On the Potential of 25 Years (1991–2015) of Rawinsonde Measurements for Elucidating Climatological and Spatiotemporal Patterns of Afternoon Boundary Layer Depths over the Contiguous US

The daytime planetary boundary layer (PBL) depth is an essential parameter in, for example, dispersion models and numerical weather prediction. We applied a recently developed technique to estimate afternoon PBL depths from 516,887 daily rawinsonde measurements obtained at 0000 UTC between 1 Jan 1991 and 31 Dec 2015 from 67 US sites. We discuss salient features in the PBL depth variability and examine the climatology of afternoon PBL depths as a function of geographical region and Köppen-Geiger climate regime. Results indicated a strong east to west PBL depth gradient, with higher PBL depths over the semiarid regions of the western US in spring and summer. Many sites located near coastlines exhibited no seasonal cycle due to marine boundary layer influences, and an inverse relationship was found between distance from the coast and observed afternoon PBL depth. Differentiating by climate type, BWk (arid, desert, and cold) has the largest median winter (1075 m) and summer (2500 m) PBL depths. Median PBL depths for Cfa (temperate, no dry season, and hot summers), Dfa (cold, no dry season, and warm summer), and Dfb (cold, no dry season, and hot summers) climate types are 750 m and 1000 m during winter and summer, respectively

The origin and evolution of the ribosome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The origin and early evolution of the active site of the ribosome can be elucidated through an analysis of the ribosomal proteins' taxonomic block structures and their RNA interactions. Comparison between the two subunits, exploiting the detailed three-dimensional structures of the bacterial and archaeal ribosomes, is especially informative.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The analysis of the differences between these two sites can be summarized as follows: 1) There is no self-folding RNA segment that defines the decoding site of the small subunit; 2) there is one self-folding RNA segment encompassing the entire peptidyl transfer center of the large subunit; 3) the protein contacts with the decoding site are made by a set of universal alignable sequence blocks of the ribosomal proteins; 4) the majority of those peptides contacting the peptidyl transfer center are made by bacterial or archaeal-specific sequence blocks.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These clear distinctions between the two subunit active sites support an earlier origin for the large subunit's peptidyl transferase center (PTC) with the decoding site of the small subunit being a later addition to the ribosome. The main implications are that a single self-folding RNA, in conjunction with a few short stabilizing peptides, formed the precursor of the modern ribosomal large subunit in association with a membrane.</p> <p>Reviewers</p> <p>This article was reviewed by Jerzy Jurka, W. Ford Doolittle, Eugene Shaknovich, and George E. Fox (nominated by Jerzy Jurka).</p

Leukotriene antagonists as first-line or add-on asthma controller therapy

Most randomized trials of treatment for asthma study highly selected patients under idealized conditions. METHODS: We conducted two parallel, multicenter, pragmatic trials to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of a leukotriene-receptor antagonist (LTRA) as compared with either an inhaled glucocorticoid for first-line asthma-controller therapy or a long-acting beta(2)-agonist (LABA) as add-on therapy in patients already receiving inhaled glucocorticoid therapy. Eligible primary care patients 12 to 80 years of age had impaired asthma-related quality of life (Mini Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire [MiniAQLQ] score =6) or inadequate asthma control (Asthma Control Questionnaire [ACQ] score =1). We randomly assigned patients to 2 years of open-label therapy, under the care of their usual physician, with LTRA (148 patients) or an inhaled glucocorticoid (158 patients) in the first-line controller therapy trial and LTRA (170 patients) or LABA (182 patients) added to an inhaled glucocorticoid in the add-on therapy trial. RESULTS: Mean MiniAQLQ scores increased by 0.8 to 1.0 point over a period of 2 years in both trials. At 2 months, differences in the MiniAQLQ scores between the two treatment groups met our definition of equivalence (95% confidence interval [CI] for an adjusted mean difference, -0.3 to 0.3). At 2 years, mean MiniAQLQ scores approached equivalence, with an adjusted mean difference between treatment groups of -0.11 (95% CI, -0.35 to 0.13) in the first-line controller therapy trial and of -0.11 (95% CI, -0.32 to 0.11) in the add-on therapy trial. Exacerbation rates and ACQ scores did not differ significantly between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Study results at 2 months suggest that LTRA was equivalent to an inhaled glucocorticoid as first-line controller therapy and to LABA as add-on therapy for diverse primary care patients. Equivalence was not proved at 2 years. The interpretation of results of pragmatic research may be limited by the crossover between treatment groups and lack of a placebo group

Implying implausibility and undermining versus accepting peoples’ experiences of suicidal ideation and self-harm in Emergency Department psychosocial assessments

Background Patients seeking emergency care for self-harm and suicidality often report they are not believed or taken seriously and there is increasing interest in the concept of epistemic injustice in mental health contexts. Communication practices implying implausibility in a person’s story or undermining their experience have been identified outside healthcare settings e.g., courtrooms where they are used to contest and recharacterize a person’s experience. Aims To investigate communication practices in Emergency Department (ED) psychosocial assessments that may (1) undermine, imply implausibility and recharacterize or (2) accept peoples’ experiences of suicidal ideation and self-harm. Method We micro-analysed verbal and nonverbal communication in 5 video-recorded psychosocial assessments with people presenting to the ED with self-harm or suicidal ideation, and conducted supplementary analysis of participants’ medical records and post-visit interviews. We describe 3 negative cases where accounts were not accepted and undermined/recharacterized and 2 positive cases where accounts were accepted. Results In the negative cases, practitioners undermined peoples’ experiences of suicidality and self-harm by: not acknowledging or accepting the person’s account; asking questions that implied inconsistency or implausibility (“Didn’t you tell your GP that you were coping okay?”); juxtaposing contrasting information to undermine the account (“You said you were coping okay before, and now you’re saying you feel suicidal.”) ; asking questions that asserted a different characterization (“So when you called 111 what were you expecting them to do”); and resisting or directly questioning the person’s account. Multiple practices across the assessment built on each other to assert that the person was not suicidal, did not look or act like they were suicidal; that the person’s decision to attend the ED was not justified; that an overdose was impulsive and not intended to end life; that self-harming behaviours were not that serious and should be in the person’s control. These alternative characterizations were used to justify decisions not to provide further support or referrals to specialist services. In other cases, communication practices were used to acknowledge, accept and validate suicidality/self-harm and introduce a shared understanding of experiences that patients found helpful. Conclusions These findings advance our understanding of how peoples’ experiences are undermined, a phenomenon which has been reported by patients, leads to further deterioration in their mental health and can discourage future help-seeking even when very unwell. Conversely, acknowledging, accepting and validating suicidality/self-harm and introducing a new way of understanding peoples’ experiences generates shared understanding and may reduce epistemic injustice in mental healthcare interactions

Low Energy Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering with the Skyrme Model in the Geodetic Approximation

We calculate nucleon-nucleon scattering at low energies and large impact parameter in the Skyrme model within the framework for soliton scattering proposed by Manton. This corresponds to a truncation of the degrees of freedom to the twelve collective coordinates which essentially describe the rigid body motion of the pair of Skyrmions. We take to its logical conclusion the result that the induced kinetic energy for these collective coordinates in the product ansatz behaves as one over the separation and hence can dominate over the potential. This behaviour implies to leading order that we can drop the potential and the resulting motion reduces simply to geodesic motion on the manifold parametrized by the variables of the product ansatz. We formulate the semi-classical quantization of these variables to obtain the motion corresponding to the nucleonic states of the Skyrme model. This is the appropriate description for the nucleons in order to consider their scattering within Manton's framework in the semi-classical approximation. We investigate the implications for the scattering of nucleons with various initial polarizations using the approximation method of ``variation of constants''.Comment: 18 pages, UDEM-LPN-TH-94-19

Communication in youth mental health clinical encounters: Introducing the agential stance

When young people seek support from mental health care practitioners, the encounters may affect the young people’s sense of self, and in particular undermine their sense of agency. For this study, an interdisciplinary team of academics and young people collaboratively analysed video-recorded encounters between young people and mental healthcare practitioners in emergency services. They identified five communication techniques that practitioners can use to avoid undermining the young person’s sense of agency in the clinical encounter. They conceptualise the use of those techniques as the adoption of an agential stance towards the young person. The agential stance consists of: (a) validating the young person’s experiences, (b) legitimising the young person’s choice to seek help, (c) refraining from objectifying the young person, (d) affirming the young person’s capacity to contribute to positive change, and (e) involving the young person in the decision-making process

A Comprehensive Resource for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells from Patients with Primary Tauopathies.

Primary tauopathies are characterized neuropathologically by inclusions containing abnormal forms of the microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) and clinically by diverse neuropsychiatric, cognitive, and motor impairments. Autosomal dominant mutations in the MAPT gene cause heterogeneous forms of frontotemporal lobar degeneration with tauopathy (FTLD-Tau). Common and rare variants in the MAPT gene increase the risk for sporadic FTLD-Tau, including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). We generated a collection of fibroblasts from 140 MAPT mutation/risk variant carriers, PSP, CBD, and cognitively normal controls; 31 induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from MAPT mutation carriers, non-carrier family members, and autopsy-confirmed PSP patients; 33 genome engineered iPSCs that were corrected or mutagenized; and forebrain neural progenitor cells (NPCs). Here, we present a resource of fibroblasts, iPSCs, and NPCs with comprehensive clinical histories that can be accessed by the scientific community for disease modeling and development of novel therapeutics for tauopathies

Development of pig welfare assessment protocol integrating animal-, environment-, and management-based measures

Abstract Background Due to increased interest in animal welfare, there is now a need for a comprehensive assessment protocol to be used in intensive pig farming systems. There are two current welfare assessment protocols for pigs: Welfare Quality&#174; Assessment Protocols (applicable in the Europe Union), that mostly focuses on animal-based measures, and the Swine Welfare Assurance Program (applicable in the United States), that mostly focuses on management- and environment-based measures. In certain cases, however, animal-based measures might not be adequate for properly assessing pig welfare status. Similarly, welfare assessment that relies only on environment- and management-based measures might not represent the actual welfare status of pigs. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to develop a new welfare protocol by integrating animal-, environment-, and management-based measures. The background for selection of certain welfare criteria and modification of the scoring systems from existing welfare assessment protocols are described. Methods The developed pig welfare assessment protocol consists of 17 criteria that are related to four main principles of welfare (good feeding, good housing, good health, and appropriate behavior). Good feeding, good housing, and good health were assessed using a 3-point scale: 0 (good welfare), 1 (moderate welfare), and 2 (poor welfare). In certain cases, only a 2-point scale was used: 0 (certain condition is present) or 2 (certain condition is absent). Appropriate behavior was assessed by scan sampling of positive and negative social behaviors based on qualitative behavior assessment and human-animal relationship tests. Results Modification of the body condition score into a 3-point scale revealed pigs with a moderate body condition (score 1). Moreover, additional criteria such as feed quality confirmed that farms had moderate (score 1) or poor feed quality (score 2), especially those farms located in a high relative humidity region. Conclusions The developed protocol can be utilized to assess welfare status in an intensive pig farming system. Although further improvements are still needed, this study is a first step in developing a pig welfare assessment protocol that combines animal-, environment-, and management-based measures

Medicine and public health in a multiethnic world

Achievement of medical and public health goals requires mutual understanding between professionals and the public, a challenge in diverse societies. Despite their massive diversity humans belong to one species, with race and ethnicity used to subgroup/classify humans and manage diversity. Classifications are contextual and vary by time, place and classifier. As classifications show major variations in health status, and risk factors, research using race and ethnicity has accelerated. Medical sciences, including epidemiology, are learning fast to extract value from such data. Among the debatable issues is the value of the relative risk versus absolute risk approaches (the latter is gaining ground), and how to assess ethnicity and race (self-assignment is favoured in the UK and North America, country of birth in continental Europe). Racial and ethnic variations in disease and risk factors are often large and usually unexplained. There is a compelling case for ethnic monitoring, despite its difficulties, for tackling inequalities and as a foundation for research. Medical and public health goals require good data collected in a racism-free social environment. Health professionals need to find the benefits of exploring differences while avoiding social division. Advances in health care, public health and medical science will follo

Galaxy And Mass Assembly: galaxy morphology in the green valley, prominent rings, and looser spiral arms

Galaxies broadly fall into two categories: star-forming (blue) galaxies and quiescent (red) galaxies. In between, one finds the less populated “green valley . Some of these galaxies are suspected to be in the process of ceasing their star-formation through a gradual exhaustion of gas supply or already dead and are experiencing a rejuvenation of star-formation through fuel injection. We use the Galaxy And Mass Assembly database and the Galaxy Zoo citizen science morphological estimates to compare the morphology of galaxies in the green valley against those in the red sequence and blue cloud. Our goal is to examine the structural differences within galaxies that fall in the green valley, and what brings them there. Previous results found disc features such as rings and lenses are more prominently represented in the green valley population. We revisit this with a similar sized data set of galaxies with morphology labels provided by the Galaxy Zoo for the GAMA fields based on new KiDS images. Our aim is to compare qualitatively the results from expert classification to that of citizen science. We observe that ring structures are indeed found more commonly in green valley galaxies compared to their red and blue counterparts. We suggest that ring structures are a consequence of disc galaxies in the green valley actively exhibiting characteristics of fading discs and evolving disc morphology of galaxies. We note that the progression from blue to red correlates with loosening spiral arm structure