Annual Review of Physiology, Volume 79

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View the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Physiology, Volume 79.

The first article to catch my attention inthis volume, “A Critical and Comparative Review of Fluorescent Tools for Live-Cell Imaging” by Elizabeth A. Specht et al., conjured  for me images of white-coated researchers anxiously holding fluorescent light tubes over microscopes. This amusing vision was, of course, very fleeting, and the last remnants were swept away when I started reading the article and realized biological researchers use the phrase “fluorescent tool” in reference to the fluorescent markers, dyes, and sensors in biological samples. These tools are much more complicated and diverse than I realized and I was very interested in learning about how they work:

This review provides a broad overview of well-established fluorescent tools, with an eye toward recent developments and emerging technologies, and it refers the reader to more comprehensive and detailed reviews on individual techniques and applications. We begin with a discussion of general classes of fluorophores and their advantages and disadvantages for various applications. We then discuss methods for labeling a molecule of interest with a fluorescent moiety—including fluorescent protein fusions, incorporation of fluorescent moieties through nonnatural amino acid substitution, chemical labeling, and antibody labeling—emphasizing applications in live cells. We briefly review applications for monitoring proteins, which are already well established, and then focus on the extension of these techniques to high-throughput proteomics and screening.

Next on my personal reading list is the article by Johannes Overgaard & Heath A. Macmillan titled “The Integrative Physiology of Insect Chill Tolerance.”  This article reminded me of when my little brother found a beetle frozen in a pool of ice when we were children. After marveling at it for days he decided to melt the ice so he could examine the beetle more closely and use it as part of an ongoing school science project.  We were both quite shocked when the defrosted beetle turned out to be very much alive and not in favor of being used for science projects. (By “shocked” I mean we jumped and screamed when it started moving.)

This article looks at how insects survive ice and cold and the adaptations that make it possible:

The cold tolerance of insects has historically been classified by their ability to tolerate ice formation in the extracellular fluid (freeze-tolerant species) or to avoid freezing by lowering the freezing point of their extracellular fluid [freeze-avoiding species that survive low temperatures above their supercooling point (SCP)]. Studies of freeze tolerance and avoidance have revealed a range of fascinating physiological adaptations that involve accumulation of cryoprotectants, removal of ice nucleators, synthesis of antifreeze proteins, or use of severe dehydration, all of which allow insects to either tolerate or avoid freezing. Nevertheless, the classification of insect species as freeze avoiding and freeze tolerant has received some criticism because it fails to take into account that insect species from warm regions experience loss of homeostasis, cold-induced injury, and death at temperatures above those causing extracellular freezing.

ph79-tongueFinally, I discovered the article by Charlotte M. Mistretta & Archana Kumari, “Tongue and Taste Organ Biology and Function: Homeostasis Maintained by Hedgehog Signaling.”  I’ve given some thought to how taste works but because it seems such a basic part of life I forget how complex it actually is. This article certainly reminded me and also included bonus discussion of the hedgehog pathway, one of my favorite names in all of science. As the authors write in the abstract:

The tongue is an elaborate complex of heterogeneous tissues with taste organs of diverse embryonic origins. The lingual taste organs are papillae, composed of an epithelium that includes specialized taste buds, the basal lamina, and a lamina propria core with matrix molecules, fibroblasts, nerves, and vessels. Because taste organs are dynamic in cell biology and sensory function, homeostasis requires tight regulation in specific compartments or niches.

If you found an article in this volume that interests you, please let me know in the comments!

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.

Research partners: Happy Valentine’s Day from Annual Reviews

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I have a soft spot for the Annual Review autobiographies. I open each volume’s table of contents and eagerly search for them. I’m always interested in how our authors discovered their passion for their field and the interplay between their lives and their science. Among these articles there are a few that are written by husband and wife teams—and they are an extraordinary glimpse into shared lives.

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I first encountered Leonard and Leonore Herzenberg in their article “Genetics, FACS, Immunology, and Redox: A Tale of Two Lives Intertwined,” published in the Annual Review of Immunology in 2004.  I was quite taken with the way they handed the narrative back and forth, as well as the humor with which they told their story. I was delighted to find them writing for us again in 2014 for the Annual Review of Physiology, and even more delighted to find they had done a video interview!  These two articles remain among my favorites, and I was sad to learn that Dr. Leonard Herzenberg had passed away soon after the video was made.

Here is a snippet from Dr. Leonore Herzenberg about their time in Paris at the Pasteur Institute from the 2004 volume of the Annual Review of Immunology:

…because Len loved hands-on experimentation, I took over much of the data recording, computation, and display (plotting) that was needed. The work was tedious (slide rules were the closest thing to computers at the time). However, it gave me the opportunity to do a preliminary analysis of the data and try novel approaches to analyzing LacZ induction kinetics. Len left this to me. He was more interested in developing methods and experiment designs that would enable clear conclusions without a lot of mathematical interference. This division of labor, which reflects Len’s innate preference for concreteness and my innate love for theory, remains with us even today.

bb-richardsonsDrs. Jane and David Richardson wrote “Doing Molecular Biophysics: Finding, Naming, and Picturing Signal Within Complexity” for the Annual Review of Biophysics in 2013. While the article focuses mainly on their research, it is full of stories about their shared experiences, such as this one:

We spent a large fraction of our lives from the early 1970s to the early 1990s in Fred Brooks’ computer graphics lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC). There we accomplished much of our own research in protein structure, acted as guinea pigs for in-depth testing of their software and hardware, and played happily with the science fiction–level gadgets that explored far-out new possibilities such as virtual reality displays, volume rendering, force feedback, fitting models into electron density, or tugging on atoms to move local structure with (more or less) physical realism. Some things worked splendidly and soon became widespread; some failed by being surprisingly unhelpful, making you sick, or whacking you in the chest (their gadgets never just fell apart)…

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In 1989, George and Eva Klein wrote “How One Thing Has Led to Another” for the Annual Review of Immunology.  Their story begins with a whirlwind romance and an intrigue-filled move into Sweden just as the Iron Curtain was falling on Dr. Klein’s Hungarian homeland.  From the epilogue of their article:

As each of us is moving towards the approaching darkness, the sun is never setting over the vast oceans of science. It has been a rare privilege to live and work through the times when the genetic material turned from protein to DNA, when adaptive changes in cell populations-including antibody production-were unmasked as Darwinian variations and selection, when GOD became the rearrangement of immunoglobulin genes, violating the dogma that all somatic cells have the same DNA….It was a great time, and it still is, but it is only the stumbling, stuttering, premature foreshadowing of what lies ahead. We have barely scratched the surface.

bi-taborThe story of Celia White Tabor and Herbert Tabor’s work in biochemical research was chronicled along with their personal history in the article “It All Started on a Streetcar in Boston” for the Annual Review of Biochemistry in 1999.  Among the scientific discussion are small stories about their lives and friendships, making this an interesting read.

We first met on a Boston streetcar in 1940, being introduced by a mutual friend. Celia was returning from research work at the Massachusetts General Hospital as part of her senior thesis at Radcliffe College, and Herb was returning from a concert by the Boston Symphony. We were married in 1946 after Celia had finished her medical training. We started working together in 1952, and we are still actively collaborating in our studies on various aspects of the biosynthesis and function of polyamines.

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.

Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease, Volume 12

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View the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease, Volume 12.

pm12-jaffeElaine S. Jaffe starts this volume off with her autobiographical article “The Microscope as a Tool for Disease Discovery—A Personal Voyage.” Her research involves the classification of hematological malignancies, and this article reveals her passion for all the things that can be discovered through the microscope as well as some surprising information about pathologists:

Looking at a microscopic slide of diseased tissue provides a wealth of information regarding the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of disease. Pathologists are very visual in their approach, and many pursue art or photography as hobbies. Most are adept at recognizing faces or images as well as discerning the varied microscopic patterns.

Sometimes political events highlight portions of our articles that I might not otherwise have noticed. Finding that our articles resonate with current events isn’t unusual, but it may strike you as surprising for an article in the Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease. Perhaps it is less surprising to find such resonances in an autobiography. Dr. Jaffe’s description of her parents and family, who immigrated to the United States from what is now Ukraine, is particularly timely:

My father was born in Steblov, and my mother in Ryzhanovka. My father’s father, who was a cantor, came to the United States in 1914 with his two oldest children, and he expected the rest of the family to follow once he was settled. Cousins who already lived in New York facilitated their arrival… My parents were typical of many immigrant families in their drive to succeed in their new homeland. Our house was always the center for extended family events and gatherings. Political events and intense debate dominated conversations.

Another article of interest is Walsh et al.’s “Humanized Mouse Models of Clinical Disease.” Anyone who has read much medical science realizes that we use animal models for several reasons, as the authors describe:

Animal models are used as surrogates of human biology due to the logistical and ethical restrictions of working with cell and tissue samples from human donors and the biological limitations of culture systems. Small animals such as mice and rats are widely used mammalian model systems due to their small size, ease of maintenance and handling, short reproductive cycle, sharing of genomic and physiological properties with humans, and ability to be readily manipulated genetically.

Of course, these models aren’t perfect, but they are getting closer as humanized mice are altered to more perfectly mimic human systems. I was surprised by how many issues these alterations are letting us research—for instance, to research infectious diseases immunodeficient mice can be grafted with human immune cells so researchers can study the human immune response. I have to note that we are in fact living in the future predicted by the science fiction authors I read as a child.

If you found an article in this volume that particularly interests you, please let me know in the comments!

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.

Annual Review of Entomology, Volume 62

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Take a look at the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Entomology, Volume 62.

Calisher’s prose in his autobiographical article, “Following the Yellow Brick Road,” is wonderfully clear and playful with a conversational tone.  I can’t recommend it highly enough—it’s a delightful article and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

I suppose I can be called a virologist, but viruses are only things, as rocks, automobile tires, and books are things. I have little interest in things that simply sit on shelves or reside in freezers. I like to know where they come from, what they do, what their closest relatives are, and, perhaps, how they arose. The study of viruses, particularly arthropod-borne viruses, requires at least a superficial understanding of their epidemiologies, the assorted peculiarities of the viruses themselves, their geographic distributions, the identity and competence of their vectors, their modes of transmission, the external influences that affect them, and so on. Understanding only one aspect of a particular virus or even a group of viruses does not confer knowledge about viruses as a whole. Recognizing that I will not live forever, early on I decided to choose one branch of virology, arbovirology, the study of viruses that are transmitted between vertebrates by hematophagous arthropods. That’s enough specialization for anyone. Perhaps a bit of my personal history will provide more perspective as to how I got from hither to yon.

en62-beesNext, I want to highlight the brilliant article “Beekeeping from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages” by Kritsky, which walks us through the earliest art and history of beekeeping practice.  Notice that it’s not a complete history, but rather just a small slice of the absolutely fascinating history of our relationship with these creatures:

Robbing wild bees of their honey is the oldest documented interaction with bees. Rock paintings in Spain depict honey hunters suspended from rope ladders as they harvest sections of honeycomb. These paintings are thought to date back 7,000 to 8,000 years, but they are not the oldest evidence of use of bee products. Chemical evidence of beeswax has been detected in Anatolian pottery nearly 9,000 years old.

A few of my coworkers can tell you that I’m not fond of spiders appearing indoors.  I don’t mind them out in nature protecting my garden;  I just don’t want them dropping on my keyboard from the ceiling unexpectedly.  The aspect of spider research I find most fascinating is the deep examination of spider silk and how we can produce it synthetically.  I was pleased to find Blamires et al.’s article “Physicochemical Property Variation in Spider Silk: Ecology, Evolution, and Synthetic Production” and greatly anticipate reading it more closely soon.  I was especially surprised at all the different types of silks:

Spiders of the large and diverse superfamily Araneoidea produce seven distinct types of silks, each of which is secreted by different silk glands. Major ampullate (MA) silk is used as a safety line by most spiders and as web frame and radii by orb web spiders. It has the most impressive mechanical properties of all spider silks, as it combines high strength with high extensibility…

I’d love to hear what you found interesting in this volume!

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.

Annual Review of Medicine, Volume 68

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View the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Medicine, Volume 68.

Fehr’s article “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” caught my eye with a section heading that sounded like it could be an absurdist art film title: “The Camel Connection.” It actually references a transmission vector for this relatively new respiratory problem. Since reading this article, I have learned a lot more about MERS from two different podcast discussions about possible vaccines and how to keep it from spreading through larger areas. Identifying the camels as vectors has also revealed some other interesting information:

Thus, many other animals found in the Arabian Peninsula, such as goats, horses, chickens, sheep, poultry, and camels, were tested for MERS-CoV seropositivity. Only dromedary camels were found to be positive for anti-MERS-CoV antibody. Dromedary camels are present throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and camels at these sites were shown to be seropositive with rates as high as 80% in some populations (reviewed in 47). Surprisingly, serum samples from as far back as 1982 in Africa and 1992 in Saudi Arabia were positive for MERS-CoV antibodies. This suggests that MERS-CoV has infected camels for an extended period of time and raises the question of why MERS was not detected in patients in Saudi Arabia before 2012.

me68-ebola-treatment-unitsThis volume also includes two articles about Ebola—which is often mentioned as an example of a virus that has spread through a remarkably large area. The first article is an interesting look back at the recent outbreak in West Africa that we now know began in 2013. “Ebola: Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Lo et al. is a fantastic guide to the geography and timeline of the outbreak and identifies the various vectors of transmission. I particularly appreciated the discussion of the geopolitical response to the outbreak:

Following these events, Ebola suddenly seemed potentially dangerous far beyond West Africa, and the epidemic was discussed at the highest political levels internationally. Ebola was debated on the floor of the United Nations (UN), and the Security Council described it as a threat to peace and security. In September 2014, the UN Secretary General established the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) to scale up the response on the ground in the heavily affected countries, coordinating the delivery of logistic, technical, and financial support. This gesture not only conveyed the perceived gravity of the situation but also lack of confidence in WHO’s organizational capacity for emergency response to the crisis. Hitherto, the only disease to have received such high-level attention internationally was AIDS, which had a specific United Nations structure (UNAIDS) established for its response.

The second article about Ebola, “Toward an Effective Ebola Virus Vaccine“ by Keshwara et al., looks forward at long-term control of the virus. I always thought of vaccines as a single type of preventative, and found myself particularly interested in reading about the various kinds of vaccines being worked on by various researchers—DNA vaccines, virus-like particles and nanoparticle vaccines, adenovirus-based vaccines, etc. The authors explain why researchers are testing so many vaccines:

From a public health perspective, it is beneficial to pursue diverse vaccine strategies to increase the likelihood of creating a successful vaccine against EBOV. In the context of prevention in endemic regions, it is not always logistically feasible to rely on recurrent vaccination. An ideal vaccine would elicit desired immunity and protection from a single, unadjuvanted shot with no serious adverse effects.

Sometimes an article title catches my ear a full year before I get to see the final version. This was the case with Mamtani & Morrow’s article in this volume, “Why Are There So Many Mastectomies in the United States?” Like so many others, I have a family history with cancer, and my interest is often peaked by articles about new treatments and therapies. In this case, the article looks at a disconnect between the known benefits and risks of this treatment and the number of related surgeries, and though this article doesn’t offer answers it does a great job of providing context for the questions:

Patients at high risk for multiple primary breast cancers, such as those discussed above, are considered medically appropriate candidates for bilateral mastectomy. However, an increasing number of average-risk women are choosing both unilateral mastectomy and CPM. Although high mastectomy rates were initially attributed to surgeons failing to offer BCT to patients, an increasing body of evidence indicates that patient choice is the major determinant of mastectomy rates.

The comment section is open, and I’d love to hear what articles you found interesting!

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.

Rabbits Riding Elephants | Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 3

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Browse the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 3.

li3-rabbits-and-elephantsIn the course of proofing articles for a volume, there is sometimes a figure or a phrase that just jumps off the screen and grabs my attention. That was the case with the rabbits riding elephants photo from Crain’s “Acquisition of Quantifiers.” I spent my lunch break reading about the differences between how adults and children respond to sentences with quantifiers because I am endlessly fascinated by child development and language acquisition. In this case, when asked to look at the four rabbits riding elephants (with one extra elephant without a rider) the subjects were asked “Is every rabbit riding an elephant?” children ages 4-6 sometimes answer no, while adults answer yes. The article goes beyond rabbits and elephants to give a historical overview of the research on quantifiers, and I was surprised by how long ago that research had started (more than 50 years ago!) as well as how complicated the subject proved to be:

Structural principles on anaphoric dependencies were expected to be in place from the earliest stages of acquisition. Linguists subsequently proposed that the difficulties children experience in assigning noncoreference in sentences with referential NPs are not due to their lack of syntactic knowledge, but rather reflect problems in executing certain pragmatic principles that govern the assignment of noncoreference to pronouns.

Sixteen years ago I moved from rural Virginia to urban California. Among the many shocks (where did the weather go?), I was dismayed to find my soft southern accent flattening out. It’s certainly not gone, as you can tell if you happen to encounter me after I have a phone call with my mother or when I’m especially tired, but you might understand my curiosity regarding Dodsworth’s article “Migration and Dialect Contact.” My attention was particularly drawn to the short section about this type of rural to urban migration:

When speakers of rural dialects migrate to a well-established urban area, the features of their rural dialects often do not survive in their children’s speech; in other words, rural features do not survive the leveling process resulting from dialect contact, as described above. By contrast, when a city’s population grows substantially as the result of rapid migration from a variety of places, including other cities, the local dialect itself may be attenuated in favor of either a national standard or a mixed variety….

As you can see, the article is more about groups of people than about individuals—although it doesn’t address my case specifically, I still found it interesting. If you’re interested in dialects specifically there’s an article by Schreier you should investigate: “Dialect Formation in Isolated Communities.” This one is about a different type of population movement that results in the formation of a new community. Here I found it interesting that the new dialect doesn’t necessarily need an isolated group: “isolation is of course not a prerequisite for NDF, and that new dialects (or koinés) may in fact emerge in urban high-contact scenarios as well. These processes have been documented in suburban overspills….”

If you have a recommendation for a good Introduction to Linguistics textbook, or a story of accent shift, please leave me a comment below!

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.

Congratulations to Daniel S. Nagin, winner of the 2017 NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing

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scireviewingWe are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Scientific Reviewing, presented this year in criminology, is Daniel S. Nagin. Dr. Nagin is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and a Committee Member of the Annual Review of Criminology (which will publish in 2018).

He will receive his award during the Annual Meeting of the NAS in Washington, DC on Sunday, April 30, 2017 at 2pm (follow the live webcast #NAS154). Eva Emerson, Senior Editor (forthcoming digital magazine), and Samuel Gubins, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, will attend the ceremony.

The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing was established in 1977 through a gift from Annual Reviews together with the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) to recognize the importance of reviews to the scientific method. Annual Reviews currently sponsors the award in its entirety.

The award recognizes authors whose publications have reviewed important subjects of research, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course of scientific thought. Since its establishment, the award has been presented to 39 recipients, two who have gone on to win a National Medal of Science in the Biological Sciences and two who proceeded to win a Nobel Prize.

Dr. Nagin is being honored for exemplary reviews of the scientific literature on the crime-prevention effects of criminal and civil sanctions. These reviews have altered the course of criminological theory and empirical research, and have greatly informed analysis of public policy. His work appears in many leading publications, including Annual Reviews, which is publishing an article and response from him in the 2017 volume of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 

new_logoAnnual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society. To find out how we create our highly cited reviews and stimulate discussion about science, please watch this short video.

The NAS is a private, nonprofit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community.

 

 

The Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Volume 57

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Check out the full tables of content for Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Volume 57.

I have an ongoing fascination with articles that examine how real clinicians work and relate to patients. So it’s no surprise that I would up rereading the article Lavoie et al.’s “Changing Provider Behavior in the Context of Chronic Disease Management: Focus on Clinical Inertia.” It focuses specifically on chronic diseases. It’s a tremendously interesting and sometimes frustrating article. See for example this paragraph on treatment of asthma:

Despite the availability of guidelines for the treatment of asthma and robust evidence that following guideline recommendations improves outcomes, provider adherence to CPGs to manage asthma is poor. For example, a retrospective study of asthma care delivered to 345 patients at a tertiary adult emergency department (ED) in Canada reported 69.6% overall compliance with guidelines . Controller (i.e., inhaled corticosteroid) use was prescribed in only one-third of children and adults in the ED and on discharge. Studies have also shown that in the nonacute care setting, few physicians prescribe ongoing daily controller medication or written self-management plans, even in adults and children with a recent acute care visit for asthma. Moreover, even when they are prescribed, the cumulative duration of available prescriptions coversless than 50% of the follow-up period.”

In other cheerful news there is the article, “Will There Be a Cure for Ebola?”, by Cardile et al. It provides this answer in the introduction: “Identification of a cure, therefore, may be approached from the perspective of prevention, treatment, or eradication. Only smallpox and rinderpest have been eradicated from nature. The prospect of EBOV eradication is untenable at this time, given our incomplete understanding of potential reservoir hosts and subsequent initial transmission from reservoir hosts to humans.” However, the control and prevention of the disease is looking more promising.”

pa57stress-and-reward

Coleman’s article “The Discovery of Suvorexant, the First Orexin Receptor Drug for Insomnia” provides some good news for those who suffer from insomnia, “Unlike GABAA receptor modulators, DORAs promote both non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep, do not disrupt sleep stage–specific quantitative electroencephalogram spectral profiles, and allow somnolence indistinct from normal sleep. The preservation of cognitive performance and the ability to arouse to salient stimuli after DORA administration suggest further advantages over historical therapies.”

Let’s head into the weekend with a happy article about relaxation and the relationship between the brain’s stress and reward circuits. Say Volkow’s wonderfully titled article “Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Endocannabinoids and Cannabis at the Intersection of Stress and Reward.” I was intrigued by the introduction to this article: “The search for a state of mental relaxation and well-being is one of the factors driving the widespread consumption of cannabis. The most frequently abused illicit substance worldwide, cannabis is consumed regularly by about 2.4% of the world population (approximately 181 million people in 2013).” This is a really interesting look at how cannabis interacts with our stress and reward centers and why it works to relax some people.

 

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 Fluid Mechanics, Volume 49

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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

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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.