From urban to national heat island: The effect of anthropogenic heat output on climate change in high population industrial countries

The project presented here sought to determine whether changes in anthropogenic thermal emission can have a measurable effect on temperature at the national level, taking Japan and Great Britain as type examples. Using energy consumption as a proxy for thermal emission, strong correlations (mean r2 = 0.90 and 0.89, respectively) are found between national equivalent heat output (HO) and temperature above background levels Δt averaged over 5‐ to 8‐yr periods between 1965 and 2013, as opposed to weaker correlations for CMIP5 model temperatures above background levels Δmt (mean r2 = 0.52 and 0.10). It is clear that the fluctuations in Δt are better explained by energy consumption than by present climate models, and that energy consumption can contribute to climate change at the national level on these timescales

Dynamic communicability and epidemic spread: a case study on an empirical dynamic contact network

We analyze a recently proposed temporal centrality measure applied to an empirical network based on person-to-person contacts in an emergency department of a busy urban hospital. We show that temporal centrality identifies a distinct set of top-spreaders than centrality based on the time-aggregated binarized contact matrix, so that taken together, the accuracy of capturing top-spreaders improves significantly. However, with respect to predicting epidemic outcome, the temporal measure does not necessarily outperform less complex measures. Our results also show that other temporal markers such as duration observed and the time of first appearance in the the network can be used in a simple predictive model to generate predictions that capture the trend of the observed data remarkably well.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures, 11 tables; typos corrected; references added; Figure 3 added; some changes to the conclusion and introductio

Test for Spatio-Temporal Counts Being Poisson

The new Log-Linear Test (TL) is proposed to identify when the Poisson model fails for a collection of count random variables. TL is shown to have better rejection rate with small sample size and essentially the same power compared to a classical Fisher-Bohning’s Statistic TF for standard alternatives to Poisson

World Health Organization (WHO)/International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grading in fine‐needle aspiration biopsies of renal masses

Background Utilization of fine‐needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy for the evaluation of renal masses has been increasing at our institution. At times diagnostic material on direct smears is superior to that in the cell block/core biopsy, therefore assigning an accurate nuclear grade in the cytopathology report would provide useful prognostic information. Methods Search of the pathology database identified renal FNAs performed during an 11‐year period (2006–2017). Corresponding core biopsies and resections were identified. Cases with a diagnosis of primary renal neoplasia on FNA, core biopsy, and/or resection were included. Two pathologists reviewed all cases and assigned a World Health Organization (WHO)/International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade to each FNA, core biopsy, and resection case. Results A total of 162 kidney FNAs were identified. Primary renal neoplasia was diagnosed in 137 cases on core biopsy/resection. Among diagnostic FNAs of clear cell RCC and papillary RCC with core biopsy/resection specimens for re‐review (n = 52), reviewers assigned a concordant WHO/ISUP grade to 83% (43/52) of cases. Among 9 cases with discrepant scores, all had a discrepancy of 1 grade and were undergraded on FNA. Using a two tier grading system (low vs. high grade), reviewers assigned a concordant grade to 88% (46/52) of cases. Among 6 cases with discrepant scores, all were classified as low grade (WHO/ISUP grade 2) on FNA versus high grade (WHO/ISUP grade 3) on resection. Conclusion The WHO/ISUP grade assigned on FNA shows good concordance with subsequent resection/core specimens (83%), with all discrepant cases being undergraded by one grade

Edge Intelligence Over the Air: Two Faces of Interference in Federated Learning

Federated edge learning is envisioned as the bedrock of enabling intelligence in next-generation wireless networks, but the limited spectral resources often constrain its scalability. In light of this challenge, a line of recent research suggested integrating analog over-the-air computations into federated edge learning systems, to exploit the superposition property of electromagnetic waves for fast aggregation of intermediate parameters and achieve (almost) unlimited scalability. Over-the-air computations also benefit the system in other aspects, such as low hardware cost, reduced access latency, and enhanced privacy protection. Despite these advantages, the interference introduced by wireless communications also influences various aspects of the model training process, while its importance is not well recognized yet. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the positive and negative effects of interference on over-the-air computation-based edge learning systems. The potential open issues and research trends are also discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Accepted by IEEE Communications Magazin

Catastrophic eruption of magnetic flux rope in the corona and solar wind with and without magnetic reconnection

It is generally believed that the magnetic free energy accumulated in the corona serves as a main energy source for solar explosions such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In the framework of the flux rope catastrophe model for CMEs, the energy may be abruptly released either by an ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) catastrophe, which belongs to a global magnetic topological instability of the system, or by a fast magnetic reconnection across preexisting or rapidly-developing electric current sheets. Both ways of magnetic energy release are thought to be important to CME dynamics. To disentangle their contributions, we construct a flux rope catastrophe model in the corona and solar wind and compare different cases in which we either prohibit or allow magnetic reconnection to take place across rapidly-growing current sheets during the eruption. It is demonstrated that CMEs, even fast ones, can be produced taking the ideal MHD catastrophe as the only process of magnetic energy release. Nevertheless, the eruptive speed can be significantly enhanced after magnetic reconnection sets in. In addition, a smooth transition from slow to fast eruptions is observed when increasing the strength of the background magnetic field, simply because in a stronger field there is more free magnetic energy at the catastrophic point available to be released during an eruption. This suggests that fast and slow CMEs may have an identical driving mechanism.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, ApJ, in press (vol. 666, Sept. 2007