Evaluation of the ECOSSE model for simulating soilcarbon under short rotation forestry energy crops in Britain

Understanding and predicting the effects of land-use change to short rotation forestry (SRF) on soil carbon (C) is an important requirement for fully assessing the C mitigation potential of SRF as a bioenergy crop. There is little current knowledge of SRF in the UK and in particular a lack of consistent measured data sets on the direct impacts of land use change on soil C stocks. The ECOSSE model was developed to simulate soil C dynamics and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in mineral and organic soils. The ECOSSE model has already been applied spatially to simulate land-use change impacts on soil C and GHG emissions. However, it has not been extensively evaluated under SRF. Eleven sites comprising 29 transitions in Britain, representing land-use change from nonwoodland land uses to SRF, were selected to evaluate the performance of ECOSSE in predicting soil C and soil C change in SRF plantations. The modelled C under SRF showed a strong correlation with the soil C measurements at both 0–30 cm (R = 0.93) and 0–100 cm soil depth (R = 0.82). As for the SRF plots, the soil C at the reference sites have been accurately simulated by the model. The extremely high correlation for the reference fields (R ≥ 0.99) shows a good performance of the model spin-up. The statistical analysis of the model performance to simulate soil C and soil C changes after land-use change to SRF highlighted the absence of significant error between modelled and measured values as well as the absence of significant bias in the model. Overall, this evaluation reinforces previous studies on the ability of ECOSSE to simulate soil C and emphasize its accuracy to simulate soil C under SRF plantations

Racial disparity in long-term mortality rate after hospitalization for myocardial infarction: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study

BACKGROUND: The underlying reasons why African American patients have a significantly higher mortality rate than European American patients after a myocardial infarction (MI) remain unclear. This study examined the racial disparity in mortality rates after MI and possible explanatory factors. METHODS: A prospective analysis was conducted within the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a community-based study of 15,792 middle-aged adults. From 1987 to 1998, 642 patients (471 European American and 171 African American) hospitalized for MI without prior history of MI were identified. Of these 642 patients, 129 (82 European American and 47 African American) died during follow-up. RESULTS: Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyze the racial difference in mortality rate after MI. After adjusting for age and sex, the relative hazard (RH) comparing African American patients to European American patients was 1.80 (95% CI, 1.24-2.61). The RH decreased after adjusting for vascular risk factors (1.29; 95% CI, 0.83-2.00), socioeconomic position (1.31; 95% CI, 0.83-2.09), severity of MI (1.60; 95% CI, 1.05-2.45), and treatment (1.36; 95% CI, 0.92-2.00). In the final model, which included all factors aforementioned, the RH for race was 1.00 (95% CI, 0.56-1.77). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggested that vascular risk factors, socioeconomic position, and treatment play major roles in the racial disparity in mortality rate after MI.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78990/1/DingDiezRoux2003_AmHeartJ.pd

International comparisons of the management of patients with non-ST segment elevation acute myocardial infarction in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States: The MINAP/NICOR, SWEDEHEART/RIKS-HIA, and ACTION Registry-GWTG/NCDR registries

To compare management of patients with acute non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) in three developed countries with national ongoing registrie

Recovery and resilience of tropical forests after disturbance

The time taken for forested tropical ecosystems to re-establish post-disturbance is of widespread interest. Yet to date there has been no comparative study across tropical biomes to determine rates of forest re-growth, and how they vary through space and time. Here we present results from a meta-analysis of palaeoecological records that use fossil pollen as a proxy for vegetation change over the past 20,000 years. A total of 283 forest disturbance and recovery events, reported in 71 studies, are identified across four tropical regions. Results indicate that forests in Central America and Africa generally recover faster from past disturbances than those in South America and Asia, as do forests exposed to natural large infrequent disturbances compared with post-climatic and human impacts. Results also demonstrate that increasing frequency of disturbance events at a site through time elevates recovery rates, indicating a degree of resilience in forests exposed to recurrent past disturbance

Severe Respiratory Syncytial Virus Bronchiolitis in Infants Is Associated with Reduced Airway Interferon Gamma and Substance P

Severe human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) bronchiolitis in previously well infants may be due to differences in the innate immune response to hRSV infection. Aim: to determine if factors mediating proposed mechanisms for severe bronchiolitis differ with severity of disease

The Perfect Family: Decision Making in Biparental Care

Background Previous theoretical work on parental decisions in biparental care has emphasized the role of the conflict between evolutionary interests of parents in these decisions. A prominent prediction from this work is that parents should compensate for decreases in each other\u27s effort, but only partially so. However, experimental tests that manipulate parents and measure their responses fail to confirm this prediction. At the same time, the process of parental decision making has remained unexplored theoretically. We develop a model to address the discrepancy between experiments and the theoretical prediction, and explore how assuming different decision making processes changes the prediction from the theory. Model Description We assume that parents make decisions in behavioral time. They have a fixed time budget, and allocate it between two parental tasks: provisioning the offspring and defending the nest. The proximate determinant of the allocation decisions are parents\u27 behavioral objectives. We assume both parents aim to maximize the offspring production from the nest. Experimental manipulations change the shape of the nest production function. We consider two different scenarios for how parents make decisions: one where parents communicate with each other and act together (the perfect family), and one where they do not communicate, and act independently (the almost perfect family). Conclusions/Significance The perfect family model is able to generate all the types of responses seen in experimental studies. The kind of response predicted depends on the nest production function, i.e. how parents\u27 allocations affect offspring production, and the type of experimental manipulation. In particular, we find that complementarity of parents\u27 allocations promotes matching responses. In contrast, the relative responses do not depend on the type of manipulation in the almost perfect family model. These results highlight the importance of the interaction between nest production function and how parents make decisions, factors that have largely been overlooked in previous models