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Stable habitat connections that wildlife can safely traverse are essential to biodiversity conservation and healthy ecosystems. We developed high‐resolution landscape connectivity models to predict resistance to movement by a threatened wetland‐obligate amphibian, the four‐toed salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum), and identified priority management areas on the 13,000‐ha Department of Energy Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) from 2019 to 2022. We developed a resistance surface based on aerial light detection and ranging data (LiDAR), >30 years of field‐based mapping of forest, hydrologic, and geologic features, and contemporary population surveys, alongside derived predictors at <1‐m resolution. We then modeled predicted movement corridors using a circuit theory‐based modeling approach. We worked closely with land management and natural resources personnel to integrate ecological modeling with broader land use priorities, monetary costs, and feasibility. We identified important terrestrial and aquatic areas on ORR and simulated management scenarios to promote stable connections for four‐toed salamanders. This approach allowed us to narrow down a list of 438 potential habitat manipulation sites to 10 sites where open‐bottomed culverts and buffers could be implemented. This smaller‐scale restoration approach produced a similar increase in landscape connectivity while costing <20% of a larger‐scale approach based on barrier removal. We successfully identified feasible, cost‐effective management strategies that integrated knowledge from a variety of sources. We offer a strategy that permitted integration of wildlife management goals into infrastructure upgrades wherein wildlife was not an initial consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenges and competitions offer a compelling platform for engaging students and lifelong learners in new technologies and skill development. This special issue explores a sampling of challenge-based approaches to education and community outreach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To help teach object-oriented programming, students at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia created a self-paced, interactive program that associates code with visual cues to reinforce the concepts of inheritance and polymorphism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clemson University students designed an inexpensive sensor node and cloud computing infrastructure to collect real-time, localized solar irradiation data. This data can be used by consumers and utilities to predict the availability of solar-generated electricity and to manage its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students at Colorado State University built a virtual reality prototype for experimenting with cognitive control of connected household devices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An Ulster University student designed a website to help manage and deliver digital assets after death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cornell University students built a system that tracks a Ping-Pong ball in real time and keeps score. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/r7VtgzPPYy4 is a video demonstration in which Cornell students Pol Rosello (CS), Taylor Pritchard (ECE), and Frank Xie (ECE), describe and demonstrate their Table Tennis Tracker system. The system analyzes a video stream to track the location of the ball and to automatically keep score. Video provided by Dr. Bruce Land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students at the University of Brasília set out to build a better exercise bike. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/NCSb_sDJL7c is a video demonstration of the Bike-X simulator, a virtual cycling experience designed by engineering students at the University of Brasília's Gama Campus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A student team from NC State designed and built a prototype wireless network to monitor the milking and weighing of cows. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A student team from NC State has designed a collar to help control wild elephants that threaten human property and life in Africa and Asia. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/aQV_BkOL4vA is a video showing how students from North Carolina State University designed a collar to keep elephants away from farms and villages. In this field test in South Africa, a buzzing sound from the collar causes an elephant to turn away from the protected area. Video by Emma Besaw. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/ap1dSwCc6fY is a video in which editor Greg Byrd introduces the new Student Design Showcase column, dedicated to innovative, interesting student projects from computer science and engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the dynamics and thermodynamics associated with the climatologically extraordinary 17?19 March 2003 snowstorm that impacted the Colorado Front Range and some surrounding areas. In particular, several anomalously high local snowfall gradients are examined to improve our understanding of precipitation distributions associated with upslope flow, blocking, and cold-air damming. This unusual event was established as a result of a deep, slowly propagating closed low. The continental-scale closed low was characterized by persistent strong upslope (or easterly) flow that transported large amounts of moisture into the Colorado Rocky Mountain barrier. Warm easterly inflow well above freezing was blocked by the terrain, and this soon created a barrier jet-like feature over the urban corridor. Simultaneously, low-level cold advection from the north occurred over the east side of the barrier due to larger-scale processes, a situation not associated with a classic barrier jet. Nevertheless, subsequently the warm inflow was lifted over the cold dome. A fourth important process, diabatic cooling from melting hydrometeors, contributed strongly to the cold dome and generated a nearly isothermal low-level temperature profile. Both cooling mechanisms (advection and diabatic) were significant. Resulting temperatures just east of the foothills were at or very close to the freezing point as the heavy snow event occurred. Precipitation type and snowfall density were major contributors to the heterogeneity of the precipitation distribution. The roles of cold-air damming and barrier jet-like features as the driving forces in both the dynamics and thermodynamics of the storm along the urban corridor are described in detail using radar, surface, and high-resolution nested model data from the Pennsylvania State University?National Center for Atmospheric Research fifth-generation Mesoscale Model. The dammed cold air, centered over and just east of the foothills, was sloped laterally upwards towards the high terrain to the west, and topped by a stable, strongly sheared layer. This dynamic setup produced heavy precipitation away from the steep terrain gradient. Heavy precipitation rates played a major role in the development of a persistent rain/snow boundary well east on the plains. The northerly flow within the cold air also generated some local downslope flow, leading to areas of drastically reduced snowfall even when compared to that of lower elevations to the east. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students at North Carolina State University enhanced Polymer Braille's multiline braille display by adding new interactive features, additional rows of characters, and a mobile-device interface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From social networks to autonomous robotics, computing technologies improve our ability to quickly and effectively respond to emergencies. This article includes a sidebar entitled, "Supporting Disaster Volunteers from the Internet," by Dai Sato, which describes the development and use of large-scale online volunteer activities in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Miface project is using crowdsourcing to build an extensive database of semantically tagged facial expressions. Developed by students at NYU, the Web application uses IBM Watson's Tone Analyzer module to refine user labels for each expression. The end result will be to enrich the ability of computational agents to understand and generate meaningful nonverbal cues for human interaction. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/kvdlR41M28c is a video of the Miface project, which is using crowdsourcing to build an extensive database of semantically-tagged facial expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things must evolve into the Internet of Everything. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This new column provides a space for undergraduates in computer engineering and science to share their capstone project designs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]