Capacity development through the sharing of climate information with diverse user communities

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) is a premier global research and capacity development institution focused on enhancing society’s capability to understand, use, manage and evaluate climate information. Its goal is to strengthen the technical capacity of individuals and organizations in order to increase the demand for climate information and its application. In the early years of IRI, staff trained local meteorologists and decision makers, often in developing countries, on using information products that IRI’s forecast group judged would be of value. However, in the last decade, IRI’s approach to training has evolved into one that is more user-driven. Today, users are brought on board during the development of training curricula to learn what information and methodologies would be most useful for their local needs. This establishes a sense of trust and ownership in the training process. Approaches are tailored to different contexts and communities, and focus is placed on cultivating long-lasting partnerships. The work presented in this article demonstrates the evolution of IRI’s capacity building and development processes. It highlights how the IRI implements capacity development activities, with a particular emphasis on the early engagement of practitioners and end users. Numerous examples are provided of the successes related to knowledge gains and to the concrete applications of climate information that can occur when the design and implementation of activities are preformed in an integrative manner. This approach builds channels for interaction among practitioners, policymakers, scientists and other societal decision making groups. Though it has seen numerous successes, the IRI is continually evaluating its capacity development methods and looking for ways to improve upon them

Bridging the climate information gap for adaptation: Mainstreaming climate services into higher education in Bangladesh

Bangladesh has proactively integrated climate change into national policies, and is renowned for constantly improving adaptation capacity. Yet, much of the focus has concentrated on long-term climate change scenarios and short-term weather forecasts. Additionally, most decision-makers (both policymakers and practitioners) lack the knowledge and skills to understand and use available climate information (past, present, short-, medium- and long-term future) that can support locally-led adaptation and reduce loss and damage. Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) has been working with IRI and others to improve not only the range and quality of information products but also its communication modalities. International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) jointly created the Bangladesh Academy for Climate Services (BACS) to strengthen national climate services through training, academic engagement and stakeholder convening. This report describes the outcomes of an Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) funded microgrant project aligned with the BACS goals of co-producing climate services content that can help bridge the climate services knowledge gap in Bangladesh through transdisciplinary collaboration. The project was a collaboration between several universities across the country to support a long-term vision where young people are trained in every climate-sensitive sector to make use of all information available to improve their resilience

The bulk mineralogy, elemental composition, and water content of the Winchcombe CM chondrite fall

On the micro-scale, the Winchcombe CM carbonaceous chondrite contains a number of lithological units with a variety of degrees of aqueous alteration. However, an understanding of the average hydration state is useful when comparing to other meteorites and remote observations of airless bodies. We report correlated bulk analyses on multiple subsamples of the Winchcombe meteorite, determining an average phyllosilicate fraction (PSF) petrologic type of 1.2 and an average water content of 11.9 wt%. We show the elemental composition and distribution of iron and iron oxidation state are consistent with measurements from other CM chondrites, however Winchcombe shows a low Hg concentration of 58.1 ±0.5 ng/g. We demonstrate that infrared reflectance spectra of Winchcombe are consistent with its bulk modal mineralogy, and comparable to other CM chondrites with similar average petrologic types. Finally, we also evaluate whether spectral parameters can estimate H/Si ratios and water abundances, finding generally spectral parameters underestimate water abundance compared to measured values.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin

Timing of therapy and neurodevelopmental outcomes in 18 families with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy

Background: Seventy-five percent of patients with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy due to a-aminoadipic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency (PDE-ALDH7A1) suffer intellectual developmental disability despite pyridoxine treatment. Adjunct lysine reduction therapies (LRT), aimed at lowering putative neurotoxic metabolites, are associated with improved cognitive outcomes. However, possibly due to timing of treatment, not all patients have normal intellectual function. Methods: This retrospective, multi-center cohort study evaluated the effect of timing of pyridoxine monotherapy and pyridoxine with adjunct LRT on neurodevelopmental outcome. Patients with confirmed PDE-ALDH7A1 with at least one sibling with PDE-ALDH7A1 and a difference in age at treatment initiation were eligible and identified via the international PDE registry, resulting in thirty-seven patients of 18 families. Treatment regimen was pyridoxine monotherapy in ten families and pyridoxine with adjunct LRT in the other eight. Primary endpoints were standardized and clinically assessed neurodevelopmental outcomes. Clinical neurodevelopmental status was subjectively assessed over seven domains: overall neurodevelopment, speech/language, cognition, fine and gross motor skills, activities of daily living and behavioral/psychiatric abnormalities. Results: The majority of early treated siblings on pyridoxine monotherapy performed better than their late treated siblings on the clinically assessed domain of fine motor skills. For siblings on pyridoxine and adjunct LRT, the majority of early treated siblings performed better on clinically assessed overall neurodevelopment, cognition, and behavior/psychiatry. Fourteen percent of the total cohort was assessed as normal on all domains. Conclusion: Early treatment with pyridoxine and adjunct LRT may be beneficial for neurodevelopmental outcome. When evaluating a more extensive neurodevelopmental assessment, the actual impairment rate may be higher than the 75% reported in literature. Take- home message: Early initiation of lysine reduction therapies adjunct to pyridoxine treatment in patients with PDE-ALDH7A1 may result in an improved neurodevelopmental outcome. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc

Trend-TDT – a transmission/disequilibrium based association test on functional mini/microsatellites

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Minisatellites and microsatellites are associated with human disease, not only as markers of risk but also involved directly in disease pathogenesis. They may play significant roles in replication, repair and mutation of DNA, regulation of gene transcription and protein structure alteration. Phenotypes can thus be affected by mini/microsatellites in a manner proportional to the length of the allele. Here we propose a new method to assess the linear trend toward transmission of shorter or longer alleles from heterozygote parents to affected child.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This test (trend-TDT) performs better than other TDT (Transmission/Disequilibrium Test) type tests, such as TDT_maxand TDT_L/S, under most marker-disease association models.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The trend-TDT test is a more powerful association test when there is a biological basis to suspect a relationship between allele length and disease risk.</p

Genome-wide association study identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is a highly heritable psychiatric disorder. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) including 20,352 cases and 31,358 controls of European descent, with follow-up analysis of 822 variants with P &lt; 1 × 10-4 in an additional 9,412 cases and 137,760 controls. Eight of the 19 variants that were genome-wide significant (P &lt; 5 × 10-8) in the discovery GWAS were not genome-wide significant in the combined analysis, consistent with small effect sizes and limited power but also with genetic heterogeneity. In the combined analysis, 30 loci were genome-wide significant, including 20 newly identified loci. The significant loci contain genes encoding ion channels, neurotransmitter transporters and synaptic components. Pathway analysis revealed nine significantly enriched gene sets, including regulation of insulin secretion and endocannabinoid signaling. Bipolar I disorder is strongly genetically correlated with schizophrenia, driven by psychosis, whereas bipolar II disorder is more strongly correlated with major depressive disorder. These findings address key clinical questions and provide potential biological mechanisms for bipolar disorder

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median $z\sim 0.03$). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between $z\sim 0.6$ and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: mapping the Milky Way, nearby galaxies, and the distant universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median ). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July