The effect of Ku on telomere replication time is mediated by telomere length but is independent of histone tail acetylation

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

On the projection of future fire danger conditions with various instantaneous/mean-daily data sources

Fire danger indices are descriptors of fire potential in a large area, and combine a few variables that affect the initiation, spread and control of forest fires. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is one of the most widely used fire danger indices in the world, and it is built upon instantaneous values of temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity at noon, together with 24 hourly accumulated precipitation. However, the scarcity of appropriate data has motivated the use of daily mean values as surrogates of the instantaneous ones in several studies that aimed to assess the impact of global warming on fire. In this paper we test the sensitivity of FWI values to both instantaneous and daily mean values, analyzing their effect on mean seasonal fire danger (seasonal severity rating, SSR) and extreme fire danger conditions (90th percentile, FWI90, and FWI>30, FOT30), with a special focus on its influence in climate change impact studies. To this aim, we analyzed reanalysis and regional climate model (RCM) simulations, and compared the resulting instantaneous and daily mean versions both in the present climate and in a future scenario. In particular, we were interested in determining the effect of these datasets on the projected changes obtained for the mean and extreme seasonal fire danger conditions in future climate scenarios, as given by a RCM. Overall, our results warn against the use of daily mean data for the computation of present and future fire danger conditions. Daily mean data lead to systematic negative biases of fire danger calculations. Although the mean seasonal fire danger indices might be corrected to compensate for this bias, fire danger extremes (FWI90 and specially FOT30) cannot be reliably transformed to accommodate the spatial pattern and magnitude of their respective instantaneous versions, leading to inconsistent results when projected into the future. As a result, we advocate caution when using daily mean data and strongly recommend the application of the standard definition for its calculation as closely as possible. Threshold-dependent indices derived from FWI are not reliably represented by the daily mean version and thus can neither be applied for the estimation of future fire danger season length and severity, nor for the estimation of future extreme events.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement 243888 (FUME Project). J.F. acknowledges nancial support from the Spanish R&D&I programme through grant CGL2010-22158-C02 (CORWES project). The ESCENA project (200800050084265) of the Spanish \Strategic action on energy and climate change" provided the WRF RCM simulation used in this study. We acknowledge three anonymous referees for their useful comments that helped to improve the original manuscript

Robust projections of Fire Weather Index in the Mediterranean using statistical downscaling

The effect of climate change on wildfires constitutes a serious concern in fire-prone regions with complex fire behavior such as the Mediterranean. The coarse resolution of future climate projections produced by General Circulation Models (GCMs) prevents their direct use in local climate change studies. Statistical downscaling techniques bridge this gap using empirical models that link the synoptic-scale variables from GCMs to the local variables of interest (using e.g. data from meteorological stations). In this paper, we investigate the application of statistical downscaling methods in the context of wildfire research, focusing in the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), one of the most popular fire danger indices. We target on the Iberian Peninsula and Greece and use historical observations of the FWI meteorological drivers (temperature, humidity, wind and precipitation) in several local stations. In particular, we analyze the performance of the analog method, which is a convenient first choice for this problem since it guarantees physical and spatial consistency of the downscaled variables, regardless of their different statistical properties. First we validate the method in perfect model conditions using ERA-Interim reanalysis data. Overall, not all variables are downscaled with the same accuracy, with the poorest results (with spatially averaged daily correlations below 0.5) obtained for wind, followed by precipitation. Consequently, those FWI components mostly relying on those parameters exhibit the poorest results. However, those deficiencies are compensated in the resulting FWI values due to the overall high performance of temperature and relative humidity. Then, we check the suitability of the method to downscale control projections (20C3M scenario) from a single GCM (the ECHAM5 model) and compute the downscaled future fire danger projections for the transient A1B scenario. In order to detect problems due to non-stationarities related to climate change, we compare the results with those obtained with a Regional Climate Model (RCM) driven by the same GCM. Although both statistical and dynamical projections exhibit a similar pattern of risk increment in the first half of the 21st century, they diverge during the second half of the century. As a conclusion, we advocate caution in the use of projections for this last period, regardless of the regionalization technique applied.We are grateful to the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) and to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) for providing the observational data used in this study. We would also like to thank Erik van Meijgaard from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute for making available ENSEMBLES RACMO2 climate model output verifying at 12:00 UTC and to the Max Planck Institute for providing the appropriate data for the ECHAM5 model used in this work. This work was partly funded by European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements 243888 (FUME Project) and from Spanish Ministry MICINN under grant EXTREMBLES (CGL2010-21869). We thank tw

The Effects of Wildfire on Mortality and Resources for an Arboreal Marsupial: Resilience to Fire Events but Susceptibility to Fire Regime Change

BACKGROUND: Big environmental disturbances have big ecological effects, yet these are not always what we might expect. Understanding the proximate effects of major disturbances, such as severe wildfires, on individuals, populations and habitats will be essential for understanding how predicted future increases in the frequency of such disturbances will affect ecosystems. However, researchers rarely have access to data from immediately before and after such events. Here we report on the effects of a severe and extensive forest wildfire on mortality, reproductive output and availability of key shelter resources for an arboreal marsupial. We also investigated the behavioural response of individuals to changed shelter resource availability in the post-fire environment. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We fitted proximity-logging radiotransmitters to mountain brushtail possums (Trichosurus cunninghami) before, during and after the 2009 wildfires in Victoria, Australia. Surprisingly, we detected no mortality associated with the fire, and despite a significant post-fire decrease in the proportion of females carrying pouch young in the burnt area, there was no short-term post-fire population decline. The major consequence of this fire for mountain brushtail possums was the loss of over 80% of hollow-bearing trees. The types of trees preferred as shelter sites (highly decayed dead standing trees) were those most likely to collapse after fire. Individuals adapted to resource decline by being more flexible in resource selection after the fire, but not by increased resource sharing. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Despite short-term demographic resilience and behavioural adaptation following this fire, the major loss of decayed hollow trees suggests the increased frequency of stand-replacing wildfires predicted under climate change will pose major challenges for shelter resource availability for hollow-dependent fauna. Hollow-bearing trees are typically biological legacies of previous forest generations in post-fire regrowth forests but will cease to be recruited to future regrowth forests if the interval between severe fires becomes too rapid for hollow formation

The Leukemia-Specific Fusion Gene ETV6/RUNX1 Perturbs Distinct Key Biological Functions Primarily by Gene Repression

-positive leukemic cell lines.-positive ALL samples underline the relevance of these pathways and molecular functions. We also validated six differentially expressed genes representing the categories “stem cell properties”, “B-cell differentiation”, “immune response”, “cell adhesion” and “DNA damage” with RT-qPCR. fusion gene interferes with key regulatory functions that shape the biology of this leukemia subtype. E/R may thus indeed constitute the essential driving force for the propagation and maintenance of the leukemic process irrespective of potential consequences of associated secondary changes. Finally, these findings may also provide a valuable source of potentially attractive therapeutic targets

Productivity of Malaria Vectors from Different Habitat Types in the Western Kenya Highlands

BACKGROUND: Mosquito Larval Source Management (LSM) could be a valuable additional tool for integrated malaria vector control especially in areas with focal transmission like the highlands of western Kenya if it were not for the need to target all potential habitats at frequent intervals. The ability to determine the productivity of malaria vectors from identified habitats might be used to target LSM only at productive ones. METHODS: Each aquatic habitat within three highland sites in western Kenya was classified as natural swamp, cultivated swamp, river fringe, puddle, open drain or burrow pit. Three habitats of each type were selected in each site in order to study the weekly productivity of adult malaria vectors from February to May 2009 using a sweep-net and their habitat characteristics recorded. RESULTS: All surveyed habitat types produced adult malaria vectors. Mean adult productivity of Anopheles gambiae sensu lato in puddles (1.8/m(2)) was 11-900 times higher than in the other habitat types. However, puddles were the most unstable habitats having water at 43% of all sampling occasions and accounted for 5% of all habitats mapped in the study areas whereas open drains accounted for 72%. Densities of anopheline late instars larvae significantly increased with the presence of a biofilm but decreased with increasing surface area or when water was flowing. Taking stability and frequency of the habitat into account, puddles were still the most productive habitat types for malaria vectors but closely followed by open drains. CONCLUSION: Even though productivity of An. gambiae s.l. was greatest in small and unstable habitats, estimation of their overall productivity in an area needs to consider the more stable habitats over time and their surface extension. Therefore, targeting only the highly productive habitats is unlikely to provide sufficient reduction in malaria vector densities