Bureau of Economic Analysis

Understanding what the US spends to treat mental health and substance use disorders (SUD) is important for understanding spending patterns and informing health policy. In this study, we determined that from 2000 through 2021, mental health and SUD nominal spending grew from $40.9billion to $139.6billion. Mental health and SUD accounted for 4.5percent of all medical services spending in 2000 and 5.5percent in 2021. Real per capita mental health and SUD spending grew at an average annual rate of 3.27percent, which was faster than the growth rate for overall medical services (2.21percent). Our decomposition analysis showed that mental health and SUD spending growth was driven primarily by increases in the number of people receiving treatment (representing 87.3percent of the growth) and to a much lesser extent by increases in the cost per case (12.7percent of the growth). However, because disease severity was unobserved, these patterns may partly reflect increased treatment of less severe cases rather than unchanged severity-adjusted treatment costs. During this period, the number of mental health and SUD cases treated grew by 253percent. In contrast, for spending increases on all diseases, 66.3percent of the total spending growth resulted from increases in cost per case, and 33.7percent resulted from more people receiving treatment.

Fractures significantly control subsurface heat and fluid transport and the mechanical properties of rock formations. Natural and stimulated fracture growth processes are thus essential for production of oil and gas in conventional and unconventional reservoirs, caprock integrity, underground storage of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, or wastewater, and for geothermal energy production in systems that require fracture stimulation or that depend on natural fractures for heat extraction. While the formation of fractures is conventionally seen as a purely mechanical process, chemical processes can decrease or increase the propensity for fracture growth as a function of stress conditions, fluid chemical and physical environment, rock composition, and rate of change of fracture driving loading conditions. The influence of chemical reactions on rock fracture processes and their implications for subsurface energy resources is thus increasingly recognized.In combination with field structural observations of fractures in a variety of natural settings, we conduct double torsion fracture mechanics tests for sandstone, shale, and polycrystalline halite to quantify effects of fluid chemical environment on fracture mechanical properties. Tests are conducted under a range of fluid compositional and environmental conditions that are relevant to subsurface hydrogen and CO2 storage and geothermal energy production. Double torsion fracture mechanics tests measure fracture toughness and subcritical fracture index. Fracture toughness quantifies the loading stress for critical fracture growth, and subcritical fracture index the rate of fracture propagation under subcritical loading conditions. Tests are conducted under ambient room conditions, in dry N2, CO2, or H2 gas environments, and partially or completely saturated aqueous conditions. Some materials are also reacted in an autoclave under elevated temperature and pressure conditions in the presence of H2 and N2 gas prior to fracture testing.Both fracture toughness and subcritical fracture index are influenced by the chemical environment to varying degree dependent on rock mineral composition, fluid composition, and environmental conditions. For all rock types except polycrystalline halite, samples tested under dry conditions have higher toughness and subcritical index values compared to partially or fully water-saturated samples. This can be beneficial for caprock integrity of CO2 or H2 storage reservoirs where injected gas would dry out the formation reducing the tendency for fracture-controlled leakage of top seals. Aqueous chemical reactions triggered by H2 or CO2 gas injection in porous reservoirs can both impede and enhance mechanical fracture processes depending on the combined effects of mineral dissolution and concurrent precipitation of newly formed minerals. With increasing temperature, the effects of aqueous mineral reactions on fracture properties are generally more pronounced, demonstrating the significance of reactive fracture processes in conventional and enhanced geothermal reservoirs. It is envisioned that chemical effects of fracture growth can be utilized to reduce undesired fracture growth or to optimize stimulated fracture growth to obtain desired fracture geometries that benefit subsurface energy operations.

Scientific ocean drilling offers a unique window into Earth processes that cannot be accessed through surface observations alone, but its remote offshore setting and technical complexity pose challenges for public communication. International drilling programs such as the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Ocean Drilling Programme (IODP3) are also inherently multinational and multilingual, yet these collaborative dimensions are not always reflected in expedition outreach materials.This presentation introduces Chikyu Chronicles, a two-volume comics-based outreach project developed for IODP Expeditions 405 and 502E in the Japan Trench. The project uses illustrated sequential narratives to communicate shipboard science, engineering workflows, and everyday expedition life to middle-grade audiences while remaining grounded in real people, roles, and practices. Rather than emphasizing scientific results, the comics focus on portraying scientific ocean drilling as a collaborative activity shaped by operational constraints and teamwork. Each volume combines comics with book back matter designed to extend engagement beyond the narrative. Photographic sections document shipboard spaces, tools, and activities, allowing readers to connect simplified illustrations they have encountered in the book to physical environments and scale. Activity-based back matter invites participation through creative and interpretive exercises, including making science comics and identifying plate boundary patterns using multiple geophysical and geological datasets. Together, these elements form a hybrid communication model that supports place-making and causal reasoning.Production of Chikyu Chronicles was embedded within the expedition environment and extended after sailing through distributed collaboration. Expedition participants contributed through interviews, reference materials, scientific review, editorial feedback, and translation assistance, ensuring linguistic accuracy and contextual fidelity without separating communication from scientific practice. Reported outcomes so far are qualitative and formative, drawing on informal feedback and basic reach metrics from real-time dissemination during Expedition 405, with structured audience evaluation currently underway. The project illustrates how comics-based outreach can align communication practices with the collaborative realities of international geoscience research.

Full waveform inversion (FWI) iteratively improves the accuracy of the model by minimizing the discrepancies between the predicted and the observed data. However, FWI commonly suffers from cycle skipping when the initial model is poor, leading to an erroneous result. To mitigate this problem, we propose deep-learning-backed adaptive waveform inversion (DL-AWI), which introduces a deep twin neural network to precondition the waveforms and compare the ratio of two signals with a zero-lag spike, thereby enhancing the stability of the inversion process. DL-AWI can project the synthetic and observed signals into an extended latent space via several convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with shared weights, which can accelerate the data matching. Compared with classic FWI methods, the proposed DL-AWI provides a wider space for model updates, significantly decreasing the risk of being trapped in local minima. We use synthetic and field examples to validate its efficiency in subsurface model inversion, and the results show that DL-AWI is robust even when a poor initial model is provided.

ABSTRACT This study utilizes recorded ground motions from West Texas to evaluate the source, path, and site effects in this region. We analyze the Fourier amplitude spectra from 354 earthquakes in the Delaware basin recorded by the TexNet seismic network at 49 sites. The magnitudes of the earthquakes range from ∼3.0 to 5.0, with hypocentral distances up to 300 km. Using a Bayesian parametric inversion on 6479 records, we simulate the spectra as a combination of source, path, and site effects from a stochastic point-source model. The inverted moment magnitudes were comparable to the catalog moment magnitudes, and the stress parameter (Δσ) ranged from 5 to 134 bar, increasing with magnitude. The geometrical spreading was characterized by a smooth bilinear function, yielding a near-field γ of 1.15 and a frequency-dependent quality factor of Q=837·f0.59. The inverted site amplification functions revealed six distinct clusters of response, with three clusters located in the western part of the study area and the other three scattered to the east. The inverted high-frequency decay parameter (κ0) ranged from 0.005 to 0.056 s, with no clear relationship to shear-wave velocity but systematic variation with cluster and location. Correlation between parameters was observed, but only the prior distribution of Δσ strongly influenced the other inverted parameters.

Pennsylvanian-aged mixed carbonate-siliciclastic deposits from the southwestern United States contain records of high-amplitude, high-frequency sea-level changes associated with the late Paleozoic ice age that influenced deposition of sediments over the backdrop of Ancestral Rocky Mountains orogenesis. These ancient mixed systems are natural laboratories for understanding vertical and lateral facies transitions and offer insight into extrinsic controls on sediment partitioning during global icehouse periods and active tectonism. This study of >75 km of nearly continuous Desmoinesian−Missourian outcrops in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico documented contemporaneous carbonate and siliciclastic deposition on a narrowing shelf bordered to the east by the actively uplifting granitic Pedernal massif and to the west by the actively subsiding Orogrande Basin. Data for this study came from more than 30 measured sections (>5000 m), one core, fusulinid and conodont biostratigraphy, outcrop photomosaic mapping, paleocurrent analysis, and extensive hand sample and petrographic observations. The result is a well-constrained outcrop example of an ancient platform-scale laterally mixed system, with only minor evidence for reciprocal deposition, that developed during the early stages of the late Paleozoic ice age. A wave-swept carbonate shelf (Bug Scuffle Member) dominated by nutrient-tolerant, filter-feeding heterotrophs and limited photoautotrophs is bisected by a siliciclastic fan delta (Gobbler Formation). Reconstructions of facies distributions and evolving platform-to-basin orientation demonstrate a dynamic coastal setting that transitioned from a south-dipping siliciclastic-dominated shelf in the Atokan to a west-facing mixed carbonate-siliciclastic shelf by the late Desmoinesian driven by rejuvenated unroofing of the Pedernal uplift and coincident subsidence of the Orogrande Basin. By comparison with coeval mixed carbonate-siliciclastic deposits from the Paradox Basin, this study demonstrates the importance of local climate, tectonics, and siliciclastic routing in cycle development and carbonate factory composition.

Abstract The construction industry in Ethiopia faces significant challenges due to inadequate waste management legislation. Particularly in Mekelle City. This study aimed to identify major sources, quantify and characterize construction wastes and analyze illegal dumping sites to promote sustainable urban waste management. Data were collected through Pyramidal and rectangular prism measurements, material flow method, questionnaire survey, field observation and secondary sources. Survey responses were analyzed by using SPSS software. Findings reveal 5,161,585 m 3 illegally disposed construction wastes composed of soil, stone, ceramics, blocks, tiles, concrete, asphalt, wood, masonry, metal, plastics, packaging, and pipes, with barriers to recycling include a Lack of recycling technology, high cost, insufficient incentives, and limited knowledge. The most preferred waste management methods are reuse (50.9%), reduce (16.4%), and disposal (16.4%), with key minimization strategies Proper storage and material handling, standardization of design, on-site segregation, and Reuse yielding Relative Importance Index (RII) values 0.89, 0.8, 0.79, 0.78, respectively. However, inadequate strategies contribute to uncontrolled waste disposal in sensitive areas such as grazing lands, water bodies, roads, and residential areas, causing environmental harm. Prior to this study, the quantification and characterization of construction waste in Mekelle had not been studied. This study addresses the quantity, characteristics, and employed waste management methods to enhance the reduction, reusing, and recycling practices within the construction industry, insight urban waste management, and ensure sustainable environment. This study recommends promoting reduce, reuse, and recycle (3Rs), enforcing legal robust framework, and fostering a change in the mindset of construction companies to improve sustainability of waste management.