Expansion of Major Urban Areas in the US Great Plains from 2000 to 2009 Using Satellite Scatterometer Data

A consistent dataset delineating and characterizing changes in urban environments will be valuable for socioeconomic and environmental research and for sustainable urban development. Remotely sensed data have been long used to map urban extent and infrastructure at various spatial and spectral resolutions. Although many datasets and approaches have been tried, there is not yet a universal way to map urban extents across the world. Here we combined a microwave scatterometer (QuikSCAT) dataset at ~1 km posting with percent impervious surface area (%ISA) data from the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) that was generated from Landsat data, and ambient population data from the LandScan product to characterize and quantify growth in nine major urban areas in the US Great Plains from 2000 to 2009. Nonparametric Mann-Kendall trend tests on backscatter time series from urban areas show significant expanding trends in eight of nine urban areas with p-values ranging 0.032 to 0.001. The sole exception is Houston, which has a substantial non-urban backscatter at the northeastern edge of the urban core. Strong power law scaling relationships between ambient population and either urban area or backscatter power (r2 of 0.96 in either model) with sub-linear exponents (β of 0.911 and 0.866, respectively) indicate urban areas become more compact with more vertical built-up structure than lateral expansion to accommodate the increased population. Increases in backscatter and %ISA datasets between 2001 and 2006 show agreement in both magnitude and direction for all urban areas except Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), likely due to the presence of many lakes and ponds throughout the MSP metropolitan area. We conclude discussing complexities in the backscatter data caused by large metal structures and rainfall

Evolutionary tracks for Betelgeuse

We have constructed a series of non-rotating quasi-hydrostatic evolutionary models for the M2 Iab supergiant Betelgeuse ($\alpha~Orionis$). Our models are constrained by multiple observed values for the temperature, luminosity, surface composition and mass loss for this star, along with the parallax distance and high resolution imagery that determines its radius. We have then applied our best-fit models to analyze the observed variations in surface luminosity and the size of detected surface bright spots as the result of up-flowing convective material from regions of high temperature in the surface convective zone. We also attempt to explain the intermittently observed periodic variability in a simple radial linear adiabatic pulsation model. Based upon the best fit to all observed data, we suggest a best progenitor mass estimate of $20 ^{+5}_{-3} M_\odot$ and a current age from the start of the zero-age main sequence of $8.0 - 8.5$ Myr based upon the observed ejected mass while on the giant branch.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures, Revised per referee suggestions, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Ohmic currents and pre-decoupling magnetism

Ohmic currents induced prior to decoupling are investigated in a standard transport model accounting both for the expansion of the background geometry as well as of its relativistic inhomogeneities. The relative balance of the Ohmic electric fields in comparison with the Hall and thermoelectric contributions is specifically addressed. The impact of the Ohmic currents on the evolution of curvature perturbations is discussed numerically and it is shown to depend explicitly upon the evolution of the conductivity.Comment: 8 pages, 4 included figure

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Screening for and Managing Identified Hypertension for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Vietnam

OBJECTIVE:To inform development of guidelines for hypertension management in Vietnam, we evaluated the cost-effectiveness of different strategies on screening for hypertension in preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD). METHODS:A decision tree was combined with a Markov model to measure incremental cost-effectiveness of different approaches to hypertension screening. Values used as input parameters for the model were taken from different sources. Various screening intervals (one-off, annually, biannually) and starting ages to screen (35, 45 or 55 years) and coverage of treatment were analysed. We ran both a ten-year and a lifetime horizon. Input parameters for the models were extracted from local and regional data. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate parameter uncertainty. A threshold of three times GDP per capita was applied. RESULTS:Cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained varied in different screening scenarios. In a ten-year horizon, the cost-effectiveness of screening for hypertension ranged from cost saving to Int$758,695 per QALY gained. For screening of men starting at 55 years, all screening scenarios gave a high probability of being cost-effective. For screening of females starting at 55 years, the probability of favourable cost-effectiveness was 90$ 15,883 in all screening scenarios among males. Similar results were found in females when starting screening at 55 years. Starting screening in females at 45 years had a high probability of being cost-effective if screening biannually was combined with increasing coverage of treatment by 20% or even if sole biannual screening was considered. CONCLUSION:From a health economic perspective, integrating screening for hypertension into routine medical examination and related coverage by health insurance could be recommended. Screening for hypertension has a high probability of being cost-effective in preventing CVD. An adequate screening strategy can best be selected based on age, sex and screening interval

Urban Heat Islands as Viewed by Microwave Radiometers and Thermal Time Indices

Urban heat islands (UHIs) have been long studied using both ground-based observations of air temperature and remotely sensed thermal infrared (TIR) data. While ground-based observations lack spatial detail even in the occasional “dense” urban network, skin temperature retrievals using TIR data have lower temporal coverage due to revisit frequency, limited swath width, and cloud cover. Algorithms have recently been developed to retrieve near-surface air temperatures using microwave radiometer data, which enables characterization of UHIs in metropolitan areas, major conurbations, and global megacities at regional to continental scales using temporally denser time series than those that have been available from TIR sensors. Here we examine how UHIs appear across the entire Western Hemisphere using surface air temperatures derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometers (AMSRs), AMSR-E onboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Aqua and AMSR2 onboard the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency’s Global Change Observation Mission-Water1 (JAXA’s GCOM-W1) satellites. We compare these data with station observations from the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) for 27 major cities across North America (in 83 urban-rural groupings) to demonstrate the capability of microwave data in a UHI study. Two measures of thermal time, accumulated diurnal and nocturnal degree-days, are calculated from the remotely sensed surface air temperature time series to characterize the urban-rural thermal differences over multiple growing seasons. Daytime urban thermal accumulations from the microwave data were sometimes lower than in adjacent rural areas. In contrast, station observations showed consistently higher day and night thermal accumulations in cities. UHIs are more pronounced at night, with 55% (AMSRs) and 93% (GHCN) of urban-rural groupings showing higher accumulated nocturnal degree-days in cities. While urban-rural thermal gradients may vary according to different datasets or locations, day-night differences in thermal time metrics were consistently lower ( \u3e90% of urban-rural groupings) in urban areas than in rural areas for both datasets. We propose that the normalized difference accumulated thermal time index (NDATTI) is a more robust metric for comparative UHI studies than simple temperature differences because it can be calculated from either station or remotely sensed data and it attenuates latitudinal effects

Intensified Antituberculosis Therapy in Adults with Tuberculous Meningitis

BACKGROUND Tuberculous meningitis is often lethal. Early antituberculosis treatment and adjunctive treatment with glucocorticoids improve survival, but nearly one third of patients with the condition still die. We hypothesized that intensified antituberculosis treatment would enhance the killing of intracerebral Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms and decrease the rate of death among patients. METHODS We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults and HIV-uninfected adults with a clinical diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis who were admitted to one of two Vietnamese hospitals. We compared a standard, 9-month antituberculosis regimen (which included 10 mg of rifampin per kilogram of body weight per day) with an intensified regimen that included higher-dose rifampin (15 mg per kilogram per day) and levofloxacin (20 mg per kilogram per day) for the first 8 weeks of treatment. The primary outcome was death by 9 months after randomization. RESULTS A total of 817 patients (349 of whom were HIV-infected) were enrolled; 409 were randomly assigned to receive the standard regimen, and 408 were assigned to receive intensified treatment. During the 9 months of follow-up, 113 patients in the intensified-treatment group and 114 patients in the standard-treatment group died (hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% confidence interval, 0.73 to 1.22; P=0.66). There was no evidence of a significant differential effect of intensified treatment in the overall population or in any of the subgroups, with the possible exception of patients infected with isoniazid-resistant M. tuberculosis. There were also no significant differences in secondary outcomes between the treatment groups. The overall number of adverse events leading to treatment interruption did not differ significantly between the treatment groups (64 events in the standard-treatment group and 95 events in the intensified-treatment group, P=0.08). CONCLUSIONS Intensified antituberculosis treatment was not associated with a higher rate of survival among patients with tuberculous meningitis than standard treatment. (Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Li Ka Shing Foundation; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN61649292.)

Gut Microbiome of Patients With Breast Cancer in Vietnam

PURPOSE: Gut microbiota play an important role in human health, including cancer. Cancer and its treatment, in turn, may alter the gut microbiome. To understand this complex relationship, we profiled the gut microbiome of 356 Vietnamese patients with breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Stool samples were collected before chemotherapy, with 162 pre- and 194 postsurgery. The gut microbiome was measured by shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Associations of gut microbial diversity, taxa abundance, and gut microbiome health index (GMHI) with sociodemographic, clinical factors, and tumor characteristics were evaluated. RESULTS: Postsurgery samples were associated with significantly lower α- and β-diversities ( CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that diagnosis delay, high fiber intake, and breast cancer surgery, which is always followed by antibiotic prophylaxis in Vietnam, led to a less diverse and unhealthy gut microbiome among patients with breast cancer