Sensitivity of malaria, schistosomiasis and dengue to global warming.

Global assessment of the potential impacts of anthropogenically-induced climate change on vector-borne diseases suggests an increase in extent of the geographical areas susceptible to transmission of malarial Plasmodium parasites, dengue Flavivirus and Schistosoma worms. The transmission potential of the three associated vector-borne diseases studied is highly sensitive to climate changes on the periphery of the currently endemic areas and at higher altitudes within such areas. Our findings vis-à-vis the present endemic areas indicate that the increase in the epidemic potential of malaria and dengue transmission may be estimated at 12–27% and 31–47%, respectively, while in contrast, schistosomiasis transmission potential may be expected to exhibit a 11–17% decreas

The dominant role of impurities in the composition of high pressure noble gas plasmas

We present in this letter how a molecular gas such as nitrogen at different levels of impurity dominates the ionic composition of an atmospheric pressure noble gas plasma such as in helium. The positive charge in the discharge is only determined by helium ions if the discharge gas contains less than 1 ppm of impurity. Above this impurity level, the positive charge is completely determined by the impurity nitrogen. The higher the relative nitrogen concentration, the more N4+ dominates over N2+. If the impurity level is between 1 and about 20 ppm, N2+ is clearly the most abundant positive ion but for higher levels of impurity, N4+ almost completely determines the positive charge

On the regime transitions during the formation of an atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier glow discharge

The atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge in helium is a pulsed discharge in nature. If during the electrical current pulse a glow discharge is reached, then this pulse will last only a few microseconds in operating periods of sinusoidal voltage with lengths of about 10 to 100 µs. In this paper we demonstrate that right before a glow discharge is reached, the discharge very closely resembles the commonly assumed Townsend discharge structure, but actually contains some significant differing features and hence should not be considered as a Townsend discharge. In order to clarify this, we present calculation results of high time and space resolution of the pulse formation. The results indicate that indeed a maximum of ionization is formed at the anode, but that the level of ionization remains high and that the electric field at that time is significantly disturbed. Our results also show where this intermediate structure comes from

Numerical simulations of atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharges in He at different operating conditions

We present in this paper a numerical description of an atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge in helium. The presented model is based on the fluid description, which is commonly used for such high pressure discharges. In our research we study the influence of the plasma operating parameters such as voltage amplitude and frequency, the thickness and nature of the dielectric and also the influence of the impurities present in the discharge gas. We present electrical current profiles for typical discharge conditions to assess the validity of the model. The electrical profiles show a good agreement with the experimental results, although there still are quantitative differences