Ammonia emission inventory for the state of Wyoming

Ammonia (NH{sub 3}) is the only significant gaseous base in the atmosphere and it has a variety of impacts as an atmospheric pollutant, including the formation of secondary aerosol particles: ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate. NH{sub 3} preferentially forms ammonium sulfate; consequently ammonium nitrate aerosol formation may be limited by the availability of NH{sub 3}. Understanding the impact of emissions of oxides of sulfur and nitrogen on visibility, therefore, requires accurately determined ammonia emission inventories for use in air quality models, upon which regulatory and policy decisions increasingly depend. This report presents an emission inventory of NH{sub 3} for the state of Wyoming. The inventory is temporally and spatially resolved at the monthly and county level, and is comprised of emissions from individual sources in ten categories: livestock, fertilizer, domestic animals, wild animals, wildfires, soil, industry, mobile sources, humans, and publicly owned treatment works. The Wyoming NH{sub 3} inventory was developed using the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Ammonia Model as framework. Current Wyoming-specific activity data and emissions factors obtained from state agencies and published literature were assessed and used as inputs to the CMU Ammonia Model. Biogenic emissions from soils comprise about three-quarters of the Wyoming NH{sub 3} inventory, though emission factors from soils are highly uncertain. Published emission factors are scarce and based on limited measurements. In Wyoming, agricultural land, rangeland, and forests comprise 96% of the land area and essentially all of the estimated emissions from soils. Future research on emission rates of NH{sub 3} for these land categories may lead to a substantial change in the magnitude of soil emissions, a different inventory composition, and reduced uncertainty in the inventory. While many NH{sub 3} inventories include annual emissions, air quality modeling studies require finer temporal resolution. Published studies indicate higher emission rates from soils and animal wastes at higher temperatures, and temporal variation in fertilizer application. A recent inverse modeling study indicates temporal variation in regional NH{sub 3} emissions. Monthly allocation factors were derived to estimate monthly emissions from soils, livestock and wild animal waste based on annual emission estimates. Monthly resolution of NH{sub 3} emissions from fertilizers is based on fertilizer sales to farmers. Statewide NH{sub 3} emissions are highest in the late spring and early summer months

Ingestion of microplastic debris by green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the Great Barrier Reef: validation of a sequential extraction protocol

Ocean contamination by plastics is a global issue. Although ingestion of plastic debris by sea turtles has been widely documented, contamination by microplastics ( 100 μm. Two macroplastics and seven microplastics (two plastic paint chips and five synthetic fabric particles) were isolated from subsamples of two green turtles. Our results highlight the need for more research towards understanding the impact of microplastics on these threatened marine reptiles

Biomass burning emission inventory with daily resolution: Application to aircraft observations of Asian outflow

Asian outflo

Storylines of family medicine V:ways of thinking-honing the therapeutic self

Storylines of Family Medicine is a 12-part series of thematically linked essays with accompanying illustrations that explore the many dimensions of family medicine, as interpreted by individual family physicians and medical educators in the USA and elsewhere around the world. In 'V: ways of thinking-honing the therapeutic self', authors present the following sections: 'Reflective practice in action', 'The doctor as drug-Balint groups', 'Cultivating compassion', 'Towards a humanistic approach to doctoring', 'Intimacy in family medicine', 'The many faces of suffering', 'Transcending suffering' and 'The power of listening to stories.' May readers feel a deeper sense of their own therapeutic agency by reflecting on these essays.</p

The TEXES Survey For H2 Emission From Protoplanetary Disks

We report the results of a search for pure rotational molecular hydrogen emission from the circumstellar environments of young stellar objects with disks using the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Observatory. We searched for mid-infrared H2 emission in the S(1), S(2), and S(4) transitions. Keck/NIRSPEC observations of the H2 S(9) transition were included for some sources as an additional constraint on the gas temperature. We detected H2 emission from 6 of 29 sources observed: AB Aur, DoAr 21, Elias 29, GSS 30 IRS 1, GV Tau N, and HL Tau. Four of the six targets with detected emission are class I sources that show evidence for surrounding material in an envelope in addition to a circumstellar disk. In these cases, we show that accretion shock heating is a plausible excitation mechanism. The detected emission lines are narrow (~10 km/s), centered at the stellar velocity, and spatially unresolved at scales of 0.4 arcsec, which is consistent with origin from a disk at radii 10-50 AU from the star. In cases where we detect multiple emission lines, we derive temperatures > 500 K from ~1 M_earth of gas. Our upper limits for the non-detections place upper limits on the amount of H2 gas with T > 500 K of less than a few Earth masses. Such warm gas temperatures are significantly higher than the equilibrium dust temperatures at these radii, suggesting that the gas is decoupled from the dust in the regions we are studying and that processes such as UV, X-ray, and accretion heating may be important.Comment: 24 pages, 16 figures, 5 tables, ApJ accepte

Diagnostic Delay Is Associated with Complicated Disease and Growth Impairment in Paediatric Crohn\u27s Disease

Background: Paediatric data on the association between diagnostic delay and inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] complications are lacking. We aimed to determine the effect of diagnostic delay on stricturing/fistulising complications, surgery, and growth impairment in a large paediatric cohort, and to identify predictors of diagnostic delay. Methods: We conducted a national, prospective, multicentre IBD inception cohort study including 1399 children. Diagnostic delay was defined as time from symptom onset to diagnosis \u3e75th percentile. Multivariable proportional hazards [PH] regression was used to examine the association between diagnostic delay and stricturing/fistulising complications and surgery, and multivariable linear regression to examine the association between diagnostic delay and growth. Predictors of diagnostic delay were identified using Cox PH regression. Results: Overall (64% Crohn\u27s disease [CD]; 36% ulcerative colitis/IBD unclassified [UC/IBD-U]; 57% male]), median time to diagnosis was 4.2 (interquartile range [IQR] 2.0-9.2) months. For the overall cohort, diagnostic delay was \u3e9.2 months; in CD, \u3e10.8 months and in UC/IBD-U, \u3e6.6 months. In CD, diagnostic delay was associated with a 2.5-fold higher rate of strictures/internal fistulae (hazard ratio [HR] 2.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.41-4.56). Every additional month of diagnostic delay was associated with a decrease in height-for-age z-score of 0.013 standard deviations [95% CI 0.005-0.021]. Associations persisted after adjusting for disease location and therapy. No independent association was observed between diagnostic delay and surgery in CD or UC/IBD-U. Diagnostic delay was more common in CD, particularly small bowel CD. Abdominal pain, including isolated abdominal pain in CD, was associated with diagnostic delay. Conclusions: Diagnostic delay represents a risk factor for stricturing/internal fistulising complications and growth impairment in paediatric CD

Addressing chemical pollution in biodiversity research

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution are planetary-scale emergencies requiring urgent mitigation actions. As these "triple crises" are deeply interlinked, they need to be tackled in an integrative manner. However, while climate change and biodiversity are often studied together, chemical pollution as a global change factor contributing to worldwide biodiversity loss has received much less attention in biodiversity research so far. Here, we review evidence showing that the multifaceted effects of anthropogenic chemicals in the environment are posing a growing threat to biodiversity and ecosystems. Therefore, failure to account for pollution effects may significantly undermine the success of biodiversity protection efforts. We argue that progress in understanding and counteracting the negative impact of chemical pollution on biodiversity requires collective efforts of scientists from different disciplines, including but not limited to ecology, ecotoxicology, and environmental chemistry. Importantly, recent developments in these fields have now enabled comprehensive studies that could efficiently address the manifold interactions between chemicals and ecosystems. Based on their experience with intricate studies of biodiversity, ecologists are well equipped to embrace the additional challenge of chemical complexity through interdisciplinary collaborations. This offers a unique opportunity to jointly advance a seminal frontier in pollution ecology and facilitate the development of innovative solutions for environmental protection

Injecting drug use predicts active tuberculosis in a national cohort of people living with HIV

OBJECTIVES: Tuberculosis (TB) is common in people living with HIV, leading to worse clinical outcomes including increased mortality. We investigated risk factors for developing TB following HIV diagnosis. DESIGN: Adults aged at least 15 years first presenting to health services for HIV care in England, Wales or Northern Ireland from 2000 to 2014 were identified from national HIV surveillance data and linked to TB surveillance data. METHODS: We calculated incidence rates for TB occurring more than 91 days after HIV diagnosis and investigated risk factors using multivariable Poisson regression. RESULTS: A total of 95 003 adults diagnosed with HIV were followed for 635 591 person-years; overall incidence of TB was 344 per 100 000 person-years (95% confidence interval 330-359). TB incidence was high for people who acquired HIV through injecting drugs [PWID; men 876 (696-1104), women 605 (365-945)] and black Africans born in high TB incidence countries [644 (612-677)]. The adjusted incidence rate ratio for TB amongst PWID was 4.79 (3.35-6.85) for men and 6.18 (3.49-10.93) for women, compared with MSM. The adjusted incidence rate ratio for TB in black Africans from high-TB countries was 4.27 (3.42-5.33), compared with white UK-born individuals. Lower time-updated CD4 cell count was associated with increased rates of TB. CONCLUSION: PWID had the greatest risk of TB; incidence rates were comparable with those in black Africans from high TB incidence countries. Most TB cases in PWID were UK-born, and likely acquired TB through transmission within the United Kingdom. Earlier HIV diagnosis and quicker initiation of antiretroviral therapy should reduce TB incidence in these populations

Constraining remote oxidation capacity with ATom observations

The global oxidation capacity, defined as the tropospheric mean concentration of the hydroxyl radical (OH), controls the lifetime of reactive trace gases in the atmosphere such as methane and carbon monoxide (CO). Models tend to underestimate the methane lifetime and CO concentrations throughout the troposphere, which is consistent with excessive OH. Approximately half of the oxidation of methane and non-methane volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is thought to occur over the oceans where oxidant chemistry has received little validation due to a lack of observational constraints. We use observations from the first two deployments of the NASA ATom aircraft campaign during July-August 2016 and January-February 2017 to evaluate the oxidation capacity over the remote oceans and its representation by the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. The model successfully simulates the magnitude and vertical profile of remote OH within the measurement uncertainties. Comparisons against the drivers of OH production (water vapor, ozone, and NOy concentrations, ozone photolysis frequencies) also show minimal bias, with the exception of wintertime NOy. The severe model overestimate of NOy during this period may indicate insufficient wet scavenging and/or missing loss on sea-salt aerosols. Large uncertainties in these processes require further study to improve simulated NOy partitioning and removal in the troposphere, but preliminary tests suggest that their overall impact could marginally reduce the model bias in tropospheric OH. During the ATom-1 deployment, OH reactivity (OHR) below 3 km is significantly enhanced, and this is not captured by the sum of its measured components (cOHRobs) or by the model (cOHRmod). This enhancement could suggest missing reactive VOCs but cannot be explained by a comprehensive simulation of both biotic and abiotic ocean sources of VOCs. Additional sources of VOC reactivity in this region are difficult to reconcile with the full suite of ATom measurement constraints. The model generally reproduces the magnitude and seasonality of cOHRobs but underestimates the contribution of oxygenated VOCs, mainly acetaldehyde, which is severely underestimated throughout the troposphere despite its calculated lifetime of less than a day. Missing model acetaldehyde in previous studies was attributed to measurement uncertainties that have been largely resolved. Observations of peroxyacetic acid (PAA) provide new support for remote levels of acetaldehyde. The underestimate in both model acetaldehyde and PAA is present throughout the year in both hemispheres and peaks during Northern Hemisphere summer. The addition of ocean sources of VOCs in the model increases cOHRmod by 3 % to 9 % and improves model-measurement agreement for acetaldehyde, particularly in winter, but cannot resolve the model summertime bias. Doing so would require 100 Tg yr-1 of a longlived unknown precursor throughout the year with significant additional emissions in the Northern Hemisphere summer. Improving the model bias for remote acetaldehyde and PAA is unlikely to fully resolve previously reported model global biases in OH and methane lifetime, suggesting that future work should examine the sources and sinks of OH over land

The Formin-Homology Protein SmDia Interacts with the Src Kinase SmTK and the GTPase SmRho1 in the Gonads of Schistosoma mansoni

BACKGROUND:Schistosomiasis (bilharzia) is a parasitic disease of worldwide significance affecting human and animals. As schistosome eggs are responsible for pathogenesis, the understanding of processes controlling gonad development might open new perspectives for intervention. The Src-like tyrosine-kinase SmTK3 of Schistosoma mansoni is expressed in the gonads, and its pharmacological inhibition reduces mitogenic activity and egg production in paired females in vitro. Since Src kinases are important signal transduction proteins it is of interest to unravel the signaling cascades SmTK3 is involved in to understand its cellular role in the gonads. METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS:Towards this end we established and screened a yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) cDNA library of adult S. mansoni with a bait construct encoding the SH3 (src homology) domain and unique site of SmTK3. Among the binding partners found was a diaphanous homolog (SmDia), which was characterized further. SmDia is a single-copy gene transcribed throughout development with a bias towards male transcription. Its deduced amino acid sequence reveals all diaphanous-characteristic functional domains. Binding studies with truncated SmDia clones identified SmTK3 interaction sites demonstrating that maximal binding efficiency depends on the N-terminal part of the FH1 (formin homology) domain and the inter-domain region of SmDia located upstream of FH1 in combination with the unique site and the SH3 domain of SmTK3, respectively. SmDia also directly interacted with the GTPase SmRho1 of S. mansoni. In situ hybridization experiments finally demonstrated that SmDia, SmRho1, and SmTK3 are transcribed in the gonads of both genders. CONCLUSION:These data provide first evidence for the existence of two cooperating pathways involving Rho and Src that bridge at SmDia probably organizing cytoskeletal events in the reproductive organs of a parasite, and beyond that in gonads of eukaryotes. Furthermore, the FH1 and inter domain region of SmDia have been discovered as binding sites for the SH3 and unique site domains of SmTK3, respectively