Structural signatures of water-soluble organic aerosols in contrasting environments in South America and Western Europe

This study describes and compares the key structural units present in water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) fraction of atmospheric aerosols collected in different South American (Colombia – Medellín and Bogotá, Peru – Lima, Argentina – Buenos Aires, and Brazil – Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Velho, during moderate (MBB) and intense (IBB) biomass burning) and Western European (Portugal – Aveiro and Lisbon) locations. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy was employed to assess the relative distribution of non-exchangeable proton functional groups in aerosol WSOC of diverse origin, for the first time to the authors’ knowledge in South America. The relative contribution of the proton functional groups was in the order H-C > H–C–C= > H-C-O > Ar-H, except in Porto Velho during MBB, Medellín, Bogotá, and Buenos Aires, for which the relative contribution of H-C-O was higher than that of H-C-C=. The 1H NMR source attribution confirmed differences in aging processes or regional sources between the two geographic regions, allowing the differentiation between urban combustion-related aerosol and biological particles. The aerosol WSOC in Aveiro, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro during summer are more oxidized than those from the remaining locations, indicating the predominance of secondary organic aerosols. Fresh emissions, namely of smoke particles, becomes important during winter in Aveiro and São Paulo, and in Porto Velho during IBB. The biosphere is an important source altering the chemical composition of aerosol WSOC in South America locations. The source attribution in Medellín, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, and Lima confirmed the mixed contributions of biological material, secondary formation, as well as urban and biomass burning emissions. Overall, the information and knowledge acquired in this study provide important diagnostic tools for future studies aiming at understanding the water-soluble organic aerosol problem, their sources and impact at a wider geographic scale.Fil: Duarte, Regina M.B.O.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Matos, João T.V.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Paula, Andreia S.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Lopes, Sónia P.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Pereira, Guilherme. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Vasconcellos, Pérola. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Gioda, Adriana. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Carreira, Renato. Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro; BrasilFil: Silva, Artur M.S.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Duarte, Armando C.. Universidade de Aveiro; PortugalFil: Smichowski, Patricia Nora. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Rojas, Nestor. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; ColombiaFil: Sanchez Ccoyllo, Odon. No especifíca

Recovery of dialysis patients with COVID-19 : health outcomes 3 months after diagnosis in ERACODA

Background. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related short-term mortality is high in dialysis patients, but longer-term outcomes are largely unknown. We therefore assessed patient recovery in a large cohort of dialysis patients 3 months after their COVID-19 diagnosis. Methods. We analyzed data on dialysis patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from 1 February 2020 to 31 March 2021 from the European Renal Association COVID-19 Database (ERACODA). The outcomes studied were patient survival, residence and functional and mental health status (estimated by their treating physician) 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis. Complete follow-up data were available for 854 surviving patients. Patient characteristics associated with recovery were analyzed using logistic regression. Results. In 2449 hemodialysis patients (mean ± SD age 67.5 ± 14.4 years, 62% male), survival probabilities at 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis were 90% for nonhospitalized patients (n = 1087), 73% for patients admitted to the hospital but not to an intensive care unit (ICU) (n = 1165) and 40% for those admitted to an ICU (n = 197). Patient survival hardly decreased between 28 days and 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis. At 3 months, 87% functioned at their pre-existent functional and 94% at their pre-existent mental level. Only few of the surviving patients were still admitted to the hospital (0.8-6.3%) or a nursing home (∼5%). A higher age and frailty score at presentation and ICU admission were associated with worse functional outcome. Conclusions. Mortality between 28 days and 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis was low and the majority of patients who survived COVID-19 recovered to their pre-existent functional and mental health level at 3 months after diagnosis

Reproducibility in the absence of selective reporting : An illustration from large-scale brain asymmetry research

Altres ajuts: Max Planck Society (Germany).The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p-hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left-right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta-analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an "ideal publishing environment," that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically-used sample sizes

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Impact of inconsistent resolution on VBM studies

This paper considers the effects of using magnetic resonance scans with different voxel dimensions in voxel-based morphometry studies. This is of potential relevance to many longitudinal studies or any ad-hoc study that relies on pre-existing databases of subjects. In order to study this effect, a group of controls were contrasted with a group of semantic dementia as well as with a group of Alzheimer's disease patients using a mixture of different voxel dimensions scans on each side of the statistical test. Scans were interpolated using a sinc function in order to obtain a different voxel depth. The effects were measured by comparing the output of each analysis to the benchmark in which all scans had the original depth (and highest resolution), both visually and through the computation of the root-mean-square error difference between the resulting t-maps. It was shown that the impact is highly dependent on the scan itself, with some images showing more robustness to the interpolation process, and hence yielding fewer differences. A measure of robustness is proposed, which may be used in order to understand the impact of mixing different dimensions or adjusting them for each scan. Indiscriminate use of voxel dimensions on both groups was found to produce more errors (false positives/false negatives) than does an approach involving the use of balanced groups and a voxel dimension nuisance covariate