9 research outputs found
Meta-analysis of exome array data identifies six novel genetic loci for lung function
Background: Over 90 regions of the genome have been associated with lung function to date, many of which have also been implicated in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Methods: We carried out meta-analyses of exome array data and three lung function measures: forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC) and the ratio of FEV1 to FVC (FEV1/FVC). These analyses by the SpiroMeta and CHARGE consortia included 60,749 individuals of European ancestry from 23 studies, and 7,721 individuals of African Ancestry from 5 studies in the discovery stage, with follow-up in up to 111,556 independent individuals.
Results: We identified significant (P<2·8x10-7) associations with six SNPs: a nonsynonymous variant in RPAP1, which is predicted to be damaging, three intronic SNPs (SEC24C, CASC17 and UQCC1) and two intergenic SNPs near to LY86 and FGF10. Expression quantitative trait loci analyses found evidence for regulation of gene expression at three signals and implicated several genes, including TYRO3 and PLAU.
Conclusions: Further interrogation of these loci could provide greater understanding of the determinants of lung function and pulmonary disease
Data descriptor: a global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era
Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850-2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high-and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python. (TABLE) Since the pioneering work of D'Arrigo and Jacoby1-3, as well as Mann et al. 4,5, temperature reconstructions of the Common Era have become a key component of climate assessments6-9. Such reconstructions depend strongly on the composition of the underlying network of climate proxies10, and it is therefore critical for the climate community to have access to a community-vetted, quality-controlled database of temperature-sensitive records stored in a self-describing format. The Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2k consortium, a self-organized, international group of experts, recently assembled such a database, and used it to reconstruct surface temperature over continental-scale regions11 (hereafter, ` PAGES2k-2013'). This data descriptor presents version 2.0.0 of the PAGES2k proxy temperature database (Data Citation 1). It augments the PAGES2k-2013 collection of terrestrial records with marine records assembled by the Ocean2k working group at centennial12 and annual13 time scales. In addition to these previously published data compilations, this version includes substantially more records, extensive new metadata, and validation. Furthermore, the selection criteria for records included in this version are applied more uniformly and transparently across regions, resulting in a more cohesive data product. This data descriptor describes the contents of the database, the criteria for inclusion, and quantifies the relation of each record with instrumental temperature. In addition, the paleotemperature time series are summarized as composites to highlight the most salient decadal-to centennial-scale behaviour of the dataset and check mutual consistency between paleoclimate archives. We provide extensive Matlab code to probe the database-processing, filtering and aggregating it in various ways to investigate temperature variability over the Common Era. The unique approach to data stewardship and code-sharing employed here is designed to enable an unprecedented scale of investigation of the temperature history of the Common Era, by the scientific community and citizen-scientists alike
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Upper Colorado River Basin 20th century droughts under 21st century warming: Plausible scenarios for the future
This study builds on a collaboration with a water resource management community of practice in the Upper Colorado River Basin to develop scenarios of future drought and assess impacts on water supply reliability. Water managers are concerned with the impacts of warming on water year streamflow, but uncertainties in projections of climate make the application of these projections to planning a challenge. Instead, water managers considered a plausible scenario for future drought to be historical droughts to which warming is added. We used a simple statistical model of water year streamflow with temperatures increased by 1 °C to 4 °C, and then examined reductions in flow and runoff efficiency (RE) with each degree of warming for the six droughts defined in the observed streamflow record. In order to place these results into a management context, we employed an existing framework for system reliability, and in particular, a vulnerability assessment for water delivery metrics. Using modeled streamflow resulting from 1 °C to 4 °C warming, we found vulnerable condition thresholds for the two water delivery metrics assessed, Upper Basin Shortage and Lees Ferry Deficit, were crossed relatively infrequently at +1 °C, but with a substantially increased frequency under additional warming. Results are more relevant to resource management because the impacts of warming on Upper Colorado River streamflow were assessed in the context of management metrics and vulnerability thresholds, in collaboration with members of the water management community of practice. © 2020 The Author(s)Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]