A leader in Texas water management

Latest Zhang project will help Texas improve water supply reliability, reduce flood damages

2023-12-01

(Press-News.org) A University of Texas at Arlington civil engineer is leading a statewide initiative to use more accurate forecasting to guide reservoir storage and release to improve water supply reliability and reduce flood damages.

Yu Zhang, a UT Arlington associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, is heading a new project—“Advancing Forecast-Informed Drought Planning for the West Gulf Region Through Integration of Climate Forecasts and Predictions of Reservoir Water Balance Predictions”—funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate Program Office. UTA received nearly $560,000 of the $719,000 grant.

Zhang is helping the state of Texas adopt what’s called Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO), in collaboration with Texas Water Development, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). Successful implementation of FIRO, according to Zhang, is predicated on accurate forecasts of reservoir inflow across a range of lead times, including at seasonal time scales of three to nine months.

“We want to introduce forecasts from dynamic climate models to complement and expand current climatology-based ensemble forecasts,” Zhang said. “We will develop forecasts for water withdrawals, diversions and lake evaporation to better represent weather/climate varying water demand.”

Zhang said the results of the research should inform the development of FIRO strategies and implementation of drought measures. The project also contains a dimension of informing USBR on its diversion project that supplies water to New Mexico and Texas. The ultimate aim is to help address water supply challenges in those two states.

Zhang is a leader in Texas in water management projects and developing better weather forecasting models. He is working with the General Land Office to develop a sediment management plan for the state, which includes assessing the amount of sediment transported from Texas rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. He also is working on a NASA-funded project to help forecasters better predict extreme weather events using a variety of existing NASA data sources.

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Public gardens contribute to invasives problem

2023-12-01

Botanist Denis Conover does not have to go far to study the growing problem of invasive plants. During an autumn stroll outside his office at the University of Cincinnati, the biology professor pointed out numerous examples of nonnative, invasive species in campus landscaping. “This is winged euonymus, otherwise known as burning bush. And here is Chinese silver grass. It’s a popular ornamental, but the seeds are dispersed by the wind,” he said. And there were many others: English ivy, wintercreeper, Callery pear. For his latest study published in the journal Ecological Restoration, he and his students examined the impact ...

Rett patients receive a new gene therapy treatment at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine

2023-12-01

Texas Children’s Hospital, an internationally-recognized, top-ranked children’s hospital and pediatric research center affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine, is the first to deliver a novel gene therapy to treat Rett syndrome in pediatric patients. Two female patients with Rett syndrome were the first children worldwide to receive this promising treatment. This exciting milestone is part of an ongoing first-in-human Phase I/II trial of a new investigational gene therapy, NGN-401, conducted by Neurogene Inc., a clinical-stage company founded to bring life-changing genetic medicines to patients ...

A color-based sensor to emulate skin's sensitivity

2023-12-01

Robotics researchers have already made great strides in developing sensors that can perceive changes in position, pressure, and temperature – all of which are important for technologies like wearable devices and human-robot interfaces. But a hallmark of human perception is the ability to sense multiple stimuli at once, and this is something that robotics has struggled to achieve. Now, Jamie Paik and colleagues in the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) in EPFL’s School of Engineering have developed a sensor that can perceive combinations of bending, stretching, compression, and temperature changes, all using a robust system that boils down ...

SFU researchers sound out Canadian military’s plan to combat ocean noise pollution

2023-12-01

new study from Simon Fraser University researchers examines the Canadian military’s efforts to reduce the impacts of underwater noise pollution on species during training exercises in the Pacific Ocean but caveat that more can still be done. The paper, published today in Marine Policy, takes aim at a report commissioned by the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) to reduce the effects of noise pollution from military small-arms munitions training within “Whiskey Hotel”, a 330-square-kilometre ...

Coverage of Bruce Willis’ frontotemporal degeneration shows media misconstrues the disease

2023-12-01

A new paper in Innovation in Aging, published by Oxford University Press, shows that a great deal of media coverage of the actor Bruce Willis’ condition, frontotemporal degeneration, was inaccurate, revealing the public’s limited knowledge of the disease. In 2022, Willis’ family released a statement saying that he had been diagnosed with aphasia, an acquired language impairment, and would retire from acting. Ten months later, the family issued another statement indicating doctors had diagnosed Willis with a more specific condition, frontotemporal degeneration. ...

Potential pitfalls when using the Cre-LoxP system in cancer research

2023-12-01

“One limitation [of Cre-LoxP], the focus of this editorial, is the potential loss of fidelity of Cre recombinase expression especially in the context of modeling cancer in mice.” BUFFALO, NY- December 1, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on November 14, 2023, entitled, “Be mindful of potential pitfalls when using the Cre-LoxP system in cancer research.” In this new editorial, researchers Piotr Czarnota and Jaroslaw Cisowski from Jagiellonian University discuss Cre-LoxP — a widely used system to conditionally modify gene expression in mouse models of cancer and other diseases. “It ...

CHOP researchers discover deep structural biology connections that help improve CAR therapy

2023-12-01

Philadelphia, December 1, 2023 – Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) have opened up an exciting new field of therapeutic advancements for rare and difficult-to-treat cancers, as they have the ability to deliver targeted therapies that can kill tumor cells. Peptide-centric CARs (PC-CARs) rely on specific peptide “barcodes,” which are derived from proteins within the cell created by potentially cancer-causing oncogenes, are designed to find and target cancer cells. These “barcodes” are displayed by human leukocyte antigens (HLAs), which help the immune system distinguish its own proteins from foreign invaders, ...

Can preeclampsia be prevented?

2023-12-01

NEWS RELEASE EMBARGOED UNTIL FRI, DEC. 1 -- 2:00 P.M. EASTERN Contact Colleen McDonald - Sr. Consultant, Earned Media 414.801.3146 | cmcdonald@mcw.edu Milwaukee, Wis. – Dec. 1, 2023 – Preeclampsia is a mysterious condition that occurs in about one of 10 pregnancies without any early warning signs. After 20 weeks or more of normal blood pressure during the pregnancy, patients with preeclampsia will begin to experience elevated blood pressure and may also have increased levels of protein in their urine due to hypertension reducing the filtering power of the kidneys. Prolonged hypertension due ...

Meditation training can support wellbeing in older adults

2023-12-01

Following an 18-month meditation programme can improve the wellbeing of older adults, finds a new randomised controlled trial by an international team co-led by UCL. The findings, published in PLOS ONE, show that meditation can improve people’s awareness, connection to others, and insight. While the meditation training did not confer significant benefits on two commonly used measures of psychological wellbeing and quality of life, the researchers say their findings may reveal limitations in existing methods of tracking wellbeing. Lead author Marco Schlosser (UCL Psychiatry and University of Geneva) said: “As the global population ...

Research shows human behavior guided by fast changes in dopamine levels

2023-12-01

What happens in the human brain when we learn from positive and negative experiences? To help answer that question and better understand decision-making and human behavior, scientists are studying dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain that serves as a chemical messenger, facilitating communication between nerve cells in the brain and the body. It is involved in functions such as movement, cognition and learning. While dopamine is most known for its association with positive emotions, scientists are also exploring ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Scientific community urges greater action against the silent rise of liver diseases

Tiny but mighty: sophisticated next-gen transistors hold great promise

World's first practical surface-emitting laser for optical fiber communications developed: advancing miniaturization, energy efficiency, and cost reduction of light sources