The public sharing of primary research datasets potentially benefits the research community but is not yet common practice. In this pilot study, we analyzed whether data sharing frequency was associated with funder and publisher requirements, journal impact factor, or investigator experience and impact. Across 397 recent biomedical microarray studies, we found investigators were more likely to publicly share their raw dataset when their study was published in a high-impact journal and when the first or...

Epidemics of infectious diseases often occur in predictable limit cycles. Theory suggests these cycles can be disrupted by high amplitude seasonal fluctuations in transmission rates, resulting in deterministic chaos. However, persistent deterministic chaos has never been observed, in part because sufficiently large oscillations in transmission rates are uncommon. Where they do occur, the resulting deep epidemic troughs break the chain of transmission, leading to epidemic extinction, even in large cities. Here we demonstrate a new...

1. Seed dispersal and subsequent recruitment dynamics play a crucially important role in regulating species coexistence and structuring tree diversity in diverse forests. Wildlife, which can dually shape the tree recruitment process by simultaneously functioning as natural enemies and seed dispersers, are undergoing widespread changes in population and behaviour due to the detrimental effects of expanding global road networks. However, the impact of these changes on recruitment dynamics through the alteration of seed dispersal processes...

Background: People living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLWH) are at risk of developing pulmonary hypertension (PH) and right ventricular (RV) dysfunction, but understanding of the relationship of RV function to afterload (RV-PA coupling) is limited. We evaluated the clinical and hemodynamic characteristics of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated PH. Methods: We performed a retrospective review of patients with a diagnosis of HIV undergoing right heart catheterization (RHC) from 2000-2016 in a tertiary care center. Inclusion criteria...

1. Difficulties quantifying pathogen load and mutualist abundance limit our ability to connect disease dynamics to host community ecology. For example, specific predictions about how differential pathogen load is hypothesized to drive host competitive outcomes are rarely tested. Additionally, although infection is known to affect mutualists, we rarely measure the magnitude of pathogen effects on mutualist abundance across host competitive contexts. We tested for both mechanisms in a plant-rhizobia-nematode system. 2. We paired the legume...

Ecologists often study biodiversity by evaluating species occupancy and the relationship between occupancy and other covariates. Occupancy models are now widely used to account for false absences in field surveys and to reduce bias in estimates of covariate relationships. Existing occupancy models take as inputs binary detection/non-detection observations of species at each visit to each site. However, autonomous sensing devices and machine learning models are increasingly used to survey biodiversity, generating a new type of...

We collected data on coinfection rates, infection prevalence, and infection intensity for Gyrodactylus spp. on wild Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata). We also collected data on the shoaling preference of wild-caught guppy hosts. Further, we collected data on transmission rates, infection intensity, and infected host mortality rates of lines of these parasites on guppies in the laboratory. We fouind that wild guppy populations with stronger shoaling preferences had higher infection prevalence and coinfection rates. Further, we...

Infectious disease systems frequently exhibit strong seasonal patterns, yet the mechanisms that underpin intra-annual cycles are unclear, particularly in tropical regions. We hypothesized that host immune function fluctuates seasonally, contributing to oscillations in infection patterns in a tropical disease system. To test this hypothesis, we investigated a key host defense of amphibians against a lethal fungal pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). We integrated two field experiments in which we perturbed amphibian skin secretions, a critical host...

Natural environments are rarely static; rather selection can fluctuate on time scales ranging from hours to centuries. However, it is unclear how adaptation to fluctuating environments differs from adaptation to constant environments at the genetic level. For bacteria, one key axis of environmental variation is selection for planktonic or biofilm modes of growth. We conducted an evolution experiment with Burkholderia cenocepacia, comparing the evolutionary dynamics of populations evolving under constant selection for either biofilm formation...

Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum - GFZ, Germany (1); Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics, Hannover, Germany (2); Union College, Schenectady, NY 12308, USA (3); Dep. Of Geology and Planetary Science, University of Pittsburg, USA (4)

Can the history of the lake records covering the glacial-interglacial cycles be reconstructed from downhole logging data without the high-resolution data derived from core analysis? To answer this question, we present a study reconstructing glacial-interglacial sediment variability and an estimate...

Digital infrastructure can make visible the problems hidden in policies that maintain systematic racism and oppression. However, these infrastructures are difficult to design because the technology workers that build them are often too far removed from those with lived experiences of oppression. Grief to Action pPUC is a novel community data-science engagement network that is building an online platform to help citizens navigate the police accountability process. The tool will collect municipal level police union...

Machine learning (ML) has found immense success in commercial applications such as computer vision and natural language processing. Given the success of ML in commercial domains, there is an increasing interest in using ML models for advancing scientific discovery. However, direct application of ``black-box" ML models has met with limited success in scientific domains given that the data available for many scientific problems is far smaller than what is needed to effectively train advanced ML...

Hemispheric Conversations Urban Art Project (HCUAP, pronounced “Hiccup”), is a public art platform that draws on the urban arts as a framework through which we can map the aesthetic, historical and cultural connections between Pittsburgh and similar post-industrial cities. HCUAP promotes urban art (graffiti, street art, and mural production) as a tool for education and dialogue about cultural expression, conscious redevelopment, and the preservation and celebration of diverse cultural identities. HCUAP partners University of Pittsburgh...

Ocean bodies have very high aspect ratios, which enable them to be approximated as two-dimensional (2D). The 2D flows are distinct from the three-dimensional (3D) counterparts, which are prone to produce a wide range of coherent motions such as eddies and jets that live a long time before being dissipated. In this project, we are going to study how collective fish swimming interact with the coherent motions in the ocean. Fishes are small compared to...

Emerging societal trends drive the need for advanced magnetic materials and power magnetic components including the electrification of domestic and military transportation; the emergence of solid state transformers as a practical and viable alternative to conventional transformers; increased penetration of renewables and other distributed energy resources which require power electronics converters and novel electric machines for grid integration. A historical gap in research and development funding for advanced power magnetics has created a severe shortfall...