To cope with California’s drought, policymakers must gobeyond water conservation and rationing

Two thirds of the state of California is experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions after four dry years. B. Lynn Ingram writes that to cope with the drought, those in the Golden State need to plan for the long-term to increase resilience to extended water scarcity. She argues that policymakers must now think more collaboratively about reducing the ‘water footprint’ of Californians and the products they produce

California needs to begin a serious and comprehensive plan to adapt to what may be a very long drought

California is currently in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the state’s history. Despite the crisis, the Golden State’s taps continue to run, with water use now far exceeding supply. B. Lynn Ingram writes that the current drought is just one of many very dry periods California has experienced regularly over the last 5,000 years or so. Taking the hardship of indigenous populations in previous droughts as a warning, she writes that the state’s rapid population growth is placing huge pressure on local water reserves. A comprehensive plan which takes advantage of new technologies such as wastewater recycling and ocean desalinization is now needed to adapt to the growing scarcity of water

Evolución de la vegetación y los ambientes de marisma en las llanuras costeras de la bahía Samborombón (35,5 º S) durante el Holoceno

La bahía Samborombón, la porción costera de la Depresión del Salado, constituye un típico ambiente de costa baja donde las transgresiones cuaternarias fueron responsables primarias de su evolución. Durante el Estadía Isotópico de Oxígeno 1 (El O 1), producto del avance y retroceso de la línea de costa, se formaron una gran variedad de ambientes geomorfológicos, dentro de los que se destacan llanuras de mareas, cordones litorales y marismas (Violante et al. 2001, Fucks et al 2010, Richiano et al. 2012). En la actualidad, la región afectada durante el EIO 1 representa un extenso humedal, caracterizado por la escasez de escurrimientos lúdricos superficiales, a excepción de las cercarúas de los canales artificiales. En la franja costera a la bahía, las tormentas transgreden varios cientos de m el continente, dejando inundada la marisma por importantes periodos de tiempo. Considerando la vulnerabilidad de los humedales y la sensibilidad de la vegetación a las inundaciones y a las variaciones de salinidad, la reconstrucción de la historia de la vegetación y de la dinámica de las marismas en relación con las variaciones del nivel del mar durante el Holoceno, constituye una herramienta de gran utilidad para realizar estimaciones de posibles respuestas futuras de estos ambientes al aumento del nivel del mar. Con el objetivo de realizar una reconstrucción precisa y en detalle, se realizó el análisis integrado de o13C, o15N y C/N de la fracción orgánica de sedimentos, de o13C y 0180 de carbonatos biogénicos de moluscos, ostrácodos y foramirúferos y del registro palinológico (Vilanova y Prieto 2012). Las muestras y su contenido fosilífero provienen de dos secuencias sedimentarias fósiles y de sedimentos superficiales. Una de las secuencias es un perfil estratigráfico expuesto sobre la margen izquierda del río Salado, a 30 km de la costa actual de la bahía Samborombón (35º 55.48333 S; 57° 43. 98333 O), próxima al límite que alcanzó la transgresión holocena y corresponde a un paleoambiente de llanuras de mareas

Abstracts from the NIHR INVOLVE Conference 2017

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Psychosocial impact of undergoing prostate cancer screening for men with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

OBJECTIVES: To report the baseline results of a longitudinal psychosocial study that forms part of the IMPACT study, a multi-national investigation of targeted prostate cancer (PCa) screening among men with a known pathogenic germline mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. PARTICPANTS AND METHODS: Men enrolled in the IMPACT study were invited to complete a questionnaire at collaborating sites prior to each annual screening visit. The questionnaire included sociodemographic characteristics and the following measures: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Impact of Event Scale (IES), 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36), Memorial Anxiety Scale for Prostate Cancer, Cancer Worry Scale-Revised, risk perception and knowledge. The results of the baseline questionnaire are presented. RESULTS: A total of 432 men completed questionnaires: 98 and 160 had mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, respectively, and 174 were controls (familial mutation negative). Participants' perception of PCa risk was influenced by genetic status. Knowledge levels were high and unrelated to genetic status. Mean scores for the HADS and SF-36 were within reported general population norms and mean IES scores were within normal range. IES mean intrusion and avoidance scores were significantly higher in BRCA1/BRCA2 carriers than in controls and were higher in men with increased PCa risk perception. At the multivariate level, risk perception contributed more significantly to variance in IES scores than genetic status. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to report the psychosocial profile of men with BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations undergoing PCa screening. No clinically concerning levels of general or cancer-specific distress or poor quality of life were detected in the cohort as a whole. A small subset of participants reported higher levels of distress, suggesting the need for healthcare professionals offering PCa screening to identify these risk factors and offer additional information and support to men seeking PCa screening

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| < 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Measurement of t(t)over-bar normalised multi-differential cross sections in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV, and simultaneous determination of the strong coupling strength, top quark pole mass, and parton distribution functions

Peer reviewe

An embedding technique to determine ττ backgrounds in proton-proton collision data

An embedding technique is presented to estimate standard model tau tau backgrounds from data with minimal simulation input. In the data, the muons are removed from reconstructed mu mu events and replaced with simulated tau leptons with the same kinematic properties. In this way, a set of hybrid events is obtained that does not rely on simulation except for the decay of the tau leptons. The challenges in describing the underlying event or the production of associated jets in the simulation are avoided. The technique described in this paper was developed for CMS. Its validation and the inherent uncertainties are also discussed. The demonstration of the performance of the technique is based on a sample of proton-proton collisions collected by CMS in 2017 at root s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb(-1).Peer reviewe