The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch (CRW) program has developed a daily global 5-km product suite based on satellite observations to monitor thermal stress on coral reefs. These products fulfill requests from coral reef managers and researchers for higher resolution products by taking advantage of new satellites, sensors and algorithms. Improvements of the 5-km products over CRW's heritage global 50-km products are derived from: (1) the higher resolution and greater data density of NOAA's next-generation operational daily global 5-km geo-polar blended sea surface temperature (SST) analysis; and (2) implementation of a new SST climatology derived from the Pathfinder SST climate data record. The new products increase near-shore coverage and now allow direct monitoring of 95% of coral reefs and significantly reduce data gaps caused by cloud cover. The 5-km product suite includes SST Anomaly, Coral Bleaching HotSpots, Degree Heating Weeks and Bleaching Alert Area, matching existing CRW products. When compared with the 50-km products and in situ bleaching observations for 2013-2014, the 5-km products identified known thermal stress events and matched bleaching observations. These near reef-scale products significantly advance the ability of coral reef researchers and managers to monitor coral thermal stress in near-real-time.

SUMMARYWe propose and demonstrate a fully probabilistic (Bayesian) approach to the detection of cloudy pixels in thermal infrared (TIR) imagery observed from satellite over oceans. Using this approach, we show how to exploit the prior information and the fast forward modelling capability that are typically available in the operational context to obtain improved cloud detection. The probability of clear sky for each pixel is estimated by applying Bayes' theorem, and we describe how to apply Bayes' theorem to this problem in general terms. Joint probability density functions (PDFs) of the observations in the TIR channels are needed; the PDFs for clear conditions are calculable from forward modelling and those for cloudy conditions have been obtained empirically. Using analysis fields from numerical weather prediction as prior information, we apply the approach to imagery representative of imagers on polar-orbiting platforms. In comparison with the established cloud-screening scheme, the new technique decreases both the rate of failure to detect cloud contamination and the false-alarm rate by one quarter. The rate of occurrence of cloud-screening-related errors of >1 K in area-averaged SSTs is reduced by 83%.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch (CRW) program has been providing resource managers, scientific researchers, and other coral reef ecosystem stakeholders with coral bleaching heat stress products for more than 20 years. The development of the CoralTemp sea surface temperature (SST) dataset has allowed CRW to produce the Coral Bleaching Heat Stress product suite with climatologies and daily SST measurements from within the same SST dataset, significantly improving data quality. Previously, the Monthly Mean (MM) SST and Maximum Monthly Mean (MMM) SST climatologies were derived using a different dataset from the near real-time SST. Here we provide an up-to-date description of how each product within the Coral Reef Watch Coral Bleaching Heat Stress product suite version 3.1 is derived, including descriptions of the MM, MMM, SST Anomaly, Coral Bleaching HotSpot and Degree Heating Week (DHW) products.

Patients with severe lower extremity injuries can expect a significant number of complications, most notably wound infection, nonunion, wound necrosis, and osteomyelitis. A large portion of these will require additional inpatient or operative treatment. Patients electing for reconstruction can expect a higher risk of complications.

One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.

Tibial plafond fractures are difficult to manage and may have serious complications. We identified more complications, more secondary procedures, and worse outcomes in patients with articular and metaphyseal comminution (type C3). ORIF was associated with fewer complications and less post-traumatic arthritis when compared to EF, possibly reflecting a selection bias for open injuries and more severely comminuted fractures to be managed with EF. ORIF with appropriate soft tissue handling resulted in acceptable results in most patients. Severely damaged soft tissues and highly comminuted C3 fractures may be safely treated with EF. Loss of function and progression to post-traumatic arthritis are common after tibial plafond fractures. Assessment of long-term results and the efficacy of additional reconstructive procedures will refine the treatment algorithms for these fractures.

Neural oscillations appear important for perception and attention processes because stimulus detection is dependent upon the phase of 7-11 Hz oscillations before stimulus onset. Previous work has examined stimulus detection at attended locations, but it is unknown whether unattended locations are also subject to phasic modulation by ongoing oscillatory activity, as would be predicted by theories proposing a role for neural oscillations in organizing general neural processing. Here, we recorded brain activity with EEG while human participants of both sexes detected brief visual targets preceded by a spatial cue and determined whether performance for cued (attended) and uncued (unattended) targets was influenced by oscillatory phase across a range of frequencies. Detection of both attended and unattended targets depended upon an ∼5 Hz theta rhythm and an ∼11-15 Hz alpha rhythm. Critically, detection of unattended stimuli was more strongly modulated by the phase of theta oscillations than was detection of attended stimuli, suggesting that attentional allocation involves a disengagement from ongoing theta sampling. There was no attention-related difference in the strength of alpha phase dependence, consistent with a perceptual rather than attentional role of oscillatory phase in this frequency range. These results demonstrate the importance of neural oscillations in modulating visual processing at both attended and unattended locations and clarify one way in which attention may produce its effects: through disengagement from low-frequency sampling at attended locations. Past work on the interaction between oscillatory phase and neural processing has shown the involvement of posterior ∼7-11 Hz oscillations in visual processing. Most studies, however, have presented stimuli at attended locations, making it difficult to disentangle frequencies related to attention from those related to perception. Here, we compared the oscillatory frequencies involved in the detection of attended and unattended stimuli and found that ∼11-15 Hz oscillations were related to perception independently of attention, whereas ∼5 Hz oscillations were more prominent for the detection of unattended stimuli. This work demonstrates the importance of neural oscillations for mediating stimulus processing at both attended and unattended locations and clarifies the different oscillatory frequencies involved in attention and perception.

Top-down guidance of visual attention has classically been thought to operate in a feature-specific manner. However, recent studies have shown that top-down visual attention can also be guided by information about target-nontarget feature relations (e.g., larger, redder, brighter). Here we recommend a minimal set of cues for differentiating between relational and feature-specific attentional guidance and examine contrasting predictions for the guidance of attention by size and color stimuli in a spatial cueing paradigm. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that in search for size, when both feature-specific and relational strategies are available, participants adopt a relational search strategy. Experiment 2 shows that when feature-specific information is the only reliable information to guide attention to the target, participants are able to adopt a feature-specific set for size information. Finally, in Experiment 3 we extend our paradigm to differentiate between feature-specific and relational strategies in search for color. Together, these experiments help to clarify the conditions under which different attentional guidance strategies will be employed, and demonstrate a useful minimum cue requirement for differentiating between these two forms of top-down guidance. Implications for current theories of attention are discussed.