Contrasting responses of mean and extreme snowfall to climate change

Snowfall is an important element of the climate system, and one that is expected to change in a warming climate. Both mean snowfall and the intensity distribution of snowfall are important, with heavy snowfall events having particularly large economic and human impacts. Simulations with climate models indicate that annual mean snowfall declines with warming in most regions but increases in regions with very low surface temperatures. The response of heavy snowfall events to a changing climate, however, is unclear. Here I show that in simulations with climate models under a scenario of high emissions of greenhouse gases, by the late twenty-first century there are smaller fractional changes in the intensities of daily snowfall extremes than in mean snowfall over many Northern Hemisphere land regions. For example, for monthly climatological temperatures just below freezing and surface elevations below 1,000 metres, the 99.99th percentile of daily snowfall decreases by 8% in the multimodel median, compared to a 65% reduction in mean snowfall. Both mean and extreme snowfall must decrease for a sufficiently large warming, but the climatological temperature above which snowfall extremes decrease with warming in the simulations is as high as −9 °C, compared to −14 °C for mean snowfall. These results are supported by a physically based theory that is consistent with the observed rain–snow transition. According to the theory, snowfall extremes occur near an optimal temperature that is insensitive to climate warming, and this results in smaller fractional changes for higher percentiles of daily snowfall. The simulated changes in snowfall that I find would influence surface snow and its hazards; these changes also suggest that it may be difficult to detect a regional climate-change signal in snowfall extremes.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant AGS-1148594)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (ROSES Grant 09-IDS09-0049

Does landscape-scale conservation management enhance the provision of ecosystem services?

Biodiversity conservation approaches are increasingly being implemented at the landscape-scale to support the maintenance of metapopulations and metacommunities. However, the impact of such interventions on the provision of ecosystem services is less well defined. Here we examine the potential impacts of landscape-scale conservation initiatives on ecosystem services, through analysis of five case study areas in England and Wales. The provision of multiple ecosystem services was projected according to current management plans and compared with a baseline scenario. Multicriteria analysis indicated that in most cases landscape-scale approaches lead to an overall increase in service provision. Consistent increases were projected in carbon storage, recreation and aesthetic value, as well as biodiversity value. However, most study areas provided evidence of trade-offs, particularly between provisioning services and other types of service. Results differed markedly between study areas, highlighting the importance of local context. These results suggest that landscape-scale conservation approaches are likely to be effective in increasing ecosystem service provision, but also indicate that associated costs can be significant, particularly in lowland areas

Special and inclusive education in the Republic of Ireland: reviewing the literature from 2000 to 2009

Provision for pupils with special educational needs in Ireland has undergone considerable change and review in the first decade of the twenty first century. In response to international demands for a more equitable education system which recognises diversity and considers how schools might address the needs of pupils who have been previously marginalised, Irish legislation has focused upon the development of inclusive schooling. Researchers during this period have endeavoured to understand how responses to the demand for greater inclusion have impacted upon the perceived need for change. This paper reviews the research literature for this period and identifies four key themes under which research has been conducted. The literature pertaining to these themes is explored and a possible agenda for future researchers identifie

Assessing Espoused Goals in Private Family Firms Using Content Analysis

Understanding how private family firms gauge performance is of great interest to family business scholars. Unfortunately, finding comparable data to understand differences in the performance of such firms is challenging. This study draws from the organizational identity literature to show how private family firms communicate different goals in publicly available organizational narratives. The authors illustrate a process using content analysis that allows family business scholars to create a comparative data set that captures both normative and utilitarian goals using website and press release narratives from a sample of Australian firms.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Prediction of preterm birth with and without preeclampsia using mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors and maternal characteristics.

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate if mid-pregnancy immune and growth-related molecular factors predict preterm birth (PTB) with and without (±) preeclampsia. STUDY DESIGN:Included were 400 women with singleton deliveries in California in 2009-2010 (200 PTB and 200 term) divided into training and testing samples at a 2:1 ratio. Sixty-three markers were tested in 15-20 serum samples using multiplex technology. Linear discriminate analysis was used to create a discriminate function. Model performance was assessed using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). RESULTS:Twenty-five serum biomarkers along with maternal age <34 years and poverty status identified >80% of women with PTB ± preeclampsia with best performance in women with preterm preeclampsia (AUC = 0.889, 95% confidence interval (0.822-0.959) training; 0.883 (0.804-0.963) testing). CONCLUSION:Together with maternal age and poverty status, mid-pregnancy immune and growth factors reliably identified most women who went on to have a PTB ± preeclampsia

ALMA Compact Array observations of the Fried Egg nebula: Evidence for large-scale asymmetric mass-loss from the yellow hypergiant IRAS 17163-3907

Yellow hypergiants are rare and represent a fast evolutionary stage of massive evolved stars. That evolutionary phase is characterised by a very intense mass loss, the understanding of which is still very limited. Here we report ALMA Compact Array observations of a 50$"$-mosaic toward the Fried Egg nebula, around one of the few Galactic yellow hypergiants IRAS 17163-3907. The emission from the $^{12}$CO J=2-1 line, H30$\alpha$ recombination line, and continuum is imaged at a resolution of $\sim$8$"$, revealing the morphology of the molecular environment around the star. The continuum emission is unresolved and peaks at the position of the star. The radio recombination line H30$\alpha$ shows unresolved emission at the star, with an approximately gaussian spectrum centered on a velocity of 21$\pm$3~km/s with a width of 57$\pm$6~km/s. In contrast, the CO 2-1 emission is complex and decomposes into several components beyond the contamination from interstellar gas in the line of sight. The CO spectrum toward the star is a broad plateau, centered at the systemic velocity of +18 km/s and with an expansion velocity of 100$\pm$10 km/s. Assuming isotropic and constant mass-loss, we estimate a mass-loss rate of 8$\pm$1.5 $\times10^{-5}$~M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$. At a radius of 25$"$ from the star, we detect CO emission associated with the dust ring previously imaged by {\it Herschel}. The kinematics of this ring, however, is not consistent with an expanding shell, but show a velocity gradient of $v_{sys} \pm$20 km/s. In addition, we find a puzzling bright feature radially connecting the star to the CO ring, at a velocity of +40 km/s relative to the star. This spur feature may trace a unidirectional ejection event from the star. Our ACA observations reveal the complex morphology around IRAS 17163 and illustrate the breakthroughs that ALMA will bring to the field of massive stellar evolution

Systemic inflammatory response predicts outcome in patients undergoing resection for ductal adenocarcinoma head of pancreas

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between the clinicopathological status, the pre- and postoperative systemic inflammatory response and survival in patients undergoing potentially curative resection for ductal adenocarcinoma of the head of the pancreas. Patients (n=65) who underwent resection of ductal adenocarcinoma of the head of pancreas between 1993 and 2001, and had pre- and postoperative measurements of C-reactive protein, were included in the study. The majority of patients had stage III disease (International Union Against Cancer Criteria, IUCC), positive circumferential margin involvement (R1), tumour size greater than 25 mm with perineural and lymph node invasion and died within the follow-up period. On multivariate analysis, tumour size (hazard ratio (HR) 2.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20–3.68, P=0.009), vascular invasion (HR 2.58, 95% CI 1.48–4.50, P<0.001) and postoperative C-reactive protein (HR 2.00, 95% CI 1.14–3.52, P=0.015) retained independent significance. Those patients with a postoperative C-reactive protein ⩽10 mg l−1 had a median survival of 21.5 months compared with 8.4 months in those patients with a C-reactive protein >10 mg l−1 (P<0.001). The results of the present study indicate that, in patients who have undergone potentially curative resection for ductal adenocarcinoma of the head of pancreas, the presence of a systemic inflammatory response predicts poor outcome

Chronic exposure to environmental temperature attenuates the thermal sensitivity of salmonids

Metabolism, the biological processing of energy and materials, scales predictably with temperature and body size. Temperature effects on metabolism are normally studied via acute exposures, which overlooks the capacity for organisms to moderate their metabolism following chronic exposure to warming. Here, we conduct respirometry assays in situ and after transplanting salmonid fish among different streams to disentangle the effects of chronic and acute thermal exposure. We find a clear temperature dependence of metabolism for the transplants, but not the in-situ assays, indicating that chronic exposure to warming can attenuate salmonid thermal sensitivity. A bioenergetic model accurately captures the presence of fish in warmer streams when accounting for chronic exposure, whereas it incorrectly predicts their local extinction with warming when incorporating the acute temperature dependence of metabolism. This highlights the need to incorporate the potential for thermal acclimation or adaptation when forecasting the consequences of global warming on ecosystems