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Upper-Ocean Singular Vectors of the North Atlantic Climate with Implications for Linear Predictability and Variability
The limits of predictability of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) and upper-ocean temperatures due to errors in ocean initial conditions and model parametrizations are investigated in an idealized configuration of an ocean general circulation model (GCM). Singular vectors (optimal perturbations) are calculated using the GCM, its tangent linear and adjoint models to determine an upper bound on the predictability of North Atlantic climate. The maximum growth time-scales of MOC and upper-ocean temperature anomalies, excited by the singular vectors, are 18.5 and 13 years respectively and in part explained by the westward propagation of upper-ocean anomalies against the mean flow. As a result of the linear interference of non-orthogonal eigenmodes of the non-normal dynamics, the ocean dynamics are found to actively participate in the significant growth of the anomalies. An initial density perturbation of merely is found to lead to a 1.7 Sv MOC anomaly after 18.5 years. In addition, Northern Hemisphere upper-ocean temperature perturbations can be amplified by a factor of 2 after 13 years. The growth of upper-ocean temperature and MOC anomalies is slower and weaker when excited by the upper-ocean singular vectors than when the deep ocean is perturbed. This leads to the conclusion that predictability experiments perturbing only the atmospheric initial state may overestimate the predictability time. Interestingly, optimal MOC and upper-ocean temperature excitations are only weakly correlated, thus limiting the utility of SST observations to infer MOC variability. The excitation of anomalies in this model might have a crucial impact on the variability and predictability of Atlantic climate. The limit of predictability of the MOC is found to be different from that of the upper-ocean heat content, emphasizing that errors in ocean initial conditions will affect various measures differently and such uncertainties should be carefully considered in decadal prediction experiments.Earth and Planetary Science
Imaging stray magnetic field of individual ferromagnetic nanotubes
We use a scanning nanometer-scale superconducting quantum interference device
to map the stray magnetic field produced by individual ferromagnetic nanotubes
(FNTs) as a function of applied magnetic field. The images are taken as each
FNT is led through magnetic reversal and are compared with micromagnetic
simulations, which correspond to specific magnetization configurations. In
magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the FNT long axis, their magnetization
appears to reverse through vortex states, i.e.\ configurations with vortex end
domains or -- in the case of a sufficiently short FNT -- with a single global
vortex. Geometrical imperfections in the samples and the resulting distortion
of idealized mangetization configurations influence the measured stray-field
patterns.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
Prevalence and clinical consequences of Hepatitis E in patients who underwent liver transplantation for chronic Hepatitis C in the United States
Background: Infection with hepatitis E virus (HEV) in immunocompromised patients can lead to severe liver disease. Treatment options for HEV include peginterferon or ribavirin, routinely also used for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. We determined the prevalence and clinical consequences of HEV in United States (US) based patients who underwent liver transplantation (LT) for chronic HCV. Methods: Seroprevalence of HEV in 145 US LT recipients with a history of chronic HCV was determined pre-LT, 1, 3 and 5 years post-LT. All last available samples and all samples in IgM positive patients and post-LT IgG seroconverters were tested for HEV RNA. Results: Overall anti-HEV seroprevalence was 42 %. Five patients were HEV IgM positive pre-LT, one patient had IgM seroconversion post-LT and eight patients had IgG seroconversion post-LT. None of the tested samples were positive for HEV RNA. Eight out of nine of the post-LT seroconverters had been treated for HCV recurrence before or at the moment of seroconversion. Conclusions: LT recipients in the US are at risk of acquiring HEV. Post-LT HCV treatment with interferons and/or ribavirin may have protected patients against chronic HEV. With the arrival of new direct antiviral agents for the treatment of HCV and the elimination of peginterferon and ribavirin from HCV treatment regimens, the prevalence of chronic HEV in this population may rise again
Air-Sea Interactions in a High-Resolution Ocean-Atmosphere Simulation
During the past few years the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) modeling groups have produced, respectively, global atmosphere-only and ocean-only simulations with km-scale grid spacing. These simulations have proved invaluable for process studies and for the development of satellite and in-situ sampling strategies. Nevertheless, a key limitation of these "nature" simulations is the lack of interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere, which limits their usefulness for studying air-sea interactions and for designing observing missions to study these interactions. We present here results from a coupled GEOS-MIT "nature run" simulation, wherein we have coupled a cubed-sphere-720 (~ 1/8) configuration of the GEOS atmosphere to a lat-lon-cap-1080 (~ 1/12) configuration of the MIT ocean. We compare near-surface diagnostics of this fully coupled ocean-atmosphere simulation to equivalent atmosphere-only and ocean-only simulations. A particular focus of the comparisons is the coupled versus uncoupled differences in interactions between Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and ocean surface wind. We discuss, in particular, a several-day mode of temporal variability in the SST-wind cycle and how it is represented in the different model simulations and in observationally-based products. A mechanism for the cycle, which is driven by SST-wind feedback, is proposed
Photo- and Electro-Disintegration of 3He at Threshold and pd Radiative Capture
The present work reports results for: pd radiative capture observables
measured at center-of-mass (c.m.) energies in the range 0--100 keV and at 2 MeV
by the TUNL and Wisconsin groups, respectively; contributions to the
Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) integral in 3He from the two- up to the three-body
breakup thresholds, compared to experimental determinations by the TUNL group
in this threshold region; longitudinal, transverse, and interference response
functions measured in inclusive polarized electron scattering off polarized 3He
at excitation energies below the threshold for breakup into ppn, compared to
unpolarized longitudinal and transverse data from the Saskatoon group. The
calculations are based on a realistic Hamiltonian with two- and three-nucleon
interactions and a realistic current operator, including one- and two-body
components. The theoretical predictions obtained by including only one-body
currents are in violent disagreement with data. These differences between
theory and experiment are, to a large extent, removed when two-body currents
are taken into account, although some rather large discrepancies remain in the
c.m. energy range 0--100 keV, particularly for the pd differential cross
section and tensor analyzing power at small angles, and contributions to the
GDH integral. A rather detailed analysis indicates that these discrepancies
have, in large part, a common origin, and can be traced back to an excess
strength obtained in the theoretical calculation of the E1 reduced matrix
element associated with the pd channel having L,S,J=1,1/2,3/2. It is suggested
that this lack of E1 strength observed experimentally might have implications
for the nuclear interaction at very low energies. Finally, the validity of the
long-wavelength approximation for electric dipole transitions is discussed.Comment: 47 pages RevTex file, 10 PostScript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Automated derivation of the adjoint of high-level transient finite element programs
In this paper we demonstrate a new technique for deriving discrete adjoint
and tangent linear models of finite element models. The technique is
significantly more efficient and automatic than standard algorithmic
differentiation techniques. The approach relies on a high-level symbolic
representation of the forward problem. In contrast to developing a model
directly in Fortran or C++, high-level systems allow the developer to express
the variational problems to be solved in near-mathematical notation. As such,
these systems have a key advantage: since the mathematical structure of the
problem is preserved, they are more amenable to automated analysis and
manipulation. The framework introduced here is implemented in a freely
available software package named dolfin-adjoint, based on the FEniCS Project.
Our approach to automated adjoint derivation relies on run-time annotation of
the temporal structure of the model, and employs the FEniCS finite element form
compiler to automatically generate the low-level code for the derived models.
The approach requires only trivial changes to a large class of forward models,
including complicated time-dependent nonlinear models. The adjoint model
automatically employs optimal checkpointing schemes to mitigate storage
requirements for nonlinear models, without any user management or intervention.
Furthermore, both the tangent linear and adjoint models naturally work in
parallel, without any need to differentiate through calls to MPI or to parse
OpenMP directives. The generality, applicability and efficiency of the approach
are demonstrated with examples from a wide range of scientific applications
Model Calculations for the Two-Fragment Electro-Disintegration of He
Differential cross sections for the electro-disintegration process are calculated, using a model in which
the final state interaction is included by means of a nucleon-nucleus (3+1)
potential constructed via Marchenko inversion. The required bound-state wave
functions are calculated within the integrodifferential equation approach
(IDEA). In our model the important condition that the initial bound state and
the final scattering state are orthogonal is fulfilled. The sensitivity of the
cross section to the input interaction in certain kinematical regions
is investigated. The approach adopted could be useful in reactions involving
few cluster systems where effective interactions are not well known and exact
methods are presently unavailable. Although, our Plane-Wave Impulse
Approximation results exhibit, similarly to other calculations, a dip in the
five-fold differential cross-section around a missing momentum of , it is argued that this is an artifact of the omission of re-scattering
four-nucleon processes.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication by Phys.Rev.
Laparoscopic adjustable gastric band in an obese unrelated living donor prior to kidney transplantation: a case report
Introduction. Obese living donors who undergo donor nephrectomy have higher rates of intra-operative and post-operative complications. Many centres exclude obese donors from living donor transplant programs. Diet, exercise and medication are often ineffective weight loss interventions for donors, hence bariatric surgery should be considered. Case presentation. We report the case of a 53-year-old Caucasian woman who underwent laparoscopically adjustable gastric banding. The procedure enabled her to lose sufficient weight to gain eligibility for kidney donation. After losing weight, she had an uncomplicated laparoscopic donor nephrectomy surgery, and the recipient underwent successful kidney transplantation. Conclusion. Laparoscopically adjustable gastric banding should be considered for obese potential living kidney donors whenever transplantation units restrict access to donor nephrectomy based on the increased surgical risk for donors
Identification of de novo variants in nonsyndromic cleft lip with/without cleft palate patients with low polygenic risk scores
Background: Nonsyndromic cleft lip with/without cleft palate (nsCL/P) is a congenital malformation of multifactorial etiology. Research has identified >40 genome-wide significant risk loci, which explain less than 40% of nsCL/P heritability. Studies show that some of the hidden heritability is explained by rare penetrant variants.
Methods: To identify new candidate genes, we searched for highly penetrant de novo variants (DNVs) in 50 nsCL/P patient/parent-trios with a low polygenic risk for the phenotype (discovery). We prioritized DNV-carrying candidate genes from the discovery for resequencing in independent cohorts of 1010 nsCL/P patients of diverse ethnicities and 1574 population-matched controls (replication). Segregation analyses and rare variant association in the replication cohort, in combination with additional data (genome-wide association data, expression, protein-protein-interactions), were used for final prioritization.
Conclusion: In the discovery step, 60 DNVs were identified in 60 genes, including a variant in the established nsCL/P risk gene CDH1. Re-sequencing of 32 prioritized genes led to the identification of 373 rare, likely pathogenic variants. Finally, MDN1 and PAXIP1 were prioritized as top candidates. Our findings demonstrate that DNV detection, including polygenic risk score analysis, is a powerful tool for identifying nsCL/P candidate genes, which can also be applied to other multifactorial congenital malformations.Funding information: The present study was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG)-Grants BE 3828/8-1, LU 1944/2-1, MA 2546/5-1, and LU1944/3-1.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The authors thank all patients, relatives, and control individuals for their participation. We thank the German support group for individuals with cleft lip and/or palate (Wolfgang Rosenthal Gesellschaft) for assistance with recruitment.We acknowledge the invaluable assistance of all clinical, laboratory, and bioinformatic personnel. The authors thank the Next Generation Sequencing Core Facility of the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn for sequencing the samples that were used in this study. DbGaP datasets were accessed through dbGaP accession number phs000094.v1.p1 (Supplemental Acknowledgments). Finally, the authors thank the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), and all groups that provided exome and genome variant data to this resource. A full list of gnomAD contributors is provided in the gnomAD flagship paper (Karczewski et al., 2020). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL
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