New insights into dust aerosol entrainment mechanisms from satellite/ground-based data, climate modeling, and wind-tunnel experiments

Atmospheric dust aerosols have implications for Earth’s radiation budget, biogeochemical cycles, hydrological cycles, human health, and visibility. Currently, there is a considerable mismatch between climate model simulations and observations in representing the dust cycle in terms of emission, transport, and deposition. This mismatch is related partly to our inadequate understanding of the complex dust emission processes and partly to the way these processes are represented in climate models. In this work, we examine these problems from various perspectives with an interdisciplinary approach by integrating wind-tunnel experiments, geomorphological mapping, satellite observations, land surface modeling, atmospheric reanalysis, and fully coupled earth system modeling. The primary science contributions of this work are summarized here. First, we developed a detailed regional land cover map of the dust belt, the Middle East and North Africa. The developed map can be integrated in any regional dust models for better representing the spatial variation in dust source erodibility. We also developed a new observation-based soil erodibility map in global scale based on the correlation between reanalysis surface winds and satellite-observed aerosol optical depth data (AOD). Second, we integrated the developed observation-based erodibility map into the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and evaluated CESM’s performance in simulating mineral dust emission over the dust belt. Results show that the new erodibility map improves dust simulations in terms of AOD/dust optical depth (DOD) and the CESM captures large scale dust storms reasonably well when the winds are nudged towards ERA-Interim reanalysis data. Third, we conducted wind tunnel experiments and explored some of the lesser understood physical mechanisms of dust emission in sandblasting and direct aerodynamic entrainment. Results indicate that surface roughness can control dust emission in direct aerodynamic entrainment and that dust emission by direct aerodynamic entrainment can be significant under certain conditions compared to sandblasting. Lastly, we develop a principal component analysis based technique to extract locally mobilized dust component from the AOD data, which otherwise represent a mixture of several aerosol types and advected dust/aerosols.Geological Science

Copanlisib in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and solid tumors: An efficacy and safety analysis

Introduction: Copanlisib is an intravenous pan-class I PI3K inhibitor with predominant activity against the α and δ isoforms. We conducted this review to assess the efficacy and safety of copanlisib in patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and other solid tumors. Methods: A systematic search of the electronic database (PubMed, Cochrane, Clinicaltrials.gov, Google scholar, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure) was conducted for relevant studies. Any clinical trial with clear outcome measures on the efficacy or safety of copanlisib in NHL or other solid tumors were eligible for inclusion. The objective response rate (ORR) and the complete response (CR) rate were used to assess the efficacy. Incidence of all grade and grade 3-4 treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAE) were calculated to evaluate the safety profile. Results: We analyzed seven single-arm prospective clinical trials. The pooled ORR was 39.1% (95% CI: 21.0-60.7%) for NHL cohort. The pooled CR rate for NHL was 10.9% (95% CI: 6.9-16.8%). Indolent NHL had a higher rate of response than aggressive NHL (ORR 56.9% vs. 22.8%; CR rate 15.8% vs. 7.6%). The pooled incidence rate of grade 3-4 TEAE was 73.9% (95% CI: 66.4-80.3%). Most common grade 3-4 TEAE were: hyperglycemia (31.4%), hypertension (29.8%), neutropenia (18.3%), anemia (7.4%), and pneumonia (6.8%). Conclusions: Copanlisib is effective in the treatment of relapsed or refractory NHL, with a higher rate of response in indolent NHL than aggressive NHL. Hyperglycemia and hypertension were the most common adverse event

A Roll‐to‐Roll Gravure‐Printing System for Manufacturing Near‐Field Energy‐Harvesting Labels

Billions of costless near‐field communication (NFC) sensor labels per day are demanded to practically enable edge computing between smartphones and everyday objects. However, to activate the billions of NFC sensor labels daily, providing an inexpensive manufacturing method for billions of wireless energy‐harvesting labels (WeHL) per day will become a decisive issue for realizing the practical applications. Herein, a roll‐to‐roll (R2R) gravure, a typical high‐throughput additive manufacturing method, is explored to print WeHLs where six diodes and six capacitors are integrated. To meet the high‐throughput manufacturing speed (90 mm s−1) of the R2R gravure system, six different electronic inks are formulated to print the WeHLs to harvest ±10 V from the smartphone's NFC carrier. To attain a practical device yield under the given printing speed, the web tension, nip force, doctor blade angle, and overlay printing registration accuracy are well controlled and optimized to print six different layers within a high overlay printing accuracy, while printing patterns to connect two electrodes with a height difference greater than 3 μm. The fully R2R‐printed WeHLs can successfully harvest energy from the smartphone's NFC carrier with the conversion efficiency of 50%

Aerosol vertical distribution and interactions with land/sea breezes over the eastern coast of the Red Sea from lidar data and high-resolution WRF-Chem simulations

International audienceAbstract. With advances in modeling approaches and the application of satellite and ground-based data in dust-related research, our understanding of the dust cycle has significantly improved in recent decades. However, two aspects of the dust cycle, namely the vertical profiles and diurnal cycles, are not yet adequately understood, mainly due to the sparsity of direct observations. Measurements of backscattering caused by atmospheric aerosols have been ongoing since 2014 at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) campus using a micro-pulse lidar (MPL) with a high temporal resolution. KAUST is located on the eastern coast of the Red Sea and currently hosts the only operating lidar system in the Arabian Peninsula. We use the data from the MPL together with other collocated observations and high-resolution simulations (with 1.33 km grid spacing) from the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) to study the following three aspects of dust over the Red Sea coastal plains. Firstly, we compare the model-simulated surface winds, aerosol optical depth (AOD), and aerosol size distributions with observations and evaluate the model performance in representing a typical large-scale dust event over the study site. Secondly, we investigate the vertical profiles of aerosol extinction and concentration in terms of their seasonal and diurnal variability. Thirdly, we explore the interactions between dust aerosols and land/sea breezes, which are the most influential components of the local diurnal circulation in the region. The WRF-Chem model successfully reproduced the diurnal profile of surface wind speed, AOD, and dust size distributions over the study area compared to observations. The model also captured the onset, demise, and height of a large-scale dust event that occurred in 2015, as compared to the lidar data. The vertical profiles of aerosol extinction in different seasons were largely consistent between the MPL data and WRF-Chem simulations along with key observations and reanalyses used in this study. We found a substantial variation in the vertical profile of aerosols in different seasons and between daytime and nighttime, as revealed by the MPL data. The MPL data also identified a prominent dust layer at ∼5–7 km during the nighttime, which likely represents the long-range transported dust brought to the site by the easterly flow from remote inland deserts. The sea breeze circulation was much deeper (∼2 km) than the land breeze circulation (∼1 km), but both breeze systems prominently affected the distribution of dust aerosols over the study site. We observed that sea breezes push the dust aerosols upwards along the western slope of the Sarawat Mountains. These sea breezes eventually collide with the dust-laden northeasterly trade winds coming from nearby inland deserts, thus causing elevated dust maxima at a height of ∼1.5 km above sea level over the mountains. Moreover, the sea and land breezes intensify dust emissions from the coastal region during the daytime and nighttime, respectively. Our study, although focused on a particular region, has broader environmental implications as it highlights how aerosols and dust emissions from the coastal plains can affect the Red Sea climate and marine habitats

Advances in diagnosis of Tuberculosis: an update into molecular diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause of deaths by a single infectious agent and has now been a global public health problem due to increasing numbers of drug-resistant cases. Early and effective treatment is crucial to prevent the emergence of drug-resistance strains. This demands the availability of fast and reliable point-of-care (POC) diagnostic methods for effective case management. Commonly used methods to screen and diagnose TB are clinical, immunological, microscopy, radiography, and bacterial culture. In addition, recent advances in molecular diagnostic methods including MTBDRplus, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), line probe assay (LPA), GeneXpert, and whole genome sequencing (WGS) have been employed to diagnose and characterize TB. These methods can simultaneously identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) and mutation(s) associated with routinely used anti-TB drugs. Here, we review the use of currently available diagnostic methods and strategies including conventional to recently implemented next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods used to detect MTB in clinical perspective

Control of the coffee ring effect during R2R gravure printing for minimizing threshold voltage variation in printed carbon nanotube-based thin film transistors

Devising a high-throughput additive manufacturing method (HTAM) could aid in fabricating flexible electronic devices with marginal greenhouse gas (GG) emissions and net zero by-products. A roll-to-roll (R2R) gravure printing method is considered a typical platform of HTAM to fabricate carbon nanotube-based flexible electronic devices. However, the large variation in threshold voltage (Vth) in the printed carbon nanotube devices restricts device yield, thereby limiting their practical applications. In this study, the authors would like to show a way of minimizing the variation of Vth in the R2R gravure printed carbon nanotube thin-film transistors (TFTs) by understanding how the morphology of the printed dielectric layer can be controlled during ink drying. Since the formation of an uneven morphology after drying with higher edge thickness, also known as the coffee ring effect (CRE), is one of the key factors causing the variation in Vth, regulating the morphology of the dielectric ink is vital in minimizing the Vth variation of the TFTs printed via R2R gravure. By optimizing the rheological characteristics of the dielectric ink, a homogeneous morphology was attained without CRE, consequently minimizing the Vth variation from 19.6% to 6.9%. Furthermore, the printed device stability was improved by removing the CRE and avoiding the localized bias stress during device operation. Based on this work, the yield, and the stability of R2R gravure printed devices could be improved, enabling the rapid commercialization of additively manufactured flexible devices without the emission of GG or any harmful by-products

Synergy processing of diverse ground-based remote sensing and in situ data using the GRASP algorithm: applications to radiometer, lidar and radiosonde observations

International audienceAbstract. The exploration of aerosol retrieval synergies from diverse combinations of ground-based passive Sun-photometric measurements with collocated active lidar ground-based and radiosonde observations using versatile Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties (GRASP) algorithm is presented. Several potentially fruitful aspects of observation synergy were considered. First, a set of passive and active ground-based observations collected during both day- and nighttime was inverted simultaneously under the assumption of temporal continuity of aerosol properties. Such an approach explores the complementarity of the information in different observations and results in a robust and consistent processing of all observations. For example, the interpretation of the nighttime active observations usually suffers from the lack of information about aerosol particles sizes, shapes and complex refractive index. In the realized synergy retrievals, the information propagating from the nearby Sun-photometric observations provides sufficient constraints for reliable interpretation of both day- and nighttime lidar observations. Second, the synergetic processing of such complementary observations with enhanced information content allows for optimizing the aerosol model used in the retrieval. Specifically, the external mixture of several aerosol components with predetermined sizes, shapes and composition has been identified as an efficient approach for achieving reliable retrieval of aerosol properties in several situations. This approach allows for achieving consistent and accurate aerosol retrievals from processing stand-alone advanced lidar observations with reduced information content about aerosol columnar properties. Third, the potential of synergy processing of the ground-based Sun-photometric and lidar observations, with the in situ backscatter sonde measurements was explored using the data from KAUST.15 and KAUST.16 field campaigns held at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the August of 2015 and 2016. The inclusion of radiosonde data has been demonstrated to provide significant additional constraints to validate and improve the accuracy and scope of aerosol profiling. The results of all retrieval setups used for processing both synergy and stand-alone observation data sets are discussed and intercompared

sj-docx-1-isp-10.1177_00207640231223431 – Supplemental material for Effect of Integrated Yoga as an add-on therapy in adults with clinical depression – A randomized controlled trial

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-isp-10.1177_00207640231223431 for Effect of Integrated Yoga as an add-on therapy in adults with clinical depression – A randomized controlled trial by Anu James Vibin, Niharika Niharika, Varun Valliappan, Pasang Lamo, Niranjan Parajuli, Mansingh Jat, Sudha Lama, Aman Agarwal, Rajesh Sagar and Gautam Sharma in International Journal of Social Psychiatry</p

Technological Advancements for the Detection of Antibiotics in Food Products

Antibiotics, nowadays, are not only used for the treatment of human diseases but also used in animal and poultry farming to increase production. Overuse of antibiotics leads to their circulation in the food chain due to unmanaged discharge. These circulating antibiotics and their residues are a major cause of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), so comprehensive and multifaceted measures aligning with the One Health approach are crucial to curb the emergence and dissemination of antibiotic resistance through the food chain. Different chromatographic techniques and capillary electrophoresis (CE) are being widely used for the separation and detection of antibiotics and their residues from food samples. However, the matrix present in food samples interferes with the proper detection of the antibiotics, which are present in trace concentrations. This review is focused on the scientific literature published in the last decade devoted to the detection of antibiotics in food products. Various extraction methods are employed for the enrichment of antibiotics from a wide variety of food samples; however, solid-phase extraction (SPE) techniques are often used for the extraction of antibiotics from food products and biological samples. In addition, this review has scrutinized how changing instrumental composition, organization, and working parameters in the chromatography and CE can greatly impact the identification and quantification of antibiotic residues. This review also summarized recent advancements in other detection methods such as immunological assays, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based assays, and biosensors which have emerged as rapid, sensitive, and selective tools for accurate detection and quantification of traces of antibiotics