Changes in Fire Weather Climatology Under 1.5 ◦C and 2.0 ◦C Warming

The 2015 Paris Agreement led to a number of studies that assessed the impact of the 1.5 ◦C and 2.0 ◦C increases in global temperature over preindustrial levels. However, those assessments have not actively investigated the impact of these levels of warming on fire weather. In view of a recent series of high-profile wildfire events worldwide, we access fire weather sensitivity based on a set of multi-model large ensemble climate simulations for these low-emission scenarios. The results indicate that the half degree difference between these two thresholds may lead to a significantly increased hazard of wildfire in certain parts of the world, particularly the Amazon, African savanna and Mediterranean. Although further experiments focused on human land use are needed to depict future fire activity, considering that rising temperatures are the most influential factor in augmenting the danger of fire weather, limiting global warming to 1.5 ◦C would alleviate some risk in these parts of the world

The association of asthma and its subgroups with osteoporosis: a cross-sectional study using KoGES HEXA data

Background A few studies have reported the association between asthma and osteoporosis. We aimed to analyze the association of asthma and its subgroups with osteoporosis in the Korean adult population. Methods We used the health examinee (HEXA) data from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study (KoGES) obtained between 2004 and 2016. We included 162,579 participants (n = 3,160 with asthma; n = 159,419 controls) who reported their previous histories of asthma and osteoporosis. The participants were categorized into 3 groups based on asthma management: participants who did not need further treatment due to controlled symptoms (well controlled); participants with ongoing treatment (being treated); participants who were not treated even though they had symptoms (not being treated). Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to calculate the adjusted odds ratios (aORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for osteoporosis. Subgroup analyses for age and sex were conducted. Results The prevalence of osteoporosis was higher in patients with asthma (13.6%) than in controls (6.8%). In the full-adjusted model, the aORs for osteoporosis were 1.74 (95% CI 1.55–1.94, P < 0.001) in patients with asthma compared to controls. There were consistent findings across the age and sex subgroups. The aORs for osteoporosis were 1.43 (95% CI 1.10–1.86, P = 0.008) in the well-controlled asthma group; 1.55 (95% CI 1.28–1.89, P < 0.001) in the being treated asthma group; and 1.96 (95% CI 1.66–2.31, P < 0.001) in the not being treated asthma group compared to the control group. Conclusion Asthma was associated with osteoporosis in the Korean adult population. Patients with asthma not being treated showed the highest ORs for osteoporosis.This research was funded by National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea, grant number (NRF-2018-R1D1A1A0-2085328 by Hyo Geun Choi, NRF-2020R1G1A1005390 by Jee Hye Wee). The funding organization did not contribute to the design or conduct of this study, preparation, review, approval, or decision to submit this manuscript for publication

Acute Renal Failure due to Obstructive Uropathy Secondary to Ureteral Endometriosis

Ureteral involvement by endometriosis is a rare and often silent disease but capable of producing significant morbidity and leading to hydronephrosis and to renal failure. Surgery is the treatment of choice to remove endometriotic lesions and relieve ureteral obstruction if the kidney is still functional or a nephrectomy is performed if there is a complete loss of renal function. We report a case of acute renal failure induced ureteral endometriosis managed with laparoscopic unilateral nephrectomy and endometrioma cystectomy. Differential diagnosis is important to confirm diagnosis for patients with ureteral obstruction presenting nonspecific symptoms

Mortality and cause of death in physical activity and insufficient physical activity participants: a longitudinal follow-up study using a national health screening cohort

Background Few studies have examined the association between physical activity (PA) and various causes of mortality in Korea. The aim of our study was to evaluate mortality and causes of death between PA and insufficient PA using Korean national cohort data. Methods The health screening cohort data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort from 2009 to 2015 were used. PA was determined if participants walked or performed moderate-intensity activity ≥5 d/week for ≥30 min, or vigorous-intensity activity ≥3 d/week for ≥20 min. Other participants were classified as insufficient PA. The PA and insufficient PA groups were matched by age, sex, income, and region of residence in a 1:1 ratio. Causes of death were classified into 13 categories. Crude and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all mortality rates were analyzed using a stratified Cox proportional hazard model. Age, sex, income, and region of residence were stratified. Subgroup analyses were performed according to age, sex, and obesity status. The odds ratio according to the causes of death was calculated by the chi-square test. Results The adjusted HR for mortality in the PA group was 0.85 (95% CI = 0.82–0.88). In subgroup analyses according to age, sex, and obesity status, results were consistent with the main findings in < 60-year-old females, ≥ 60-year-old males and females, and in all subgroups by obesity. The death rate by neoplasm, mental diseases, neurologic disease, circulatory disease, respiratory disease, digestive disease, abnormal finding, and trauma were lower in the PA than the insufficient PA group. Conclusions These results suggest that PA is inversely associated with mortality caused specifically by diseases reflected by mental, respiratory, cancer, and cardiovascular conditions. Additionally, PA is inversely associated with mortality compared to insufficient PA in all obesity status.This work was supported by the Hallym University Research Fund (HURF) and in part by research grants (NRF-2018-R1D1A1A02085328 and NRF2019R1A6A3A01091963) from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. The funding bodies contributed to the data analysis fee and the labor Table 4 The difference in mortality between the physical activity (PA) and insufficient PA groups according to cause of death Cause of death Total participants PA(n = 167,413) Insufficient PA (n = 167,413) Odds ratio (95% CI) P-value All-cause death (n,%) 5483 (100.0) 6781 (100.0) 0.80 (0.77–0.83) < 0.001*Infection (n,%) 110 (2.0) 142 (2.1) 0.78 (0.60–0.99) 0.057 Neoplasm (n,%) 2425 (44.2) 2781 (41.0) 0.87 (0.82–0.92) < 0.001*Metabolic disease (n,%) 165 (3.0) 202 (3.0) 0.82 (0.67–1.00) 0.063 Mental disease (n,%) 33 (0.6) 71 (1.1) 0.47 (0.31–0.70) 0.001* Neurologic disease (n,%) 110 (2.0) 155 (2.3) 0.71 (0.56–0.91) 0.010*Circulatory disease (n,%) 1011 (18.4) 1311 (19.3) 0.77 (0.71–0.84) < 0.001*Respiratory disease (n,%) 372 (6.8) 567 (8.4) 0.66 (0.58–0.75) < 0.001*Digestive disease (n,%) 171 (3.1) 215 (3.2) 0.80 (0.65–0.97) 0.036*Muscular disease (n,%) 30 (0.6) 35 (0.5) 0.86 (0.53–1.40) 0.535 Genitourinary disease (n,%) 79 (1.4) 87 (1.3) 0.91 (0.67–1.23) 0.535 Abnormal finding (n,%) 283 (5.2) 365 (5.4) 0.78 (0.66–0.91) 0.002*Trauma (n,%) 669 (12.2) 801 (11.8) 0.84 (0.75–0.93) 0.002*Others (n,%) 25 (0.5) 49 (0.7) 0.51 (0.32–0.83) 0.009*Abbreviation: PA physical activity * Chi-square test. Significance at false discovery rate-adjusted P < 0.05 Min et al. BMC Public Health (2020) 20:1469 Page 8 of 10 costs of researchers. The funding bodies have no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, interpretation of the data, or in writing the manuscript

Determination of Traffic Lane in Tunnel and Positioning of Autonomous Vehicles Using Chromaticity of LED Lights

Currently, the location recognition and positioning system are the essential parts of unmanned vehicles. Among them, location estimation under GPS-denied environments is currently being studied using IMU, Wi-Fi, and VLC, but there are problems such as cumulative errors, hardware complexity, and precision positioning. To address this problem with the current positioning system, the present study proposed a lane positioning technique by analyzing the chromaticity coordinates, judging from the color temperature of LED lights in tunnels. The tunnel environment was built using LEDs with three color temperatures, and to solve nonlinear problems such as lane positioning from chromaticity analysis, a single input single output fuzzy algorithm was developed to estimate the position of an object on lanes using chromaticity values of signals measured by RGB sensors. The RGB value measured by the sensor removes the disturbance through the pre-processing filter, accepts only the tunnel LED information, and estimates where it is located on the x-distance indicating the lane position through a fuzzy algorithm. Finally, the performance of the fuzzy algorithm was evaluated through experiments, and the accuracy was shown with an average error of less than 4.86%

Proteomic analysis of silver nanoparticle toxicity in rat

Silver nanoparticles (SNPs) have received considerable attention recently, because SNPs with different shapes and sizes exhibit variable antimicrobial activity, which makes them useful for medical and hygienic purposes. SNPs have been detected in various tissues and organisms after inhalation, oral ingestion, and contact with the skin, indicating that SNPs can be distributed to different body tissues after uptake. Thus, the toxicity of SNPs to different body tissues after their uptake needs to be studied. In this study, we performed a proteomic analysis of liver, lung, and kidney tissues in rats exposed to approximately 50 nm SNPs by intravascular injection. Then, the differentially expressed proteins representing a dose-dependent response were identified. The differentially expressed proteins were mostly related to the known toxicity of SNPs, such as apoptosis, increased reactive oxygen species, thrombus formation, and inflammation. Additionally, proteins related to metabolic disorders including diabetes were identified as differentially expressed proteins in kidney, based solely on the analysis of the protein profile and related disease pathway. In conclusion, the differentially expressed proteins identified in this study could provide basic data for understanding the toxic and pathological responses of SNP-exposed tissues and to identify candidate SNP toxicity biomarkers. © 2010 The Korean Society of Environmental Risk Assessment and Health Science and Springer.1