Oak Ridge National Laboratory

About: Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a facility organization based out in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Neutron & Ion. The organization has 31868 authors who have published 73724 publications receiving 2633689 citations. The organization is also known as: ORNL.

Parameterization improvements and functional and structural advances in version 4 of the Community Land Model

Abstract: [1] The Community Land Model is the land component of the Community Climate System Model. Here, we describe a broad set of model improvements and additions that have been provided through the CLM development community to create CLM4. The model is extended with a carbon-nitrogen (CN) biogeochemical model that is prognostic with respect to vegetation, litter, and soil carbon and nitrogen states and vegetation phenology. An urban canyon model is added and a transient land cover and land use change (LCLUC) capability, including wood harvest, is introduced, enabling study of historic and future LCLUC on energy, water, momentum, carbon, and nitrogen fluxes. The hydrology scheme is modified with a revised numerical solution of the Richards equation and a revised ground evaporation parameterization that accounts for litter and within-canopy stability. The new snow model incorporates the SNow and Ice Aerosol Radiation model (SNICAR) - which includes aerosol deposition, grain-size dependent snow aging, and vertically-resolved snowpack heating – as well as new snow cover and snow burial fraction parameterizations. The thermal and hydrologic properties of organic soil are accounted for and the ground column is extended to ∼50-m depth. Several other minor modifications to the land surface types dataset, grass and crop optical properties, surface layer thickness, roughness length and displacement height, and the disposition of snow-capped runoff are also incorporated. The new model exhibits higher snow cover, cooler soil temperatures in organic-rich soils, greater global river discharge, and lower albedos over forests and grasslands, all of which are improvements compared to CLM3.5. When CLM4 is run with CN, the mean biogeophysical simulation is degraded because the vegetation structure is prognostic rather than prescribed, though running in this mode also allows more complex terrestrial interactions with climate and climate change.

Cellular and dynamic aspects of oocyte growth in teleosts

Abstract: SYNOPSIS. Four principal stages of oocyte growth are recognized among teleosts. During gonadotropin-independent primary growth, multiple nucleoli form as well as a Balbiani body which eventually disperses throughout the ooplasm. The first gonadotropin-dependent stage involves the formation of yolk vesicles, the precursors to the cortical alveoli. True vitellogenesis follows during which vitellogenin is sequestered from the maternal blood and packaged into yolk granules or spheres. The latter generally fuse centripetally at some time during oocyte growth to give a continuous fluid phase surrounded by a peripheral layer of cytoplasm containing the cortical alveoli. Maturation represents the final stage and is accompanied in many teleosts by water uptake; among marine teleosts with pelagic eggs, most of the final egg volume may be achieved by this process. Ovaries may be synchronous, asynchronous, or group-synchronous. Among the latter, a clutch of oocytes may be recruited from an asynchronous population of earlier stages into any of the subsequent stages. In teleosts which spawn repeatedly, recruitment of new clutches can usually be associated with the transition of a previously recruited clutch from one stage to the next. Teleosts thus offer examples of virtually every conceivable type of ovarian physiology and provide a wealth of experimental material for exploring the cellular and hormonal mechanisms which regulate oocyte recruitment and growth throughout ovarian recrudescence.