Detection and attribution of human influence on regional precipitation

Understanding how human influence on climate is affecting precipitation around the world is immensely important for defining mitigation policies, and for adaptation planning. Yet despite increasing evidence for the influence of climate change on global patterns of precipitation, and expectations that significant changes in regional precipitation should have already occurred as a result of human influence on climate, compelling evidence of anthropogenic fingerprints on regional precipitation is obscured by observational and modelling uncertainties and is likely to remain so using current methods for years to come. This is in spite of substantial ongoing improvements in models, new reanalyses and a satellite record that spans over thirty years. If we are to quantify how human-induced climate change is affecting the regional water cycle, we need to consider novel ways of identifying the effects of natural and anthropogenic influences on precipitation that take full advantage of our physical expectations

Flexible integration of blockchain with business process automation: A federated architecture

Blockchain technology enables various business transactions to be performed in an immutable and transparent manner. Within the business process management community, blockchain technology has been positioned as a way to better support the execution of inter-organisational business processes, where the entities involved may not completely trust each other. However, the architectures proposed thus far in the literature for blockchain-enabled business process management can be described as “heavy-weight”, since they promote the blockchain platform as the mono- lithic focal point of all business logic and process operations. We propose an alternative: a federated and flexible architecture that leverages the capabilities of blockchain, but without overloading the functionalities of the blockchain platform with those already extant in Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs). We illustrate its benefits, and demonstrate its feasibility, through the implementation of a prototype

Prednisolone combined with adjunctive immunosuppression is not superior to prednisolone alone in terms of efficacy and safety in giant cell arteritis:meta-analysis

To conduct a meta-analysis of published data of the effectiveness of drug treatment in giant cell arteritis (GCA) to provide evidence to support the optimal use of glucocorticoids (GCs) and adjunct therapy. MEDLINE, CENTRAL and EMBASE searches were used to identify randomised control trials on the treatment of GCA. Studies included were trials in which: (1) the participants were classified as having GCA by the 1990 ACR criteria or biopsy proven disease; (2) parallel-group randomised control of at least 16 weeks duration had been conducted with at least 20 participants; (3) the design included either alternative adjunct immunosuppressant regimens, alternative GCs dosing or routes of administration; and (4) outcome data was included on either relapse rates or rates of infection. One thousand eight hundred thirty-six articles were retrieved, of which only 37 met the primary inclusion criteria. Sixteen of these studies reported some information about the GCs or adjuvant regimen used. Only ten studies were of sufficient quality to be included in the meta-analysis. Together these comprised 638 participants of which 72 % were female. Three studies compared various GCs regimens, with two comparing IV GCs, the latter showing a marginal benefit with respect to relapse (risk ratio (RR) = 0.78, 95 % CI = 0.54 to 1.12) but a greater risk of infection (RR = 1.58, 95 % CI = 0.90 to 2.78). Another three used methotrexate as an adjunctive agent and showed marginal benefit with respect to relapse (RR = 0.85, 95 % CI = 0.66 to 1.11). The remaining four trials compared prednisolone to dapsone, infliximab, adalimumab and hydroxychloroquine, respectively. There are various clinical trials of varying quality. The results from this meta-analysis show that the use of adjunct agents is not associated with improved outcome