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Episodes of high bromine levels and surface ozone depletion in the springtime Arctic are simulated by an online air-quality model, GEM-AQ, with gas-phase and heterogeneous reactions of inorganic bromine species and a simple scheme of air-snowpack chemical interactions implemented for this study. Snowpack on sea ice is assumed to be the only source of bromine to the atmosphere and to be capable of converting relatively stable bromine species to photolabile Br2 via air-snowpack interactions. A set of sensitivity model runs are performed for April 2001 at a horizontal resolution of approximately 100 km×100 km in the Arctic, to provide insights into the effects of temperature and the age (first-year, FY, versus multi-year, MY) of sea ice on the release of reactive bromine to the atmosphere. The model simulations capture much of the temporal variations in surface ozone mixing ratios as observed at stations in the high Arctic and the synoptic-scale evolution of areas with enhanced BrO column amount ("BrO clouds") as estimated from satellite observations. The simulated "BrO clouds" are in modestly better agreement with the satellite measurements when the FY sea ice is assumed to be more efficient at releasing reactive bromine to the atmosphere than on the MY sea ice. Surface ozone data from coastal stations used in this study are not sufficient to evaluate unambiguously the difference between the FY sea ice and the MY sea ice as a source of bromine. The results strongly suggest that reactive bromine is released ubiquitously from the snow on the sea ice during the Arctic spring while the timing and location of the bromine release are largely controlled by meteorological factors. It appears that a rapid advection and an enhanced turbulent diffusion associated with strong boundary-layer winds drive transport and dispersion of ozone to the near-surface air over the sea ice, increasing the oxidation rate of bromide (Br−) in the surface snow. Also, if indeed the surface snowpack does supply most of the reactive bromine in the Arctic boundary layer, it appears to be capable of releasing reactive bromine at temperatures as high as −10 °C, particularly on the sea ice in the central and eastern Arctic Ocean. Dynamically-induced BrO column variability in the lowermost stratosphere appears to interfere with the use of satellite BrO column measurements for interpreting BrO variability in the lower troposphere but probably not to the extent of totally obscuring "BrO clouds" that originate from the surface snow/ice source of bromine in the high Arctic. A budget analysis of the simulated air-surface exchange of bromine compounds suggests that a "bromine explosion" occurs in the interstitial air of the snowpack and/or is accelerated by heterogeneous reactions on the surface of wind-blown snow in ambient air, both of which are not represented explicitly in our simple model but could have been approximated by a parameter adjustment for the yield of Br2 from the trigger.

We investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in the upper troposphere through numerical simulations and comparison with observations from a space-based instrument. To perform the simulations, we used the Global Environmental Multiscale Air Quality model (GEM-AQ), which is based on the three-dimensional global multiscale model developed by the Meteorological Service of Canada for operational weather forecasting. The model was run for the period 2004–2006 on a 1.5°×1.5° global grid with 28 hybrid vertical levels from the surface up to 10 hPa. Objective analysis data from the Canadian Meteorological Centre were used to update the meteorological fields every 24 h. Fire emission fluxes of gas species were generated by using year-specific inventories of carbon emissions with 8-day temporal resolution from the Global Fire Emission Database (GFED) version 2. The model output is compared with HCN profiles measured by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) instrument onboard the Canadian SCISAT-1 satellite. High values of up to a few ppbv are observed in the tropics in the Southern Hemisphere; the enhancement in HCN volume mixing ratios in the upper troposphere is most prominent in October. Low upper-tropospheric mixing ratios of less than 100 pptv are mostly recorded at middle and high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere in May–July. Mixing ratios in Northern Hemisphere peak in the boreal summer. The amplitude of the seasonal variation is less pronounced than in the Southern Hemisphere. The comparison with the satellite data shows that in the upper troposphere GEM-AQ performs well globally for all seasons, except at northern high and middle latitudes in summer, where the model has a large negative bias, and in the tropics in winter and spring, where it exhibits large positive bias. This may reflect inaccurate emissions or possible inaccuracies in the emission profile. The model is able to explain most of the observed variability in the upper troposphere HCN field, including the interannual variations in the observed mixing ratio. A complementary comparison with daily total columns of HCN from two middle latitude ground-based stations in Northern Japan for the same simulation period shows that the model captures the observed seasonal variation and also points to an underestimation of model emissions in the Northern Hemisphere in the summer. The estimated average global emission equals 1.3 Tg N yr−1. The average atmospheric burden is 0.53 Tg N, and the corresponding lifetime is 4.9 months.

Tropospheric chemistry and air quality processes were implemented on-line in the Global Environmental Multiscale weather prediction model. The integrated model, GEM-AQ, was developed as a platform to investigate chemical weather at scales from global to urban. The current chemical mechanism is comprised of 50 gas-phase species, 116 chemical and 19 photolysis reactions, and is complemented by a sectional aerosol module with 5 aerosols types. All tracers are advected using the semi-Lagrangian scheme native to GEM. The vertical transport includes parameterized subgrid-scale turbulence and large scale deep convection. Dry deposition is included as a flux boundary condition in the vertical diffusion equation. Wet deposition of gas-phase species is treated in a simplified way, and only below-cloud scavenging is considered. The emissions used include yearly-averaged anthropogenic, and monthly-averaged biogenic, ocean, soil, and biomass burning emission fluxes, as well as NOx from lightning. In order to evaluate the ability to simulate seasonal variations and regional distributions of trace gases such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, the model was run for a period of five years (2001–2005) on a global uniform 1.5°×1.5° horizontal resolution domain and 28 hybrid levels extending up to 10 hPa. Model results were compared with observations from satellites, aircraft measurement campaigns and balloon sondes. We find that GEM-AQ is able to capture the spatial details of the chemical fields in the middle and lower troposphere. The modelled ozone consistently shows good agreement with observations, except over tropical oceans. The comparison of carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide with satellite measurements emphasizes the need for more accurate, year-specific emissions fluxes for biomass burning and anthropogenic sources. Other species also compare well with available observations.

Global transports and budgets of three PCBs were investigated with a 3-D dynamic model for semi-volatile persistent organic pollutants – GEM/POPs. Dominant pathways were identified for PCB transports in the atmosphere with a transport flux peaking below 8 km for gaseous and 14 km for particulate PCB28, and peaking below 4 km for gaseous and 6 km for particulate PCB180. The inter-continental transports of PCBs in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) are dominated in the zonal direction with their route changes regulated seasonally by the variation of westerly jet. The transport pathways from Europe and North Atlantic contributed the most PCBs to the Arctic. Inter-hemispheric transports of PCBs originated from the regions of Europe, Asia and North America in three different flow-paths, accompanying with easterly jet, Asian monsoon winds and trade winds. PCBs from the Southern Hemisphere (SH) could also be exported into the NH. According to the PCB emissions of year 2000, Europe, North America and Asia are the three largest sources of the three PCBs, contributing to the global background concentrations in the atmosphere, soil and water. Globally, PCB28 in soil and water has become a comparable source to the anthropogenic emissions while heavier PCBs such as PCB153 and 180 are still transporting into soil and water. For all three congeners, particulate PCBs are concentrated in the higher levels than gaseous PCBs. More than half of the particulate PCB28 could reach up to the stratosphere, while most of the heavier counter-parts (PCB153 and PCB180) are stored in the troposphere including boundary layer with more than 99% gaseous PCB180 below 6 km.

Turbulence and attenuation are signal degrading factors that can severely hinder free-space and underwater OAM optical pattern demultiplexing. A variety of state-of-the-art convolutional neural network architectures are explored to identify which, if any, provide optimal performance under these non-ideal environmental conditions. Hyperparameter searches are performed on the architectures to ensure that near-ideal settings are used for training. Architectures are compared in various scenarios and the best performing, with their settings, are provided. We show that from the current state-of-the-art architectures, DenseNet outperforms all others when memory is not a constraint. When memory footprint is a factor, ShuffleNet is shown to performed the best.

The use of easily accessible peripheral samples, such as blood or saliva, to investigate neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders is well-established in genetic and epigenetic research, but the pathological implications of such biomarkers are not easily discerned. To better understand the relationship between peripheral blood- and brain-based epigenetic activity, we conducted a pilot study on captive baboons (Papio hamadryas) to investigate correlations between miRNA expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and 14 different cortical and subcortical brain regions, represented by two study groups comprised of 4 and 6 animals. Using next-generation sequencing, we identified 362 miRNAs expressed at ≥ 10 read counts in 80% or more of the brain samples analyzed. Nominally significant pairwise correlations (one-sided P < 0.05) between peripheral blood and mean brain expression levels of individual miRNAs were observed for 39 and 44 miRNAs in each group. When miRNA expression levels were averaged for tissue type across animals within the groups, Spearman’s rank correlations between PBMCs and the brain regions are all highly significant (rs = 0.47–0.57; P < 2.2 × 10–16), although pairwise correlations among the brain regions are markedly stronger (rs = 0.86–0.99). Principal component analysis revealed differentiation in miRNA expression between peripheral blood and the brain regions for the first component (accounting for ∼75% of variance). Linear mixed effects modeling attributed most of the variance in expression to differences between miRNAs (>70%), with non-significant 7.5% and 13.1% assigned to differences between blood and brain-based samples in the two study groups. Hierarchical UPGMA clustering revealed a major co-expression branch in both study groups, comprised of miRNAs globally upregulated in blood relative to the brain samples, exhibiting an enrichment of miRNAs expressed in immune cells (CD14+, CD15+, CD19+, CD3+, and CD56 + leukocytes) among the top blood-brain correlates, with the gene MYC, encoding a master transcription factor that regulates angiogenesis and neural stem cell activation, representing the most prevalent miRNA target. Although some differentiation was observed between tissue types, these preliminary findings reveal wider correlated patterns between blood- and brain-expressed miRNAs, suggesting the potential utility of blood-based miRNA profiling for investigating by proxy certain miRNA activity in the brain, with implications for neuroinflammatory and c-Myc-mediated processes.