29 research outputs found

    The state of the Martian climate

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    60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

    State of the climate in 2018

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    In 2018, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—continued their increase. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface was 407.4 ± 0.1 ppm, the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800 000 years. Combined, greenhouse gases and several halogenated gases contribute just over 3 W m−2 to radiative forcing and represent a nearly 43% increase since 1990. Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 65% of this radiative forcing. With a weak La Niña in early 2018 transitioning to a weak El Niño by the year’s end, the global surface (land and ocean) temperature was the fourth highest on record, with only 2015 through 2017 being warmer. Several European countries reported record high annual temperatures. There were also more high, and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly all of the 68-year extremes record. Madagascar recorded a record daily temperature of 40.5°C in Morondava in March, while South Korea set its record high of 41.0°C in August in Hongcheon. Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded its highest temperature of 50.2°C, which may be a new daily world record for April. Globally, the annual lower troposphere temperature was third to seventh highest, depending on the dataset analyzed. The lower stratospheric temperature was approximately fifth lowest. The 2018 Arctic land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying for third highest in the 118-year record, following 2016 and 2017. June’s Arctic snow cover extent was almost half of what it was 35 years ago. Across Greenland, however, regional summer temperatures were generally below or near average. Additionally, a satellite survey of 47 glaciers in Greenland indicated a net increase in area for the first time since records began in 1999. Increasing permafrost temperatures were reported at most observation sites in the Arctic, with the overall increase of 0.1°–0.2°C between 2017 and 2018 being comparable to the highest rate of warming ever observed in the region. On 17 March, Arctic sea ice extent marked the second smallest annual maximum in the 38-year record, larger than only 2017. The minimum extent in 2018 was reached on 19 September and again on 23 September, tying 2008 and 2010 for the sixth lowest extent on record. The 23 September date tied 1997 as the latest sea ice minimum date on record. First-year ice now dominates the ice cover, comprising 77% of the March 2018 ice pack compared to 55% during the 1980s. Because thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in summer, this shift in sea ice age has contributed to the decreasing trend in minimum ice extent. Regionally, Bering Sea ice extent was at record lows for almost the entire 2017/18 ice season. For the Antarctic continent as a whole, 2018 was warmer than average. On the highest points of the Antarctic Plateau, the automatic weather station Relay (74°S) broke or tied six monthly temperature records throughout the year, with August breaking its record by nearly 8°C. However, cool conditions in the western Bellingshausen Sea and Amundsen Sea sector contributed to a low melt season overall for 2017/18. High SSTs contributed to low summer sea ice extent in the Ross and Weddell Seas in 2018, underpinning the second lowest Antarctic summer minimum sea ice extent on record. Despite conducive conditions for its formation, the ozone hole at its maximum extent in September was near the 2000–18 mean, likely due to an ongoing slow decline in stratospheric chlorine monoxide concentration. Across the oceans, globally averaged SST decreased slightly since the record El Niño year of 2016 but was still far above the climatological mean. On average, SST is increasing at a rate of 0.10° ± 0.01°C decade−1 since 1950. The warming appeared largest in the tropical Indian Ocean and smallest in the North Pacific. The deeper ocean continues to warm year after year. For the seventh consecutive year, global annual mean sea level became the highest in the 26-year record, rising to 81 mm above the 1993 average. As anticipated in a warming climate, the hydrological cycle over the ocean is accelerating: dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions rainier. Closer to the equator, 95 named tropical storms were observed during 2018, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. Eleven tropical cyclones reached Saffir–Simpson scale Category 5 intensity. North Atlantic Major Hurricane Michael’s landfall intensity of 140 kt was the fourth strongest for any continental U.S. hurricane landfall in the 168-year record. Michael caused more than 30 fatalities and 25billion(U.S.dollars)indamages.InthewesternNorthPacific,SuperTyphoonMangkhutledto160fatalitiesand25 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages. In the western North Pacific, Super Typhoon Mangkhut led to 160 fatalities and 6 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was responsible for 170 fatalities in Vietnam and Laos. Nearly all the islands of Micronesia experienced at least moderate impacts from various tropical cyclones. Across land, many areas around the globe received copious precipitation, notable at different time scales. Rodrigues and Réunion Island near southern Africa each reported their third wettest year on record. In Hawaii, 1262 mm precipitation at Waipā Gardens (Kauai) on 14–15 April set a new U.S. record for 24-h precipitation. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte received nearly 75 mm of rain in just 20 minutes, nearly half its monthly average. Globally, fire activity during 2018 was the lowest since the start of the record in 1997, with a combined burned area of about 500 million hectares. This reinforced the long-term downward trend in fire emissions driven by changes in land use in frequently burning savannas. However, wildfires burned 3.5 million hectares across the United States, well above the 2000–10 average of 2.7 million hectares. Combined, U.S. wildfire damages for the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons exceeded $40 billion (U.S. dollars)

    Novel targets and future strategies for acute cardioprotection: Position Paper of the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on Cellular Biology of the Heart

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    Ischaemic heart disease and the heart failure that often results, remain the leading causes of death and disability in Europe and worldwide. As such, in order to prevent heart failure and improve clinical outcomes in patients presenting with an acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction and patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery, novel therapies are required to protect the heart against the detrimental effects of acute ischaemia/reperfusion injury. During the last three decades, a wide variety of ischaemic conditioning strategies and pharmacological treatments have been tested in the clinic - however, their translation from experimental to clinical studies for improving patient outcomes has been both challenging and disappointing. Therefore, in this Position Paper of the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on Cellular Biology of the Heart, we critically analyse the current state of ischaemic conditioning in both the experimental and clinical settings, provide recommendations for improving its translation into the clinical setting, and highlight novel therapeutic targets and new treatment strategies for reducing acute myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion injury

    Practical guidelines for rigor and reproducibility in preclinical and clinical studies on cardioprotection

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    The potential for ischemic preconditioning to reduce infarct size was first recognized more than 30 years ago. Despite extension of the concept to ischemic postconditioning and remote ischemic conditioning and literally thousands of experimental studies in various species and models which identified a multitude of signaling steps, so far there is only a single and very recent study, which has unequivocally translated cardioprotection to improved clinical outcome as the primary endpoint in patients. Many potential reasons for this disappointing lack of clinical translation of cardioprotection have been proposed, including lack of rigor and reproducibility in preclinical studies, and poor design and conduct of clinical trials. There is, however, universal agreement that robust preclinical data are a mandatory prerequisite to initiate a meaningful clinical trial. In this context, it is disconcerting that the CAESAR consortium (Consortium for preclinicAl assESsment of cARdioprotective therapies) in a highly standardized multi-center approach of preclinical studies identified only ischemic preconditioning, but not nitrite or sildenafil, when given as adjunct to reperfusion, to reduce infarct size. However, ischemic preconditioning—due to its very nature—can only be used in elective interventions, and not in acute myocardial infarction. Therefore, better strategies to identify robust and reproducible strategies of cardioprotection, which can subsequently be tested in clinical trials must be developed. We refer to the recent guidelines for experimental models of myocardial ischemia and infarction, and aim to provide now practical guidelines to ensure rigor and reproducibility in preclinical and clinical studies on cardioprotection. In line with the above guideline, we define rigor as standardized state-of-the-art design, conduct and reporting of a study, which is then a prerequisite for reproducibility, i.e. replication of results by another laboratory when performing exactly the same experiment

    Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

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    Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

    Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

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    IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

    Electrophysiology of Error Processing : Associations With Depression, Anxiety, Fear of Failure, and Clinical Perfectionism

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    Color poster with text, graphs, and charts.One current debate about the ERN and Pe is whether they reflect performance monitoring or emotional response to errors. We predicted that ERN and Pe would correlate with depression, anxiety, fear of failure, and/or clinical perfectionism.We also looked for potential associations between ERN/Pe, self-compassion, and achievement goals.Student Blugold Commitment Differential Tuition; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
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