Clinical findings of West Nile virus infection in hospitalized patients, New York and New Jersey, 2000.

Outbreaks of West Nile (WN) virus occurred in the New York metropolitan area in 1999 and 2000. Nineteen patients diagnosed with WN infection were hospitalized in New York and New Jersey in 2000 and were included in this review. Eleven patients had encephalitis or meningoencephalitis, and eight had meningitis alone. Ages of patients ranged from 36 to 87 years (median 63 years). Fever and neurologic and gastrointestinal symptoms predominated. Severe muscle weakness on neurologic examination was found in three patients. Age was associated with disease severity. Hospitalized cases and deaths were lower in 2000 than in 1999, although the case-fatality rate was unchanged. Clinicians in the Northeast should maintain a high level of suspicion during the summer when evaluating older patients with febrile illnesses and neurologic symptoms, especially if associated with gastrointestinal complaints or muscle weakness

Accidental Releases of Sour Gas From Wells and Collection Pipelines in the Overthrust Belt: Calculating and Assessing Potential Health and Environmental Risks

Parts of the Overthrust Belt of western Wyoming and adjoining areas in Utah and Idaho contain geologic formations with significant accumulations of oil and natural gas. Some of these formations, though, yield gas that is contaminated with toxic hydrogen sulfide. As a consequence, the development of these so-called sour-gas reservoirs requires special safety procedures and technologies in order to prevent accidental releases of gas to the atmosphere that could cause adverse occupational and public health effects. To improve the analysis and assessment of wells and collection pipelines completed on lands leased from the Federal Government, the Minerals Management Service, Onshore Operations, now part of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), asked Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to conduct a study to test methods to the analysis of the potential risks associated with the development of sour-gas resources located near Evanston, Wyoming. The process of assessing the health risks of a potential sour-gas release involves estimation of the emission rate of hydrogen sulfide, specification of how the gas is released (e.g., vertically into the atmosphere or horizontally), prediction of downwind concentrations of the gas, analysis of the potential health effects, and finally, review of safety methods required to minimize the potential health risks. The first part of the report includes an analysis of data on the health effects of hydrogen sulfide to determine the nature of its dose-response relationship. Following that review is a study of the different methods of quantifying the emission rate of gas from wells and pipelines. Data on the frequency of accidental releases from those facilities are also analyzed. To assess the health risks of an accidental release from a well under BLM supervision located near Evanston, we collected meteorological data for 1 yr from four stations in that area. Our analysis of a worst-case release scenario (i.e., a gas plume that is near the surface) using those data indicates that the greatest risks of incurring an acute health effect (e.g., unconsciousness, respiratory arrest, pulmonary edema, or death) are located in the northwest sector downwind from the well because of the occurrence of stable atmospheric conditions along with slow winds from the southeast. The risks of an acute health effect in that northwest sector over the 20-yr operation of the well were on the order of 10 -4 to 10 -5 -- similar to the risk of accidental death caused by a natural disaster over the same period

High-Arctic family planning:Earlier spring onset advances age at first reproduction in barnacle geese

Quantifying how key life-history traits respond to climatic change is fundamental in understanding and predicting long-term population prospects. Age at first reproduction (AFR), which affects fitness and population dynamics, may be influenced by environmental stochasticity but has rarely been directly linked to climate change. Here, we use a case study from the highly seasonal and stochastic environment in High-Arctic Svalbard, with strong temporal trends in breeding conditions, to test whether rapid climate warming may induce changes in AFR in barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis. Using long-term mark– recapture and reproductive data (1991–2017), we developed a multi-event model to estimate individual AFR (i.e. when goslings are produced). The annual probability of reproducing for the first time was negatively affected by population density but only for 2 year olds, the earliest age of maturity. Furthermore, advanced spring onset (SO) positively influenced the probability of reproducing and even more strongly the probability of reproducing for the first time. Thus, because climate warming has advanced SO by two weeks, this likely led to an earlier AFR by more than doubling the probability of reproducing at 2 years of age. This may, in turn, impact important life-history tradeoffs and long-term population trajectories

Design and microfabrication of a high-aspect-ratio PDMS microbeam array for parallel nanonewton force measurement and protein printing

Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 17(3): pp. 623-632.Cell and protein mechanics has applications ranging from cellular development to tissue engineering. Techniques such as magnetic tweezers, optic tweezers, and atomic force microscopy have been used to measure cell deformation forces on the order of piconewtons to nanonewtons. In this study, an array of polymeric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microbeams with diameters of 10-40μm and lengths of 118μm was fabricated from Sylgard® with curing agent concentrations ranging from 5% to 20%. Resulting spring constants were 100-300nN/μm. The elastic modulus of PDMS was determined experimentally at different curing agent concentrations and found to be 346kPa to 704kPa in a millimeter-scale array and ~1MPa in a microbeam array. Additionally, the microbeam array was used to print laminin for the purpose of cell adhesion. Linear and non-linear finite element analyses are presented and compared to the closed-from solution. Conclusion: The highly compliant, transparent, biocompatible PDMS may offer a method for more rapid throughput in cell and protein mechanics force measurement experiments with sensitivities necessary for highly compliant structures such as axons

Time evolution, cyclic solutions and geometric phases for general spin in an arbitrarily varying magnetic field

A neutral particle with general spin and magnetic moment moving in an arbitrarily varying magnetic field is studied. The time evolution operator for the Schr\"odinger equation can be obtained if one can find a unit vector that satisfies the equation obeyed by the mean of the spin operator. There exist at least $2s+1$ cyclic solutions in any time interval. Some particular time interval may exist in which all solutions are cyclic. The nonadiabatic geometric phase for cyclic solutions generally contains extra terms in addition to the familiar one that is proportional to the solid angle subtended by the closed trace of the spin vector.Comment: revtex4, 8 pages, no figur

Mathematical results for some α\displaystyle{\alpha} models of turbulence with critical and subcritical regularizations

In this paper, we establish the existence of a unique "regular" weak solution to turbulent flows governed by a general family of $\alpha$ models with critical regularizations. In particular this family contains the simplified Bardina model and the modified Leray-$\alpha$ model. When the regularizations are subcritical, we prove the existence of weak solutions and we establish an upper bound on the Hausdorff dimension of the time singular set of those weak solutions. The result is an interpolation between the bound proved by Scheffer for the Navier-Stokes equations and the regularity result in the critical case

Percutaneous vertebroplasty is not a risk factor for new osteoporotic compression fractures: results from VERTOS II

Background and purpose: Pv is increasingly used as treatment for osteoporotic vcfs. However, controversy exists as to whether pv increases the risk for new vcfs during follow-up. The purpose of our research was to assess the incidence of new vcfs in patients with acute vcfs randomized to pv and conservative therapy. Materials and methods: Vertos ii is a prospective multicenter randomized controlled trial comparing pv with conservative therapy in 202 patients. Incidence, distribution, and timing of new vcfs during follow-up were assessed from spine radiographs. In addition, further height loss during follow-up of treated vcfs was measured. Results: After a mean follow-up of 11.4 Months (Median, 12.0; Range, 1-24 months), 18 New vcfs occurred in 15 of 91 patients after pv and 30 new vcfs in 21 of 85 patients after conservative therapy. This difference was not significant (P = .44). There was no higher fracture risk for adjacent-versus-distant vertebrae. Mean time to new vcf was 16.2 Months after pv and 17.8 Months after conservative treatment (Logrank, p = .45). The baseline number of vcfs was the only risk factor for occurrence (Or, 1.43; 95% Ci, 1.05-1.95) And number (P = .01) Of new vcfs. After conservative therapy, further height loss of treated vertebrae occurred more frequently (35 Of 85 versus 11 of 91 patients, p < .001) And was more severe (P < .001) Than after pv. Conclusions: Incidence of new vcfs was not different after pv compared with conservative therapy after a mean of 11.4 Months' follow-up. The only risk factor for new vcfs was the number of vcfs at baseline. Pv contributed to preservation of stature by decreasing both the incidence and severity of further height loss in treated vertebrae

Geography, environment, and colonization history interact with morph type to shape genomic variation in an Arctic fish

Funding Information: Thanks go to our editor and three anonymous reviewers whose suggestions greatly improved this study. We thank S. Avery, J. Callahan, S. Duffy, S. Hann, L. Pike, R. Solomon, A. Walsh, for assistance with sample collection and fieldwork. We are grateful to X. Dallaire and J.S. Moore for providing samples from Ungava, Bay (HAB) and to L. Bernatchez for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thanks to Parks Canada for allowing us access to the Torngat Mountains National Park and the Nunatsiavut government for allowing us to collect samples from their lands. Thanks to A. Belay at Mount Sinai Hospital for her help with sequencing, A. Mesmer for help with genotyping, and S. Lehnert for insightful data analysis suggestions. We also thank the Institute for Biodiversity, Ecosystem Science, and Sustainability of the Department of Environment and Conservation of the Government of Labrador and Newfoundland for funding for this project; NSERC for the Strategic Grant STPGP 430198 and Discovery Grant awarded to DER, for the CGS‐D awarded to SJS; the Killam Trust for the Level 2 Izaak awarded to SJS; and the Government of Nova Scotia for the Graduate Scholarship awarded to SJS. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Peer reviewedPublisher PD