Atmospheric gravity waves generated by an eclipse were first proposed in 1970. Despite numerous efforts since, there has been no definitive evidence for eclipse generated gravity waves in the lower to middle atmosphere. Measuring wave characteristics produced by a definite forcing event such as an eclipse provides crucial knowledge for developing more accurate physical descriptions of gravity waves. These waves are fundamental to the transport of energy and momentum throughout the atmosphere and their parameterization or simulation in numerical models provides increased accuracy to forecasts. Here, we present the findings from a radiosonde field campaign carried out during the total solar eclipse of July 2, 2019 aimed at detecting eclipse-driven gravity waves in the stratosphere. This eclipse was the source of three stratospheric gravity waves. The first wave (eclipse wave #1) was detected 156 min after totality and the other two waves were detected 53 and 62 min after totality (eclipse waves #2 and #3 respectively) using balloon-borne radiosondes. Our results demonstrate both the importance of field campaign design and the limitations of currently accepted balloon-borne analysis techniques for the detection of stratospheric gravity waves.

The SARS-CoV2 pandemic has highlighted the importance of efficient and effective methods for identification of therapeutic drugs, and in particular has laid bare the need for methods that allow exploration of the full diversity of synthesizable small molecules. While classical high-throughput screening methods may consider up to millions of molecules, virtual screening methods hold the promise of enabling appraisal of billions of candidate molecules, thus expanding the search space while concurrently reducing costs and speeding discovery. Here, we describe a new screening pipeline, called drugsniffer, that is capable of rapidly exploring drug candidates from a library of billions of molecules, and is designed to support distributed computation on cluster and cloud resources. As an example of performance, our pipeline required ∼40,000 total compute hours to screen for potential drugs targeting three SARS-CoV2 proteins among a library of ∼3.7 billion candidate molecules.

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The 21 August 2017 total solar eclipse was the first total eclipse on the mainland of the United States since 1979. The Atmospheric Responses of 2017 Total Solar Eclipse (ARTSE2017) project was created to observe the response of the atmosphere to the shadow of the moon. During the eclipse, 10 sites launched radiosondes in a very rapid, serial weather balloon deployment along the totality path, and high-resolution mesoscale meteorological network (mesonet) data were collected in three states. Here, we focus on the results obtained from the radiosonde field campaign in Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and the New York State Mesonet (NYSM). In Fort Laramie, 36 people from 13 institutions flew 19 radiosondes and launched 5 large balloons carrying video payloads before, during, and after the eclipse while continuously recording surface weather data. Preliminary analysis of the radiosonde data provided inconclusive evidence of eclipse-driven gravity waves but showed that the short duration of darkness during totality was enough to alter boundary layer (BL) height, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, substantially. The statewide impact of the partial eclipse in New York State (NYS) was observed for solar radiation, surface temperature, surface wind, and surface-layer lapse rate using NYSM data. Importantly, the radiosonde and mesonet data collected during the eclipse will be available for public access. ARTSE2017 also focused on education, including students from all demographics (undergraduate and K–12) and the general public. Finally, we summarize goals accomplished from leveraging resources for education, research, and workforce development on undergraduate students from a variety of fields.

Recordings of animal sounds enable a wide range of observational inquiries into animal communication, behavior, and diversity. Automated labeling of sound events in such recordings can improve both throughput and reproducibility of analysis. Here, we describe our software package for labeling sound elements in recordings of animal sounds and demonstrate its utility on record- ings of beetle courtships and whale songs. The software, DISCO, computes sensible confidence estimates and produces labels with high precision and accuracy. In addition to the core labeling software, it provides a simple tool for labeling training data, and a visual system for analysis of resulting labels. DISCO is open-source and easy to install, it works with standard file formats, and it presents a low barrier of entry to use.