Natural Settings Research Articles

Specific heats for quantum BTZ black holes in extended thermodynamics

It was shown recently that extended black hole thermodynamics, where the cosmological constant is a dynamical variable, giving rise to a pressure p and its conjugate volume V, can be given a natural setting in the context of braneworld models. We study the specific heat capacities Cp(T) and CV(T) of the quantum version of the Bañados, Teitelboim, and Zanelli (BTZ) black hole that lives in the induced gravity theory on the brane. There are multiple branches of solutions, and we explore and characterize key features of the possible behavior. We identify and study a critical point in the space of solutions where both specific heats diverge. In the regime of weak backreaction where we are close to an ordinary theory of gravity, the black hole is “subentropic,” but as backreaction is increased we note that there are parts of parameter space that has regions where it is “superentropic.” While a study of the sign of the specific heats does not always show a corresponding instability (conjectured in the literature), the presence of strong backreaction makes interpretation unclear. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

The use of Language ENvironment Analysis in autism research: A systematic review.

In research, language ability has historically been measured using structured tasks in laboratory settings. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on the need to instead capture language ability in an individual's natural setting (i.e. through social interaction or in their home). Considering natural language may be particularly important for the autistic population, as an autistic child's language ability can be very different depending on the setting. One common tool for capturing natural language is the LENA recording system, which takes audio recordings over long periods of time and provides estimates of children's and caregivers' speech. The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize the use of LENA in autism research, to highlight the strengths and limitations of the system as identified by researchers, and to provide recommendations for future research and clinical use. We identified 42 autism studies that used LENA in a variety of ways and settings. Most studies used LENA within the guidelines put forth by its creators, and it was most commonly used to understand speech or speech development for autistic children. LENA is a useful tool for clinicians and caregivers to gain some insights into child speech, but those considering using it should be aware of concerns about its accuracy and limitations about the information it provides. In this review, we supplement the official LENA guidelines with specific suggestions for use with the autistic population.

Influence of Cultural Identity on Revisit Intention (A Case Study of Inlay Region in Myanmar)

This study aimed to analyze the influence of cultural identity on tourist satisfaction and to examine the influence of tourist satisfaction on revisit intention in the Inlay region. Quantitative analysis was employed with 385 samples in this study and which was gathered by convenience sampling. The findings indicated that all cultural identity dimensions, namely; cognitive, emotional and behavioral, have significant positive effect on tourist satisfaction and the tourist satisfaction also has a significant positive effect on revisit intention of Inlay region. Thus, the authorities should need to conduct more public education and media publicity about cultural evidence history of civilization and beliefs of Inlay region. Moreover, in order to maintain a calm and beautiful natural setting and the sustainable development of cultural heritages, the authorities also need to hang on to the elements of their well-known cultural history.

Investigating the Incidence and Severity of Field Diseases Impacting Tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa L.) Cultivation: A Case Study in the Jashore District, Bangladesh

A research investigation was conducted in the Jashore district of Bangladesh to examine diseases affecting tuberose plants. The laboratory analysis was performed at the plant disease study facility at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study encompassed eighteen villages across four unions within the Jhikargacha upazila of the Jashore district. The primary objective was to document the occurrence and severity of diseases in tuberose fields under natural conditions. Seven fungal diseases were detected in the natural field setting and were subjected to further scrutiny in the research facility. The pathogens responsible for these diseases were isolated and identified, revealing botrytis blight (Botrytis cinerea), blossom blight (Fusarium equiseti), alternaria leaf spot (Alternaria polyanthi), leaf tip blight (Phoma sp.), peduncle blight (Lasidiplodia theobromae), stem rot (Sclerotium rolfsii), and tuber rot (Fusarium oxysporum). Disease incidence ranged from 0% to 64.33%, and severity ranged from 0% to 24.00%. Stem rot, botrytis blight, alternaria leaf spot, and leaf tip blight were identified as significant challenges in tuberose cultivation in the Jashore district. This study represents the first documentation of tuberose pathogen prevalence in Bangladesh, providing valuable insights for disease identification and contributing to the improvement of tuberose cultivation practices in the region.

Lessons From 3 Longitudinal Sensor-Based Human Behavior Assessment Field Studies and an Approach to Support Stakeholder Management: Content Analysis.

Pervasive technologies are used to investigate various phenomena outside the laboratory setting, providing valuable insights into real-world human behavior and interaction with the environment. However, conducting longitudinal field trials in natural settings remains challenging due to factors such as low recruitment success and high dropout rates due to participation burden or data quality issues with wireless sensing in changing environments. This study gathers insights and lessons from 3 real-world longitudinal field studies assessing human behavior and derives factors that impacted their research success. We aim to categorize challenges, observe how they were managed, and offer recommendations for designing and conducting studies involving human participants and pervasive technology in natural settings. We developed a qualitative coding framework to categorize and address the unique challenges encountered in real-life studies related to influential factor identification, stakeholder management, data harvesting and management, and analysis and interpretation. We applied inductive reasoning to identify issues and related mitigation actions in 3 separate field studies carried out between 2018 and 2022. These 3 field studies relied on gathering annotated sensor data. The topics involved stress and environmental assessment in an office and a school, collecting self-reports and wrist device and environmental sensor data from 27 participants for 3.5 to 7 months; work activity recognition at a construction site, collecting observations and wearable sensor data from 15 participants for 3 months; and stress recognition in location-independent knowledge work, collecting self-reports and computer use data from 57 participants for 2 to 5 months. Our key extension for the coding framework used a stakeholder identification method to identify the type and role of the involved stakeholder groups, evaluating the nature and degree of their involvement and influence on the field trial success. Our analysis identifies 17 key lessons related to planning, implementing, and managing a longitudinal, sensor-based field study on human behavior. The findings highlight the importance of recognizing different stakeholder groups, including those not directly involved but whose areas of responsibility are impacted by the study and therefore have the power to influence it. In general, customizing communication strategies to engage stakeholders on their terms and addressing their concerns and expectations is essential, while planning for dropouts, offering incentives for participants, conducting field tests to identify problems, and using tools for quality assurance are relevant for successful outcomes. Our findings suggest that field trial implementation should include additional effort to clarify the expectations of stakeholders and to communicate with them throughout the process. Our framework provides a structured approach that can be adopted by other researchers in the field, facilitating robust and comparable studies across different contexts. Constantly managing the possible challenges will lead to better success in longitudinal field trials and developing future technology-based solutions.

Motivation-Based Segmentation of Hiking Tourists in Taiwan

Hiking is one of the most popular and significant recreational activities in natural settings, yet hiking tourists are often not distinguished from the broader population of nature-based tourists. This study aimed to identify distinct segments of hiking tourists based on their motivations and to explore the relationship between segmentation, motivations, and their satisfaction with the hiking experience. Using a questionnaire survey of 262 hiking tourists in Taiwan and multivariate statistical techniques, four hiking motives—“relaxation”, “social interaction”, “competence and exploration”, and “mental refreshment”—were identified, and four segments of hiking tourists—“mental refreshment seekers”, “social hikers”, “challenge seekers”, and “general purpose hikers”—were classified, respectively. While all segments reported high levels of satisfaction, their satisfaction was influenced by different motives. This study enhances the theoretical understanding of hiking motives and provides practical recommendations for enhancing hiking experiences and nature conservation.

Climate Change Implications on Middle Eastern Geography and Stability – A Case Studies of GCC- with a Focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The environment constitutes the natural setting where humans reside, secure food sources, and utilize natural resources to fulfill their material and life necessities. Unlike other creatures, humans have not adapted to nature and the surrounding environment; instead, they have manipulated it to their advantage, disrupting the ecological balance. The primary catalyst for this disruption was the Industrial Revolution, which significantly increased pollution rates, harmful emissions, and the extraction of raw materials, thereby intensifying the exploitation of natural resources. The gravest concern is that the damage inflicted upon nature may reach a point of no return, with catastrophic and enduring consequences, such as global warming, ice melting, rising sea levels, and escalation in greenhouse gases, along with severe repercussions of these events, including an increase in mortality rates due to natural disasters. Effective responses necessitate actions at various levels, including cultural and educational initiatives and international measures, particularly in legislation. Such laws must enforce stringent controls on emissions from industrial and automotive sources. Individuals are called upon to conserve electricity and water, and adopting renewable energy sources, such as solar, hydro, wind, and tidal energy, that do not rely on fuel combustion is encouraged. Planting trees, which absorb carbon dioxide as a primary contributor to global warming, is among the most critical measures we can undertake. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is essential in combating climate change in this arena, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is leading in this. This paper elaborates on the impact of climate change in Middle Eastern countries using a brief case study of the Saudi Green Initiatives. The paper also presents the policy recommendations to the concerned stakeholders of the GCC and the government of Saidi Arabia.

Combined toxicity of microplastics and antibiotics towards aquatic ecosystems: A case study in Beiluo River, China

Microplastics (MPs) can adsorb antibiotics to form complex pollutants that seriously threaten the health of freshwater ecosystems. However, few studies have examined the combined ecotoxicity of MPs and multiple antibiotics in natural aquatic environments. In this study, we examined the effects of combined exposure to antibiotics and MPs on aquatic community structure in natural settings in the Beiluo River using eDNA analysis. The results revealed that antibiotic pollution in the Beiluo River mainly originates from animal husbandry and agriculture, whereas MPs mainly originate from agriculture and urban sewage. The community structure of aquatic organisms was significantly correlated with the concentrations of antibiotics and MPs and that the combined effects of antibiotics and MPs were highly interpretable for cyanobacteria and phytoplankton. The effect of MPs on antibiotic toxicity is highly dependent on the antibiotic type and MP particle size. These insights highlight that co-exposure to MPs and antibiotics in the natural environment is a common phenomenon and that co-exposure to MPs can alter the toxicological profile of antibiotics. The results enhance our comprehensive understanding of the complex combined effects of MPs and antibiotics on aquatic organisms, emphasising the necessity of informed scientific management of these emerging contaminants.

Non-existence of cusps for a free-boundary problem for water waves

In Varvaruca and Weiss (2011), Varvaruca and Weiss eliminate the existence of cusps for a free-boundary problem for two-dimensional water waves under assumptions that hold for solutions for which \{u>0\} is a “strip-like” domain in the sense of Varvaruca (2008). In this paper, it is proven that cusps do not exist in the natural setting for these free-boundary problems. In particular, non-strip-like domains are also allowed. This qualitative result follows from quantitative results which, roughly speaking, give lower bounds on the “slope” at which the free boundary approaches a stagnation point. This builds upon recent work on non-existence of cusps in McCurdy and Naples (2022) for local minimizers.

Metabolic rates of different demographics in the sand fiddler crab Leptuca pugilator.

Studies on animal energetics often focus on standardized metabolic rates to facilitate comparison across systems. Yet these standardized measurements often do not capture the realistic demographic and environmental variation that is common in natural settings. Rather, individuals included in these studies are often non-reproducing, uninjured, resting adults that have not recently eaten-far from a representative sample. We measured the respiratory rates of the sand fiddler crab Leptuca pugilator in air immediately after capture in the field, and compared rates between males, females of different reproductive states, and juveniles. As expected, we show that metabolic rates were influenced by body mass and activity level. We also show that being vitellogenic or gravid had only minor impacts on metabolic costs of females. Importantly, we demonstrate how considering demographics allows for the detection of phenomena that would otherwise go unnoticed. We found that field metabolic rates of L. pugilator in air are as much as an order of magnitude higher than previous standard metabolic rates measured on post-prandial, quiescent individuals. These higher rates may reflect a combination of high activity and active digestion, as fiddler crabs actively feed during low tide periods. Our results highlight the importance of considering differences in sex, life history stage, and reproductive state of organisms in fluctuating environments, such as intertidal habitats, when assessing energy expenditure.

Children’s nature play: access to the outdoors and interactions with biodiversity

ABSTRACT In the U.S. and elsewhere, the nature play and outdoor time that is important to childhood development is not accessible to many. Children’s interactions with elements of nature, including biodiversity, are important. This study explored community-based affordances, using a nature play continuum, to examine the wildness in specific space types. To investigate children’s access and uncover how they interacted with nature in specific types of outdoor spaces, two iterations of household surveys for 489 families were used in the study. Underlying associations between types of outdoor space and children’s access were found. Direct and intentional interactions with biodiversity were related to specific types of outdoor play space. Given access, children will seek out interactions with biodiversity. Given that patterns exist between how families access both private and community outdoor spaces, community planning that designs for access to less available types of natural settings within more available types is suggested.

The Accelerating Universe in a NoncommutativeAnalytically Continued Foliated Quantum Gravity

Abstract Based on an analytically continued Riemannian foliated quantum gravity
super-Hamiltonian, known as Branch Cut Quantum Gravity (BCQG) we propose
a novel approach to investigating the effects of noncommutative geometry on a
minisuperspace of variables, influencing the acceleration behavior of the universe’s
wave function and the cosmic scale factor. Noncommutativity is introduced through
a deformation of the conventional Poisson algebra, enhanced with a symplectic
metric. The resulting symplectic manifold provides a natural setting that enables
an isomorphism between canonically conjugate dual vector spaces, spanning the
BCQG cosmic scale factor and its complementary quantum counterpart. Using this
formulation, we describe the dynamic evolution of the universe’s wave function, the
cosmic scale factor, and its complementary quantum image. Our results strongly
suggest that the noncommutative algebra induces late-time accelerated growth of the
wave function, the universe’s scale factor, and its complementary quantum counterpart,
offering a new perspective on explaining the accelerating cosmic expansion rate and
the inflationary period. In contrast to the inflationary model, where inflation requires
a remarkably fine-tuned set of initial conditions in a patch of the universe, analytically
continued non-commutative foliated quantum gravity captures short and long scales,
driving the evolutionary dynamics of the universe through a reconfiguration of the
primordial cosmic content of matter and energy. This reconfiguration is encapsulated
into a quantum field potential, which leads to the generation of relic gravitational
waves, a topic for future investigation. Graphical representations and contour plots
indicate a characteristic torsion (or twist) deformation of spacetime geometry. This
result introduces new speculative elements regarding the reconfiguration of matter and
energy as a driver of spacetime torsion deformation, generating relic gravitational waves
and serving as an alternative topological mechanism for the universe’s acceleration.
However, these assumptions require further investigation.

Fast feature- and category-related parafoveal previewing support free visual exploration.

While humans typically saccade every ∼250 ms in natural settings, studies on vision tend to prevent or restrict eye movements. As it takes ∼50 ms to initiate and execute a saccade, this leaves only ∼200 ms to identify the fixated object and select the next saccade goal. How much detail can be derived about parafoveal objects in this short time interval, during which foveal processing and saccade planning both occur? Here, we had male and female human participants freely explore a set of natural images while we recorded magnetoencephalography and eye movements. Using multivariate pattern analysis, we demonstrate that future parafoveal images could be decoded at the feature and category level with peak decoding at ∼110 ms and ∼165 ms respectively, while the decoding of fixated objects at the feature and category level peaked at ∼100 ms and ∼145 ms. The decoding of features and categories was contingent on the objects being saccade goals. In sum, we provide insight on the neuronal mechanism of pre-saccadic attention by demonstrating that feature and category specific information of foveal and parafoveal objects can be extracted in succession within a ∼200 ms intersaccadic interval. These findings rule out strict serial or parallel processing accounts but are consistent with a pipeline mechanism in which foveal and parafoveal objects are processed in parallel but at different levels in the visual hierarchy.Significance Statement We provide neural evidence that future parafoveal saccade goals are processed surprisingly quickly at the feature and the category level before we saccade to them. Specifically, using multivariate pattern analysis applied to magnetoencephalography and eye-tracking data, we found that information about the colour and the category of parafoveal objects emerged at ∼110 ms and ∼165 ms respectively, with the same information about foveal objects emerging ∼100 ms and ∼145 ms. Our findings provide novel insight into the neuronal dynamics of parafoveal previewing during free visual exploration. The dynamics rule out strict serial or parallel processing, but are consistent with a pipelining mechanism in which foveal and parafoveal objects are processed in parallel but at different levels in the visual hierarchy.

Rb-Sr isochron method of sediment source fingerprinting reveals a fundamental shift in erosion in response to anthropogenic land use

Human alterations to landscapes can greatly influence watershed-scale sedimentary processes; therefore, in this study, we test the viability of a novel Rb-Sr isotope and elemental geochemical method for fingerprinting the impacts of human land use on sediment provenance. We analyzed a ∼1200-year sediment core record from Little Kennebago Lake, Maine, USA, that captures negligible anthropogenic activity pre-1900 CE, timber transport downstream during log drives (1900−1952 CE), and increased road construction and timber harvest (1952−2018 CE). 87Sr/86Sr data alone reveal several spikes, likely due to storm events, and variability but no systematic shift at the onset of logging. The pre-logging record Rb-Sr isotope data comprise an isochron corresponding to an age of 354 ± 16 Ma (two standard errors [2SE]; mean square of weighted deviates [MSWD] = 2.1, n = 33). None of the bedrock or glacial till sources that we analyzed fall along the pre-logging isochron, nor did any binary or ternary bulk rock mixtures. However, the linearity of all pre-logging samples and coincidence of the isochron age with Acadian metamorphism in the region suggests that sediment was derived from a single source in the undisturbed watershed, though that exact bedrock or glacial till source remains unclear. The onset of logging coincides with a shift toward generally lower sediment Rb-Sr isotope ratios that are offset from the pre-logging isochron. This logging data forms a scattered pseudo-isochron with an apparent Carboniferous age of 322 ± 32 Ma (2SE; MSWD = 4.5, n = 10). No rocks of this age exist in the region. Therefore, we interpret this age to have no geologic meaning and instead reflect the introduction of new sediment sources due to logging. Logging also coincides with subtle changes in elemental geochemistry. The Big Island Pond Pluton underlies most of the northern part of the watershed and is the only catchment lithology capable of producing each geochemical change; therefore, we conclude that it was the primary new source of sediment introduced by logging. We found little variation in sediment geochemistry between the period of early log drives and later road expansion, suggesting that sediment provenance was constant once altered by the initial onset of logging, which could reflect the same source being tapped by activities in each period. We established a framework for interpreting bulk sediment Rb-Sr isotope ratios and demonstrated their viability for identifying shifts in human impacts on geomorphic processes. Our findings suggest that relative changes in sediment Rb-Sr isotope ratios are a promising tool for investigating changes to sedimentary processes not identifiable by other commonly used fingerprints and that the method should be further tested in a range of other natural and anthropogenic settings globally.

COVID‐19 Labor Market Protection and Support for the Welfare State: Job Retention Versus Job Loss in Four European Countries

ABSTRACTThe COVID‐19 pandemic presents a natural setting to study how labor market protection policies may influence welfare attitudes because while lockdowns and economic recession threatened millions of jobs, job retention schemes shielded many workers from unemployment. We investigate support for unemployment protection and the unemployed among people active in the labor force and participating in the Mannheim Corona Study in Germany, Coping with COVID‐19 in France, ResPOnsE in Italy, and the British Social Attitudes survey in Great Britain. Two‐way fixed effects analyses on the German data show that there was a general increase in respondents' support over the onset of the pandemic and that while job loss significantly boosted support, there was little attitudinal difference between those who experienced job retention and those who continued working. We confirm these patterns with cross‐sectional analyses in all four countries, providing comparative insight into attitudes across the largest European economies. Unemployment is materially similar to job retention, but because it is associated with higher support, we contend that nonmaterial factors such as risk perceptions may be consequential in influencing preference changes when individuals lose their jobs.

Barriers Perceived by Professionals in Family-Centered Early Intervention Services: A Systematic Review of the Current Evidence

AbstractFamily-centered services are the recommended early intervention approach to develop and deliver services for children with disabilities and their families. This systematic review aims to identify and highlight what barriers service providers in family-centered early intervention perceive that prevent them from providing high-quality services focused on the family and the child's overall well-being. We identified 37 articles that met the selection criteria of the first initial search of 1858 articles. These studies provided insights from both service providers and families. The identified barriers were categorized into eight dimensions: family, child, knowledge, and application of the approach/model, professional beliefs, natural environment, service coordination, working conditions, and current legislation. The main barriers identified were family barriers, insecurities perceived by professionals and difficulties in their ability to provide services, changes in their attitudes and behaviors when they perceive that they are losing their role as experts, lack of knowledge and application of specific practices, and lack of skills needed to engage primary caregivers in natural settings. These findings should inform policy implementation at local and state levels in countries where family-centered service is established in early childhood programs.

The effect of particle size distribution on the collapse of wet polydisperse granular materials

Low-saturation liquid-containing granular materials are commonly encountered in both natural and industrial settings, where interstitial liquids significantly affect the motion of particles, while particle size polydispersity plays a crucial role in determining the level of system cohesion. In this study, the collapse of wet polydisperse granular columns is numerically investigated based on the developed discrete element model, with corresponding dam-break experiments performed to validate our numerical model and methodology. The dependence of the dynamics and flow mobility on particle size distribution is primarily examined, and the underlying mechanisms are also explored by analyzing particle path lengths and average fidelity. Building upon the effective Bond number proposed using the mixing theory, a macroscopic cohesion parameter at the material scale is defined by considering the dependence of the collapse on the system size effect. The relevance of this cohesion parameter in describing different wet polydisperse granular collapses is further validated based on our designed experimental tests and DEM simulations. The approach of constructing the cohesion parameters at different scales can be extended to characterize cohesion effects in more complex wet polydisperse granular flows and describe their associated rheological behaviors.

Parent-teacher partnerships to enhance education for sustainable development: Early childhood development education learning centres in Zimbabwe

Education is one of the fundamental tools necessary to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, Goal 4 advocates for quality education for all since it is important for all children to have a sound educational foundation. In this study, I focus on the second target of Sustainable Development Goal 4 that advocates for early childhood development and universal pre-primary education. The aim of this study was to explore how parent-teacher partnerships could be used to enhance education for sustainable development in early childhood development education learning centres in rural areas. The study was conducted in two primary schools in Bulilima district of Matabeleland, South province in Zimbabwe. The study called on Epstein's notion of parental engagement as the theoretical framework. A participatory action research methodological design was deemed suitable for this qualitative study because it allowed participants to have an opportunity to express their views in their natural settings. Data was generated by means of discussion meetings and reflections and Fairclough's (1992) critical discourse analysis was employed in its analysis. The findings, from early childhood development centres, highlight the importance of teacher-parent partnerships in promoting sustainable learning outcomes and children's well-being. Furthermore, it was found that such partnerships promote alignment between the school culture and the needs of communities and enhance communication and decision making as well as providing a basis for change in the parents' perceptions regarding early childhood development education. The study concluded that teachers and parents should work together at this level of education.

Extracting the Heterogeneous 3D Structure of Molecular Films Using Higher Dimensional SFG Microscopy.

Ultrathin molecular films are widespread in both natural and industrial settings, where details of the molecular structure such as density, out-of-plane tilt angles, and in-plane directionality determine their physicochemical properties. Many of these films possess important molecular-to-macroscopic heterogeneity in these structural parameters, which have traditionally been difficult to characterize. Here, we show how extending sum-frequency generation (SFG) microscopy measurements to higher dimensionality by azimuthal-scanning can extract the spatial variation in the three-dimensional molecular structure at an interface. We extend the commonly applied theoretical assumptions used to analyze SFG signals to the study of systems possessing in-plane anisotropy. This theoretical framework is then applied to a phase-separated mixed lipid monolayer to investigate the variation in molecular density and 3D orientation across the chirally packed lipid domains. The results show little variation in out-of-plane structure but a distinct micron-scale region at the domain boundaries with a reduction in both density and in-plane ordering.

Annotation-free prediction of microbial dioxygen utilization.

Aerobes require dioxygen (O2) to grow; anaerobes do not. However, nearly all microbes-aerobes, anaerobes, and facultative organisms alike-express enzymes whose substrates include O2, if only for detoxification. This presents a challenge when trying to assess which organisms are aerobic from genomic data alone. This challenge can be overcome by noting that O2 utilization has wide-ranging effects on microbes: aerobes typically have larger genomes encoding distinctive O2-utilizing enzymes, for example. These effects permit high-quality prediction of O2 utilization from annotated genome sequences, with several models displaying ≈80% accuracy on a ternary classification task for which blind guessing is only 33% accurate. Since genome annotation is compute-intensive and relies on many assumptions, we asked if annotation-free methods also perform well. We discovered that simple and efficient models based entirely on genomic sequence content-e.g., triplets of amino acids-perform as well as intensive annotation-based classifiers, enabling rapid processing of genomes. We further show that amino acid trimers are useful because they encode information about protein composition and phylogeny. To showcase the utility of rapid prediction, we estimated the prevalence of aerobes and anaerobes in diverse natural environments cataloged in the Earth Microbiome Project. Focusing on a well-studied O2 gradient in the Black Sea, we found quantitative correspondence between local chemistry (O2:sulfide concentration ratio) and the composition of microbial communities. We, therefore, suggest that statistical methods like ours might be used to estimate, or "sense," pivotal features of the chemical environment using DNA sequencing data.IMPORTANCEWe now have access to sequence data from a wide variety of natural environments. These data document a bewildering diversity of microbes, many known only from their genomes. Physiology-an organism's capacity to engage metabolically with its environment-may provide a more useful lens than taxonomy for understanding microbial communities. As an example of this broader principle, we developed algorithms that accurately predict microbial dioxygen utilization directly from genome sequences without annotating genes, e.g., by considering only the amino acids in protein sequences. Annotation-free algorithms enable rapid characterization of natural samples, highlighting quantitative correspondence between sequences and local O2 levels in a data set from the Black Sea. This example suggests that DNA sequencing might be repurposed as a multi-pronged chemical sensor, estimating concentrations of O2 and other key facets of complex natural settings.