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Immersive 360° media is changing how educators engage learners in experiences such as virtual field trips, lab simulations, and career-exploration experiences, yet accessibility for learners with disabilities is often an afterthought. This article describes accessibility features built into SeekBeak, a cloudbased platform for authoring interactive 360° content. It shows how they are used in two-year college technician education and K-12 career exploration. These features include keyboard navigation across the full interface, hotspot shortcut keys, joystick and adaptive-controller input, and a tap-and-hold gesture for touch devices. A text viewer that presents hotspot content as structured text that works well with screen readers. The work draws on immersive career-exploration tours produced by Be More Colorful, a Resource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies (RECITE) industry partner, that are deployed across more than 25 states. We map each feature to WCAG and UDL principles. 

Abstract The development of quantum technology is facing substantial scientific and technological challenges. More importantly, there are as-yet-unknown aspects and applications of quantum technology to be uncovered. There is thus global acknowledgement by stakeholder communities and governments alike that the ongoing advancement of quantum science and technology ought to be an international pursuit in which the strain between competition and cooperation is balanced through collaboration. It is in this spirit of ‘coopetition’ that this article seeks to give a cross-sectional view of the state of Quantum 2.0 technology in the USA, Europe and Japan, by providing the predictions of a large number of experts concerning progress in quantum technology over the next two decades. 

Abstract Tundra fires can dramatically influence plant species cover and abundance, organic layer depth, and the magnitude of seasonal permafrost thaw. However, knowledge of the impact of wildfire on short and long-term interactions between vegetation and permafrost thaw remains limited. Here, we evaluate the spatial and temporal interactions between wildfire disturbance and surface subsidence on a remotely derived proxy for species diversity (i.e. spectral diversity (SD)) of 16 fire scars within the Izaviknek and Kingaglia uplands of southwestern Alaska’s Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta with burn dates between 1971 and 2015. SD was calculated as the sum of squared spectral variance of pixel spectra from the mean spectra, within a plant community (analogous to alpha diversity), between plant communities (beta diversity), and across terrain composed of a mosaic of communities (gamma diversity). Surface subsidence was calculated from spaceborne interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from Sentinel-1. Results indicate the burn scars had consistently lower total gamma diversity and greater rates of subsidence than paired unburned reference areas, where both gamma diversity (R²= 0.74,p< 0.001) and relative subsidence (R²= 0.86,p< 0.001) decreased with the time since burn. Compared to older burn scars, young scars had higher gamma spectral diversities (0.013 and 0.005) and greater subsidence rates (−0.097 cm day⁻¹and −0.053 cm day⁻¹). Communities subsiding at higher rates had higher gamma diversities (R²= 0.81,p< 0.001). Results indicate that rates of post-fire vegetation succession are amplified by the thickening of active layers and surface subsidence that increases both spectral and species diversity over 15 years following fire. These results support the idea that SD may be used as a remotely sensed analog of species diversity, used to advance knowledge of the trajectories of plant community change in response to interacting arctic disturbance regimes. 

We present a theory for pitch, a matrix property that is linked to the coupling of rotational and translational motion of rigid bodies at low Reynolds numbers. The pitch matrix is a geometric property of objects in contact with a surrounding fluid, and it can be decomposed into three principal axes of pitch and their associated moments of pitch. The moments of pitch predict the translational motion in a direction parallel to each pitch axis when the object is rotated around that axis and can be used to explain translational drift, particularly for rotating helices. We also provide a symmetrized boundary element model for blocks of the resistance tensor, allowing calculation of the pitch matrix for arbitrary rigid bodies. We analyze a range of chiral objects, including chiral molecules and helices. Chiral objects with a Cn symmetry axis with n > 2 show additional symmetries in their pitch matrices. We also show that some achiral objects have non-vanishing pitch matrices, and we use this result to explain recent observations of achiral microswimmers. We also discuss the small but non-zero pitch of Lord Kelvin’s isotropic helicoid. 

Abstract In summer 2022 the Chukchi Sea exhibited the highest concentrations of the toxin producing dinoflagellateAlexandrium catenellaever recorded in the Arctic, documented by two back‐to‐back cruises. Here, we use the shipboard hydrographic and velocity data, together with ocean reanalysis fields, to investigate the physical factors that helped dictate the initiation and evolution of the bloom. High concentrations ofAlexandrium catenellavegetative cells were first detected west of St. Lawrence Island, within Bering Summer Water, and were subsequently advected poleward. A backward trajectory calculation indicates that the water transporting the bloom originated from the Gulf of Anadyr, then passed through Anadyr Strait and the US side of Bering Strait, reaching 71°N roughly a month and a half later. A strong southerly wind event diverted part of the bloom into Kotzebue Sound and caused it to mix with warmer Alaskan Coastal Water, further promoting cell growth. We also investigate the possibility that part of the bloom was generated locally in the Ledyard Bay region due to germination from the large cyst bed there, as was observed in summer 2018. While such local germination may have occurred in early August, as was the case in 2018, considerably colder near‐surface temperatures in 2022 would have slowed vegetative cell growth relative to conditions in 2018. Using mooring data from the Bering Strait we demonstrate that the heat flux through the strait largely dictates the timing of cyst germination in the Ledyard Bay region, and also shapes subsequent growth and accumulation of vegetative cells there.