Hydro-economic modeling with aquifer-river interactions to guide sustainable basin management

Policymakers in arid and semiarid basins face hard choices on water policies needed for adaptation to climate change. Hydro-economic modeling is a state-of-the art approach that can be used to guide the design and implementation of these policies in basins. A major gap in developments of hydro-economic modeling to date has been the weak integration of physically-based representations of water sources and uses such as the interaction between ground and surface water resources, to inform complex basin scale policy choices. This paper presents an integrated hydro-economic modeling framework to address this gap with application to an important and complex river basin in Spain, the Jucar basin, for the assessment of a range of climate change scenarios and policy choices. Results indicate that in absence of adequate policies protecting water resources and natural ecosystems, water users will strategically deplete reservoirs, aquifers and river flows for short-term adaptation to climate change, disregarding the impacts on the environment and future human activities. These impacts can be addressed by implementing sustainable management policies. However, these policies could have disproportionate costs for some stakeholders groups, and their opposition may undermine attempts at sustainable policy. These tradeoffs among water policy choices are important guides to the design of policies aimed at basin-wide adaptation to climate change

Chern-Simons Solitons, Chiral Model, and (affine) Toda Model on Noncommutative Space

We consider the Dunne-Jackiw-Pi-Trugenberger model of a U(N) Chern-Simons gauge theory coupled to a nonrelativistic complex adjoint matter on noncommutative space. Soliton configurations of this model are related the solutions of the chiral model on noncommutative plane. A generalized Uhlenbeck's uniton method for the chiral model on noncommutative space provides explicit Chern-Simons solitons. Fundamental solitons in the U(1) gauge theory are shaped as rings of charge `n' and spin `n' where the Chern-Simons level `n' should be an integer upon quantization. Toda and Liouville models are generalized to noncommutative plane and the solutions are provided by the uniton method. We also define affine Toda and sine-Gordon models on noncommutative plane. Finally the first order moduli space dynamics of Chern-Simons solitons is shown to be trivial.Comment: latex, JHEP style, 23 pages, no figur

High-velocity microsprays enhance antimicrobial activity in S. mutans biofilms

Streptococcus mutans in dental plaque biofilms play a role in caries development. The biofilm’s complex structure enhances the resistance to antimicrobial agents by limiting the transport of active agents inside the biofilm. We assessed the ability of high-velocity water microsprays to enhance delivery of antimicrobials into 3-days old S. mutans biofilms. Biofilms were exposed to a 90° or 30° impact, firstly using a 1-?m tracer beads solution (109 beads/mL) and secondly, a 0.2% Chlorhexidine (CHX) or 0.085% Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) solution. For comparison, a 30-sec diffusive transport and simulated mouthwash were also performed. Confocal microscopy was used to determine number and relative bead penetration depth (RD) into the biofilm. Assessment of antimicrobial penetration was determined by calculating the killing depth (KD) detected by live/dead viability staining. We firstly demonstrated that the microspray was able to deliver significantly more microbeads deeper in the biofilm compared to diffusion and mouthwashing exposures. Next our experiments revealed that the microspray yielded better antimicrobial penetration evidenced by deeper killing inside the biofilm and a wider killing zone around the zone of clearance than a diffusion transport with the same antimicrobials. Interestingly the 30° impact in the distal position delivered approximately 16 times more microbeads and yielded approximately 20% more bacteria killing (for both CHX and CPC) than the 90o impact. These data suggest that high-velocity water microsprays can be used as an effective mechanism to deliver micro-particles and antimicrobials inside S. mutans biofilms. High shear stresses generated at the biofilm/burst interface might have enhanced beads and antimicrobials delivery inside the remaining biofilm by combining forced advection into the biofilm matrix and physical restructuring of the biofilm itself. Further, the impact angle has potential to be optimized both for biofilm removal and active agents’ delivery inside biofilm in those protected areas where some biofilm might remai

Antibiotic Treatment of Suspected and Confirmed Neonatal Sepsis Within 28 Days of Birth: A Retrospective Analysis

Neonatal sepsis causes significant mortality and morbidity worldwide. Diagnosis is usually confirmed via blood culture results. Blood culture sepsis confirmation can take days and suffer from contamination and false negatives. Empiric therapy with antibiotics is common. This study aims to retrospectively describe and compare treatments of blood culture-confirmed and unconfirmed, but suspected, sepsis within the University of Utah Hospital system. Electronic health records were obtained from 1,248 neonates from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2017. Sepsis was categorized into early-onset (≤3 days of birth, EOS) and late-onset (\u3e3 and ≤28 days of birth, LOS) and categorized as culture-confirmed sepsis if a pathogen was cultured from the blood and unconfirmed if all blood cultures were negative with no potentially contaminated blood cultures. Of 1,010 neonates in the EOS cohort, 23 (2.3%) were culture-confirmed, most with Escherichia coli (42%). Treatment for unconfirmed EOS lasted an average of 6.1 days with primarily gentamicin and ampicillin while confirmed patients were treated for an average of 12.3 days with increased administration of cefotaxime. Of 311 neonates in the LOS cohort, 62 (20%) were culture-confirmed, most culturing coagulase negative staphylococci (46%). Treatment courses for unconfirmed LOS lasted an average of 7.8 days while confirmed patients were treated for an average of 11.4 days, these patients were primarily treated with vancomycin and gentamicin. The use of cefotaxime for unconfirmed EOS and LOS increased throughout the study period. Cefotaxime administration was associated with an increase in neonatal mortality, even when potential confounding factors were added to the logistic regression model (adjusted odds ratio 2.8, 95%CI [1.21, 6.88], p = 0.02). These results may not be generalized to all hospitals and the use of cefotaxime may be a surrogate for other factors. Given the low rate of blood culture positive diagnosis and the high exposure rate of empiric antibiotics, this patient population might benefit from improved diagnostics with reevaluation of antibiotic use guideline

Scattering of Noncommutative Waves and Solitons in a Supersymmetric Chiral Model in 2+1 Dimensions

Interactions of noncommutative waves and solitons in 2+1 dimensions can be analyzed exactly for a supersymmetric and integrable U(n) chiral model extending the Ward model. Using the Moyal-deformed dressing method in an antichiral superspace, we construct explicit time-dependent solutions of its noncommutative field equations by iteratively solving linear equations. The approach is illustrated by presenting scattering configurations for two noncommutative U(2) plane waves and for two noncommutative U(2) solitons as well as by producing a noncommutative U(1) two-soliton bound state.Comment: 1+13 pages; v2: reference added, version published in JHE

Abelian Toda field theories on the noncommutative plane

Generalizations of GL(n) abelian Toda and $\widetilde{GL}(n)$ abelian affine Toda field theories to the noncommutative plane are constructed. Our proposal relies on the noncommutative extension of a zero-curvature condition satisfied by algebra-valued gauge potentials dependent on the fields. This condition can be expressed as noncommutative Leznov-Saveliev equations which make possible to define the noncommutative generalizations as systems of second order differential equations, with an infinite chain of conserved currents. The actions corresponding to these field theories are also provided. The special cases of GL(2) Liouville and $\widetilde{GL}(2)$ sinh/sine-Gordon are explicitly studied. It is also shown that from the noncommutative (anti-)self-dual Yang-Mills equations in four dimensions it is possible to obtain by dimensional reduction the equations of motion of the two-dimensional models constructed. This fact supports the validity of the noncommutative version of the Ward conjecture. The relation of our proposal to previous versions of some specific Toda field theories reported in the literature is presented as well.Comment: v3 30 pages, changes in the text, new sections included and references adde

Tobacco use and psychosis risk in persons at clinical high risk

Aim: To evaluate the role of tobacco use in the development of psychosis in individuals at clinical high risk. Method: The North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study is a 2-year multi-site prospective case control study of persons at clinical high risk that aims to better understand predictors and mechanisms for the development of psychosis. The cohort consisted of 764 clinical high risk and 279 healthy comparison subjects. Clinical assessments included tobacco and substance use and several risk factors associated with smoking in general population studies. Results: Clinical high risk subjects were more likely to smoke cigarettes than unaffected subjects (light smoking odds ratio [OR] = 3.0, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.9-5; heavy smoking OR = 4.8, 95% CI = 1.7-13.7). In both groups, smoking was associated with mood, substance use, stress and perceived discrimination and in clinical high risk subjects with childhood emotional neglect and adaption to school. Clinical high risk subjects reported higher rates of several factors previously associated with smoking, including substance use, anxiety, trauma and perceived discrimination. After controlling for these potential factors, the relationship between clinical high risk state and smoking was no longer significant (light smoking OR = 0.9, 95% CI = 0.4-2.2; heavy smoking OR = 0.3, 95% CI = 0.05-2.3). Moreover, baseline smoking status (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.16, 95% CI = 0.82-1.65) and categorization as ever smoked (HR = 1.3, 95% CI = 0.8-2.1) did not predict time to conversion. Conclusion: Persons at high risk for psychosis are more likely to smoke and have more factors associated with smoking than controls. Smoking status in clinical high risk subjects does not predict conversion. These findings do not support a causal relationship between smoking and psychosis

Measurement of Hadron and Lepton-Pair Production at 130GeV < \sqrt{s} < 189 GeV at LEP

We report on measurements of e+e- annihilation into hadrons and lepton pairs. The data have been collected with the L3 detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies between 130 and 189 GeV. Using a total integrated luminosity of 243.7 pb^-1, 25864 hadronic and 8573 lepton-pair events are selected for the measurement of cross sections and leptonic forward-backward asymmetries. The results are in good agreement with Standard Model predictions

Measurement of the Bs0→J/ψKS0B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0 branching fraction

The $B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ branching fraction is measured in a data sample corresponding to 0.41$fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions affecting the sin2$\beta$ measurement from $B^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ The time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be $BF(B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0)=(1.83\pm0.28)\times10^{-5}$. This is the most precise measurement to date

Model-independent search for CP violation in D0→K−K+π−π+ and D0→π−π+π+π− decays

A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states K−K+π−π+ and π−π+π+π− is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the K−K+π−π+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the π−π+π+π− final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity