Assessment of the Impact of Long Integration Time in Geosynchronous SAR Imagery of Agricultural Fields by Means of GB-SAR Data

Geosynchronous Synthetic Aperture Radar (GeoSAR) missions offer the advantage of near-continuous monitoring of specific regions on Earth, making them essential for applications that require continuous information. However, wind induced motion along the inherent long integration time can result in image defocusing, with potential degradation of retrieved information. This paper aims to investigate the impact of GEOSAR long integration time in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging and derived products (time series of backscatter and coherence) required to extract agriculture relevant soil or crop parameters of interest. The study is based on the extensive HydroSoil data acquisition campaign carried out over barley and corn crops, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). The collected raw data are used to synthesize equivalent apertures with integration times of up to 4 hours, similar to those acquired with a GeoSAR. These Ultra Slow apertures facilitate the assessment of the impact of agricultural scene decorrelation on the generation of images with extended integration times.This work was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA Contract No. 4000132509/20/NL/FF/ab with UPC), supported by the Spanish MCINN funds Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu MDM-2016-0600 and under projects PID2020-117303GB-C21/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and PID2020-117303GB-C22/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

Limits on Relief through Constrained Exchange on Random Graphs

Agents are represented by nodes on a random graph (e.g., small world or truncated power law). Each agent is endowed with a zero-mean random value that may be either positive or negative. All agents attempt to find relief, i.e., to reduce the magnitude of that initial value, to zero if possible, through exchanges. The exchange occurs only between agents that are linked, a constraint that turns out to dominate the results. The exchange process continues until a Pareto equilibrium is achieved. Only 40%-90% of the agents achieved relief on small world graphs with mean degree between 2 and 40. Even fewer agents achieved relief on scale-free like graphs with a truncated power law degree distribution. The rate at which relief grew with increasing degree was slow, only at most logarithmic for all of the graphs considered; viewed in reverse, relief is resilient to the removal of links.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 22 references Changes include name change for Lory A. Ellebracht (formerly Cooperstock, e-mail address stays the same), elimination of contractions and additional references. We also note that our results are less surprising in view of other work now cite

The impact of health status and human capital formation on regional performance: Empirical evidence

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of health on growth, assuming that it is a fundamental component of the human capital of a region along with education. Various measures of population health status are used, together with a health index generated by Principal Component Analysis. Potential endogeneity between health and growth is controlled for using instrumental variable regressions and dynamic panel data. The results show a positive effect of a change in health status on regional output and a negative effect of proxy variables for health limitations on regional performance. This corroborates the importance of investing in health along with education with the aim of improving not only the well-being of individuals but the human capital and growth of a region

Evidence of atmospheric nanoparticle formation from emissions of marine microorganisms

International audienceEarth, as a whole, can be considered as a living organism emitting gases and particles into its atmosphere, in order to regulate its own temperature. In particular, oceans may respond to climate change by emitting particles that ultimately will influence cloud coverage. At the global scale, a large fraction of the aerosol number concentration is formed by nucleation of gas-phase species, but this process has never been directly observed above oceans. Here we present, using semicontrolled seawater-air enclosures, evidence that nucleation may occur from marine biological emissions in the atmosphere of the open ocean. We identify iodine-containing species as major precursors for new particle clusters’ formation, while questioning the role of the commonly accepted dimethyl sulfide oxidation products, in forming new particle clusters in the region investigated and within a time scale on the order of an hour. We further show that amines would sustain the new particle formation process by growing the new clusters to larger sizes. Our results suggest that iodine-containing species and amines are correlated to different biological tracers. These observations, if generalized, would call for a substantial change of modeling approaches of the sea-to-air interactions

Dynamic fronto-amygdalar interactions underlying emotion-regulation deficits in women at higher weight

Objective: The regulation of negative emotions entails the modulation of subcortical regions, such as the amygdala, by prefrontal regions. There is preliminary evidence suggesting that individuals at higher weight may present with hypoactivity in prefrontal regulatory systems during emotional regulation, although the directionality of these pathways has not been tested. In this study, we compared fronto-amygdalar effective connectivity during cognitive reappraisal as a function of BMI in 48 adult women with obesity and 54 control participants. Methods: Dynamic causal modeling and parametric empirical Bayes were used to map effective connectivity between the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala. Results: Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale scores were higher in the obesity group compared with control participants (p < 0.001). A top-down cortical model best explained our functional magnetic resonance imaging data (posterior probability = 86%). Participants at higher BMI were less effective at inhibiting activity in the amygdala via the orbitofrontal cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during reappraisal compared with those at lower BMI. In contrast, increased excitatory modulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-to-amygdalar connectivity was found in participants at lower BMI. Conclusions: These findings support a framework involving alterations in fronto-amygdalar connectivity contributing to difficulties in regulating negative affect in individuals at higher weight

Neutralizing antibodies against the preactive form of respiratory syncytial virus fusion protein offer unique possibilities for clinical intervention

Human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) is the most important viral agent of pediatric respiratory infections worldwide. The only specific treatment available today is a humanized monoclonal antibody (Palivizumab) directed against the F glycoprotein, administered prophylactically to children at very high risk of severe hRSV infections. Palivizumab, as most anti-F antibodies so far described, recognizes an epitope that is shared by the two conformations in which hRSV_F can fold, the metastable prefusion form and the highly stable postfusion conformation. We now describe a unique class of antibodies specific for the prefusion form of this protein that account for most of the neutralizing activity of either a rabbit serum raised against a vaccinia virus recombinant expressing hRSV_F or a human Ig preparation (Respigam), which was used for prophylaxis before Palivizumab. These antibodies therefore offer unique possibilities for immune intervention against hRSV, and their production should be assessed in trials of hRSV vaccines

Brief Research Report: Virus-Specific Humoral Immunity at Admission Predicts the Development of Respiratory Failure in Unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 Patients

Erratum for Brief Research Report: Virus-Specific Humoral Immunity at Admission Predicts the Development of Respiratory Failure in Unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 Patients. Tajuelo A, Carretero O, García-Ríos E, López-Siles M, Cano O, Vázquez M, Más V, Rodríguez-Goncer I, Lalueza A, López-Medrano F, Juan RS, Fernández-Ruiz M, Aguado JM, McConnell MJ, Pérez-Romero P. Front Immunol. 2022 Apr 25;13:878812. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.878812. eCollection 2022. PMID: 35547738 Free PMC article.Introduction: There is robust evidence indicating that the SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral response is associated with protection against severe disease. However, relatively little data exist regarding how the humoral immune response at the time of hospital admission correlates with disease severity in unimmunized patients. Our goal was toidentify variables of the humoral response that could potentially serve as prognostic markers for COVID-19 progressionin unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2 patients. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was carried out in a cohort of 160 unimmunized, adult COVID-19 patients from the Hospital Universitario 12Octubre. Participants were classified into four clinical groups based on disease severity: non-survivors with respiratory failure (RF), RF survivors, patients requiring oxygen therapy and those not receiving oxygen therapy. Serum samples were taken on admission and IgM, IgG, IgG subclass antibody titers were determined by ELISA, and neutralizing antibody titersusing a surrogate neutralization assay. The differences in the antibody titers between groups and the association between the clinical and analytical characteristics of the patients and the antibody titers were analyzed. Results: Patients that developed RF and survived had IgM titers that were 2-fold higher than non-survivors (p = 0.001), higher levels of total IgG than those who developed RF and succumbed to infection (p< 0.001), and than patients who required oxygen therapy (p< 0.05), and had 5-fold higher IgG1 titers than RF non-survivors (p< 0.001) and those who needed oxygen therapy (p< 0.001), and 2-fold higher than patients that did not require oxygen therapy during admission (p< 0.05). In contrast, RF non-survivorshad the lowest neutralizing antibodylevels, which were significantly lower compared those with RF that survived (p = 0.03). A positive correlation was found between IgM, total IgG, IgG1 and IgG3 titers and neutralizing antibody titers in the total cohort (p ≤ 0.0036). Conclusions: We demonstrate that patients with RF that survived infection had significantly higher IgM, IgG, IgG1 and neutralizing titers compared to patients with RF that succumb to infection, suggesting that using humoral response variables could be used as a prognostic marker for guiding the clinical management of unimmunized patients admitted to the hospital for SARS-CoV-2 infection.This work was supported by Mutua Madrileña Foundation (2020/0056) “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” and Instituto de Salud Carlos III (COVID-19 Research Call COV20/00181 and COV20_00679), Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spanish Network for Research in Infectious Diseases (REIPI RD16/0016) - co-financed by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) "A way to achieve Europe- The ESF invests in your future". Red de Enfermedades Infecciosas (CIBERINFEC), CB21/13/00079. EG-R is supported by the Sara Borrell Program (CD18CIII/00007), MLS is supported by the Sara Borrell Program (CD17CIIII/00017), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades., and AT is supported by the Garantía Juvenil Program of the Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid. IRG holds a research training contract “Río Hortega” (CM19/00163) and MFR a research contract “Miguel Servet” (CP18/00073), both from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.S

Neutral Bremsstrahlung Emission in Xenon Unveiled

[EN] We present evidence of non-excimer-based secondary scintillation in gaseous xenon, obtained using both the NEXT-White time projection chamber (TPC) and a dedicated setup. Detailed comparison with first-principle calculations allows us to assign this scintillation mechanism to neutral bremsstrahlung (NBrS), a process that is postulated to exist in xenon that has been largely overlooked.The NEXT Collaboration acknowledges support from the following agencies and institutions: the European Research Council (ERC) under Advanced Grant No. 339787-NEXT; the European Unions Framework Program for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (20142020) under Grant Agreements No. 674896, No. 690575, and No. 740055; the Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad and the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacin y Universidades of Spain under Grants No. FIS2014-53371-C04 and No. RTI2018-095979, the Severo Ochoa Program Grants No. SEV-2014-0398 and No. CEX2018-000867-S, and the Mara de Maeztu Program MDM-2016-0692; the Generalitat Valenciana under Grants No. PROMETEO/2016/120 and No. SEJI/2017/011; the Portuguese FCT under Project No. PTDC/FIS-NUC/3933/2021 and under Project No. UIDP/04559/2020 to fund the activities of LIBPhys-UC; the U.S. Department of Energy under Contracts No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 (Argonne National Laboratory), No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), No. DE-FG02-13ER42020 (Texas A&M), and No. DE-SC0019223/DE-SC0019054 (University of Texas at Arlington); and the University of Texas at Arlington (USA). D. G.-D. acknowledges Ramon y Cajal program (Spain) under Contract No. RYC- 2015-18820. J. M.-A. acknowledges support from Fundacin Bancaria la Caixa (ID 100010434), Grant No. LCF/BQ/PI19/11690012. We would like to thank Lorenzo Muniz for insightful discussions on the subtleties of electron transport in gases.Henriques, C.; Amedo, P.; Teixeira, JMR.; González-Díaz, D.; Azevedo, C.; Para, A.; Martín-Albo, J.... (2022). Neutral Bremsstrahlung Emission in Xenon Unveiled. Physical Review X. 12(2):021005-1-021028-23. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021005021005-1021028-2312