Present climate and climate change over North America as simulated by the fifth-generation Canadian regional climate model

The fifth-generation Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) was used to dynamically downscale two Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM) simulations of the transient climate change for the period 1950–2100, over North America, following the CORDEX protocol. The CRCM5 was driven by data from the CanESM2 and MPI-ESM-LR CGCM simulations, based on the historical (1850–2005) and future (2006–2100) RCP4.5 radiative forcing scenario. The results show that the CRCM5 simulations reproduce relatively well the current-climate North American regional climatic features, such as the temperature and precipitation multiannual means, annual cycles and temporal variability at daily scale. A cold bias was noted during the winter season over western and southern portions of the continent. CRCM5-simulated precipitation accumulations at daily temporal scale are much more realistic when compared with its driving CGCM simulations, especially in summer when small-scale driven convective precipitation has a large contribution over land. The CRCM5 climate projections imply a general warming over the continent in the 21st century, especially over the northern regions in winter. The winter warming is mostly contributed by the lower percentiles of daily temperatures, implying a reduction in the frequency and intensity of cold waves. A precipitation decrease is projected over Central America and an increase over the rest of the continent. For the average precipitation change in summer however there is little consensus between the simulations. Some of these differences can be attributed to the uncertainties in CGCM-projected changes in the position and strength of the Pacific Ocean subtropical high pressure

Evolution of malaria mortality and morbidity after the emergence of chloroquine resistance in Niakhar, Senegal

Background: Recently, it has been assumed that resistance of Plasmodium to chloroquine increased malaria mortality. The study aimed to assess the impact of chemoresistance on mortality attributable to malaria in a rural area of Senegal, since the emergence of resistance in 1992, whilst chloroquine was used as first-line treatment of malaria, until the change in national anti-malarial policy in 2003. Methods: The retrospective study took place in the demographic surveillance site (DSS) of Niakhar. Data about malaria morbidity were obtained from health records of three health care facilities, where diagnosis of malaria was based on clinical signs. Source of data concerning malaria mortality were verbal autopsies performed by trained fieldworkers and examined by physicians who identified the probable cause of death. Results: From 1992 to 2004, clinical malaria morbidity represented 39% of total morbidity in health centres. Mean malaria mortality was 2.4 parts per thousand and 10.4 parts per thousand among total population and children younger than five years, respectively, and was highest in the 1992-1995 period. It tended to decline from 1992 to 2003 (Trend test, total population p = 0.03, children 0-4 years p = 0.12 - children 1-4 years p = 0.04 - children 5-9 years p = 0.01). Conclusion: Contrary to what has been observed until 1995, mortality attributable to malaria did not continue to increase dramatically in spite of the growing resistance to chloroquine and its use as first-line treatment until 2003. Malaria morbidity and mortality followed parallel trends and rather fluctuated accordingly to rainfall

Challenges in QCD matter physics - The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sqrt(s_NN) = 2.7 - 4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (mu_B > 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation-of-state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2022, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Published in European Physical Journal

Performance Of MC2 And The Ecmwf Ifs Forecast Model On The Fujitsu Vpp700 And Nec Sx-4m

The NEC SX-4M cluster and Fujitsu VPP700 supercomputers are both based on custom vector processors using low-power CMOS technology. Their basic architectures and programming models are however somewhat different. A multi-node SX4M cluster contains up to 32 processors per shared memory node, with a maximum of 16 nodes connected via the proprietary NEC IXS fibre channel crossbar network. A hybrid combination of inter-node MPI message-passing with intra-node multitasking or threads is possible. The Fujitsu VPP700 is a fully distributed-memory vector machine with a scalable crossbar interconnect which also supports MPI. The parallel performance of the MC2 model for high-resolution mesoscale forecasting over large domains and of the IFS RAPS 4.0 benchmark are presented for several different machine configurations. These include an SX-4/32 with 8 GB main memory unit (MMU), an SX-4/32M cluster (SX-4/16, 8 GB MMU + SX-4/16, 4 GB MMU) and up to 80 PE's of the VPP700. 1 Computational Sciences S..

Large Atmospheric Computation on the Earth Simulator: The LACES Project

The Large Atmospheric Computation on the Earth Simulator (LACES) project is a joint initiative between Canadian and Japanese meteorological services and academic institutions that focuses on the high resolution simulation of Hurricane Earl (1998). The unique aspect of this effort is the extent of the computational domain, which covers all of North America and Europe with a grid spacing of 1 km. The Canadian Mesoscale Compressible Community (MC2) model is shown to parallelize effectively on the Japanese Earth Simulator (ES) supercomputer; however, even using the extensive computing resources of the ES Center (ESC), the full simulation for the majority of Hurricane Earl's lifecycle takes over eight days to perform and produces over 5.2 TB of raw data. Preliminary diagnostics show that the results of the LACES simulation for the tropical stage of Hurricane Earl's lifecycle compare well with available observations for the storm. Further studies involving advanced diagnostics have commenced, taking advantage of the uniquely large spatial extent of the high resolution LACES simulation to investigate multiscale interactions in the hurricane and its environment. It is hoped that these studies will enhance our understanding of processes occurring within the hurricane and between the hurricane and its planetary-scale environment

Biomass Ash Fluidised-Bed Agglomeration: Hydrodynamic Investigations

International audienc

Using hydro-geomorphological typologies in functional ecology: Preliminary results in contrasted hydrosystems

The study highlights the relevance of integrating hydro-geomorphological typologies in pluri-disciplinary ecological researches on ecosystem functioning, in two contrasted hydrosystems: the Rhine alluvial plain and the Yzeron basin. Two hydro-geomorphological typologies of reference status in rivers, elaborated from the same conceptual scheme, are compared with two bio-typologies of ecosystem functioning characterization, one based on communities of aquatic macrophytes (Rhine plain) and the second on oligochaete assemblages (Yzeron basin). The two bio-typologies mainly reflect water exchanges between surface water and groundwater. In the Rhine plain, morphodynamics of the D3 geomorpho-type modify the tendency of increasing in the trophic level from upstream to downstream areas, this increasing being only verified for the D4 geomorpho-type. Indeed, morphodynamics of the D3 geomorpho-type prevents channel clogging and activates the limnocrene groundwater springs, inducing water oligotrophication and increase of biodiversity. In the Yzeron basin, which is impacted by polluted urban water runoffs, the B3 and A1 geomorpho-types present the highest values of ecological potentials (EPs) due to greater slopes and active surface water/groundwater exchanges. Results suggest that some biological characteristics and ecological functions could be spatialized on larger spatial scales through appropriate geomorphic river typologies

Shared HCV Transmission Networks Among HIV-1–Positive and HIV-1–Negative Men Having Sex With Men by Ultradeep Sequencing

International audienceObjective: Several studies reported hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission networks among men having sex with men (MSM) in Europe and the spread of HCV strains from HIV-HCV coinfected toward HCV monoinfected MSM. We aimed to investigate HCV transmission dynamics among HIV-positive and HIV-negative MSM by ultradeep sequencing (UDS).Design and methods: NS5B fragment (388 bp) was sequenced from virus of 50 HIV-positive and 18 HIV-negative patients diagnosed with recent HCV infection. UDS data were analyzed by Geneious (version 10.3.2). Phylogenetic trees were constructed by FastTree (version 2.1) and submitted to ClusterPicker (version 1.2.3) for transmission chain detection at different thresholds of maximum genetic distance (MGD) (3% for Sanger, 3% and 4.5% for UDS).Results: Ten, 17, and 18 HCV transmission chains were identified by Sanger at 3%, UDS at 3% and at 4.5% of MGD, respectively. Of 68 subjects enrolled, 38 (55.9%), 38 (55.9%), and 43 (65.3%) individuals were involved in transmission networks found by Sanger at 3%, UDS at 3%, and at 4.5% of MGD, respectively. Mixed transmission chains including HIV-positive and HIV-negative subjects were detected for 8/10 chains by Sanger at 3%, for 9/17 by UDS at 3%, and for 10/18 by UDS at 4.5% of MGD. Overall, the number of HIV-negative individuals clustering with HIV-positive ones was 9/18 by Sanger, 9/18 by UDS at 3%, and 10/18 by UDS at 4.5% of MGD.Conclusions: HIV-positive and HIV-negative MSM shared HCV transmission networks, which emphasizes the need for HCV surveillance and prevention measures in these communities regardless of the HIV status