A Linear Analysis of Equatorial Atlantic Ocean Thermocline Variability

Observed variations in the Atlantic Ocean\u27s equatorial thermocline are compared at four locations with simultations using an analytical reduced-gravity model. The comparison shows the essential features of the seasonal wind-forced thermocline response to be accounted for by a linear superposition of equatorial long waves, evolving basinwide, tending to bring the zonal pressure gradient into balance with the wind stress. A frequency response function is derived whose properties provide a basis for discussing the large scale features of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean\u27s seasonal cycle-for example, its evolution along the equator, the maximum upwelling region observed in the Gulf of Guinea and the secondary upwelling season also observed there. Clarification is also given to the issue of remote versus local forcing for these features

Sea surface temperature patterns on the West Florida Shelf using growing hierarchical self-organizing maps

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 23 (2006): 325–338, doi:10.1175/JTECH1848.1.Neural network analyses based on the self-organizing map (SOM) and the growing hierarchical self-organizing map (GHSOM) are used to examine patterns of the sea surface temperature (SST) variability on the West Florida Shelf from time series of daily SST maps from 1998 to 2002. Four characteristic SST patterns are extracted in the first-layer GHSOM array: winter and summer season patterns, and two transitional patterns. Three of them are further expanded in the second layer, yielding more detailed structures in these seasons. The winter pattern is one of low SST, with isotherms aligned approximately along isobaths. The summer pattern is one of high SST distributed in a horizontally uniform manner. The spring transition includes a midshelf cold tongue. Similar analyses performed on SST anomaly data provide further details of these seasonally varying patterns. It is demonstrated that the GHSOM analysis is more effective in extracting the inherent SST patterns than the widely used EOF method. The underlying patterns in a dataset can be visualized in the SOM array in the same form as the original data, while they can only be expressed in anomaly form in the EOF analysis. Some important features, such as asymmetric SST anomaly patterns of winter/summer and cold/warm tongues, can be revealed by the SOM array but cannot be identified in the lowest mode EOF patterns. Also, unlike the EOF or SOM techniques, the hierarchical structure in the input data can be extracted by the GHSOM analysis.Support was provided by the Office of Naval Research under Grant N00014-98-1-0158 for observations and modeling of the west Florida continental shelf circulation and Grant N00014-02-1-0972 for the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System

A comparison of the hypoglycemic effect of insulin with systemic venous and portal venous administration

The hyperglycemic effect of insulin by prolonged intraportal and systemic infusion was measured in unanesthetized dogs with a modified portacaval transposition. There was no significant difference in response with the two routes of administration. The relation of these results to research directed to surgical therapy of diabetes is discussed. © 1963 W. B. Saunders Company

High Velocity Rain: The Terminal Velocity of Model of Galactic Infall

A model is proposed for determining the distances to falling interstellar clouds in the galactic halo by measuring the cloud velocity and column density and assuming a model for the vertical density distribution of the Galactic interstellar medium. It is shown that falling clouds with $N(H I) < \sim 10^{19} cm^{-2}$ may be decelerated to a terminal velocity which increases with increasing height above the Galactic plane. This terminal velocity model correctly predicts the distance to high velocity cloud Complex M and several other interstellar structures of previously determined distance. It is demonstrated how interstellar absorption spectra alone may be used to predict the distances of the clouds producing the absorption. If the distances to the clouds are already known, we demonstrate how the model may be used to determine the vertical density structure of the ISM. The derived density distribution is consistent with the expected density distribution of the warm ionized medium, characterized by Reynolds. There is also evidence that for $z >\sim 0.4 kpc$ one or more of the following occurs: (1) the neutral fraction of the cloud decreases to $\sim 31 \pm 14$, (2) the density drops off faster than characterized by Reynolds, or (3) there is a systematic decrease in drag coefficient with increasing z.Comment: ApJ, in pres

Pre-hospital management protocols and perceived difficulty in diagnosing acute heart failure

Aim To illustrate the pre-hospital management arsenals and protocols in different EMS units, and to estimate the perceived difficulty of diagnosing suspected acute heart failure (AHF) compared with other common pre-hospital conditions. Methods and results A multinational survey included 104 emergency medical service (EMS) regions from 18 countries. Diagnostic and therapeutic arsenals related to AHF management were reported for each type of EMS unit. The prevalence and contents of management protocols for common medical conditions treated pre-hospitally was collected. The perceived difficulty of diagnosing AHF and other medical conditions by emergency medical dispatchers and EMS personnel was interrogated. Ultrasound devices and point-of-care testing were available in advanced life support and helicopter EMS units in fewer than 25% of EMS regions. AHF protocols were present in 80.8% of regions. Protocols for ST-elevation myocardial infarction, chest pain, and dyspnoea were present in 95.2, 80.8, and 76.0% of EMS regions, respectively. Protocolized diagnostic actions for AHF management included 12-lead electrocardiogram (92.1% of regions), ultrasound examination (16.0%), and point-of-care testings for troponin and BNP (6.0 and 3.5%). Therapeutic actions included supplementary oxygen (93.2%), non-invasive ventilation (80.7%), intravenous furosemide, opiates, nitroglycerine (69.0, 68.6, and 57.0%), and intubation 71.5%. Diagnosing suspected AHF was considered easy to moderate by EMS personnel and moderate to difficult by emergency medical dispatchers (without significant differences between de novo and decompensated heart failure). In both settings, diagnosis of suspected AHF was considered easier than pulmonary embolism and more difficult than ST-elevation myocardial infarction, asthma, and stroke. Conclusions The prevalence of AHF protocols is rather high but the contents seem to vary. Difficulty of diagnosing suspected AHF seems to be moderate compared with other pre-hospital conditions

U.S. IOOS coastal and ocean modeling testbed : inter-model evaluation of tides, waves, and hurricane surge in the Gulf of Mexico

© The Author(s), 2013. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 118 (2013): 5129–5172, doi:10.1002/jgrc.20376.A Gulf of Mexico performance evaluation and comparison of coastal circulation and wave models was executed through harmonic analyses of tidal simulations, hindcasts of Hurricane Ike (2008) and Rita (2005), and a benchmarking study. Three unstructured coastal circulation models (ADCIRC, FVCOM, and SELFE) validated with similar skill on a new common Gulf scale mesh (ULLR) with identical frictional parameterization and forcing for the tidal validation and hurricane hindcasts. Coupled circulation and wave models, SWAN+ADCIRC and WWMII+SELFE, along with FVCOM loosely coupled with SWAN, also validated with similar skill. NOAA's official operational forecast storm surge model (SLOSH) was implemented on local and Gulf scale meshes with the same wind stress and pressure forcing used by the unstructured models for hindcasts of Ike and Rita. SLOSH's local meshes failed to capture regional processes such as Ike's forerunner and the results from the Gulf scale mesh further suggest shortcomings may be due to a combination of poor mesh resolution, missing internal physics such as tides and nonlinear advection, and SLOSH's internal frictional parameterization. In addition, these models were benchmarked to assess and compare execution speed and scalability for a prototypical operational simulation. It was apparent that a higher number of computational cores are needed for the unstructured models to meet similar operational implementation requirements to SLOSH, and that some of them could benefit from improved parallelization and faster execution speed.This project was supported by NOAA via the U.S. IOOS Office (award: NA10NOS0120063 and NA11NOS0120141

Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes: What Can Be Unified and What Needs to Be Individualized?

Data show that the insights that improve obesity prevention and treatment will almost certainly benefit the incidence and care of type 2 diabetes

Mice Lacking NKT Cells but with a Complete Complement of CD8+ T-Cells Are Not Protected against the Metabolic Abnormalities of Diet-Induced Obesity

The contribution of natural killer T (NKT) cells to the pathogenesis of metabolic abnormalities of obesity is controversial. While the combined genetic deletion of NKT and CD8+ T-cells improves glucose tolerance and reduces inflammation, interpretation of these data have been complicated by the recent observation that the deletion of CD8+ T-cells alone reduces obesity-induced inflammation and metabolic dysregulation, leaving the issue of the metabolic effects of NKT cell depletion unresolved. To address this question, CD1d null mice (CD1d−/−), which lack NKT cells but have a full complement of CD8+ T-cells, and littermate wild type controls (WT) on a pure C57BL/6J background were exposed to a high fat diet, and glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, inflammation, and obesity were assessed. Food intake (15.5±4.3 vs 15.3±1.8 kcal/mouse/day), weight gain (21.8±1.8 vs 22.8±1.4 g) and fat mass (18.6±1.9 vs 19.5±2.1 g) were similar in CD1d−/− and WT, respectively. As would be expected from these data, metabolic rate (3.0±0.1 vs 2.9±0.2 ml O2/g/h) and activity (21.6±4.3 vs 18.5±2.6 beam breaks/min) were unchanged by NKT cell depletion. Furthermore, the degree of insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, liver steatosis, and adipose and liver inflammatory marker expression (TNFα, IL-6, IL-10, IFN-γ, MCP-1, MIP1α) induced by high fat feeding in CD1d−/− were not different from WT. We conclude that deletion of NKT cells, in the absence of alterations in the CD8+ T-cell population, is insufficient to protect against the development of the metabolic abnormalities of diet-induced obesity