Abrupt climate transition of icy worlds from snowball to moist or runaway greenhouse

Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by the evolutionary history of its climate. It has been suggested that icy planets and moons become habitable after their initial ice shield melts as their host stars brighten. Here we show from global climate model simulations that a habitable state is not achieved in the climatic evolution of those icy planets and moons that possess an inactive carbonate-silicate cycle and low concentrations of greenhouse gases. Examples for such planetary bodies are the icy moons Europa and Enceladus, and certain icy exoplanets orbiting G and F stars. We find that the stellar fluxes that are required to overcome a planet's initial snowball state are so large that they lead to significant water loss and preclude a habitable planet. Specifically, they exceed the moist greenhouse limit, at which water vapour accumulates at high altitudes where it can readily escape, or the runaway greenhouse limit, at which the strength of the greenhouse increases until the oceans boil away. We suggest that some icy planetary bodies may transition directly to a moist or runaway greenhouse without passing through a habitable Earth-like state.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, 2 supplementary tables, and 9 supplementary figure

Metric Optimization for Surface Analysis in the Laplace-Beltrami Embedding Space

In this paper we present a novel approach for the intrinsic mapping of anatomical surfaces and its application in brain mapping research. Using the Laplace-Beltrami eigen-system, we represent each surface with an isometry invariant embedding in a high dimensional space. The key idea in our system is that we realize surface deformation in the embedding space via the iterative optimization of a conformal metric without explicitly perturbing the surface or its embedding. By minimizing a distance measure in the embedding space with metric optimization, our method generates a conformal map directly between surfaces with highly uniform metric distortion and the ability of aligning salient geometric features. Besides pairwise surface maps, we also extend the metric optimization approach for group-wise atlas construction and multi-atlas cortical label fusion. In experimental results, we demonstrate the robustness and generality of our method by applying it to map both cortical and hippocampal surfaces in population studies. For cortical labeling, our method achieves excellent performance in a cross-validation experiment with 40 manually labeled surfaces, and successfully models localized brain development in a pediatric study of 80 subjects. For hippocampal mapping, our method produces much more significant results than two popular tools on a multiple sclerosis study of 109 subjects

Multiple parallel deinonychosaurian trackways from a diverse dinosaur track assemblage of the Lower Cretaceous Dasheng Group of Shandong Province, China

Many newly-discovered dinosaur tracksites have recently been reported from the Lower Cretaceous Dasheng Group of Shandong Province. These are proving valuable as tools for characterizing the fauna in deposits almost devoid of body fossils. Here we report on a new Cretaceous site, the 14th documented in recent years, with multiple track-bearing levels, that adds ∼300 tracks to a growing database. At least two morphotypes tentatively labelled as cf. Menglongpus isp., representing a deinonychosaur, and cf. Tatarornipes isp., representing an avian theropod, add to the list of at least seven named ichnogenera attributed to avian and non-avian theropods reported from the Dasheng Group in Shandong Province. Combined with two sauropodomorph and two ornithopod ichnogenera, and unnamed turtle tracks, the genus-level ichnodiversity (∼14) is one of the highest reported for any Cretaceous unit either regionally in China or globally. The tracks identified as cf. Menglongpus isp. occur in four parallel trackways indicating a group of small didactyl bipeds of inferred deinonychosaurian affinity. Despite the lack of body fossils from the Dasheng Group in Shandong Province, a high diversity of deinonychosaur body fossils is known from the contemporary Jehol Biota from northeastern China. This similarity underscores the importance of the Shandong track assemblage as indicators of regional, tetrapod biodiversity during the Cretaceous

Battery-free, fully implantable optofluidic cuff system for wireless optogenetic and pharmacological neuromodulation of peripheral nerves

Studies of the peripheral nervous system rely on controlled manipulation of neuronal function with pharmacologic and/or optogenetic techniques. Traditional hardware for these purposes can cause notable damage to fragile nerve tissues, create irritation at the biotic/abiotic interface, and alter the natural behaviors of animals. Here, we present a wireless, battery-free device that integrates a microscale inorganic light-emitting diode and an ultralow-power microfluidic system with an electrochemical pumping mechanism in a soft platform that can be mounted onto target peripheral nerves for programmed delivery of light and/or pharmacological agents in freely moving animals. Biocompliant designs lead to minimal effects on overall nerve health and function, even with chronic use in vivo. The small size and light weight construction allow for deployment as fully implantable devices in mice. These features create opportunities for studies of the peripheral nervous system outside of the scope of those possible with existing technologies.NIH Director's Transformative Research [TR01 NS081707]; NIH SPARC Award via the NIBIB of the NIH [U18EB021793, R01 NS42595]; NIMH of the NIH [R41MH116525]; NRSA [F32 DK115122]; McDonnell Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology Postdoctoral Fellowship [T32 DA007261]; Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) [T32 GM07200]; University of Missouri-Columbia start-up fund; NINDS NRSA [F31 NS103472]Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Rethinking headache as a global public health case model for reaching the SDG 3 HEALTH by 2030

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out, through 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a path for the prosperity of people and the planet. SDG 3 in particular aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages and includes several targets to enhance health. This review presents a “headache-tailored” perspective on how to achieve SDG 3 by focusing on six specific actions: targeting chronic headaches; reducing the overuse of acute pain-relieving medications; promoting the education of healthcare professionals; granting access to medication in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC); implementing training and educational opportunities for healthcare professionals in low and middle income countries; building a global alliance against headache disorders. Addressing the burden of headache disorders directly impacts on populations’ health, as well as on the possibility to improve the productivity of people aged below 50, women in particular. Our analysis pointed out several elements, and included: moving forward from frequency-based parameters to define headache severity; recognizing and managing comorbid diseases and risk factors; implementing a disease management multi-modal management model that incorporates pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments; early recognizing and managing the overuse of acute pain-relieving medications; promoting undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing medical education of healthcare professionals with specific training on headache; and promoting a culture that favors the recognition of headaches as diseases with a neurobiological basis, where this is not yet recognized. Making headache care more sustainable is an achievable objective, which will require multi-stakeholder collaborations across all sectors of society, both health-related and not health-related. Robust investments will be needed; however, considering the high prevalence of headache disorders and the associated disability, these investments will surely improve multiple health outcomes and lift development and well-being globally.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Removal of Hepatitis B virus surface HBsAg and core HBcAg antigens using microbial fuel cells producing electricity from human urine

© 2019, The Author(s). Microbial electrochemical technology is emerging as an alternative way of treating waste and converting this directly to electricity. Intensive research on these systems is ongoing but it currently lacks the evaluation of possible environmental transmission of enteric viruses originating from the waste stream. In this study, for the first time we investigated this aspect by assessing the removal efficiency of hepatitis B core and surface antigens in cascades of continuous flow microbial fuel cells. The log-reduction (LR) of surface antigen (HBsAg) reached a maximum value of 1.86 ± 0.20 (98.6% reduction), which was similar to the open circuit control and degraded regardless of the recorded current. Core antigen (HBcAg) was much more resistant to treatment and the maximal LR was equal to 0.229 ± 0.028 (41.0% reduction). The highest LR rate observed for HBsAg was 4.66 ± 0.19 h−1 and for HBcAg 0.10 ± 0.01 h−1. Regression analysis revealed correlation between hydraulic retention time, power and redox potential on inactivation efficiency, also indicating electroactive behaviour of biofilm in open circuit control through the snorkel-effect. The results indicate that microbial electrochemical technologies may be successfully applied to reduce the risk of environmental transmission of hepatitis B virus but also open up the possibility of testing other viruses for wider implementation

Wearable Microfluidic Diaphragm Pressure Sensor for Health and Tactile Touch Monitoring

Flexible pressure sensors have many potential applications in wearable electronics, robotics, health monitoring, and more. In particular, liquid-metal-based sensors are especially promising as they can undergo strains of over 200% without failure. However, current liquid-metal-based strain sensors are incapable of resolving small pressure changes in the few kPa range, making them unsuitable for applications such as heart-rate monitoring, which require a much lower pressure detection resolution. In this paper, a microfluidic tactile diaphragm pressure sensor based on embedded Galinstan microchannels (70 µm width × 70 µm height) capable of resolving sub-50 Pa changes in pressure with sub-100 Pa detection limits and a response time of 90 ms is demonstrated. An embedded equivalent Wheatstone bridge circuit makes the most of tangential and radial strain fields, leading to high sensitivities of a 0.0835 kPa^(−1) change in output voltage. The Wheatstone bridge also provides temperature self-compensation, allowing for operation in the range of 20–50 °C. As examples of potential applications, a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) wristband with an embedded microfluidic diaphragm pressure sensor capable of real-time pulse monitoring and a PDMS glove with multiple embedded sensors to provide comprehensive tactile feedback of a human hand when touching or holding objects are demonstrated