Asian emissions in 2006 for the NASA INTEX-B mission

A new inventory of air pollutant emissions in Asia in the year 2006 is developed to support the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment-Phase B (INTEX-B) funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Emissions are estimated for all major anthropogenic sources, excluding biomass burning. We estimate total Asian anthropogenic emissions in the year 2006 as follows: 47.1 Tg SO2, 36.7 Tg NOx, 298.2 Tg CO, 54.6 Tg NMVOC, 29.2 Tg PM10, 22.2 Tg PM2.5, 2.97 Tg BC, and 6.57 Tg OC. We emphasize emissions from China because they dominate the Asia pollutant outflow to the Pacific and the increase of emissions from China since 2000 is of great concern. We have implemented a series of improved methodologies to gain a better understanding of emissions from China, including a detailed technology-based approach, a dynamic methodology representing rapid technology renewal, critical examination of energy statistics, and a new scheme of NMVOC speciation for model-ready emissions. We estimate China's anthropogenic emissions in the year 2006 to be as follows: 31.0 Tg SO2, 20.8 Tg NOx, 166.9 Tg CO, 23.2 Tg NMVOC, 18.2 Tg PM10, 13.3 Tg PM2.5, 1.8 Tg BC, and 3.2 Tg OC. We have also estimated 2001 emissions for China using the same methodology and found that all species show an increasing trend during 2001-2006: 36% increase for SO2, 55% for NOx, 18% for CO, 29% for VOC, 13% for PM10, and 14% for PM2.5, BC, and OC. Emissions are gridded at a resolution of 30 minW30 min and can be accessed at our web site (mic.greenresource.cn/intex-b2006)

Novel genetic loci associated with hippocampal volume

The hippocampal formation is a brain structure integrally involved in episodic memory, spatial navigation, cognition and stress responsiveness. Structural abnormalities in hippocampal volume and shape are found in several common neuropsychiatric disorders. To identify the genetic underpinnings of hippocampal structure here we perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 33,536 individuals and discover six independent loci significantly associated with hippocampal volume, four of them novel. Of the novel loci, three lie within genes (ASTN2, DPP4 and MAST4) and one is found 200 kb upstream of SHH. A hippocampal subfield analysis shows that a locus within the MSRB3 gene shows evidence of a localized effect along the dentate gyrus, subiculum, CA1 and fissure. Further, we show that genetic variants associated with decreased hippocampal volume are also associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (rg =-0.155). Our findings suggest novel biological pathways through which human genetic variation influences hippocampal volume and risk for neuropsychiatric illness

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

Surgical management of traumatic elbow luxation in two cats using circumferential suture prostheses

Two Domestic Shorthaired cats were admitted after sustaining a traumatic lateral elbow luxation. Non-surgical management with reduction and external coaptation was unsuccessful at maintaining reduction. At surgery, the lateral collateral ligament (LCL) was intact but grossly elongated in one case, and ruptured in the other. Trans-condylar, trans-radial and trans-ulnar tunnels were drilled from lateral to medial and a suture prosthesis was used in order to augment a suture imbrication of the LCL in the fist cat. The prosthesis was used as a stand-alone procedure in the second case. No postoperative complications occurred and both patients regained excellent elbow range of motion without any observable lamenes

Robust Facial Landmark Detection for Intelligent Vehicle System

This paper presents an integrated approach for robustly locating facial landmark for drivers. In the first step a cascade of probability learners is used to detect the face edge primitives from fine to coarse, so that faces with variant head poses can be located. The edge density descriptors and skin-tone color features are combined together as the basic features to examine the probability of an edge being a face primitive. A cascade of the probability learner is used. In each scale, only edges with sufficient large probabilities are kept and passed on to the next scale. The final output of the cascade gives the edge primitives that belong to faces, which determine the face location. In the second step, a facial landmark detection procedure is applied on the segmented face pixels. Facial landmark candidates are first detected by learning the posteriors in multiple resolutions. Then geometric constraint and the local appearance, modeled by SIFT descriptor, are used to find the set of facial landmarks with largest matching score. Experiments over highresolution images (FERET database) as well as the real-world drivers’ data are used to evaluate the performance. A fairly good results can be obtained, which validates the proposed approach