Paleoclimates in Southwestern Tasmania during the Last 13,000 Years

Plant-sociological and climatic classification of the Australian Nothofagus cunninghamii rain forest provides the basis for a new, semiquantitative approach to interpretations of late-Quaternary paleoclimates from four pollen sequences in southwestern Tasmania. Varying proportions of rain-forest pollen types in the records were related to different modern rain-forest alliances and their specifc climatic regimes, such as Eastern Rain Forest, Leatherwood Rain Forest, and sclerophyllous, Subalpine Rain Forest. According to this interpretation, early Holocene climates were characterized by 1,600 mm annual precipitation and 10°C annual temperature, conditions substantially warmer and drier than previously thought. Maximum precipitation levels of 2,500 mm annually were not reached until 8,000 years B.P. A short-term cooling episode between 6,000 and 5,000 years B.P. led to the establishment of modern rain-forest distribution in western Tasmania, characterized either by a precipitation gradient steeper than before, or by greater climatic variability. To interpret paleoclimates from before 12,000 years B. P., when non-arboreal environments dominated in western Tasmanian bollen records, various modern treeless environments were studied in search for analogs. Contrary to earlier interpretations, late-glacial environments were not alpine tundra with a treeline at modern sea level, but steppe, with marshes or shallow lakes instead of the modern lakes. Climate was characterized by 50% less precipitation than today, resulting in substantial summer droughts. To explain such drastic precipitation decrease, the westerlies that dominate Tasmanian climate today must have been shifted polewards. This suggestion is supported by climate models that take Milankovitch-type insolation differences into account as well as sea-surface temperatures. Paleolimnological information based on diatom analyses support the general paleoclimatic reassessment

Exploring synergetic effects of dimensionality reduction and resampling tools on hyperspectral imagery data classification

The present paper addresses the problem of the classification of hyperspectral images with multiple imbalanced classes and very high dimensionality. Class imbalance is handled by resampling the data set, whereas PCA and a supervised filter are applied to reduce the number of spectral bands. This is a preliminary study that pursues to investigate the benefits of combining several techniques to tackle the imbalance and the high dimensionality problems, and also to evaluate the order of application that leads to the best classification performance. Experimental results demonstrate the significance of using together these two preprocessing tools to improve the performance of hyperspectral imagery classification. Although it seems that the most effective order corresponds to first a resampling strategy and then a feature (or extraction) selection algorithm, this is a question that still needs a much more thorough investigation in the futureThis work has partially been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under grants CSD2007–00018, AYA2008–05965–0596 and TIN2009–14205, the Fundació Caixa Castelló–Bancaixa under grant P1–1B2009–04, and the Generalitat Valenciana under grant PROMETEO/2010/02

Geographic population structure analysis of worldwide human populations infers their biogeographical origins

The search for a method that utilizes biological information to predict humans’ place of origin has occupied scientists for millennia. Over the past four decades, scientists have employed genetic data in an effort to achieve this goal but with limited success. While biogeographical algorithms using next-generation sequencing data have achieved an accuracy of 700 km in Europe, they were inaccurate elsewhere. Here we describe the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) algorithm and demonstrate its accuracy with three data sets using 40,000–130,000 SNPs. GPS placed 83% of worldwide individuals in their country of origin. Applied to over 200 Sardinians villagers, GPS placed a quarter of them in their villages and most of the rest within 50 km of their villages. GPS’s accuracy and power to infer the biogeography of worldwide individuals down to their country or, in some cases, village, of origin, underscores the promise of admixture-based methods for biogeography and has ramifications for genetic ancestry testing

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

Cytotoxicity and DNA damage in the neutrophils of patients with sickle cell anaemia treated with hydroxyurea

Hydroxyurea (HU) is the most important advance in the treatment of sickle cell anaemia (SCA) for preventing complications and improving quality of life for patients. However, some aspects of treatment with HU remain unclear, including their effect on and potential toxicity to other blood cells such as neutrophils. This study used the measurement of Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) and Methyl ThiazolTetrazolium (MTT) and the comet assay to investigate the cytotoxicity and damage index (DI) of the DNA in the neutrophils of patients with SCA using HU.In the LDH and MTT assays, a cytoprotective effect was observed in the group of patients treated, as well as an absence of toxicity. When compared to patients without the treatment, the SS group (n=20, 13 women and 07 men, aged 18-69 years), and the group of healthy individuals (AA) used as a control group (n=52, 28 women and 24 men, aged 19-60 years), The SSHU group (n=21, 11 women and 10 men, aged 19-63 years) showed a significant reduction (p20 months), demonstrating that despite the cytoprotective effects in terms of cell viability, the use of HU can induce DNA damage in neutrophils

A population-scale temporal case–control evaluation of COVID-19 disease phenotype and related outcome rates in patients with cancer in England (UKCCP)

Patients with cancer are at increased risk of hospitalisation and mortality following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. However, the SARS-CoV-2 phenotype evolution in patients with cancer since 2020 has not previously been described. We therefore evaluated SARS-CoV-2 on a UK populationscale from 01/11/2020-31/08/2022, assessing case-outcome rates of hospital assessment(s), intensive care admission and mortality. We observed that the SARS-CoV-2 disease phenotype has become less severe in patients with cancer and the non-cancer population. Case-hospitalisation rates for patients with cancer dropped from 30.58% in early 2021 to 7.45% in 2022 while case-mortality rates decreased from 20.53% to 3.25%. However, the risk of hospitalisation and mortality remains 2.10x and 2.54x higher in patients with cancer, respectively. Overall, the SARS-CoV-2 disease phenotype is less severe in 2022 compared to 2020 but patients with cancer remain at higher risk than the non-cancer population. Patients with cancer must therefore be empowered to live more normal lives, to see loved ones and families, while also being safeguarded with expanded measures to reduce the risk of transmission