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Canopy‐snow unloading is the complex physical process of snow unloading from the canopy through meltwater drip, sublimation to the atmosphere, or solid snow unloading to the snowpack below. This process is difficult to parameterize due to limited observations. Time‐lapse photographs of snow in the canopy were characterized by citizen scientists to create a data set of snow interception observations at multiple locations across the western United States. This novel interception data set was used to evaluate three snow unloading parameterizations in the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) modular hydrologic modeling framework. SUMMA was modified to include a third snow unloading parameterization, termed Wind‐Temperature (Roesch et al., 2001, https://doi.org/10.1007/s003820100153), which includes wind‐dependent and temperature‐dependent unloading functions. It was compared to a meltwater drip unloading parameterization, termed Melt (Andreadis et al., 2009, https://doi.org/10.1029/2008wr007042), and a time‐dependent unloading parameterization, termed Exponential‐Decay (Hedstrom & Pomeroy, 1998, https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1085(199808/09)12:10/11<1611::AID-HYP684>3.0.CO;2-4). Wind‐Temperature performed well without calibration across sites, specifically in cold climates, where wind dominates unloading and rime accretion is low. At rime prone sites, Wind‐Temperature should be calibrated to account for longer interception events with less sensitivity to wind, otherwise Melt can be used without calibration. The absence of model physics in Exponential‐Decay requires local calibration that can only be transferred to sites with similar unloading patterns. The choice of unloading parameterization can result in 20% difference in SWE on the ground below the canopy and 10% difference in estimated average winter canopy albedo. These novel observations shed light on processes that are often overlooked in hydrology. Plain Language Summary: Forests intercept snowfall and affect how much snow accumulates on the landscape. Canopy snow can unload by melting onto the snowpack below, sublimating back to the atmosphere, or by sluffing off and contributing to the ground's snowpack. It has been difficult to create and validate models for canopy‐snow unloading due to limited observations. However, time‐lapse photography can observe canopy‐snow unloading in remote areas. In this work, these were characterized by citizen scientists to create an observational data set of snow interception, which we used to evaluate the performance of three canopy‐snow unloading models. Models that unloaded snow as a function of wind and temperature performed better than time‐based estimates. How a model unloads snow impacts the model's estimate of water available for runoff because it changes how much intercepted snow is modeled as falling to the ground versus lost back to the atmosphere. Additionally, different models of how long snow stays in the canopy impact the models' estimates of how much radiation was reflected back to the atmosphere. This work shows that citizen scientists can substantially contribute to science and produce a novel data set that can be used to investigate processes often overlooked in hydrology. Key Points: Remote time‐lapse cameras and citizen science shed light on forest‐snow interception processes that are often overlookedSite specific interception patterns, such as wind dominated unloading and riming, impact the transferability of unloading parameterizationsThe choice of unloading scheme impacts the canopy albedo feedback, and the partitioning of snow on the ground versus canopy sublimation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface meteorological analyses are an essential input (termed "forcing") for hydrologic modeling. This study investigated the sensitivity of different hydrologic model configurations to temporal variations of seven forcing variables (precipitation rate, air temperature, longwave radiation, specific humidity, shortwave radiation, wind speed, and air pressure). Specifically, the effects of temporally aggregating hourly forcings to hourly daily average forcings were examined. The analysis was based on 14 hydrological outputs from the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) model for the 671 Catchment Attributes and Meteorology for Large-Sample Studies (CAMELS) basins across the contiguous United States (CONUS). Results demonstrated that the hydrologic model sensitivity to temporally aggregating the forcing inputs varies across model output variables and model locations. We used Latin hypercube sampling to sample model parameters from eight combinations of three influential model physics choices (three model decisions with two options for each decision, i.e., eight model configurations). Results showed that the choice of model physics can change the relative influence of forcing on model outputs and the forcing importance may not be dependent on the parameter space. This allows for model output sensitivity to forcing aggregation to be tested prior to parameter calibration. More generally, this work provides a comprehensive analysis of the dependence of modeled outcomes on input forcing behavior, providing insight into the regional variability of forcing variable dominance on modeled outputs across CONUS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a clear need for a sexual orientation measure that can both conceptually encompass sexual orientation diversity and be accessible to individuals with normative identities. Two novel scales have recently been introduced into the literature (Sexual-Romantic and Gendered Sexuality) and have been found to better capture the experiences of sexual and gender minority individuals. The present study investigated the face validity ratings of heterosexual cisgender individuals to these two new scales as well as the Kinsey Scale. Participants completed all three scales and assessed their face validity by rating how well each captured their sexuality. Participants were 791 U.S. residents of the United States (558 women, 233 men). Face validity ratings were analyzed with a 2 (Gender) X 3 (Scale) mixed ANOVA. Although face validity scores were high for all scales, a main effect for scale was found. Heterosexual cisgender participants rated the Sexual-Romantic Scale as a significantly more valid measure of their sexuality than either the Kinsey scale or the Gendered Sexuality scale (which did not differ from each other). Because past research has established that sexual and gender minority individuals prefer these two newer scales over Kinsey, the Sexual-Romantic and Gendered Sexuality scales offer researchers options for valid measures appropriate for use regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity of the rater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of species richness often correlate strongly with measures of energy. The more individuals hypothesis (MIH) proposes that this relationship is facilitated by greater resources supporting larger populations, which are less likely to become extinct. Hence, the MIH predicts that community abundance and species richness will be positively related. Recently, , Journal of Animal Ecology, , 358-365) documented a decoupling of community abundance and species richness in lizard communities in south-west United States, such that richer communities did not contain more individuals. They predicted, as a consequence of the mechanisms driving the decoupling, a more even distribution of species abundances in species-rich communities, evidenced by a positive relationship between species evenness and species richness. We found a similar decoupling of the relationship between abundance and species richness for lizard communities in semi-arid south-eastern Australia. However, we note that a positive relationship between evenness and richness is expected because of the nature of the indices used. We illustrate this mathematically and empirically using data from both sets of lizard communities. When we used a measure of evenness, which is robust to species richness, there was no relationship between evenness and richness in either data set. For lizard communities in both Australia and the United States, species dominance decreased as species richness increased. Further, with the iterative removal of the first, second and third most dominant species from each community, the relationship between abundance and species richness became increasingly more positive. Our data support the contention that species richness in lizard communities is not directly related to the number of individuals an environment can support. We propose an alternative hypothesis regarding how the decoupling of abundance and richness is accommodated ; namely, an inverse relationship between species dominance and species richness, possibly because of ecological release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1991 Persian Gulf War is a “most likely” case for several crisis decision-making models. It commanded presidential attention, arose when bureaucrats were fighting over post-Cold War budgets, and evoked the strong organizational cultures of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. We use this case to assess the contexts, decision stages, and issue areas in which alternative crisis models have the most explanatory power. We find that presidents are most powerful in agenda setting, choosing among options, crises, and high-politics issues. Bureaucratic politics diminishes in crises and best explains the behavior of mid-level careerists, the formulation of options, and the shaping of post-war budgets. Most striking, even in crises organizational cultures strongly shape tactical military decisions, choices among weapons systems, and the willingness of officials to risk their careers on behalf of their organizations' values. Overall, these findings argue for greater attention to the influence of organizational cultures in crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the relevance of the international relations articles published in the first 100 years of the Review for American foreign policy. We define a spectrum of ‘policy relevance’ and give a brief overview of the Review s changing relationship to American foreign policy as the journal, the profession, and the foreign policy process evolved over the last century. We then look at the Review's role in key periods in American foreign policy, focusing in particular on the example of the democratic peace literature. We conclude that although the content of the journal has moved away from early aspirations to near-term and direct policy relevance, the journal has evolved toward basic research that influences American foreign policies by affecting what scholars teach students, publish in policy journals, write in newspaper op-eds, say on the media, advise political leaders, and do when they are themselves in public office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building cyberinfrastructure for the reuse and reproducibility of large-scale hydrologic modeling studies requires overcoming a number of data management and software architecture challenges. The objective of this research is to advance the cyberinfrastructure needed to overcome some of these challenges to make such computational hydrologic studies easier to reuse and reproduce. We present novel cyberinfrastructure capable of integrating HydroShare (an online data repository), CyberGIS-Jupyter for Water and high performance computing (HPC) resources (computational environments), and the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) hydrologic modeling framework through its application programming interface for orchestrating model runs. The cyberinfrastructure is demonstrated for a complex computational modeling study on a contiguous United States dataset. We present and discuss key capabilities of the cyberinfrastructure including (1) containerization for portability across compute environments, (2) Globus for large data transfers, (3) a Jupyter gateway to HPC environments, and (4) Jupyter notebooks for capturing the modeling workflows. • Presents novel cyberinfrastructure for complex hydrologic modeling studies. • Focuses on the challenges introduced by computationally and data intensive studies. • Uses Globus for large data transfers between scientific cloud services. • Leverages containerization for model portability across compute environments. • Combines model APIs and Jupyter notebooks to document modeling workflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Past studies examining the health outcomes of diabetes mellitus (DM) patients found that social determinants of health disparities were associated with variabilities in health outcomes. However, improving access to healthcare, such as health insurance, should mitigate negative health outcomes. The aim of the study was to explore the association between four types of health insurance, namely, Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS), Medicare Managed Care (MC), Private FFS, and Private MC plans, and the health outcomes of DM patients, controlling for patients' social determinants of health., Methods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional archival record study to explore the relationships between types of health insurance and health outcomes of DM patients who were at least 65 years old, or the elderly. Data was drawn from the 2012 Maryland Clinical Public Use Data and received an exempt status from our Institutional Review Board. Elderly Maryland residents with chronic DM were included in the study, resulting in a sample size of 43,519 individuals. Predictor variables were four types of insurance and health outcome variables were length of hospital stay (LOS), 30-day readmission, and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Control variables included hospital characteristics, patient characteristics, and social determinants of health. Student's t-tests determined the statistical differences for the control variables between the types of insurance. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test the association between insurance plans and LOS, while logistic regression analyses were applied to test the association between insurance plans with 30-day readmission and ESRD. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05., Results: t-test results indicated minimal statistical differences between the health statuses of patients enrolled in different insurance plans. After factoring out the control variables, regression analyses indicated that Medicare FFS patients had the worst outcome for LOS, 30-day readmission, and ESRD rates. Although patients on Medicare MC plans had lower LOS, 30-day readmission, and ESRD rates compared to those on Medicare FFS, patients enrolled in Private MC plans had the lowest odds of a 30-day readmission and patients enrolled in Private FFS had the lowest odds of an ESRD., Conclusions: The data suggests that insurance plans were related to the health outcomes of elderly DM patients after considering their social determinants of health. Specifically, DM patients enrolled in managed care and private insurance plans had better health outcomes compared to those on Medicare FFS plans.