QBO modulation of the semiannual oscillation in MAECHAM5 and HAMMONIA

The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) signature in the equatorial upper stratosphere and mesosphere is analyzed from MAECHAM5 and HAMMONIA general circulation models. Our results show that this region is significantly influenced by the stratospheric QBO. In the upper stratosphere the QBO modulates the altitude of maximum descent of the stratospheric semiannual oscillation (SSAO) westerly phases. Our results also suggest that the QBO modulates the altitude of maximum descent and also the strength of the SSAO easterly phase. We explore the role of large-scale and small-scale waves and also momentum advection in the forcing of the QBO signature in the SSAO domain. The results show how the vertical propagation of the QBO signature to the middle and upper mesosphere depends on the vertical phase structure of the SAO and consequently on the seasonal cycle. During the solstices when MSAO westerlies prevail in the middle and upper mesosphere no QBO signature can be detected above the stratopause region. However, during the equinoxes, when MSAO easterlies dominate in the middle and upper mesosphere, the QBO signature extends throughout the mesosphere and low thermosphere. The QBO directly modulates MSAO easterlies by modifying the altitude at which they are generated in the upper mesosphere. A QBO signature is also detected on the MSAO westerly phase occurring in the mesopause region during the equinoxes. Copyright © 2010 by the American Geophysical Union

On the quality of climate proxies derived from newspaper reports ? a case study

International audienceOne of the main problems in climate reconstruction from documentary sources is the evaluation of the quality of non instrumental meteorological records in absence of instrumental observations to perform a calibration. In these cases it is mandatory to envision different approaches to assess the climatic signal in a reconstruction. This work is aimed to test the consistency of a snow frequency reconstruction in the central Argentinean Andes by studying the synoptic patterns related to the occurrence of precipitation in this area. While the original reconstruction covers the period between 1885 and 1996, the insufficiency of overlapping instrumental data limited the calibration to a short 15-year interval. In this paper we evaluate the performance of the reconstructed series for the entire 45-year period between 1958 and 1996 by analyzing the displacement in the jet stream and the patterns of geopotential height related to anomalies in the reconstructed snow frequency series. Previous works have linked the precipitation in the central Andes to the ENSO through the Pacific South American mode. We also have found this connection between ENSO and the reconstructed precipitation. Finally, it is shown that the ENSO relationship is the cause of a significant link between the precipitation anomalies in the central Argentinean Andes and the ice extent around the Antarctic Peninsula

Mapping participatory planning in Havana: patchwork legacies for a strengthened local governance

In 2019, Cuba approved a new political constitution that calls for deepening citizen participation to strengthen local governance. The emerging decentralization processes and the role of new actors in urban development open new possibilities for inclusive planning. While citizen participation is widely documented in the global South and under Western liberal democracy regimes, participatory urban planning in the context of Southern socialist cities such as Havana has been less scrutinized. This paper aims at mapping the framings, trajectories and legacies of such participatory planning initiatives. Based on mapping workshops and desktop research, we find that participatory initiatives within Havana are spatially dispersed, sporadic, lacking at the city level, and occurring in isolation at the neighbourhood level. We argue that establishing sustained participatory urban planning practices in Havana requires decision makers to scale outwards and upwards the lessons learned from existing initiatives to foster a city-wide participatory planning strategy

Northern hemisphere stratospheric pathway of different El Niño Flavors in stratosphere-resolving CMIP5 models

AbstractThe Northern Hemisphere (NH) stratospheric signals of eastern Pacific (EP) and central Pacific (CP) El Niño events are investigated in stratosphere-resolving historical simulations from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), together with the role of the stratosphere in driving tropospheric El Niño teleconnections in NH climate. The large number of events in each composite addresses some of the previously reported concerns related to the short observational record. The results shown here highlight the importance of the seasonal evolution of the NH stratospheric signals for understanding the EP and CP surface impacts. CMIP5 models show a significantly warmer and weaker polar vortex during EP El Niño. No significant polar stratospheric response is found during CP El Niño. This is a result of differences in the timing of the intensification of the climatological wavenumber 1 through constructive interference, which occurs earlier in EP than CP events, related to the anomalous enhancement and earlier development of the Pacific–North American pattern in EP events. The northward extension of the Aleutian low and the stronger and eastward location of the high over eastern Canada during EP events are key in explaining the differences in upward wave propagation between the two types of El Niño. The influence of the polar stratosphere in driving tropospheric anomalies in the North Atlantic European region is clearly shown during EP El Niño events, facilitated by the occurrence of stratospheric summer warmings, the frequency of which is significantly higher in this case. In contrast, CMIP5 results do not support a stratospheric pathway for a remote influence of CP events on NH teleconnections

Evaluation of autofocus functions in molecular cytogenetic analysis

This work describes a systematic evaluation of several autofocus functions used for analytical fluorescent image cytometry studies of counterstained nuclei. Focusing is the first step in the automatic fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis of cells. Thirteen functions have been evaluated using qualitative and quantitative procedures. For the last of these procedures a figure-of-merit (FOM) is defined and proposed. This new FOM takes into account five important features of the focusing function. Our results show that functions based on correlation measures have the best performance for this type of image.Publicad

Dataset of the sperm proteome of stallions with different motility

This paper provides a detailed set of data on how the stal-lion sperm proteome differs among stallions with different sperm motilities, although within normal ranges. Findings distinguish proteins that may help to identify stallions of su-perior sperm motility. Sperm proteins were analyzed using a UHPLC/MS/MS system comprising of an Agilent 1290 in-finity series UHPLC coupled to an Agilent 6550 Q-TOF mass spectrometer (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA). These data can be used to disclose potential targets to iden-tify good sperm samples and to study specific pathways in-volved in the regulation of sperm motility. This data article is linked to the paper "Proteins involved in mitochondrial metabolic functions and fertilization predominate in stallions with better motility Journal of Proteomics 247:104335 doi: 10.1016/j.jprot.2021.104335".(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

La humanización del “oficio de defender los Derechos Humanos” desde la práctica de las defensoras

El presente artículo analiza la problemática en torno al género y al debate sobre los principios masculinos y femeninos como fuentes de construcción de lo humano. Examina también las alianzas y oposiciones entre los diferentes feminismos y masculinidades. Finalmente expone, desde una perspectiva de género, la cuestión de la vulnerabilidad de los/as defensores de derechos humanos. La tesis principal versa sobre la posibilidad de humanizar la defensa de los derechos humanos al incorporar los principios masculinos y femeninos en la práctica del oficio

Synergistic Antimicrobial Effects of Silver/Transition-metal Combinatorial Treatments

Due to the emergence of multi-drug resistant strains, development of novel antibiotics has become a critical issue. One promising approach is the use of transition metals, since they exhibit rapid and significant toxicity, at low concentrations, in prokaryotic cells. Nevertheless, one main drawback of transition metals is their toxicity in eukaryotic cells. Here, we show that the barriers to use them as therapeutic agents could be mitigated by combining them with silver. We demonstrate that synergism of combinatorial treatments (Silver/transition metals, including Zn, Co, Cd, Ni, and Cu) increases up to 8-fold their antimicrobial effect, when compared to their individual effects, against E. coli and B. subtilis. We find that most combinatorial treatments exhibit synergistic antimicrobial effects at low/ non-toxic concentrations to human keratinocyte cells, blast and melanoma rat cell lines. Moreover, we show that silver/(Cu, Ni, and Zn) increase prokaryotic cell permeability at sub-inhibitory concentrations, demonstrating this to be a possible mechanism of the synergistic behavior. Together, these results suggest that these combinatorial treatments will play an important role in the future development of antimicrobial agents and treatments against infections. In specific, the cytotoxicity experiments show that the combinations have great potential in the treatment of topical infections

Extreme infrared variables from UKIDSS-I. A concentration in star-forming regions

We present initial results of the first panoramic search for high-amplitude near-infrared variability in theGalactic plane.We analyse the widely separated two-epoch K-band photometry in the fifth and seventh data releases of the UKIDSS Galactic plane survey.We find 45 stars with δK > 1 mag, including two previously known OH/IR stars and a Nova. Even though the midplane is not yet included in the data set, we find the majority (66 per cent) of our sample to be within known star-forming regions (SFRs), with two large concentrations in the Serpens OB2 association (11 stars) and the Cygnus-X complex (12 stars). Sources in SFRs show spectral energy distributions that support classification as young stellar objects (YSOs). This indicates that YSOs dominate the Galactic population of high-amplitude infrared variable stars at low luminosities and therefore likely dominate the total high-amplitude population. Spectroscopic follow up of the DR5 sample shows at least four stars with clear characteristics of eruptive premain- sequence variables, two of which are deeply embedded. Our results support the recent concept of eruptive variability comprising a continuum of outburst events with different timescales and luminosities, but triggered by a similar physical mechanism involving unsteady accretion. Also, we find what appears to be one of the most variable classical Be stars. © 2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society