with a spatial resolution of 10km from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2009 is obtained based on those works.
The results show that undercatch correction is necessary for station data, which can reduce the distributional error by 30% at most. A thin-plate splines interpolation algorithm considering altitude as a covariate is helpful to reduce the statistical distributional error in general.
Fig. 2. The difference between the corrected results and the previous dataset. Mean is the daily average, Q98 is the 98th percentile, Var is the variance and APHRO means the APHRODITE dataset. All of the results consider only wet days, which are classified by a threshold of 0.1 mm/d. The first column (a, d) shows the difference in the daily average. The second column (b, e) shows the difference in the daily 98th percentile. The third column (c, f) shows the difference in the daily variance. Credit: LI Hongyi
Compared with the existing gridded precipitation dataset, this dataset has better precipitation frequency distribution characteristics, a more reasonable mean value, variance, and a better suppressive smoothing effect widely existing in the previous gridded precipitation products (Fig. 2).
The results provide a relatively reliable gridded precipitation dataset for those hydrometeorological studies on the Tibetan Plateau.
The dataset has been published online in a paper titled “Reducing the Statistical Distribution Error in Gridded Data for the Tibetan Plateau” in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
More information:
Jiapei Ma et al. Reducing the Statistical Distribution Error in Gridded Precipitation Data for the Tibetan Plateau, Journal of Hydrometeorology (2020). DOI: 10.1175/JHM-D-20-0096.1
Citation:
Scientists improve gridded precipitation dataset for Tibetan Plateau (2020, December 10)
retrieved 10 December 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-scientists-gridded-precipitation-dataset-tibetan.html
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