Eric W.

A recent study published in the Journal of Personality challenges the widely-held notion that an individual's beliefs about the world are significantly influenced by their personal life experiences, such as their privileged backgrounds or traumas. While the study found that childhood trauma did influence negative worldviews, factors like wealth, health, and gender had weaker correlations with one's primal world beliefs than previously assumed. ...

Much is still unknown of the evolution of animal metabolic enzymes. This study describes a new enzyme family bridging the production of polyketides and membrane lipids. This expands the known biochemical repertoire of animals for making ecologically and biomedically important natural products.

Abstract Controlled manipulation of cultured cells by delivery of exogenous macromolecules is a cornerstone of experimental biology.

As social robots become more prevalent, they often employ non-speech sounds, in addition to other modes of communication, to communicate emotion and intention in an increasingly complex visual and audio environment. These non-speech sounds are usually tailor-made, and research into the generation of non-speech sounds that can convey emotions has been limited. To enable social robots to use a large amount of non-speech sounds in a natural and dynamic way, while expressing a wide range of emotions effectively, this work proposes an automatic method of sound generation using a genetic algorithm, coupled with a random forest model trained on representative non-speech sounds to validate each produced sound's ability to express emotion. The sounds were tested in an experiment wherein subjects rated the perceived valence and arousal. Statistically significant clusters of sounds in the valence arousal space corresponded to different emotions, showing that the proposed method generates sounds that can readily be used in social robots.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) facilitates and enables societal benefits from satellite oceanography, supporting operational and experimental satellite missions, developing new and improved ocean observing capabilities, engaging users by developing and distributing fit-for-purpose data, applications, tools, and services, and curating, translating, and integrating diverse data products into information that supports informed decision making. STAR research, development, and application efforts span from passive visible, infrared, and microwave observations to active altimetry, scatterometry, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observations. These efforts directly support NOAA's operational geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) missions with calibration/validation and retrieval algorithm development, implementation, maintenance, and anomaly resolution, as well as leverage the broader international constellation of environmental satellites for NOAA's benefit. STAR's satellite data products and services enable research, assessments, applications, and, ultimately, decision making for understanding, predicting, managing, and protecting ocean and coastal resources, as well as assessing impacts of change on the environment, ecosystems, and climate. STAR leads the NOAA Coral Reef Watch and CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Programs, helping people access and utilize global and regional satellite data for ocean, coastal, and ecosystem applications.

Abstract Global change is associated with variable shifts in the annual production of aboveground plant biomass, suggesting localized sensitivities with unclear causal origins.

Abstract To enable interrogation of tumor HLA LOH as a clinical diagnostic for precision oncology, we developed and validated an assay that

Abstract Serial section transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has proven to be one of the leading methods for millimeter-scale 3D imaging of brain tissues at nanoscale resolution.

Here, authors report that local ionic transport across cathode catalyst layers is vital in improving CO production from CO2. This work demonstrates the potential of a CO2 electrolyzer constructed from materials free from platinum group metals.

Soil microbes contribute to soil organic matter. Here, the authors explore how microbial traits contribute to organic matter accumulation, finding that synergies among fungal traits promote soil organic matter formation, functional complexity, and stability.