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Changes in CO 2 concentration and climate are likely to alter disturbance regimes and competitive outcomes among tree species, which ultimately can result in shifts of species and biome boundaries. Such changes are already evident in high latitude forests, where waterlogged soils produced by topography, surficial geology, and permafrost are an important driver of forest dynamics. Predicting such effects under the novel conditions of the future requires models with direct and mechanistic links of abiotic drivers to growth and competition. We enhanced such a forest landscape model (PnET-Succession in LANDIS-II) to allow simulation of waterlogged soils and their effects on tree growth and competition. We formally tested how these modifications alter water balance on wetland and permafrost sites, and their effect on tree growth and competition. We applied the model to evaluate its promise for mechanistically simulating species range expansion and contraction under climate change across a latitudinal gradient in Siberian Russia. We found that higher emissions scenarios permitted range expansions that were quicker and allowed a greater diversity of invading species, especially at the highest latitudes, and that disturbance hastened range shifts by overcoming the natural inertia of established ecological communities. The primary driver of range advances to themore »north was altered hydrology related to thawing permafrost, followed by temperature effects on growth. Range contractions from the south (extirpations) were slower and less tied to emissions or latitude, and were driven by inability to compete with invaders, or disturbance. An important non-intuitive result was that some extant species were killed off by extreme cold events projected under climate change as greater weather extremes occurred over the next 30 years, and this had important effects on subsequent successional trajectories. The mechanistic linkages between climate and soil water dynamics in this forest landscape model produced tight links between climate inputs, physiology of vegetation, and soils at a monthly time step. The updated modeling system can produce high quality projections of climate impacts on forest species range shifts by accounting for the interacting effects of CO 2 concentration, climate (including longer growing seasons), seed dispersal, disturbance, and soil hydrologic properties.« less

The advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors need high power laser sources with excellent beam quality and low-noise behavior. We present a pre-stabilized laser system with 70 W of output power that was used in the third observing run of the advanced LIGO detectors. Furthermore, the prototype of a 140 W pre-stabilized laser system for future use in the LIGO observatories is described and characterized.

Amorphous tantala (${\mathrm{T}\mathrm{a}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_5$) thin films were deposited by reactive ion beam sputtering with simultaneous low energy assist${\mathrm{A}\mathrm{r}}^{+}$or${\mathrm{A}\mathrm{r}}^{+}/{\mathrm{O}}_2^{+}$bombardment. Under the conditions of the experiment, the as-deposited thin films are amorphous and stoichiometric. The refractive index and optical band gap of thin films remain unchanged by ion bombardment. Around 20% improvement in room temperature mechanical loss and 60% decrease in absorption loss are found in samples bombarded with 100-eV${\mathrm{A}\mathrm{r}}^{+}$. A detrimental influence from low energy${\mathrm{O}}_2^{+}$bombardment on absorption loss and mechanical loss is observed. Low energy${\mathrm{A}\mathrm{r}}^{+}$bombardment removes excess oxygen point defects, while${\mathrm{O}}_2^{+}$bombardment introduces defects into the tantala films.

Binary static analysis has seen a recent surge in interest, due to a rise in analysis targets for which no other method is appropriate, such as, embedded firmware. This has led to the proposal of a number of binary static analysis tools and techniques, handling various kinds of programs, and answering different research questions. While static analysis tools that focus on binaries inherit the undecidability of static analysis, they bring with them other challenges, particularly in dealing with the aliasing of code and data pointers. These tools may tackle these challenges in different ways, but unfortunately, there is currently no concrete means of comparing their effectiveness at solving these central, problem-independent aspects of static analysis. In this paper, we propose a new method for creating a dataset of real-world programs, paired with the ground truth for static analysis. Our approach involves the injection of synthetic “facts” into a set of open-source programs, consisting of new variables and their possible values. The analyses’ goal is then to evaluate the possible values of these facts at certain program points. As the facts are injected randomly within an arbitrarily-large set of programs, the kinds of data flows that can be measured are widely-variedmore »in size and complexity. We implemented this idea as a prototype system, AUTOFACTS, and used it to create a ground truth dataset of 29 programs, with various types and number of facts, resulting in a total of 2,088 binaries (with 72 versions for each program). To our knowledge, this is the first dataset aimed at the problem-independent evaluation of static analysis tools, and we contribute all code and the dataset itself to the community as open-source.« less