Transdermal Diagnosis of Malaria Using Vapor Nanobubbles.

A fast, precise, noninvasive, high-throughput, and simple approach for detecting malaria in humans and mosquitoes is not possible with current techniques that depend on blood sampling, reagents, facilities, tedious procedures, and trained personnel. We designed a device for rapid (20-second) noninvasive diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum infection in a malaria patient without drawing blood or using any reagent. This method uses transdermal optical excitation and acoustic detection of vapor nanobubbles around intraparasite hemozoin. The same device also identified individual malaria parasite-infected Anopheles mosquitoes in a few seconds and can be realized as a low-cost universal tool for clinical and field diagnoses

A regime view of the North Atlantic Oscillation and its response to anthropogenic forcing

The distribution of the daily wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index in the 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40) is significantly negatively skewed. Dynamical and statistical analyses both suggest that this skewness reflects the presence of two distinct regimes—referred to as “Greenland blocking” and “subpolar jet.” Changes in both the relative occurrence and in the structure of the regimes are shown to contribute to the long-term NAO trend over the ERA-40 period. This is contrasted with the simulation of the NAO in 100-yr control and doubled CO2 integrations of the third climate configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (HadCM3). The model has clear deficiencies in its simulation of the NAO in the control run, so its predictions of future behavior must be treated with caution. However, the subpolar jet regime does become more dominant under anthropogenic forcing and, while this change is small it is clearly statistically significant and does represent a real change in the nature of NAO variability in the model

Stratospheric ozone chemistry feedbacks are not critical for the determination of climate sensitivity in CESM1(WACCM)

The Community Earth System Model‐Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (CESM1‐WACCM) is used to assess the importance of including chemistry feedbacks in determining the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). Two 4×CO2 model experiments were conducted: one with interactive chemistry and one with chemical constituents other than CO2 held fixed at their preindustrial values. The ECS determined from these two experiments agrees to within 0.01 K. Similarly, the net feedback parameter agrees to within 0.01 W m−2 K−1. This agreement occurs in spite of large changes in stratospheric ozone found in the simulation with interactive chemistry: a 30% decrease in the tropical lower stratosphere and a 40% increase in the upper stratosphere, broadly consistent with other published estimates. Off‐line radiative transfer calculations show that ozone changes alone account for the difference in radiative forcing. We conclude that at least for determining global climate sensitivity metrics, the exclusion of chemistry feedbacks is not a critical source of error in CESM

Rossby wave dynamics of the North Pacific extra-tropical response to El Niño: importance of the basic state in coupled GCMs

The extra-tropical response to El Nino in a "low" horizontal resolution coupled climate model, typical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report simulations, is shown to have serious systematic errors. A high resolution configuration of the same model has a much improved response that is similar to observations. The errors in the low resolution model are traced to an incorrect representation of the atmospheric teleconnection mechanism that controls the extra-tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during El Nino. This is due to an unrealistic atmospheric mean state, which changes the propagation characteristics of Rossby waves. These erroneous upper tropospheric circulation anomalies then induce erroneous surface circulation features over the North Pacific. The associated surface wind speed and direction errors create erroneous surface flux and upwelling anomalies which finally lead to the incorrect extra-tropical SST response to El Nino in the low resolution model. This highlights the sensitivity of the climate response to a single link in a chain of complex climatic processes. The correct representation of these processes in the high resolution model indicates the importance of horizontal resolution in resolving such processes

The Cold Peace: Russo-Western Relations as a Mimetic Cold War

In 1989–1991 the geo-ideological contestation between two blocs was swept away, together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant Cold War played out on the larger stage. Paradoxically, while the domestic sources of Cold War confrontation have been transcended, its external manifestations remain in the form of a ‘legacy’ geopolitical contest between the dominant hegemonic power (the United States) and a number of potential rising great powers, of which Russia is one. The post-revolutionary era is thus one of a ‘cold peace’. A cold peace is a mimetic cold war. In other words, while a cold war accepts the logic of conflict in the international system and between certain protagonists in particular, a cold peace reproduces the behavioural patterns of a cold war but suppresses acceptance of the logic of behaviour. A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived victim status of one set of actors provides the seedbed for renewed conflict, while the ‘victory’ of the others cannot be consolidated in some sort of relatively unchallenged post-conflict order. The ‘universalism’ of the victors is now challenged by Russia's neo-revisionist policy, including not so much the defence of Westphalian notions of sovereignty but the espousal of an international system with room for multiple systems (the Schmittean pluriverse)

Spatiotemporal proteomic profiling of the pro-inflammatory response to lipopolysaccharide in the THP-1 human leukaemia cell line.

Protein localisation and translocation between intracellular compartments underlie almost all physiological processes. The hyperLOPIT proteomics platform combines mass spectrometry with state-of-the-art machine learning to map the subcellular location of thousands of proteins simultaneously. We combine global proteome analysis with hyperLOPIT in a fully Bayesian framework to elucidate spatiotemporal proteomic changes during a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory response. We report a highly dynamic proteome in terms of both protein abundance and subcellular localisation, with alterations in the interferon response, endo-lysosomal system, plasma membrane reorganisation and cell migration. Proteins not previously associated with an LPS response were found to relocalise upon stimulation, the functional consequences of which are still unclear. By quantifying proteome-wide uncertainty through Bayesian modelling, a necessary role for protein relocalisation and the importance of taking a holistic overview of the LPS-driven immune response has been revealed. The data are showcased as an interactive application freely available for the scientific community

Dependence of the Ice Water Content and Snowfall Rate on Temperature, Globally: Comparison of In-Situ Observations, Satellite Active Remote Sensing Retrievals and Global Climate Model Simulations

Cloud ice microphysical properties measured or estimated from in-situ aircraft observations are compared to global climate models and satellite active remote sensor retrievals. Two large datasets, with direct measurements of the ice water content (IWC) and encompassing data from polar to tropical regions, are combined to yield a large database of in-situ measurements. The intention of this study is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the various methods used to derive ice cloud microphysical properties. The in-situ data are measured with total water hygrometers, condensed water probes, and particle spectrometers. Data from polar, midlatitude, and tropical locations are included. The satellite data are retrieved from CloudSat/CALIPSO (2C-ICE, 2C-SNOWPROFILE), and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Level2A. Although the 2CICE retrieval is for IWC, we developed a method to use the IWC to get snowfall rates (S). The GPM retrievals are for snowfall rate only. Model results are derived using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5) and the UK Met Office Unified Model (GA7). The retrievals and model results are related to the in-situ observations using temperature and partitioned by geographical region. Specific variables compared between the in-situ observations, models, and retrievals are the IWC and S. The retrieved IWCs are reasonably close in value to the in-situ observations, whereas the models' values are relatively low by comparison. Differences between the in-situ IWCs and those from the other methods are compounded when S is considered, leading to model snowfall rates that are considerably lower than derived from the in-situ data. Anomalous trends with temperature are noted in some instances

Transdermal Diagnosis of Malaria Using Vapor Nanobubbles.

A fast, precise, noninvasive, high-throughput, and simple approach for detecting malaria in humans and mosquitoes is not possible with current techniques that depend on blood sampling, reagents, facilities, tedious procedures, and trained personnel. We designed a device for rapid (20-second) noninvasive diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum infection in a malaria patient without drawing blood or using any reagent. This method uses transdermal optical excitation and acoustic detection of vapor nanobubbles around intraparasite hemozoin. The same device also identified individual malaria parasite-infected Anopheles mosquitoes in a few seconds and can be realized as a low-cost universal tool for clinical and field diagnoses