The Influence of Physiological Status on age Prediction of Anopheles Arabiensis Using Near Infra-red spectroscopy

Determining the age of malaria vectors is essential for evaluating the impact of interventions that reduce the survival of wild mosquito populations and for estimating changes in vectorial capacity. Near infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS) is a simple and non-destructive method that has been used to determine the age and species of Anopheles gambiae s.l. by analyzing differences in absorption spectra. The spectra are affected by biochemical changes that occur during the life of a mosquito and could be influenced by senescence and also the life history of the mosquito, i.e., mating, blood feeding and egg-laying events. To better understand these changes, we evaluated the influence of mosquito physiological status on NIR energy absorption spectra. Mosquitoes were kept in individual cups to permit record keeping of each individual insect’s life history. Mosquitoes of the same chronological age, but at different physiological stages, were scanned and compared using cross-validations. We observed a slight trend within some physiological stages that suggest older insects tend to be predicted as being physiologically more mature. It was advantageous to include mosquitoes of different chronological ages and physiological stages in calibrations, as it increases the robustness of the model resulting in better age predictions. Progression through different physiological statuses of An. arabiensis influences the chronological age prediction by the NIRS. Entomologists that wish to use NIR technology to predict the age of field-caught An. gambiae s.l from their study area should use a calibration developed from their field strain using mosquitoes of diverse chronological ages and physiological stages to increase the robustness and accuracy of the predictions.\u

Medical performance and the ‘inaccessible’ experience of illness: An exploratory study

© 2016 Medical Humanities. All rights reserved. We report a survey of audience members’ responses (147 questionnaires collected at seven performances) and 10 in-depth interviews (five former patients and two family members, three medical practitioners) to bloodlines, a medical performance exploring the experience of haematopoietic stem-cell transplant as treatment for acute leukaemia. Performances took place in 2014 and 2015. The article argues that performances that are created through interdisciplinary collaboration can convey otherwise ‘inaccessible’ illness experiences in ways that audience members with personal experience recognise as familiar, and find emotionally affecting. In particular such performances are adept at interweaving ‘objectivist’ (objective, medical) and ‘subjectivist’ (subjective, emotional) perspectives of the illness experience, and indeed, at challenging such distinctions. We suggest that reflecting familiar yet hard-to-articulate experiences may be beneficial for the ongoing emotional recovery of people who have survived serious disease, particularly in relation to the isolation that they experience during and as a consequence of their treatment

HAWC+ Far-infrared Observations of the Magnetic Field Geometry in M51 and NGC 891

Abstract: Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera Plus polarimetry at 154 μm is reported for the face-on galaxy M51 and the edge-on galaxy NGC 891. For M51, the polarization vectors generally follow the spiral pattern defined by the molecular gas distribution, the far-infrared (FIR) intensity contours, and other tracers of star formation. The fractional polarization is much lower in the FIR-bright central regions than in the outer regions, and we rule out loss of grain alignment and variations in magnetic field strength as causes. When compared with existing synchrotron observations, which sample different regions with different weighting, we find the net position angles are strongly correlated, the fractional polarizations are moderately correlated, but the polarized intensities are uncorrelated. We argue that the low fractional polarization in the central regions must be due to significant numbers of highly turbulent segments across the beam and along lines of sight in the beam in the central 3 kpc of M51. For NGC 891, the FIR polarization vectors within an intensity contour of 1500 are oriented very close to the plane of the galaxy. The FIR polarimetry is probably sampling the magnetic field geometry in NGC 891 much deeper into the disk than is possible with NIR polarimetry and radio synchrotron measurements. In some locations in NGC 891, the FIR polarization is very low, suggesting we are preferentially viewing the magnetic field mostly along the line of sight, down the length of embedded spiral arms. There is tentative evidence for a vertical field in the polarized emission off the plane of the disk

An ocean-colour time series for use in climate studies: the experience of the ocean-colour climate change initiate (OC-CCI)

Ocean colour is recognised as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV) by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS); and spectrally-resolved water-leaving radiances (or remote-sensing reflectances) in the visible domain, and chlorophyll-a concentration are identified as required ECV products. Time series of the products at the global scale and at high spatial resolution, derived from ocean-colour data, are key to studying the dynamics of phytoplankton at seasonal and inter-annual scales; their role in marine biogeochemistry; the global carbon cycle; the modulation of how phytoplankton distribute solar-induced heat in the upper layers of the ocean; and the response of the marine ecosystem to climate variability and change. However, generating a long time series of these products from ocean colour data is not a trivial task: algorithms that are best suited for climate studies have to be selected from a number that are available for atmospheric correction of the satellite signal and for retrieval of chlorophyll-a concentration; since satellites have a finite life span, data from multiple sensors have to be merged to create a single time series, and any uncorrected inter-sensor biases could introduce artefacts in the series, e.g., different sensors monitor radiances at different wavebands such that producing a consistent time series of reflectances is not straightforward. Another requirement is that the products have to be validated against in situ observations. Furthermore, the uncertainties in the products have to be quantified, ideally on a pixel-by-pixel basis, to facilitate applications and interpretations that are consistent with the quality of the data. This paper outlines an approach that was adopted for generating an ocean-colour time series for climate studies, using data from the MERIS (MEdium spectral Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) sensor of the European Space Agency; the SeaWiFS (Sea viewingWide-Field-of-view Sensor) and MODIS-Aqua (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-Aqua) sensors from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (USA); and VIIRS (Visible and Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA). The time series now covers the period from late 1997 to end of 2018. To ensure that the products meet, as well as possible, the requirements of the user community, marine-ecosystem modellers, and remote-sensing scientists were consulted at the outset on their immediate and longer-term requirements as well as on their expectations of ocean-colour data for use in climate research. Taking the user requirements into account, a series of objective criteria were established, against which available algorithms for processing ocean-colour data were evaluated and ranked. The algorithms that performed best with respect to the climate user requirements were selected to process data from the satellite sensors. Remote-sensing reflectance data from MODIS-Aqua, MERIS, and VIIRS were band-shifted to match the wavebands of SeaWiFS. Overlapping data were used to correct for mean biases between sensors at every pixel. The remote-sensing reflectance data derived from the sensors were merged, and the selected in-water algorithm was applied to the merged data to generate maps of chlorophyll concentration, inherent optical properties at SeaWiFS wavelengths, and the diffuse attenuation coefficient at 490 nm. The merged products were validated against in situ observations. The uncertainties established on the basis of comparisons with in situ data were combined with an optical classification of the remote-sensing reflectance data using a fuzzy-logic approach, and were used to generate uncertainties (root mean square difference and bias) for each product at each pixel

BioCreative III interactive task: an overview

The BioCreative challenge evaluation is a community-wide effort for evaluating text mining and information extraction systems applied to the biological domain. The biocurator community, as an active user of biomedical literature, provides a diverse and engaged end user group for text mining tools. Earlier BioCreative challenges involved many text mining teams in developing basic capabilities relevant to biological curation, but they did not address the issues of system usage, insertion into the workflow and adoption by curators. Thus in BioCreative III (BC-III), the InterActive Task (IAT) was introduced to address the utility and usability of text mining tools for real-life biocuration tasks. To support the aims of the IAT in BC-III, involvement of both developers and end users was solicited, and the development of a user interface to address the tasks interactively was requested

The Far-infrared Polarization Spectrum of ρ Ophiuchi A from HAWC+/SOFIA Observations

We report on polarimetric maps made with HAWC+/SOFIA toward ρ Oph A, the densest portion of the ρ Ophiuchi molecular complex. We employed HAWC+ bands C (89 μm) and D (154 μm). The slope of the polarization spectrum was investigated by defining the quantity ${{ \mathcal R }}_{{DC}}={p}_{D}/{p}_{C}$, where p C and p D represent polarization degrees in bands C and D, respectively. We find a clear correlation between ${{ \mathcal R }}_{{DC}}$ and the molecular hydrogen column density across the cloud. A positive slope (${{ \mathcal R }}_{{DC}}$ > 1) dominates the lower-density and well-illuminated portions of the cloud, which are heated by the high-mass star Oph S1, whereas a transition to a negative slope (${{ \mathcal R }}_{{DC}}$ < 1) is observed toward the denser and less evenly illuminated cloud core. We interpret the trends as due to a combination of (1) warm grains at the cloud outskirts, which are efficiently aligned by the abundant exposure to radiation from Oph S1, as proposed in the radiative torques theory; and (2) cold grains deep in the cloud core, which are poorly aligned owing to shielding from external radiation. To assess this interpretation, we developed a very simple toy model using a spherically symmetric cloud core based on Herschel data and verified that the predicted variation of ${{ \mathcal R }}_{{DC}}$ is consistent with the observations. This result introduces a new method that can be used to probe the grain alignment efficiency in molecular clouds, based on the analysis of trends in the far-infrared polarization spectrum

Large-scale exome-wide association analysis identifies loci for White Blood Cell Traits and Pleiotropy with Immune-Mediated Diseases

White blood cells play diverse roles in innate and adaptive immunity. Genetic association analyses of phenotypic variation in circulating white blood cell (WBC) counts from large samples of otherwise healthy individuals can provide insights into genes and biologic pathways involved in production, differentiation, or clearance of particular WBC lineages (myeloid, lymphoid) and also potentially inform the genetic basis of autoimmune, allergic, and blood diseases. We performed an exome array-based meta-analysis of total WBC and subtype counts (neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, basophils, and eosinophils) in a multi-ancestry discovery and replication sample of ∼157,622 individuals from 25 studies. We identified 16 common variants (8 of which were coding variants) associated with one or more WBC traits, the majority of which are pleiotropically associated with autoimmune diseases. Based on functional annotation, these loci included genes encoding surface markers of myeloid, lymphoid, or hematopoietic stem cell differentiation (CD69, CD33, CD87), transcription factors regulating lineage specification during hematopoiesis (ASXL1, IRF8, IKZF1, JMJD1C, ETS2-PSMG1), and molecules involved in neutrophil clearance/apoptosis (C10orf54, LTA), adhesion (TNXB), or centrosome and microtubule structure/function (KIF9, TUBD1). Together with recent reports of somatic ASXL1 mutations among individuals with idiopathic cytopenias or clonal hematopoiesis of undetermined significance, the identification of a common regulatory 3 UTR variant of ASXL1 suggests that both germline and somatic ASXL1 mutations contribute to lower blood counts in otherwise asymptomatic individuals. These association results shed light on genetic mechanisms that regulate circulating WBC counts and suggest a prominent shared genetic architecture with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases