Stratospheric dynamics and transport studies

A three dimensional General Circulation Model/Transport Model is used to simulate stratospheric circulation and constituent distributions. Model simulations are analyzed to interpret radiative, chemical, and dynamical processes and their mutual interactions. Concurrent complementary studies are conducted using both global satellite data and other appropriate data. Comparisons of model simulations and data analysis studies are used to aid in understanding stratospheric dynamics and transport processes and to assess the validity of current theory and models

Theory and observations: Model simulations of the period 1955-1985

The main objective of the theoretical studies presented here is to apply models of stratospheric chemistry and transport in order to understand the processes that control stratospheric ozone and that are responsible for the observed variations. The model calculations are intended to simulate the observed behavior of atmospheric ozone over the past three decades (1955-1985), for which there exists a substantial record of both ground-based and, more recently, satellite measurements. Ozone concentrations in the atmosphere vary on different time scales and for several different causes. The models described here were designed to simulate the effect on ozone of changes in the concentration of such trace gases as CFC, CH4, N2O, and CO2. Changes from year to year in ultraviolet radiation associated with the solar cycle are also included in the models. A third source of variability explicitly considered is the sporadic introduction of large amounts of NO sub x into the stratosphere during atmospheric nuclear tests

Nonlinear Diffusion Through Large Complex Networks Containing Regular Subgraphs

Transport through generalized trees is considered. Trees contain the simple nodes and supernodes, either well-structured regular subgraphs or those with many triangles. We observe a superdiffusion for the highly connected nodes while it is Brownian for the rest of the nodes. Transport within a supernode is affected by the finite size effects vanishing as $N\to\infty.$ For the even dimensions of space, $d=2,4,6,...$, the finite size effects break down the perturbation theory at small scales and can be regularized by using the heat-kernel expansion.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures include

Quantum Bubble Nucleation beyond WKB: Resummation of Vacuum Bubble Diagrams

On the basis of Borel resummation, we propose a systematical improvement of bounce calculus of quantum bubble nucleation rate. We study a metastable super-renormalizable field theory, $D$ dimensional O(N) symmetric $\phi^4$ model ($D<4$) with an attractive interaction. The validity of our proposal is tested in D=1 (quantum mechanics) by using the perturbation series of ground state energy to high orders. We also present a result in D=2, based on an explicit calculation of vacuum bubble diagrams to five loop orders.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, PHYZZ

Dental management considerations for the patient with an acquired coagulopathy. Part 1: Coagulopathies from systemic disease

Current teaching suggests that many patients are at risk for prolonged bleeding during and following invasive dental procedures, due to an acquired coagulopathy from systemic disease and/or from medications. However, treatment standards for these patients often are the result of long-standing dogma with little or no scientific basis. The medical history is critical for the identification of patients potentially at risk for prolonged bleeding from dental treatment. Some time-honoured laboratory tests have little or no use in community dental practice. Loss of functioning hepatic, renal, or bone marrow tissue predisposes to acquired coagulopathies through different mechanisms, but the relationship to oral haemostasis is poorly understood. Given the lack of established, science-based standards, proper dental management requires an understanding of certain principles of pathophysiology for these medical conditions and a few standard laboratory tests. Making changes in anticoagulant drug regimens are often unwarranted and/or expensive, and can put patients at far greater risk for morbidity and mortality than the unlikely outcome of postoperative bleeding. It should be recognised that prolonged bleeding is a rare event following invasive dental procedures, and therefore the vast majority of patients with suspected acquired coagulopathies are best managed in the community practice setting

Mental Health of Parents and Life Satisfaction of Children: A Within-Family Analysis of Intergenerational Transmission of Well-Being

This paper addresses the extent to which there is an intergenerational transmission of mental health and subjective well-being within families. Specifically it asks whether parents’ own mental distress influences their child’s life satisfaction, and vice versa. Whilst the evidence on daily contagion of stress and strain between members of the same family is substantial, the evidence on the transmission between parental distress and children’s well-being over a longer period of time is sparse. We tested this idea by examining the within-family transmission of mental distress from parent to child’s life satisfaction, and vice versa, using rich longitudinal data on 1,175 British youths. Results show that parental distress at year t-1 is an important determinant of child’s life satisfaction in the current year. This is true for boys and girls, although boys do not appear to be affected by maternal distress levels. The results also indicated that the child’s own life satisfaction is related with their father’s distress levels in the following year, regardless of the gender of the child. Finally, we examined whether the underlying transmission correlation is due to shared social environment, empathic reactions, or transmission via parent-child interaction

Ozone climatology using interactive chemistry: results from the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model

The climatology of ozone produced by the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM) is presented. This three-dimensional global model incorporates the radiative feedbacks of ozone and water vapor calculated on-line with a photochemical module. This module includes a comprehensive gas-phase reaction set and a limited set of heterogeneous reactions to account for processes occurring on background sulphate aerosols. While transport is global, photochemistry is solved from about 400 hPa to the top of the model at ∼95 km. This approach provides a complete and comprehensive representation of transport, emission, and photochemistry of various constituents from the surface to the mesopause region. A comparison of model results with observations indicates that the ozone distribution and variability are in agreement with observations throughout most of the model domain. Column ozone annual variation is represented to within 5–10% of the observations except in the Southern Hemisphere for springtime high latitudes. The vertical ozone distribution is generally well represented by the model up to the mesopause region. Nevertheless, in the upper stratosphere, the model generally underestimates the amount of ozone as well as the latitudinal tilting of ozone isopleths at high latitude. Ozone variability is analyzed and compared with measurements. The comparison shows that the phase and amplitude of the seasonal variation as well as shorter timescale variations are well represented by the model at various latitudes and heights. Finally, the impact of incorporating ozone radiative feedback on the model climatology is isolated. It is found that the incorporation of ozone radiative feedback results in a cooling of ∼8 K in the summer stratopause region, which corrects a warm bias that results when climatological ozone is used

The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)

The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) was established to study and intercompare climate simulations made with coupled ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere-land GCMs. There are two main phases (CMIP1 and CMIP2), which study, respectively, 1) the ability of models to simulate current climate, and 2) model simulations of climate change due to an idealized change in forcing (a 1% per year CO2 increase). Results from a number of CMIP projects were reported at the first CMIP Workshop held in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1998. Some recent advances in global coupled modeling related to CMIP were also reported. Presentations were based on preliminary unpublished results. Key outcomes from the workshop were that 1) many observed aspects of climate variability are simulated in global coupled models including the North Atlantic oscillation and its linkages to North Atlantic SSTs, El Niño-like events, and monsoon interannual variability; 2) the amplitude of both high- and low-frequency global mean surface temperature variability in many global coupled models is less than that observed, with the former due in part to simulated ENSO in the models being generally weaker than observed, and the latter likely to be at least partially due to the uncertainty in the estimates of past radiative forcing; 3) an El Niño-like pattern in the mean SST response with greater surface warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific than the western equatorial Pacific is found by a number of models in global warming climate change experiments, but other models have a more spatially uniform or even a La Niña-like, response; 4) flux adjustment, by definition, improves the simulation of mean present-day climate over oceans, does not guarantee a drift-free climate, but can produce a stable base state in some models to enable very long term (1000 yr and longer) integrations-in these models it does not appear to have a major effect on model processes or model responses to increasing CO2; and 5) recent multicentury integrations show that a stable surface climate can be attained without flux adjustment (though still with some systematic simulation errors)

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types