Author Correction: Intensified summer monsoon and the urbanization of Indus Civilization in northwest India.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.NERC (NE/H011463/1

Intensified summer monsoon and the urbanization of Indus Civilization in northwest India

Today the desert margins of northwest India are dry and unable to support large populations, but were densely occupied by the populations of the Indus Civilization during the middle to late Holocene. The hydroclimatic conditions under which Indus urbanization took place, which was marked by a period of expanded settlement into the Thar Desert margins, remains poorly understood. We measured the isotopic values (δ18O and δD) of gypsum hydration water in paleolake Karsandi sediments in northern Rajasthan to infer past changes in lake hydrology, which is sensitive to changing amounts of precipitation and evaporation. Our record reveals that relatively wet conditions prevailed at the northern edge of Rajasthan from ~5.1 ± 0.2 ka BP, during the beginning of the agricultural-based Early Harappan phase of the Indus Civilization. Monsoon rainfall intensified further between 5.0 and 4.4 ka BP, during the period when Indus urban centres developed in the western Thar Desert margin and on the plains of Haryana to its north. Drier conditions set in sometime after 4.4 ka BP, and by ~3.9 ka BP an eastward shift of populations had occurred. Our findings provide evidence that climate change was associated with both the expansion and contraction of Indus urbanism along the desert margin in northwest India

Outcome of hospitalization for COVID-19 in patients with interstitial lung disease. An international multicenter study

Rationale: The impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) has not been established. Objectives: To assess outcomes in patients with ILD hospitalized for COVID-19 versus those without ILD in a contemporaneous age-, sex-, and comorbidity-matched population. Methods: An international multicenter audit of patients with a prior diagnosis of ILD admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 between March 1 and May 1, 2020, was undertaken and compared with patients without ILD, obtained from the ISARIC4C (International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium) cohort, admitted with COVID-19 over the same period. The primary outcome was survival. Secondary analysis distinguished idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis from non–idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ILD and used lung function to determine the greatest risks of death. Measurements and Main Results: Data from 349 patients with ILD across Europe were included, of whom 161 were admitted to the hospital with laboratory or clinical evidence of COVID-19 and eligible for propensity score matching. Overall mortality was 49% (79/161) in patients with ILD with COVID-19. After matching, patients with ILD with COVID-19 had significantly poorer survival (hazard ratio [HR], 1.60; confidence interval, 1.17–2.18; P = 0.003) than age-, sex-, and comorbidity-matched controls without ILD. Patients with an FVC of <80% had an increased risk of death versus patients with FVC ≥80% (HR, 1.72; 1.05–2.83). Furthermore, obese patients with ILD had an elevated risk of death (HR, 2.27; 1.39−3.71). Conclusions: Patients with ILD are at increased risk of death from COVID-19, particularly those with poor lung function and obesity. Stringent precautions should be taken to avoid COVID-19 in patients with ILD

Hierarchical MPC for a dynamic process system employing parametric global optimization strategy

The hierarchical decision making in process industries has been traditionally viewed as having a common objective, such as the overall cost, which needs to be optimized. However, a more appropriate approach is to formulate and solve hierarchical optimization and control problems. The solution algorithms for hierarchical optimization problems have been reported in the literature. The idea is to recast each optimization sub-problem in the hierarchy into a multiparametric programming problem, considering the variables of upper-level problems as unknown parameters. In this paper, explicit Model Predictive Control (MPC) and hierarchical optimization techniques, employing multiparametric programming, are combined for hierarchical MPC. The solution algorithm for hierarchical MPC is described in detail. Note that the solution to a hierarchical MPC problem is challenging, even for the simplest case of linear-quadratic objectives. Closed-loop simulations of a thermal mixing process, under two different hierarchical MPC formulations, are performed and the control performance is studied

Author Correction: Intensified summer monsoon and the urbanization of Indus Civilization in northwest India.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.NERC (NE/H011463/1

Author correction:Intensified summer monsoon and the urbanization of Indus Civilization in northwest India

(Scientific Reports, (2018), 8, 1, (4225), 10.1038/s41598-018-22504-5)</p