Hillslope and catchment evolution will be the cumulative product of short and long-term processes that operate and dominate over different hillslope length scales. In this study erosion and deposition patterns rates generated over short lengths scales (0.1-3m) are examined using erosion pins over a 14 year period for a field site in northern Australia. The pins consisted of two sets of nine pins located on a catchment divide. Over the 14 year period, there was considerable variability in erosion and deposition with both sites being depositional (~7mm of deposition). The sites, separated by several hundred metres both had very similar erosion and deposition patterns. Annual erosion and deposition patterns were modelled using a computer based Landscape Evolution Model (SSSPAM) that models both fluvial and diffusive erosion. Model results found that SSSPAM was unable to predict the erosion and deposition rate and patterns using a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the site. However, when the DEM was modified at each annual time step to capture short length scale random particle movement, SSSPAM predicted both erosion and deposition variability as well as the field measured deposition. The model results demonstrate that the commonly used equation for diffusion when calibrated for the site performs well.

Without stringent reductions in emission of greenhouse gases in the coming years, an exceedance of the 1.5C temperature limit would become increasingly likely. This has given rise to so-called temperature overshoot scenarios, in which the global mean surface air temperature increase above pre-industrial levels exceeds a certain limit, i.e. 1.5C, before bringing temperatures back below that level. Despite their prominence in the climate mitigation literature, the implications of an overshoot for local climate impacts is still understudied. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of implications of an overshoot for regional temperature and precipitation changes as well as climate extremes indices. Based on a multi-model comparison from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) we find that temperature changes are largely reversible in most regions, but also report significant land-ocean and latitudinal differences after an overshoot. For precipitation, the emergent picture is less clear. For regions where significant changes in precipitation can be identified, a reversibility of those changes is the exception, with most regions experiencing increased drying or wetting after an overshoot. This effect is even more pronounced for extreme precipitation. Taken together, our results indicate that even under a reversal of global mean temperature increase, regional climate changes may only be partially reversible, if at all. We thus provide further evidence that overshooting of a warming level implies irreversible changes.

Location-specific machine learning models trained on synthetic images represent a scalable paradigm for quantifying biodiversity. Digital images of specimens or samples can be manipulated and combined with computer-generated scene elements to produce nearly infinite synthetic images for training machine learning models. Application of this method for the automatic cataloging of wildlife from camera trap images is of urgent need during this time of high extinction rate and environmental change.

Electrochemical carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction (ECR) has become more attractive to realize CO2 convert to high value products with renewable electricity. In this review, recent progress in the synthesis and electrochemical application of chalcogenide-derived Cu (including OD-Cu, SD-Cu and SeD-Cu) materials for CO2 electroreduction reaction have been summarized. The kind of ECR products is highly related with the CO2 adsorption pattern and reduction process on catalyst surface. In addition, the structure-activity relationship between crystal structure/morphology/composition of chalcogenide-derived Cu and their ECR activity/selectivity/products have also been discussed. Finally, some prospects on the challenge and future research trends in rational design of high efficient OD-Cu, SD-Cu and SeD-Cu electrodes are provided.

Rationale Ammonium fluoride has been shown to improve sensitivity in electrospray ionization in mass spectral detection when used as a mobile phase additive. Internal investigation showed sensitivity improvement for steroid compounds with LCMS. Our work presented here investigates ammonium fluoride as a mobile phase additive in improving mass spectral ionization compared with other mobile phases under fully optimized instrument conditions. Methods For our research, we investigated ammonium fluoride in comparison with formic acid and ammonium hydroxide as mobile phase additives to measure sensitivity effects in electrospray ionization sensitivity. Full source optimization was performed for nine commercially available compounds at three different organic concentrations (30, 60, or 90%) with formic acid, ammonium fluoride, and ammonium hydroxide adjusted mobile phase sets. Optimization results were compiled to generate individual methods by compound, polarity, mobile phase additive, and organic concentration, respectively. These methods were used for final flow injection analysis to objectively compare compounds analyzed with the different solvent systems under optimal conditions for each mobile phase composition. Results Negative ESI data showed 2 – 22-fold sensitivity improvements for all seven compounds with ammonium fluoride. Positive ESI data showed > 1 - 11-fold improvement in sensitivity for four of seven compounds and equivalent (or slight drop in) sensitivity for three of seven compounds with ammonium fluoride adjustment. Acetaminophen showed the greatest sensitivity improvement in both polarities, with 7-22-fold (ESI-) and 4-11-fold (ESI+) improvements in sensitivity, respectively Conclusions With fully optimized source conditions there is good likelihood of improving MS sensitivity (ESI-) in using ammonium fluoride adjusted mobile phase. Investigation with ESI+ analyses showed mixed results, with four of seven compounds showing improvement and others showing equivalency or slight loss in sensitivity. Our investigation focused solely on sensitivity gains achievable in ESI-MS by source optimization and mobile phase additive selection by flow injection without chromatography.

Myeloid sarcoma is a rare extramedullary tumoral infiltration of immature myeloid cells and can occur in different sites of the body, without leukemic infiltration A 38-year-old woman patient presented at emergency with a pleural effusion and bicytopenias. In the following days, she worsened with a chylothorax and pancytopenias. Pleural puncture cytologically

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Adequacy is a crucial consideration in the planning and operation dispatching of the power system, especially in the power system with high penetration of renewable energy sources. Considering the multi-time scale characteristics of renewable energy power and the response characteristics of flexible regulation resources, a multi-time scale adequacy evaluation method based on empirical mode decomposition is proposed. In this method, a net load curve is decomposed into multiple component curves at a multi-time scale by the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm. As a result, the adequacy demand of the system at each time scale is obtained by waveform recognition. Moreover, the available adequacy resources of the system at different time scales are obtained according to the regulation models of flexible regulation resources. By analyzing the adequacy demand and available adequacy resources of the system at the same time scale, the adequacy evaluation indices at each time scale can be calculated and weighted to form the comprehensive indices. At last, taking a practical power system as a case, the adequacy evaluation indices at each time scale with different capacities of renewable energy sources and energy storage systems are compared and analyzed. Simulation results indicate the validity of the method.

This study investigates the impact of coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic on households’ livelihood in Sokoto State, Nigeria using a survey dataset for a sample of two hundred and seventeen (217). The study applied mean and standard deviation in analyzing the data and finding suggests that covid-19 has negatively has negatively affected the household’s livelihood in terms of food security, market accessibility, and income generation activities and women and youths empowerment. The study further revealed that the pandemic put on negative influence on social activities of the households such as children education, social structure and gender relations. Furthermore, the study concludes that, covid-19 has negative effects on cultural activities of the households such as community events, funeral activities, ceremonies, sports activities and cultural values. In addition to covid-19 pandemic, this study also indicated that psychological behaviour of household such as sustainable behavior, uncertainty; infections fears and family relations were negatively affected. From the foregoing, this study recommends the needs for the government to create a window in fiscal policy that will accommodate any unforeseen health challenges in the future. Based on the previous experience, the study further recommends the urgent need for the households to be on alert on the future pandemic

In the movie Idiocracy, a man named Joe is cryogenically frozen and wakes up in a distant future where the world has become a dystopian wasteland. One of the most striking scenes in the movie is when Joe goes to the doctor for a checkup. The doctor and the staff are completely clueless and subject Joe with ridiculous questions, such as why he doesn't have a tattoo (bar code), or cluelessly handing out probes to be inserted at all the wrong places.

Vortex generators (VGs) have been widely applied to wind turbines thanks to their potential to increase aerodynamic performance. Due to the complex inflow perceived by a rotor and the proneness to flow separation, VGs on wind turbines usually experience highly unsteady flow. While there are models that exist to simulate the steady effects of VGs, we lack a fast and efficient tool to model the unsteady performance of airfoils equipped with VGs. This paper adopts an unsteady double-wake panel model with viscous-inviscid interaction developed to simulate a vertical axis turbine in dynamic stall, adding the capability of predicting the dynamic aerodynamic performance of VG-equipped airfoils. The results of a series of steady and unsteady cases of an airfoil with different VG configurations in various pitch motions in free and forced transition are verified against experimental data. Results show that the double wake model offers sufficient accuracy results compared to experimental data to claim the model’s validity in a preliminary evaluation of an airfoil’s capability to prevent stall with VGs. While a few limitations are still identified for improvement, the model’s accuracy in predicting the transition location, separation and reattachment, and drag forces into future development.

The Norwegian government recently agreed on the goal 30by40 which involves opening Norwegian offshore areas to host 30 GW of installed wind power by 2040 (Regjeringen, 2022).We address this goal by presenting a first mapping of wind power suitability scores (WPSS) for the entire Norwegian economic zone (NEZ) using a multi-criteria decision analysis framework (MCDA), including an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) approach. We obtain WPSS considering relevant criteria like wind resources, techno-economic aspects, social acceptance, environmental considerations, and met-ocean constraints such as wind and wave conditions. The results starts with a baseline scenario, where the criteria importance are pair-vise compared in the context of balancing economic incentives and conflicting interests. Additionally, to reveal regions that are robust to changes in criteria importance we carry out a sensitivity analysis by introducing three additional scenarios. These scenarios represent actors with distinct preferences for siting of wind farms: the investor, the environmentalist, and the fisherman. The results show that the southern part of the NEZ is the most suitable region for offshore wind power deployment. This region receives the highest suitability category (“very high” suitability for wind power application) throughout all the scenarios. Areas in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea and the near-coastal areas outside mid-Norway are also well suited regions, but these are more sensitive to the choice of criteria importance. The use of AHP within the framework of MCDA is shown to be a promising tool for pinpointing the best Norwegian offshore areas for wind power application.

The effects of mechanical and microstructural anisotropy on short fatigue crack initiation and propagation behaviours of a directionally superalloy have been studied. An unusual result was found where the fatigue lives of specimens with grains longitudinally aligned along the loading direction fail at lower lifetimes than the specimens with transversely loaded grains when the applied stress is close to the yield stress. This is mainly attributed to the lower Young’s modulus of the longitudinal specimen, which induces more local plastic strain (at stress concentration features) leading to earlier crack initiation and faster crack propagation under the applied test stress.

We urge the medical community to recognize the drastic limitations of conventional diagnostic techniques in detecting chronic NTBI poisoning and to adopt a much more proactive approach in identifying and managing patients with elevated transferrin saturation in combination with relatively low ferritin. 

The increasing growth of agro-industrial activity resulting in excessive amounts of agri-waste has led to the accumulation of a large quantity of lignocellulosic residues all over the world, in particular, deforestation initiatives for the removal of invasive trees in South Africa. These lignocellulosic residues are rich in energy resources consisting of a mixture of natural polymers based on lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose. The use of lignolytic fungi such as mushrooms in solid-state fermentation could sufficiently degrade the indigestible lignocellulosic components and add medicinal and nutritional value to otherwise unusable, high-energy waste material. The digestive type of animal for which the potential feed is developed must be identified and considered before deciding on the bioconversion method and process, since the outcomes for obtaining potentially high-quality feeds for non-ruminant and ruminant animals are different. The current study presents the data of the bioconversion of lignocellulosic substrate using solid-state fermentation with the edible and medicinal mushrooms, Ganoderma lucidum, Pleurotus ostreatus, and a possible new species, to increase digestibility and nutritional value to be applied as ruminant animal feed. The solid-state fermentation process was optimised and the resulting product analysed for the degradation of the lignocellulosic components. Results indicated that the solid-state fermentation duration and mushroom species were key components in achieving significant degradation. Data obtained after 18 weeks of degradation indicated a significant (p < 0.05) reduction in the acid detergent fibre, acid detergent lignin and neutral detergent fibre fractions of the biomass, with up to 20% reduction in indigestible components.

The recovery of mammalian species in the US Midwest through natural recolonization constitutes a conservation success story, yet management remains challenging due to many unknowns related to population dynamics and abundance. Abundance is a critical parameter for management decisions, and estimating the density and abundance of elusive species, such as terrestrial carnivores, remains challenging despite recent technological advances. In this study, we evaluated density and abundance of a recovering carnivore species, the bobcat (Lynx rufus) in two areas of Ohio using non-invasive DNA from scat. The target areas in eastern and southern Ohio have been shown to have uneven dynamics and recolonization success and we expected that this would be reflected in differences in density and abundance. We collected 298 bobcat scats between July 2018 and April 2019 on 150 km of repeated transects. Of these, 102 scats were successfully genotyped, and 55 individuals were identified (33 in eastern Ohio and 22 in southern Ohio). Using Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture models, we estimated 17.9 ± 4.3 and 11.3 ± 2.9 bobcats/100 km2 in eastern and southern Ohio study areas, respectively. Our results support prior telemetry data which indicated that bobcats in eastern Ohio had smaller home-ranges than bobcats in southern Ohio, and thus could support a higher density of individuals. The higher densities were similar to other eastern US populations and are much higher than other Midwestern recovering populations. Our results provide a snapshot of the population status and can be used to determine sustainable management strategies for Ohio’s bobcat population

This study aimed to investigate the effect of X-radiation on the ATPase activity and the activity of antioxidant enzymes, including enzymes of proline biosynthesis, in C. guilliermondii NP-4 yeast cells after X-irradiation and the post-irradiation repair of cells. It has been shown that the X-irradiation of yeasts C. guilliermondii NP-4 at a dose of 300 Gy causes the increase of activity of the enzymes catalase and SOD and the ratio of catalase/SOD. The repair of radiation-induced damages requires a lot of energy, so the demand for ATP increases in irradiated and repaired yeasts. The total and FoF 1-ATPase activity in yeast homogenates and mitochondria increases after X-irradiation and post-irradiation repair. Amino acid proline is an antioxidative defense molecule and plays a significant role in the adaptation of cells to stress. So higher proline levels in yeasts can protect them from oxidative damage. There are still no systematic studies of the antioxidant properties of proline. In this study, it has been shown that the activity of enzymes of proline biosynthesis (ornithine transaminase and proline-5-carboxylate reductase) in yeasts C.guilliermondii NP-4 increases after X-irradiation and remains higher after post-irradiation repair. Connected with it, the proline amount in X-irradiated and repaired yeasts also is higher than in non-irradiated cells. We suppose that proline has a radioprotective effect on X-irradiated yeasts C. guilliermondii NP-4.

Background/aim: The relationship between COVID-19 fatality and quality health care in OECD countries was aimed to be examined, considering the effectiveness of primary health care, the effectiveness of secondary health care. Materials and methods: Data from OECD countries were collected from open-access websites. Dependent variable is COVID-19 fatality, independent variables are effectiveness of primary health care, the effectiveness of secondary health care, gross domestic product, median age, number of hospital beds, number of intensive care unit beds, number of doctors and nurses, number of computed tomography scanners, educational status and air pollution. Spearman Rho correlation and partial correlation were used in the analysis of the data, and generalized linear regression analysis was performed. Results: A statistically significant relationship was found between case fatality rates and the effectiveness of secondary health care (p<0,05). The relationships between case fatality rates and other health, demographic indicators are not statistically significant. In Generalized Linear Model (GLM-Logit Model) analysis results, only the effectiveness of secondary health care (p< 0,01) and the number of hospital beds (p<0,05) were found to be statistically significant. Conclusion: Satisfaction with quality health care is not associated with COVID-19 fatality. As the effectiveness of secondary health care increases, the fatality of COVID-19 decreases. The effectiveness of primary health care has no effect on COVID-19 fatality.

Application of lean management in hospitals has a great impact in reducing waste and waits with continuous improvement of healthcare. The current study aimed at identification of the challenges and reality of applying the lean management philosophy in private hospitals in Jordan. Many challenges have been identified such as management roles and responsibilities, people construction, resources management, strategy, planning, and information about lean. The study sample consisted of 131 employees working in private hospitals, and the study adopted the quantitative approach, and many statistical methods were used, such as descriptive statistics. The results of the study showed that there are many challenges and obstacles that limit the application of the lean management philosophy, such as the management role, the administration bears the greatest responsibility for not applying the philosophy of lean management in an appropriate manner, through the lack of commitment and support on the part of senior management with regard to the mechanism of applying lean management. Also, one of the factors that greatly affect the lack of application of lean management is the people construct; so there are many private hospitals that do not focus on the participation of their employees in their decision-making at times. In addition to the weakness in resources management, the lack of strategies and planning by the administration in hospitals, and the lack of sufficient knowledge among the management and employees in lean management. The study recommended the work of private hospital managers to choose the best ways and methods in order to implement and implement lean management, this is within the framework of defining strategic goals and priorities that form the basis of all hospital systems.

The combined presence of autoantibodies to the 65 kD isoform of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GADA) and to the islet-specific cation efflux transporter ZnT8 (ZnT8A) in serum is the best predictive sign of the loss of immune tolerance and the clinical manifestation of autoimmune diabetes mellitus (DM). The screening of GADA and ZnT8A could be an appropriate alternative to identify diabetic subjects with underlying autoimmunity, helping to reach to a correct diagnosis and guaranteeing the start of an early and adequate treatment. Herein, we describe the expression of a chimera molecule including immunodominant regions of the antigens ZnT8 and GAD65 by using the baculovirus-insect cells system, yielding 30 mg/L culture medium. This recombinant chimera retains the immunoreactive conformation of the epitopes that are recognized by their specific antibodies, so it was used for the development of a high sensitivity (75.51 %) and specificity (98.04 %) bridge ELISA for the detection of highly prevalence ZnT8A and/or GADA, in a one-step screening assay. This immunoassay is useful either to confirm autoimmune diabetes or for detection in routine screening of individuals at risk of autoimmune DM. As DM is a slow progress disease, remaining asymptomatic for a long preclinical period, serological testing is of importance to establish a preventive treatment.

In the Netherlands drug regulatory science is a vibrant national and internationally oriented community. In this review we present the factors that have contributed to this successful collaboration between relevant stakeholders, and that led to a surge of activities around how regulatory science became embedded in the ecosystem of medicines research, clinical pharmacology, policy making and regulation. We distinguished three pivotal episodes: 1) TI Pharma Escher-project, 2) Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board as catalyst of the big jump, 3) Regulatory Science Network Netherlands and multistakeholder engagement. The research agenda has been influenced by the dynamic evolution of legal frameworks in Europe, such as the EU orphan medicines legislation of 2001 and the EU pharmacovigilance legislation of 2012. All these developments have inspired and have raised pertinent regulatory sciences questions. Furthermore, clinical pharmacology as a discipline has been very influential in shaping regulatory science, contributing to discussions on the level of clinical evidence that is necessary to justify marketing approval of a new medicine. With a growing interest of multiple parties such as academics, EMA, national agencies, patient organisations and EFPIA, connecting regulatory science activities is key.

The purpose of text classification is to label the text with known labels. In recent years, the method based on graph neural network (GNN) has achieved good results. However, the existing methods based on GNN only regard the text as the set of co-occurring words, without considering the position information of each word in the statement. Meanwhile, this method mainly extracts node features, but neglects the use of edge features between nodes. To solve these problems, a new text classification method, graph convolutional network using positions and edges (PEGCN), is proposed. In the word embedding section, a positional encoding input representation is employed to enable the neural network to learn the relative positional information among words. Meanwhile, the dimension of the adjacency matrix is increased to extract the multi-dimensional edge features. Through experiments on multiple text classification datasets, the proposed method is shown to be superior to the traditional text classification method, and has achieved a maximum improvement of more than 4%.

Aim. To investigate the impact of pharmacists’ presence in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) on medication usage. Methods. The study followed a retrospective cohort design, with a sample of patients aged ≥ 65 years old admitted to 3 LTCFs over 30 months. Data on age, gender, type of stay, presence/absence of pharmacist and medication at admission and discharge were obtained for study patients. Variations in the number of medicines (NoM), anticholinergic burden (ACB), and potentially inappropriate medication (PIMs), at admission and discharge, were assessed as outcome variables. Anticholinergic burden and PIMs were identified using the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden scale and the EU(7)-PIM List, respectively. One-sample t-tests were applied to compare outcome variables’ mean values at admission and discharge. A 4-way ANOVA was employed to test the association between background and outcome variables. Partial Eta squared (η2) was used to measure the effect size. Results. The 3 LTCFs assisted 1643 patients during the study period, of which 1366 were included in data analysis. Only one LTCF had pharmacy services. All outcome variables showed a statistically significant increase at discharge compared with admission. Pharmacist’s presence was statistically significant at improving the NoM (p<0.001) and ACB score (p<0.001), while no statistically significant value was reached on PIMs (p = 0.642). Small effect size values were reached for pharmacist impact on the NoM and ACB score (η2 = 0.021, η2 = 0.011, respectively). Conclusion. The present findings suggest that pharmacists’ presence positively impacts the use of medications implicated in adverse health outcomes in LTC patients.

We investigated the gross and ultrastructure morphology of the mandibles, labial palpus and mandibular palpus of adult male and female Glenea cantor beetles using scanning electron microscopy. There were significant differences between males and females in the gross and ultrastructure morphology of these parts. Observation of the gross morphology of the mandible, labial palpus and mandibular palpus revealed that their lengths were significantly greater in females, which is mainly related to the oviposition mechanism. In terms of the ultrastructural morphology of the mandibles, labial palpus and mandibular palpus, seven types of sensilla were found on these parts: sensilla twig basiconica (STB I, II, III, and IV), sensilla chaetica (SCh IV and V), Böhm’s bristles (Bb), sensilla placodea (SP), sensilla trichodea (ST II), sensilla plate (SP), sensilla coeloconica (SC) and sensilla campaniformia (SCa). Females have significantly more ST I and SCh III on their mandibles than males. The mechanical sensors SCh and Bb, olfactory sensor ST II, taste sensor STB IV, and carbon dioxide sensor and temperature and humidity sensors SC, SP and SCa were significantly more developed on female than male labial and maxillary palps, which also further explained the important role of the oral appendages in oviposition behavior. These results will help us further understand the host selection and oviposition behavior of adult G. cantor and promote the information-based design of pest control methods.