Disruption of marine habitats by artificial light at night from global coastal megacities

Half of globally significant megacities are situated near the coast, exposing urban marine ecosystems to multiple stressors such as waste-water discharge containing a host of organic and inorganic pollutants, air and noise pollution. In addition to these well recognized sources, artificial light at night (ALAN) pollution is inseparable from cities but poorly quantified in marine ecosystems to date. We have developed a time- and wavelength-resolving hydrological optical model that includes solar (daylight and twilight components), lunar and ALAN source terms and propagates these spectrally through a tidally varying water column using Beer’s Law. Our model shows that for 8 globally distributed cities surface ALAN dosages are up to a factor of 6 greater than moonlight, as ALAN intensities vary little throughout the night, over monthly or seasonal cycles. Moonlight only exceeds ALAN irradiances over the ±3-day period around full moon, and particularly during the brightest moons (mid-latitude winter, at zenith). Unlike the relatively stable surface ALAN, underwater ALAN varies spectrally and in magnitude throughout the night due to tidal cycles. The extent of ALAN in-water attenuation is location-specific, driven by the season, tidal range and cycle, and water clarity. This work highlights that marine ALAN ecosystem pollution is a particularly acute global change issue near some of the largest cities in the world

The Pharmacogenetics Research Network: From SNP Discovery to Clinical Drug Response

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109975/1/cpt6100087.pd

A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1,2. Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches1, while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end.Peer reviewe

The burden of unintentional drowning: Global, regional and national estimates of mortality from the Global Burden of Disease 2017 Study

__Background:__ Drowning is a leading cause of injury-related mortality globally. Unintentional drowning (International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 10 codes W65-74 and ICD9 E910) is one of the 30 mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive causes of injury-related mortality in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. This study's objective is to describe unintentional drowning using GBD estimates from 1990 to 2017. __Methods:__ Unintentional drowning from GBD 2017 was estimated for cause-specific mortality and years of life lost (YLLs), age, sex, country, region, Socio-demographic Index (SDI) quintile, and trends from 1990 to 2017. GBD 2017 used standard GBD methods for estimating mortality from drowning. __Results:__ Globally, unintentional drowning mortality decreased by 44.5% between 1990 and 2017, from 531 956 (uncertainty interval (UI): 484 107 to 572 854) to 295 210 (284 493 to 306 187) deaths. Global age-standardised mortality rates decreased 57.4%, from 9.3 (8.5 to 10.0) in 1990 to 4.0 (3.8 to 4.1) per 100 000 per annum in 2017. Unintentional drowning-associated mortality was generally higher in children, males and in low-SDI to middle-SDI countries. China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh accounted for 51.2% of all drowning deaths in 2017. Oceania was the region with the highest rate of age-standardised YLLs in 2017, with 45 434 (40 850 to 50 539) YLLs per 100 000 across both sexes. __Conclusions:__ There has been a decline in global drowning rates. This study shows that the decline was not consistent across countries. The results reinforce the need for continued and improved policy, prevention and research efforts, with a focus on low-and middle-income countries

Tracking development assistance for health and for COVID-19 : a review of development assistance, government, out-of-pocket, and other private spending on health for 204 countries and territories, 1990-2050

Background The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed, especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was disbursed for COVID-19. We aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020. Methods We estimated domestic health spending and development assistance for health to generate total health-sector spending estimates for 204 countries and territories. We leveraged data from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database to produce estimates of domestic health spending. To generate estimates for development assistance for health, we relied on project-level disbursement data from the major international development agencies' online databases and annual financial statements and reports for information on income sources. To adjust our estimates for 2020 to include disbursements related to COVID-19, we extracted project data on commitments and disbursements from a broader set of databases (because not all of the data sources used to estimate the historical series extend to 2020), including the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance Financial Tracking Service and the International Aid Transparency Initiative. We reported all the historic and future spending estimates in inflation-adjusted 2020 US$, 2020 US$ per capita, purchasing-power parity-adjusted US$per capita, and as a proportion of gross domestic product. We used various models to generate future health spending to 2050. Findings In 2019, health spending globally reached$8. 8 trillion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 8.7-8.8) or $1132 (1119-1143) per person. Spending on health varied within and across income groups and geographical regions. Of this total,$40.4 billion (0.5%, 95% UI 0.5-0.5) was development assistance for health provided to low-income and middle-income countries, which made up 24.6% (UI 24.0-25.1) of total spending in low-income countries. We estimate that $54.8 billion in development assistance for health was disbursed in 2020. Of this,$13.7 billion was targeted toward the COVID-19 health response. $12.3 billion was newly committed and$1.4 billion was repurposed from existing health projects. $3.1 billion (22.4$2.4 billion (17.9%) was for supply chain and logistics. Only $714.4 million (7.7$1519 (1448-1591) per person in 2050, although spending across countries is expected to remain varied. Interpretation Global health spending is expected to continue to grow, but remain unequally distributed between countries. We estimate that development organisations substantially increased the amount of development assistance for health provided in 2020. Continued efforts are needed to raise sufficient resources to mitigate the pandemic for the most vulnerable, and to help curtail the pandemic for all. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the correlation between flow harmonics of different order in lead-lead collisions at √sNN = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Correlations between the elliptic or triangular flow coefficients vm (m=2 or 3) and other flow harmonics vn (n=2 to 5) are measured using √sNN=2.76 TeV Pb+Pb collision data collected in 2010 by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 7 μb−1. The vm−vn correlations are measured in midrapidity as a function of centrality, and, for events within the same centrality interval, as a function of event ellipticity or triangularity defined in a forward rapidity region. For events within the same centrality interval, v3 is found to be anticorrelated with v2 and this anticorrelation is consistent with similar anticorrelations between the corresponding eccentricities, ε2 and ε3. However, it is observed that v4 increases strongly with v2, and v5 increases strongly with both v2 and v3. The trend and strength of the vm−vn correlations for n=4 and 5 are found to disagree with εm−εn correlations predicted by initial-geometry models. Instead, these correlations are found to be consistent with the combined effects of a linear contribution to vn and a nonlinear term that is a function of v22 or of v2v3, as predicted by hydrodynamic models. A simple two-component fit is used to separate these two contributions. The extracted linear and nonlinear contributions to v4 and v5 are found to be consistent with previously measured event-plane correlations

Measurements of fiducial cross-sections for t\bart production with one or two additional b-jets in pp collisions at √s =8 TeVusing the ATLAS detector

Fiducial cross-sections for $t\bar{t}$ production with one or two additional $b$-jets are reported, using an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider, collected with the ATLAS detector. The cross-section times branching ratio for $t\bar{t}$ events with at least one additional $b$-jet is measured to be 950 $\pm$ 70 (stat.) $^{+240}_{-190}$ (syst.) fb in the lepton-plus-jets channel and 50 $\pm$ 10 (stat.) $^{+15}_{-10}$ (syst.) fb in the $e \mu$ channel. The cross-section times branching ratio for events with at least two additional $b$-jets is measured to be 19.3 $\pm$ 3.5 (stat.) $\pm$ 5.7 (syst.) fb in the dilepton channel ($e \mu$,\,$\mu\mu$, and \,$ee$) using a method based on tight selection criteria, and 13.5 $\pm$ 3.3 (stat.) $\pm$ 3.6 (syst.) fb using a looser selection that allows the background normalisation to be extracted from data. The latter method also measures a value of 1.30 $\pm$ 0.33 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.28 (syst.)\% for the ratio of $t\bar{t}$ production with two additional $b$-jets to $t\bar{t}$ production with any two additional jets. All measurements are in good agreement with recent theory predictions.Comment: 41 pages plus author list + cover page (58 total), 9 Figures, 16 tables, submitted to EPJC, all figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/TOPQ-2014-10

Search for W′→tb→qqbb decays in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A search for a massive W′ gauge boson decaying to a top quark and a bottom quark is performed with the ATLAS detector in pp collisions at the LHC. The dataset was taken at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV and corresponds to 20.3 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. This analysis is done in the hadronic decay mode of the top quark, where novel jet substructure techniques are used to identify jets from high-momentum top quarks. This allows for a search for high-mass W′ bosons in the range 1.5–3.0 TeV. b-tagging is used to identify jets originating from b-quarks. The data are consistent with Standard Model background-only expectations, and upper limits at 95 % confidence level are set on the W′→tb cross section times branching ratio ranging from 0.16pb to 0.33pb for left-handed W′ bosons, and ranging from 0.10pb to 0.21pb for W′ bosons with purely right-handed couplings. Upper limits at 95 % confidence level are set on the W′-boson coupling to tb as a function of the W′ mass using an effective field theory approach, which is independent of details of particular models predicting a W′boson

Measurement of event-shape observables in Z→ℓ+ℓ− events in pp collisions at √ s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Event-shape observables measured using charged particles in inclusive $Z$-boson events are presented, using the electron and muon decay modes of the $Z$ bosons. The measurements are based on an integrated luminosity of $1.1 {\rm fb}^{-1}$ of proton--proton collisions recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV. Charged-particle distributions, excluding the lepton--antilepton pair from the $Z$-boson decay, are measured in different ranges of transverse momentum of the $Z$ boson. Distributions include multiplicity, scalar sum of transverse momenta, beam thrust, transverse thrust, spherocity, and $\mathcal{F}$-parameter, which are in particular sensitive to properties of the underlying event at small values of the $Z$-boson transverse momentum. The Sherpa event generator shows larger deviations from the measured observables than Pythia8 and Herwig7. Typically, all three Monte Carlo generators provide predictions that are in better agreement with the data at high $Z$-boson transverse momenta than at low $Z$-boson transverse momenta and for the observables that are less sensitive to the number of charged particles in the event.Comment: 36 pages plus author list + cover page (54 pages total), 14 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC, All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2014-0