Diagnosis of the ocean's overturning circulation is essential to closing global budgets of heat, salt and biogeochemical tracers. This diagnosis is sensitive to the choice of density variable used to distinguish water masses and identify transformations between them. The oceanographic community has adopted neutral density for this purpose because its isopycnal slopes are approximately aligned with neutral slopes, along which ocean flows tend to be confined. At high latitudes there are often no tenable alternatives because potential density varies non-monotonically with depth, regardless of the reference pressure. However, in many applications the use of isoneutral fluxes is impractical due to the high computational cost of calculating neutral density. Consequently neutral density-related diagnostics are typically not available as output from ocean models. In this article the authors derive a modified Temporal Residual Mean (TRM) approximation to the isoneutral mass fluxes, referred to as the Neutral Density Temporal Residual Mean (NDTRM). The NDTRM may be calculated using quantities that are routinely offered as diagnostic output from ocean models, making it several orders of magnitude faster than explicitly computing isoneutral mass fluxes. The NDTRM is assessed using a process model of the Antarctic continental shelf and slope. The onshore transport of warm Circumpolar Deep Water in the model ocean interior approximately doubles when diagnosed using neutral density, rather than potential density. The NDTRM closely approximates these explicitly-computed isoneutral mass fluxes. The NDTRM also exhibits a much smaller error than the traditional TRM in regions of large isoneutral temperature and salinity gradients, where nonlinearities in the equation of state diabatically modify the neutral density.

The Antarctic Slope Front (ASF) modulates ventilation of the abyssal ocean via the export of dense Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) and constrains shoreward transport of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) toward marine-terminating glaciers. Along certain stretches of the continental shelf, particularly where AABW is exported, density surfaces connect the shelf waters to the middepth Circumpolar Deep Water offshore, offering a pathway for mesoscale eddies to transport CDW directly onto the continental shelf. Using an eddy-resolving process model of the ASF, the authors show that mesoscale eddies can supply a dynamically significant transport of heat and mass across the continental shelf break. The shoreward transport of surface waters is purely wind driven, while the shoreward CDW transport is entirely due to mesoscale eddy transfer. The CDW flux is sensitive to all aspects of the model's surface forcing and geometry, suggesting that shoreward eddy heat transport may be localized to favorable sections of the continental slope.

Abstract. The authors present an analytical model for wind-driven free drift of sea ice that allows for an arbitrary mixture of ice and open water. The model includes an ice–ocean boundary layer with an Ekman spiral, forced by transfers of wind-input momentum both through the sea ice and directly into the open water between the ice floes. The analytical tractability of this model allows efficient calculation of the ice velocity provided that the surface wind field is known and that the ocean geostrophic velocity is relatively weak. The model predicts that variations in the ice thickness or concentration should substantially modify the rotation of the velocity between the 10 m winds, the sea ice, and the ocean. Compared to recent observational data from the first ice-tethered profiler with a velocity sensor (ITP-V), the model is able to capture the dependencies of the ice speed and the wind/ice/ocean turning angles on the wind speed. The model is used to derive responses to intensified southerlies on Arctic summer sea ice concentration, and the results are shown to compare closely with satellite observations.

Previous studies have suggested that the global ocean density stratification below ∼3000 m is approximately set by its direct connection to the Southern Ocean surface density, which in turn is constrained by the atmosphere. Here the role of Southern Ocean surface forcing in glacial-interglacial stratification changes is investigated using a comprehensive climate model and an idealized conceptual model. Southern Ocean surface forcing is found to control the global deep ocean stratification up to ∼2000 m, which is much shallower than previously thought and contrary to the expectation that the North Atlantic surface forcing should strongly influence the ocean at intermediate depths. We show that this is due to the approximately fixed surface freshwater fluxes, rather than a fixed surface density distribution in the Southern Ocean as was previously assumed. These results suggest that Southern Ocean surface freshwater forcing controls glacial-interglacial stratification changes in much of the deep ocean.

Populations composed of racial/ethnic minorities, disabled persons, and people with low socioeconomic status have worse health than their counterparts. Implementing evidence-based behavioral interventions (EBIs) to prevent and manage chronic disease and di

Enhancing body awareness has been described as a key element or a mechanism of action for therapeutic approaches often categorized as mind-body approaches, such as yoga, TaiChi, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, Body Awareness Therapy, mindfulness based therapies/meditation, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method, Breath Therapy and others with reported benefits for a variety of health conditions. To better understand the conceptualization of body awareness in mind-body therapies, leading practitioners and teaching faculty of these approaches were invited as well as their patients to participate in focus groups. The qualitative analysis of these focus groups with representative practitioners of body awareness practices, and the perspectives of their patients, elucidated the common ground of their understanding of body awareness. For them body awareness is an inseparable aspect of embodied self awareness realized in action and interaction with the environment and world. It is the awareness of embodiment as an innate tendency of our organism for emergent self-organization and wholeness. The process that patients undergo in these therapies was seen as a progression towards greater unity between body and self, very similar to the conceptualization of embodiment as dialectic of body and self described by some philosophers as being experienced in distinct developmental levels. © 2011 Mehling et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), which fills the global ocean abyss, is derived from dense water that forms in several distinct Antarctic shelf regions. Previous modeling studies have reached conflicting conclusions regarding export pathways of AABW across the Southern Ocean and the degree to which AABW originating from distinct source regions are blended during their export. This study addresses these questions using passive tracer deployments in a 61-year global high-resolution (0.1°) ocean/sea-ice simulation. Two distinct export “conduits” are identified: Weddell Sea- and Prydz Bay-sourced AABW are blended together and exported mainly to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, while Ross Sea- and Adelie Land-sourced AABW are exported mainly to the Pacific Ocean. Northward transport of each tracer occurs almost exclusively (>90%) within a single conduit. These findings imply that regional changes in AABW production may impact the three-dimensional structure of the global overturning circulation.

Interoceptive awareness is the conscious perception of sensations that create a sense of the physiological condition of the body. A validation study for the Japanese translation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) surprised with a factor structure different from the original English-language version by eliminating two of eight scales. This prompted an exploration of the similarities and differences in interoceptive bodily awareness between Japanese and European Americans. Bicultural Japanese-Americans discussed concepts and experiences in the two cultures. We conducted focus groups and qualitative thematic analyses of transcribed recordings. 16 participants illustrated cross-cultural differences in interoceptive bodily awareness: switching between languages changes embodied experience; external versus internal attention focus; social expectations and body sensations; emphasis on form versus self-awareness; personal space; and mind-body relationship; context dependency of bodily awareness and self-construal. The participants explained key concepts that present challenges for a Japanese cultural adaptation of the MAIA, specifically the concept of self-regulation lost in the factor analysis. In Japanese culture, self-regulation serves the purpose of conforming to social expectations, rather than achieving an individual self-comforting sense of homeostasis. Our findings will inform the next phase of improving the MAIA's cross-cultural adaptation.

Introduction:Advance directives have traditionally been considered the gold standard for advance care planning. However, recent evidence suggests that advance care planning involves a series of multiple discrete behaviors for which people are in varying st