Search for: All records

Understanding patterns and mechanisms underlying local adaptation is becoming increasingly important for species conservation amid anthropogenically driven environmental change. Alpine systems are experiencing particularly intense pressure from environmental change resulting from increased rates of warming and corresponding loss of snow and ice. We integrate morphological and genetic analyses to identify traits important for local adaptation in one of the highest elevation breeding birds in North America, the Sierra Nevada Gray-crowned Rosy Finch. We performed an in-depth analysis of how traits with known links to thermoregulation in birds such as wing length, bill size, and feather microstructure vary between two populations at sites with contrasting climate and environmental conditions. We identified loci underlying these traits using a genome-wide association study and further examined regions of the genome related to altitude adaptation and cold tolerance using F ST outlier tests. Together, these results indicate that temperature, food availability, and alpine landscape features may impose multifaceted and potentially conflicting selective pressures on morphological traits important to adaptation in alpine birds. Overall, this work represents one of the first in-depth analyses of the genetic basis of adaptation in an alpine specialist songbird. 

The Quantum for All project is designed to expand Quantum Information Science education in precollege education. The professional development model includes an opportunity for teachers to learn QIS and then teach a summer camp. In this presentation, we will examine growth in student knowledge and confidence in the QIS, as well as attitudes the students have around the topics and careers in QIS. We will also correlate these findings with teacher content knowledge and confidence for the various topics, since some topics were initially unfamiliar to the teachers. 

The Quantum for All project has developed instructional materials and a professional development program to expand Quantum Information Science education in precollege education. In this paper, we discuss the background for Quantum Science education in the United States. We then discuss the design of the professional development plan and the development of the materials by the Leadership Team, and the workshops for teachers to learn and utilize this content. We will examine growth in teacher knowledge and confidence and examine the variation of these things across content domains as represented by the instructional modules. 

The current study presents the transition of large amplitude oscillations to a fixed hovering point in the context of Bio-inspired flapping robots (BIFRs). The experimental arrangement allows two degrees of freedom for the BIFRs under study: body pitching and translation. The primary objective of this investigation is to compare the flight mechanics characteristics of two almost-identical BIFR configurations: a two-winged configuration and a four-winged one that exploits wing-wing interaction for aerodynamic effects. A motion capture system is utilized to track the two degrees of freedom of each BIFR. The study reveals that the four-winged BIFR exhibits passive transition of large amplitude oscillations to a fixed point beyond a certain frequency, whereas no such transition was observed for the two-winged BIFR at any frequency within the considered range. Realizing that the main difference between the two systems lies within the wing-wing interaction, this study thus underscores the significance of the wing-wing interaction for the transitional response upon the four-winged model. This response might be due to a phenomenon called vibrational stabilization. From the study, it can be implied that wing-wing interaction promotes the transitional response beyond a critical frequency.