Severe traumatic injury during long duration spaceflight: Light years beyond ATLS

Traumatic injury strikes unexpectedly among the healthiest members of the human population, and has been an inevitable companion of exploration throughout history. In space flight beyond the Earth's orbit, NASA considers trauma to be the highest level of concern regarding the probable incidence versus impact on mission and health. Because of limited resources, medical care will have to focus on the conditions most likely to occur, as well as those with the most significant impact on the crew and mission. Although the relative risk of disabling injuries is significantly higher than traumatic deaths on earth, either issue would have catastrophic implications during space flight. As a result this review focuses on serious life-threatening injuries during space flight as determined by a NASA consensus conference attended by experts in all aspects of injury and space flight

Simulation of the December 2021 Marshall fire with a hybrid stochastic Lagrangian-cellular automata model

A stochastic model based on a combination of the cellular automata approach for forest fires and a random walk for firebrands and hot gases has been further developed and used to simulate the Marshall fire, Colorado, December 2021. Typical heat release profiles for burning wooden houses from the literature were used to distil information on the burning duration and ignition delay time needed to model the hours-long firebrand emission from wooden buildings in the Marshall area during this fire. In addition to information on vegetation and housing structures from in-person inspection, satellite images were used to estimate various model parameters. The results give reasonable predictions for the extent of the fire and its time evolution. A parametric analysis further highlighted the sensitivity of predictions to the parameters used in the model and suggested areas for improvement. The very low computational cost of the model, ease of operation, and acceptable accuracy suggest that the proposed framework can be used for operational decision-making and damage assessment

Simulation of the December 2021 Marshall fire with a hybrid stochastic Lagrangian–cellular automata model

A stochastic model based on a combination of the cellular automata approach for forest fires and a random walk for firebrands and hot gases has been further developed and used to simulate the Marshall fire, Colorado, December 2021. Typical heat release profiles for burning wooden houses from the literature were used to distill information on the burning duration and ignition delay time needed to model the hours-long firebrand emission from wooden buildings in the Marshall area during this fire. In addition to information on vegetation and housing structures from in-person inspection, satellite images were used to estimate various model parameters. The results give reasonable predictions for the extent of the fire and its time evolution. A parametric analysis further highlighted the sensitivity of predictions to the parameters used in the model and suggested areas for improvement. The very low computational cost of the model, ease of operation, and acceptable accuracy suggest that the proposed framework can be used for operational decision-making and damage assessment

Catch rates, composition and fish size from reefs managed with periodically-harvested closures

Periodically-harvested closures are commonly employed within co-management frameworks to help manage small-scale, multi-species fisheries in the Indo-Pacific. Despite their widespread use, the benefits of periodic harvesting strategies for multi-species fisheries have, to date, been largely untested. We examine catch and effort data from four periodically-harvested reef areas and 55 continuously-fished reefs in Solomon Islands. We test the hypothesis that fishing in periodically-harvested closures would yield: (a) higher catch rates, (b) proportionally more short lived, fast growing, sedentary taxa, and (c) larger finfish and invertebrates, compared to catches from reefs continuously open to fishing. Our study showed that catch rates were significantly higher from periodically-harvested closures for gleaning of invertebrates, but not for line and spear fishing. The family level composition of catches did not vary significantly between open reefs and periodically-harvested closures. Fish captured from periodically-harvested closures were slightly larger, but Trochus niloticus were significantly smaller than those from continuously open reefs. In one case of intense and prolonged harvesting, gleaning catch rates significantly declined, suggesting invertebrate stocks were substantially depleted in the early stages of the open period. Our study suggests periodically-harvested closures can have some short term benefits via increasing harvesting efficiency. However, we did not find evidence that the strategy had substantially benefited multi-species fin-fisheries

COVID-19 and its impact on the cardiovascular system

Objectives: The clinical impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has varied across countries with varying cardiovascular manifestations. We review the cardiac presentations, in-hospital outcomes and development of cardiovascular complications in the initial cohort of SARS-CoV-2 positive patients at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, United Kingdom. Methods: We retrospectively analysed 498 COVID-19 positive adult admissions to our institute from 7th March to 7th April 2020. Patient data was collected for baseline demographics, co-morbidities and in-hospital outcomes, especially relating to cardiovascular intervention. Results: Mean age was 67.4±16.1 years and 62.2%(n=310) were male. 64.1%(n=319) of our cohort had underlying cardiovascular disease (CVD) with 53.4%(n=266) having hypertension. 43.2%(n=215) developed acute myocardial injury. Mortality was significantly increased in those patients with myocardial injury (47.4% vs 18.4%,p<0.001). Only 4 COVID-19 patients had invasive coronary angiography,2 underwent percutaneous coronary intervention and 1 required a permanent pacemaker implantation. 7.0%(n=35) of patients had an inpatient echocardiogram. Acute myocardial injury (OR 2.39,1.31-4.40,p=0.005) and history of hypertension (OR 1.88 ,1.01-3.55,p=0.049) approximately doubled the odds of in-hospital mortality in patients admitted with COVID-19 after other variables had been controlled for. Conclusion: Hypertension, pre-existing CVD and acute myocardial injury were associated with increased in-hospital mortality in our cohort of COVID-19 patients. However, only a low number of patients required invasive cardiac intervention