Climate Change Sensitivity Assessment on Upper Mississippi River Basin Streamflows Using SWAT

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to assess the impacts of potential future climate change on the hydrology of the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). Calibration and validation of SWAT were performed on a monthly basis for 1968-87 and 1988-97, respectively; R2 and Nash-Sutcliffe simulation efficiency (E) values computed for the monthly comparisons were 0.74 and 0.65 for the calibration period and 0.81 and 0.75 for the validation period. The impacts of eight 20-year (1971- 90) scenarios were then analyzed, relative to a scenario baseline. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations was predicted to result in an average annual flow increase of 35 percent. An average annual flow decrease of 15 percent was estimated for a constant temperature increase of 4°C. Essentially linear impacts were predicted among precipitation change scenarios of -20, -10, 10, and 20 percent, which resulted in average annual flow changes at Grafton, Illinois, of -51, -27, 28, and 58 percent, respectively. The final two scenarios accounted for variable monthly temperature and precipitation changes obtained from a previous climate projection with and without the effects of CO2 doubling. The resultant average annual flows were predicted to increase by 15 and 52 percent in response to these climatic changes. Overall, the results indicate that the UMRB hydrology is very sensitive to potential future climate changes and that these changes could stimulate increased periods of flooding or drought

Validation of EPIC for Two Watersheds in Southwest Iowa

The Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) model is validated using long-term data collected for two southwest Iowa watersheds that have been cropped in continuous corn under two different tillage systems. The annual hydrologic balance was calibrated during 1988-94 by adjusting the runoff curve numbers and residue effects on soil evaporation. Model validation was performed for 1976-87 using both summary statistics and parametric and nonparametric statistical tests. Overall, results show that EPIC was able to replicate the long-term relative differences between the two tillage systems

Climate Change Sensitivity Assessment on Upper Mississippi River Basin Streamflows using SWAT

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to assess the effects of potential future climate change on the hydrology of the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). Calibration and validation of SWAT were performed using monthly stream flows for 1968–1987 and 1988–1997, respectively. The R2 and Nash-Sutcliffe simulation efficiency values computed for the monthly comparisons were 0.74 and 0.69 for the calibration period and 0.82 and 0.81 for the validation period. The effects of nine 30-year (1968 to 1997) sensitivity runs and six climate change scenarios were then analyzed, relative to a scenario baseline. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 to 660 ppmv (while holding other climate variables constant) resulted in a 36 percent increase in average annual streamflow while average annual flow changes of −49, −26, 28, and 58 percent were predicted for precipitation change scenarios of −20, −10, 10, and 20 percent, respectively. Mean annual streamflow changes of 51,10, 2, −6, 38, and 27 percent were predicted by SWAT in response to climate change projections generated from the CISRO-RegCM2, CCC, CCSR, CISRO-Mk2, GFDL, and HadCMS general circulation model scenarios. High seasonal variability was also predicted within individual climate change scenarios and large variability was indicated between scenarios within specific months. Overall, the climate change scenarios reveal a large degree of uncertainty in current climate change forecasts for the region. The results also indicate that the simulated UMRB hydrology is very sensitive to current forecasted future climate changes

Evolution of the Chern-Simons Vortices

Based on the gauge potential decomposition theory and the $\phi$-mapping theory, the topological inner structure of the Chern-Simons-Higgs vortex has been showed in detail. The evolution of CSH vortices is studied from the topological properties of the Higgs scalar field. The vortices are found generating or annihilating at the limit points and encountering, splitting or merging at the bifurcation points of the scalar field $\phi .$Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

Towards Activity Context using Software Sensors

Service-Oriented Computing delivers the promise of configuring and reconfiguring software systems to address user's needs in a dynamic way. Context-aware computing promises to capture the user's needs and hence the requirements they have on systems. The marriage of both can deliver ad-hoc software solutions relevant to the user in the most current fashion. However, here it is a key to gather information on the users' activity (that is what they are doing). Traditionally any context sensing was conducted with hardware sensors. However, software can also play the same role and in some situations will be more useful to sense the activity of the user. Furthermore they can make use of the fact that Service-oriented systems exchange information through standard protocols. In this paper we discuss our proposed approach to sense the activity of the user making use of software

The incidence of liver injury in Uyghur patients treated for TB in Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, China, and its association with hepatic enzyme polymorphisms nat2, cyp2e1, gstm1 and gstt1.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Of three first-line anti-tuberculosis (anti-TB) drugs, isoniazid is most commonly associated with hepatotoxicity. Differences in INH-induced toxicity have been attributed to genetic variability at several loci, NAT2, CYP2E1, GSTM1and GSTT1, that code for drug-metabolizing enzymes. This study evaluated whether the polymorphisms in these enzymes were associated with an increased risk of anti-TB drug-induced hepatitis in patients and could potentially be used to identify patients at risk of liver injury. METHODS AND DESIGN: In a cross-sectional study, 2244 tuberculosis patients were assessed two months after the start of treatment. Anti-TB drug-induced liver injury (ATLI) was defined as an ALT, AST or bilirubin value more than twice the upper limit of normal. NAT2, CYP2E1, GSTM1 and GSTT1 genotypes were determined using the PCR/ligase detection reaction assays. RESULTS: 2244 patients were evaluated, there were 89 cases of ATLI, a prevalence of 4% 9 patients (0.4%) had ALT levels more than 5 times the upper limit of normal. The prevalence of ATLI was greater among men than women, and there was a weak association with NAT2*5 genotypes, with ATLI more common among patients with the NAT2*5*CT genotype. The sensitivity of the CT genotype for identifying patients with ATLI was 42% and the positive predictive value 5.9%. CT ATLI was more common among slow acetylators (prevalence ratio 2.0 (95% CI 0.95,4.20) )compared to rapid acetylators. There was no evidence that ATLI was associated with CYP2E1 RsaIc1/c1genotype, CYP2E1 RsaIc1/c2 or c2/c2 genotypes, or GSTM1/GSTT1 null genotypes. CONCLUSIONS: In Xinjiang Uyghur TB patients, liver injury was associated with the genetic variant NAT2*5, however the genetic markers studied are unlikely to be useful for screening patients due to the low sensitivity and low positive predictive values for identifying persons at risk of liver injury

Exploring novel correlations in trilepton channels at the LHC for the minimal supersymmetric inverse seesaw model

We investigate signatures of the minimal supersymmetric inverse seesaw model at the large hadron collider (LHC) with three isolated leptons and large missing energy (3\ell + \mET or 2\ell + 1\tau + \mET, with \ell=e,\mu) in the final state. This signal has its origin in the decay of chargino-neutralino (\chpm1\ntrl2) pair, produced in pp collisions. The two body decays of the lighter chargino into a charged lepton and a singlet sneutrino has a characteristic decay pattern which is correlated with the observed large atmospheric neutrino mixing angle. This correlation is potentially observable at the LHC by looking at the ratios of cross sections of the trilepton + \mET channels in certain flavour specific modes. We show that even after considering possible leading standard model backgrounds these final states can lead to reasonable discovery significance at the LHC with both 7 TeV and 14 TeV center-of-mass energy.Comment: 28 pages, 9 .eps figures. 3 new figures and discussions on LHC observables added, minor modifications in text and in the abstract, 23 new references added, matches with the published version in JHE

Scans for signatures of selection in Russian cattle breed genomes reveal new candidate genes for environmental adaptation and acclimation

Domestication and selective breeding has resulted in over 1000 extant cattle breeds. Many of these breeds do not excel in important traits but are adapted to local environments. These adaptations are a valuable source of genetic material for efforts to improve commercial breeds. As a step toward this goal we identified candidate regions to be under selection in genomes of nine Russian native cattle breeds adapted to survive in harsh climates. After comparing our data to other breeds of European and Asian origins we found known and novel candidate genes that could potentially be related to domestication, economically important traits and environmental adaptations in cattle. The Russian cattle breed genomes contained regions under putative selection with genes that may be related to adaptations to harsh environments (e.g., AQP5, RAD50, and RETREG1). We found genomic signatures of selective sweeps near key genes related to economically important traits, such as the milk production (e.g., DGAT1, ABCG2), growth (e.g., XKR4), and reproduction (e.g., CSF2). Our data point to candidate genes which should be included in future studies attempting to identify genes to improve the extant breeds and facilitate generation of commercial breeds that fit better into the environments of Russia and other countries with similar climates