Urban vulnerability and resilience within the context of climate change

Natural hazards, due to climate change, are particularly damaging in urban areas because of interdependencies of their networks. So, urban resilience has to face up to climate risks. The most impacting phenomenon is the urban heat island (UHI) effect. The storage capacity of heat is depending on shapes of buildings, public spaces, spatial organization, transport or even industrial activities. So, adaptive strategies for improving urban climate could be possible in different ways. In the framework of the French project Resilis, this study characterises urban vulnerability and resilience in terms of energy needs of buildings and outside urban comfort according to the IPCC carbon dioxide emission scenarios B2 and A2 for the period 2050–2100 for 10 French cities. The evolutions of four climate indicators in terms of heating and cooling needs and number of hours when the temperature is above 28 °C are then obtained for each city to analyse climate risks and their impacts in urban environment

Safety of the Combination of PERC and YEARS Rules in Patients With Low Clinical Probability of Pulmonary Embolism: A Retrospective Analysis of Two Large European Cohorts

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to determine the failure rate of a combination of the PERC and the YEARS rules for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) in the emergency department (ED). METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of two European cohorts of emergency patients with low gestalt clinical probability of PE (PROPER and PERCEPIC). All patients we included were managed using a conventional strategy (D-dimer test, followed, if positive, by computed tomographic pulmonary angiogram (CTPA). We tested a diagnostic strategy that combined PERC and YEARS to rule out PE. The primary endpoint was a thromboembolic event diagnosed in the ED or at 3-months follow-up. Secondary endpoints included a thromboembolic event at baseline in the ED and a CTPA in the ED. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals (CIs) of proportions were calculated with the use of Wilson\u27s continuity correction. RESULTS: We analyzed 1,951 patients (mean ± SD age = 47 ± 18 years, 56% women) with an overall proportion of patients with PE of 3.5%. Both PERC and YEARS strategies were associated with 11 missed PE in the ED: failure rate 0.57 (95% CI = 0.32-1.02). At 3-month follow-up, the overall failure rate was 0.83% (95% CI = 0.51-1.35). Among the 503 patients who underwent a CTPA (26%), the use of the PERC-YEARS combination would have ruled out PE without CTPA in 249 patients (50% [95%CI = 45%-54%], absolute reduction 13% (95% CI = 11%-14%]). CONCLUSION: The combination of PERC then YEARS was associated with a low risk of PE diagnostic failure and would have resulted in a relative reduction of almost half of CTPA

Quasiprojectile breakup and isospin equilibration at Fermi energies: an indication of longer projectile-target contact times?

An investigation of the quasiprojectile breakup channel in semiperipheral and peripheral collisions of $^{58,64}$Ni+$^{58,64}$Ni at 32 and 52 MeV/nucleon is presented. Data have been acquired in the first experimental campaign of the INDRA-FAZIA apparatus in GANIL. The effect of isospin diffusion between projectile and target in the two asymmetric reactions has been highlighted by means of the isospin transport ratio technique, exploiting the neutron-to-proton ratio of the quasiprojectile reconstructed from the two breakup fragments. We found evidence that, for the same reaction centrality, a higher degree of relaxation of the initial isospin imbalance is achieved in the breakup channel with respect to the more populated binary output, possibly indicating the indirect selection of specific dynamical features. We have proposed an interpretation based on different average projectile-target contact times related to the two exit channels under investigation, with a longer interaction for the breakup channel. The time information has been extracted from AMD simulations of the studied systems coupled to GEMINI++: the model calculations support the hypothesis hereby presented

Comparison of Urban Air Quality Simulations During the KORUS‐AQ Campaign With Regionally Refined Versus Global Uniform Grids in the Multi‐Scale Infrastructure for Chemistry and Aerosols (MUSICA) Version 0

Model intercomparison studies often report a large spread in simulation results, but quantifying the causes of these differences is hindered by the fact that several processes contribute to the model spread simultaneously. Here we use the Multi-Scale Infrastructure for Chemistry and Aerosols (MUSICA) version 0 to investigate the model resolution dependencies of simulated chemical species, with a focus on the differences between global uniform grid and regional refinement grid simulations with the same modeling framework. We construct two global (ne30 [∼112 km] and ne60 [∼56 km]) and two regional refinement grids over Korea (ne30x8 [∼14 km] and ne30x16 [∼7 km]). The grid resolution can change chemical concentrations by an order of magnitude in the boundary layer, and the importance increases as the species' reactivity increases (e.g., up to 50% and 1,000% changes for ethane and xylenes, respectively). The diurnal cycle of oxidants (OH, O3, and NO3) also varies with the grid resolution, which leads to different oxidation pathways of volatile organic compounds (e.g., the fraction of monoterpenes reacting with NO3 in Seoul around midnight is 90% for ne30, but 65% for ne30x16). The models with high-resolution grids usually do a better job at reproducing aircraft observations during the KORUS-AQ campaign, but not always, implying compensating errors in the coarse grid simulations. For example, ozone is better reproduced by the coarse grid due to the artificial mixing of NOx. When developing new chemical mechanisms and evaluating models over urban areas, the uncertainties associated with model resolution should be considered. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union

Analysis of the Plant bos1 Mutant Highlights Necrosis as an Efficient Defence Mechanism during D. dadantii/Arabidospis thaliana Interaction

Dickeya dadantii is a broad host range phytopathogenic bacterium provoking soft rot disease on many plants including Arabidopsis. We showed that, after D. dadantii infection, the expression of the Arabidopsis BOS1 gene was specifically induced by the production of the bacterial PelB/C pectinases able to degrade pectin. This prompted us to analyze the interaction between the bos1 mutant and D. dadantii. The phenotype of the infected bos1 mutant is complex. Indeed, maceration symptoms occurred more rapidly in the bos1 mutant than in the wild type parent but at a later stage of infection, a necrosis developed around the inoculation site that provoked a halt in the progression of the maceration. This necrosis became systemic and spread throughout the whole plant, a phenotype reminiscent of that observed in some lesion mimic mutants. In accordance with the progression of maceration symptoms, bacterial population began to grow more rapidly in the bos1 mutant than in the wild type plant but, when necrosis appeared in the bos1 mutant, a reduction in bacterial population was observed. From the plant side, this complex interaction between D. dadantii and its host includes an early plant defence response that comprises reactive oxygen species (ROS) production accompanied by the reinforcement of the plant cell wall by protein cross-linking. At later timepoints, another plant defence is raised by the death of the plant cells surrounding the inoculation site. This plant cell death appears to constitute an efficient defence mechanism induced by D. dadantii during Arabidopsis infection

Antiretroviral-naive and -treated HIV-1 patients can harbour more resistant viruses in CSF than in plasma

Objectives The neurological disorders in HIV-1-infected patients remain prevalent. The HIV-1 resistance in plasma and CSF was compared in patients with neurological disorders in a multicentre study. Methods Blood and CSF samples were collected at time of neurological disorders for 244 patients. The viral loads were >50 copies/mL in both compartments and bulk genotypic tests were realized. Results On 244 patients, 89 and 155 were antiretroviral (ARV) naive and ARV treated, respectively. In ARV-naive patients, detection of mutations in CSF and not in plasma were reported for the reverse transcriptase (RT) gene in 2/89 patients (2.2%) and for the protease gene in 1/89 patients (1.1%). In ARV-treated patients, 19/152 (12.5%) patients had HIV-1 mutations only in the CSF for the RT gene and 30/151 (19.8%) for the protease gene. Two mutations appeared statistically more prevalent in the CSF than in plasma: M41L (P = 0.0455) and T215Y (P = 0.0455). Conclusions In most cases, resistance mutations were present and similar in both studied compartments. However, in 3.4% of ARV-naive and 8.8% of ARV-treated patients, the virus was more resistant in CSF than in plasma. These results support the need for genotypic resistance testing when lumbar puncture is performe

Harnessing collective intelligence for the future of learning – a co-constructed research and development agenda

Learning, defined as the process of constructing meaning and developing competencies to act on it, is instrumental in helping individuals, communities, and organizations tackle challenges. When these challenges increase in complexity and require domain knowledge from diverse areas of expertise, it becomes difficult for single individuals to address them. In this context, collective intelligence, a capacity of groups of people to act together and solve problems using their collective knowledge, becomes of great importance. Technologies are instrumental both to support and understand learning and collective intelligence, hence the need for innovations in the area of technologies that can support user needs to learn and tackle collective challenges. Use-inspired research is a fitting paradigm that spans applied solutions and scientific explanations of the processes of learning and collective intelligence, and that can improve the technologies that may support them. Although some conceptual and theoretical work explaining and linking learning with collective intelligence is emerging, technological infrastructures as well as methodologies that employ and evidence that support them are nascent. We convened a group of experts to create a middleground and engage with the priorities for use-inspired research. Here we detail directions and methods they put forward as most promising for advancing a scientific agenda around learning and collective intelligence