The role of the atmospheric aerosol in weather forecasts for the Iberian Peninsula: investigating the direct effects using the WRF-chem model

In the atmosphere, aerosols play an important role in climate change, the Earth’s environment and human health. The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct and semi-direct aerosol effects on weather forecasting, focusing on the Iberian Peninsula (IP). To that end, two Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Chem simulations (with and without aerosol feedback) for an entire year (2015) were performed. The model setup includes two nested domains run in two-way mode, allowing the downscaling for the IP domain at a 5 × 5 km2 high-horizontal resolution. The results were explored through agreement of pairs of time series and their spatial variability in order to analyse the importance of including the online-coupled aerosol radiative effect on the meteorological variables: shortwave (solar) radiation, air temperature and precipitation. Significant variations of agreement were found when capturing both temporal and spatial patterns of the analysed meteorological variables. While the spatial distribution of temperature and precipitation is similar throughout the IP domain, with agreement values ranging from 0.87 up to 1.00, the solar radiation presents a distinct spatial pattern with lower agreement values (0.68–0.75) over ocean and higher agreement (0.75–0.98) over land regions. With regard to the spatial differences between simulations, the aerosol contributed to a considerable decrease in annual mean and maximum radiation (up to 20 and 40 Wm−2, respectively), slightly impacting the temperature variation (up to 0.5 °C). These results suggest that the aerosol feedback effects should be accounted when performing weather forecasts, and not only for purposes of air quality assessment.publishe

Classification of critical levels of CO exposure of firefigthers through monitored heart rate

Smoke inhalation poses a serious health threat to firefighters (FFs), with potential effects including respiratory and cardiac disorders. In this work, environmental and physiological data were collected from FFs, during experimental fires performed in 2015 and 2019. Extending a previous work, which allowed us to conclude that changes in heart rate (HR) were associated with alterations in the inhalation of carbon monoxide (CO), we performed a HR analysis according to different levels of CO exposure during firefighting based on data collected from three FFs. Based on HR collected and on CO occupational exposure standards (OES), we propose a classifier to identify CO exposure levels through the HR measured values. An ensemble of 100 bagged classification trees was used and the classification of CO levels obtained an overall accuracy of 91.9%. The classification can be performed in real-time and can be embedded in a decision fire-fighting support system. This classification of FF’ exposure to critical CO levels, through minimally-invasive monitored HR, opens the possibility to identify hazardous situations, preventing and avoiding possible severe problems in FF’ health due to inhaled pollutants. The obtained results also show the importance of future studies on the relevance and influence of the exposure and inhalation of pollutants on the FF’ health, especially in what refers to hazardous levels of toxic air pollutants.publishe

Combined effect of high-resolution land cover and grid resolution on surface NO2 concentrations

High-resolution air quality simulations are often performed using different nested domains and resolutions. In this study, the variability of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations estimated from two nested domains focused on Portugal (D2 and D3), with 5 and 1 km horizontal grid resolutions, respectively, was investigated by applying the WRF-Chem model for the year 2015. The main goal and innovative aspect of this study is the simulation of a whole year with high resolutions to analyse the spatial variability under the simulation grids in conjunction with detailed land cover (LC) data specifically processed for these high-resolution domains. The model evaluation was focused on Portuguese air quality monitoring stations taking into consideration the station typology. As main results, it should be noted that (i) D3 urban LC categories enhanced pollution hotspots; (ii) generally, modelled NO2 was underestimated, except for rural stations; (iii) differences between D2 and D3 estimates were small; (iv) higher resolution did not impact model performance; and (v) hourly D2 estimates presented an acceptable quality level for policy support. These modelled values are based on a detailed LC classification (100 m horizontal resolution) and coarse spatial resolution (approximately 10 km) emission inventory, the latter suitable for portraying background air pollution problems. Thus, if the goal is to characterise urban/local-scale pollution patterns, the use of high grid resolution could be advantageous, as long as the input data are properly represented.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support by national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020) and CESAM (UIDP/50017/2020 + UIDB/50017/2020 + LA/P/0094/2020), and for the contract granted to Joana Ferreira (2020.00622.CEECIND). Thanks are also due for financial support to OleaChain project “Skills for sustainability and innovation in the value chain of traditional olive groves in the Northern Interior of Portugal” (NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000188).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Learning Disabilities in Children with Autism

Children with autism spectrum disorders often present signs of cognitive strategies that are not within the expected developmental profile. Therefore, it should be expected that the learning process of children with this disorder should be the focus of several studies regarding schooling and literacy. Unfortunately, that is not the real situation. In this chapter, the authors propose to present an overview of the available literature about learning, reading, and literacy in children with the autism spectrum disorders and report results of studies about the association between executive functions and reading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders that attend to regular and special schools in Brazil

Trade-off between offspring number and offspring size in the marine copepod Euterpina acutifrons at different food concentrations

collected females of the marine copepod Euterpina acutifrons monthly from November 1994 to January 1996 at a station located in Ria de Vigo (Spain). A trade-off between egg size and egg number was found. As food concentration measured as mean fluorescence in the water column diminished, mean number of eggs per sac carried per female decreased, whereas mean egg size increased. An experiment carried out with adult females cultured at different food concentrations confirmed the field results, and also showed that as egg size increased, there, was an increase in naupliar body length at hatching; nauplii developed faster to first copepodite stage, and net reproductive rate was higher. Therefore, the reproductive strategy of directing more energy toward offspring size rather than offspring number, at low food concentrations, clearly increases reproductive success.Postprin

Rockfall Hazard Assessment in Volcanic Regions Based on ISVS and IRVS Geomechanical Indices

In volcanic regions, rockfalls represent a major hazard strongly conditioned by the geomechanical behaviour of volcanic materials, the geomorphological characteristics of the relief and the climatic conditions. Volcanic rocks possess very different properties to those of other lithological groups, presenting highly heterogeneous geomechanical behaviours. Nevertheless, they have received little research attention in the field of geological and geotechnical engineering. To date, the application of geomechanical classifications to characterise and estimate volcanic slope stability has not yielded reliable results, indicating the need to establish specific criteria for these rocks. Consequently, we developed indices to estimate rockfall susceptibility, hazard and risk in volcanic slopes. The index of susceptibility for volcanic slopes (ISVS) is designed to estimate slope susceptibility to instability, which is related to the level of hazard, while the index of risk for volcanic slopes (IRVS) is designed to estimate the level of risk as a function of the potential damage or economic loss caused as a result of rockfalls on slopes. Both indices were developed in order to provide an easily applied procedure that facilitates the adoption of short-term preventive measures against rockfalls. The indices were applied in Tenerife (Canary Islands), which presents exceptional conditions for analysing slope stability in volcanic rocks because of its mountainous orography with very steep slopes and a wide variety of materials. These conditions have frequently precipitated slope instability, causing significant damage to housing, beaches, roads and other infrastructures. After applying these indices to a number of slopes representative of the island’s wide variety of geological, geomorphological and climatic conditions, the results obtained were compared with the actual behaviour of the slopes, determined from extensive rockfall inventory data and in situ geomechanical survey

Sitting Time and Body Mass Index, in a Portuguese Sample of Men: Results from the Azorean Physical Activity and Health Study (APAHS)

The aim of this study was to verify the relation between body mass index (BMI) and sitting time in a sample of 4,091 Azorean men. BMI was calculated from self-reported weight and height. Total physical activity (PA) time and total sitting time were assessed with the IPAQ (short version). Linear Regression analysis showed that total sitting time (hours/day) was positively associated with BMI (B = 0.078; p < 0.001) after adjustments for age, meal frequency, alcohol and tobacco consumptions, island of residence, education level and total PA time. Although the cross sectional design precludes us from establishing causality, our findings emphasize the importance of reducing sedentary behavior to decrease the risk of obesity

Blood flow of bubbles moving in microchannels with bifurcations

The gas embolism is a well-known phenomenon. Previous studies have been performed to understand the formation, the behavior and the influence of air bubbles in microcirculation. This study aims to investigate the flow of bubbles in a microchannel network with bifurcations. For that purpose, a microchannel network was fabricated by soft lithography. The working fluids used were composed by sheep red blood cells (RBCs) suspended in dextran 40 and two different hematocrits were studied, 5% and 10%. The in vitro blood flow was analyzed for a flow rate of lO ~-tllmin, by using an inverted microscope and a high-speed camera. It was possible to visualize the formation of the bubbles and their behavior along the network. The results show that the passage of air bubbles influences the cells local concentration, since a higher concentration of cells was seen upstream to the bubble and lower concentrations downstream to the bubble.This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, under the strategic grants UID/EMS/04077/2019, UID/EEA/04436/2019 and UID/EMS/00532/2019. The authors are also grateful for the partial funding of FCT through the projects POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016861 (ref: PTDC/QEQ-FIT/4287/2014), NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-029394, NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-030171, funded by COMPETE2020, NOR1E2020, PORTUGAL2020, and FEDER. D. Bento acknowledges the PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/911921 2012 granted by FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Isolated Taylor Bubbles in Co-Current with Shear Thinning CMC Solutions in Microchannels—A Numerical Study

Slug flow is a multiphase flow pattern characterized by the occurrence of long gas bubbles (Taylor bubbles) separated by liquid slugs. This multiphase flow regime is present in many and diversified natural and industrial processes, at macro and microscales, such as in eruption of volcanic magmas, oil recovery from pre-salt regions, micro heat exchangers, and small-sized refrigerating systems. Previous studies in the literature have been mostly focused on tubular gas bubbles flowing in Newtonian liquids. In this work, results from several numerical simulations of tubular gas bubbles flowing in a shear thinning liquid in microchannels are reported. To simulate the shear thinning behavior, carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) solutions with different concentrations were considered. The results are compared with data from bubbles flowing in Newtonian liquids in identical geometric and dynamic conditions. The numerical work was carried out in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package Ansys Fluent (release 16.2.0) employing the volume of fluid (VOF) methodology to track the volume fraction of each phase and the continuum surface force (CSF) model to insert the surface tension effects. The flow patterns, the viscosity distribution in the liquid, the liquid film thickness between the bubble and the wall, and the bubbles shape are analyzed for a wide range of shear rates. In general, the flow patterns are similar to those in Newtonian liquids, but in the film, where a high viscosity region is observed, the thickness is smaller. Bubble velocities are smaller for the non-Newtonian cases.</jats:p

Ability of Different Measures of Adiposity to Identify High Metabolic Risk in Adolescents

Introduction. This study aimed to evaluate the screening performance of different measures of adiposity: body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) for high metabolic risk in a sample of adolescents. Methods. A cross-sectional school-based study was conducted on 517 adolescents aged 15–18, from the Azorean Islands, Portugal. We measured fasting glucose, insulin, total cholesterol (TC), HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure. HOMA and TC/HDL-C ratio were calculated. For each of these variables, a Z-score was computed by age and sex. A metabolic risk score (MRS) was constructed by summing the Z-scores of all individual risk factors. High risk was considered when the individual had ≥1SD of this score. Receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) were used. Results. Linear regression analyses showed that, after adjusting for age and pubertal stage, all different measures of adiposity are positively and significantly associated with MRS in both sexes, with exception of WHtR for boys. BMI, WC, and WHtR performed well in detecting high MRS, indicated by areas under the curve (AUC), with slightly greater AUC for BMI than for WC and WHtR in both sexes. Conclusion. All measures of adiposity were significantly associated with metabolic risk factors in a sample of Portuguese adolescents