Song Descriptions

A description of the nine Dream Music tracks recorded in the December of 1941. Each point highlights the spirit which inspired the song and a short explaination of what the spirit told the ‘hala’

Commentary on Temiar Dream Music

A short article written by H.D. Noone about the Temiar’s relationship with spirits and the Temiar shaman (or ‘hala’) accompanied by the list of nine Dream Music tracks

Tree Cover Mapping for Assessing Greater Sage-Grouse Habitat in Eastern Oregon

We used a predictive model to map canopy cover of vegetation over seven feet in height ( tall woody vegetation ) at 30-meter resolution over nearly 29 million acres within and adjacent to the range of the greater sage-grouse in Oregon (Figure 1). Texture measures computed at various resolutions from color-infrared aerial photography provided the main source of predictor data used to produce the map. Canopy cover was treated as a categorical variable using six cover classes: absent (cover class C0), present at less than 4% (C1), 4 – 10% (C2), 10 – 20% (C3), 20 – 50% (C4), and 50% and over (C5). The map is referenced to conditions in the years 2011 and 2012. Although the specific target of the mapping was western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis), our reference data did not permit separating juniper from other tall woody vegetation during the predictive modeling process. The majority of the tall woody vegetation within the project area is western juniper. However, in high elevation regions, riparian, wetland, and residential areas, other vegetation is occasionally represented. The methodology discussed here produces raw modeled data. It is recommended that prior to use in most applications this raw tree cover product be additionally filtered or masked to eliminate false detections which often occur adjacent to agricultural areas and roads. For species-specific applications, an additional modeling phase is necessary to either eliminate tree cover detections likely to be species other than the target, or to model species importance values associated with each tree occurrence

Haemophilia care in Europe:a survey of 19 countries

In 2009, a questionnaire was circulated to 19 national haemophilia patient organizations in Europe affiliated to the European Haemophilia Consortium (EHC) and the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) to seek information about the organization of haemophilia care and treatment available at a national level. The responses received highlighted differences in the level of care despite the recent promulgation of consensus guidelines designed to standardize the care of haemophilia throughout the continent of Europe. There was a wide range in factor VIII consumption with usage ranging from 0.38 IU per capita in Romania to 8.7 IU per capita in Sweden (median: 3.6 IU per capita). Despite the specific inclusion of coagulation factor concentrate in the WHO list of essential medications, cryoprecipitate is still used in some eastern European countrie

Response to: "Renal biopsies should be performed whenever treatment strategies depend on renal involvement"

We thank Chemouny et al for their letter and concur with their conclusions. As we state (1): “A positive biopsy for AAV is helpful when considering an initial diagnosis or recurrent disease.” In our view, renal biopsy is important to establish diagnosis and may also provide an indication of prognostic trajectory and although existing classification systems need further validation, changes like glomerular sclerosis have obvious adverse prognostic value for patients with AAV (2-4). The Delphi process, for the scope of the current recommendations, identified the role of biopsy at both diagnosis and follow-up as an important item for update. Histopathological evidence of vasculitis, such as pauci-immune glomerulonephritis or necrotising vasculitis in any organ, remains the gold standard for diagnostic purposes. The likely diagnostic yield varies and is dependent on the organ targeted and in patients with GPA with renal involvement can be as high as 91.5% from renal biopsy (5). As Chemouny and colleagues have demonstrated, a renal biopsy was definitive in determining their management decisions. However during follow-up when relapses occur, it may be prudent to consider judicious use of further kidney biopsy during suspected renal relapse since the cause for acute kidney injury may be due to another cause other than AAV (6). Kind regards, M Yates, C Mukhtyar and DR Jayne on behalf of co-authors

Homogenisation and analysis of an expanded long-term monthly rainfall network for the Island of Ireland (1850-2010)

Long-term precipitation series are critical for understanding emerging changes to the hydrological cycle. To this end we construct a homogenised Island of Ireland Precipitation (IIP) network comprising 25 stations and a composite series covering the period 1850-2010, providing the second- longest regional precipitation archive in the British-Irish Isles. We expand the existing catalogue of long-term precipitation records for the island by recovering archived data for an additional eight stations. Following bridging and updating of stations HOMER homogenisation software is used to detect breaks using pairwise and joint detection. Twenty-five breakpoints are detected across 14 stations, and the majority (20) are corroborated by metadata. Assessment of variability and change in homogenised and extended precipitation records reveal positive (winter) and negative (summer) trends. Trends in records covering the typical period of digitisation (1941 onwards) are not always representative of longer records. Furthermore, trends in post-homogenisation series change magnitude and even direction at some stations. While cautionary flags are raised for some series, confidence in the derived network is high given attention paid to metadata, coherence of behaviour across the network and consistency of findings with other long-term climatic series such as England and Wales precipitation. As far as we are aware, this work represents the first application of HOMER to a long- term precipitation network and bodes well for use in other regions. It is expected that the homogenised IIP network will find wider utility in benchmarking and supporting climate services across the Island of Ireland, a sentinel location in the North Atlantic

Quasi-biennial oscillation and quasi-biennial oscillation--annual beat in the tropical total column ozone: A two-dimensional model simulation

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction–Department of Energy Reanalysis 2 data are used to calculate the monthly mean meridional circulation and eddy diffusivity from 1979 to 2002 for use in the California Institute of Technology–Jet Propulsion Laboratory two-dimensional (2-D) chemistry and transport model (CTM). This allows for an investigation of the impact of dynamics on the interannual variability of the tropical total column ozone for all years for which the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet merged total ozone data are available. The first two empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of the deseasonalized and detrended stratospheric stream function capture 88% of the total variance on interannual timescales. The first EOF, accounting for over 70% of the interannual variance, is related to the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and its interaction with annual cycles, the QBO-annual beat (QBO-AB). The 2-D CTM provides realistic simulations of the seasonal and interannual variability of ozone in the tropics. The equatorial ozone anomaly from the model is close to that derived from the observations. The phase and amplitude of the QBO are well captured by the model. The magnitude of the QBO signal is somewhat larger in the model than it is in the data. The QBO-AB found in the simulated ozone agrees well with that in the observed data