Anthropogenic Electromagnetic Fields and Cancer: A Perspective

The authors review findings of a recent National Research Council report and conclude that, e.g., until a cancer promotion model can be identified for effective testing, the EMF issue will remain open to debate

EXPOSURE CONCENTRATIONS OF PHARMACEUTICAL ESTROGENS AND XENOESTROGENS IN MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT SOURCES, THE AQUATIC ENVIRONMENT AND AN AQUATIC HAZARD ASSESSMENT OF BISPHENOL-A: IMPLICATIONS FOR WILDLIFE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Humans are exposed daily to both pharmaceutical estrogens and xenoestrogens (PEXE) due to their presence in many household products, food products, soil, air, water and estrogen based medications. These PEXEs have been implicated in various human health outcomes, such as breast cancer in women and testicular dysgenesis syndrome including testicular cancer. They also can have adverse reproductive effects on aquatic wildlife through sex reversals, production of intersex individuals, alterations in mating, and prevention of gonadal maturation. There are many sources and types of PEXEs in air, water, soil, household products and food products, but the focus for this research is on the transport and fate of PEXEs from all media into surface water, especially through municipal waste water treatment plant (WWTP) sources. This dissertation consists of three related research papers. The first examines the sources and types of PEXEs in municipal WWTPs. The second documents and compares aquatic exposure concentrations of PEXEs to their Predicted No effect concentration (PNECs) to determine aquatic species protectiveness or risk. The third paper conducts an aquatic hazard assessment of the xenoestrogen, Bisphenol A (BPA). The findings of the research suggest that PEXEs; contain compounds that can mimic estrogens, are mostly introduced into the environment through municipal WWTP effluent sources, and are discharged directly into rivers and lakes at environmentally relevant concentrations. Specifically, BPA, a compound widely used in plastics may be present in surface waters at hazardous concentrations that may present a risk for aquatic receptors. The public health significance of this research is that approximately sixty percent of Americans obtain their drinking water from surface water sources. Thus, understanding PEXEs and their concentrations present of WWTP effluents is imperative for environmental public health tracking of associated disease states, and in the regulation of fish or wildlife consumption from rivers and lakes. Further, to examine adverse health effects in the biotic aquatic system is to indirectly explore possible exposure and health effects on humans since species in the wild are sentinels for human exposure ("the canary in the mine"). Sentinel animals may provide early warning of potential risks before disease develops in human populations

Converting InSAR- and GNSS-derived strain rate maps into earthquake hazard models for Anatolia

&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Geodetic measurements of crustal deformation rates can provide important constraints on a region&amp;amp;#8217;s earthquake hazard that purely seismicity-based hazard models may miss. For example, geodesy might show that strain (or a deficit of seismic moment) is accumulating faster than the total rate at which known earthquakes have released it, implying that the long-term hazard may include larger earthquakes with long recurrence intervals (and/or temporal increases in seismicity rates). Conversely, the moment release rate in recent earthquakes might surpass the geodetic moment buildup rate, suggesting that the long-term-average earthquake activity and hazard may in fact may be more quiescent than might be estimated using the earthquake history alone. Such geodetic constraints, however, have traditionally been limited by poor spatial and/or temporal sampling, resulting in ambiguities about how the lithosphere accommodates strain in space and time that can bias estimates of the resulting hazard. High-resolution deformation maps address this limitation by imaging (rather than presuming and/or modelling) where and how deformation takes place. These maps are now within reach for the Alpine-Himalayan Belt &amp;amp;#8211; one of the most populous and seismically hazardous regions on Earth &amp;amp;#8211; thanks to the COMET-LiCSAR InSAR processing system, which performs large-scale automated processing and timeseries analysis of Sentinel-1 data provided by the EU&amp;amp;#8217;s Copernicus programme. We are pairing LiCSAR products with GNSS data to generate high-resolution maps of interseismic surface motion (velocity) and strain rate for the Anatolia region. Here we quantitively investigate what these strain rate distributions imply for seismic hazard in this region, using two approaches in parallel.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;First, building on previous work, we develop a fully probability-based method to pair geodesy and seismic catalogs to estimate the recurrence times of large, moderate and small earthquakes in a given region. We assume that earthquakes 1) obey a power-law magnitude-frequency distribution up to a maximum magnitude and 2) collectively release seismic moment at the same rate that we estimate it is accumulating from the strain rate maps. Iterating over various magnitude-frequency distributions and their governing parameters, and formally incorporating uncertainties in moment buildup rate and the magnitudes of recorded earthquakes, we build a probabilistic long-term-average earthquake model for Anatolia as a whole, including the most likely maximum earthquake magnitude. Second, we estimate how seismic hazard may vary from place to place within Anatolia. Using insights from dislocation models, we identify two key signatures of a locked fault in a strain rate field, allowing us to convert the newly developed strain maps to &amp;amp;#8220;effective fault maps.&amp;amp;#8221; Additionally, we explore how characteristics of earthquake magnitude-frequency distributions may scale with the rate of strain (or moment) buildup, and what these scaling relations imply for the distribution of hazard in Anatolia, using the seismic catalog to evaluate these hypotheses. We also explore the implications of our findings for seismic hazard and address how to expand these approaches to the Alpine-Himalaya Belt as a whole.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; </jats:p

Behavior of the Escape Rate Function in Hyperbolic Dynamical Systems

For a fixed initial reference measure, we study the dependence of the escape rate on the hole for a smooth or piecewise smooth hyperbolic map. First, we prove the existence and Holder continuity of the escape rate for systems with small holes admitting Young towers. Then we consider general holes for Anosov diffeomorphisms, without size or Markovian restrictions. We prove bounds on the upper and lower escape rates using the notion of pressure on the survivor set and show that a variational principle holds under generic conditions. However, we also show that the escape rate function forms a devil's staircase with jumps along sequences of regular holes and present examples to elucidate some of the difficulties involved in formulating a general theory.Comment: 21 pages. v2 differs from v1 only by additions to the acknowledgment

Estimating the minimum important difference in the DEMQOL instrument in people with dementia

Purpose The Dementia-Related Quality of Life (DEMQOL) measure and the DEMQOL-Utility Score (DEMQOL-U) are validated tools for measuring quality of life (QOL) in people with dementia. What score changes translate to a clinically significant impact on patients’ lives was unknown. This study establishes the minimal important differences (MID) for these two instruments. Methods Anchor-based and distribution-based methods were used to estimate the MID scores from patients enrolled in a randomised controlled trial. For the anchor-based method, the global QOL (Q29) item from the DEMQOL was chosen as the anchor for DEMQOL and both Q29 and EQ-5D for DEMQOL-U. A one category difference in Q29, and a 0.07 point difference in EQ-5D score, were used to classify improvement and deterioration, and the MID scores were calculated for each category. These results were compared with scores obtained by the distribution-based methods. Results A total of 490 people with dementia had baseline DEMQOL data, of these 386 had 8-month data, and 344 had 12-month DEMQOL data. The absolute change in DEMQOL for a combined 1-point increase or decrease in the Q29 anchor was 5.2 at 8 months and 6.0 at 12 months. For the DEMQOL-U, the average absolute change at 8 and 12 months was 0.032 and 0.046 for the Q29 anchor and 0.020 and 0.024 for EQ-5D anchor. Conclusion We present MID scores for the DEMQOL and DEMQOL-U instruments obtained from a large cohort of patients with dementia. An anchored-based estimate of the MID for the DEMQOL is around 5 to 6 points; and 0.02 to 0.05 points for the DEMQOL-U. The results of this study can guide clinicians and researchers in the interpretation of these instruments comparisons between groups or within groups of people with dementia. Trial Registration Number and date of registration: ISRCTN17993825 on 11th October 2016

Towards InSAR Everywhere, All the Time, With Sentinel-1

Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014, and has been collecting data routinely over more than one year. Sentinel-1B is set for launch on 22 April 2016. The Sentinel-1 constellation has several advantages over previous radar missions for InSAR applications: (1) Data are being acquired systematically for tectonic and volcanic areas, (2) Images cover a wide footprint, 250 km from near to far range in Interferometric Wide Swath (TOPS) mode, (3) Small perpendicular and temporal baselines greatly improve interferometric coherence at C-band, (4) Data are freely available to all users, (5) The mission is planned to be operational for 20 years, with 1C and 1D planned for future launches. These features enable us to map geological processes occurring in any place at anytime using InSAR.We will review progress within COMET towards our ultimate goal of building a fully-automated processing system that provides deformation results and derived products to the wide InSAR and Geophysics communities. In addition to high-resolution-ECMWF-based atmospheric correction model, we will show results of a systematic analysis of interferometric coherence in tectonic and volcanic areas, and discuss the future goals and timeline for the COMET InSAR automated processing system

‘Preventing the next pandemic’ – A 2020 UNEP Frontiers Series Report on zoonotic diseases with reflections for South Africa

Zoonoses account for about 25% of the infectious disease burden in low-income countries. Poverty might increase the risk for zoonotic disease where the active human–livestock and human–wildlife interfaces can increase the likelihood of disease transmission. A combined disease burden exists for people in areas such as tropical and subtropical Africa, where there is likelihood of co-infection with zoonotic diseases and other pathogenic or infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.1 Many endemic zoonoses remain widely neglected in such settings, undetected and underreported, because their impacts are borne largely by impoverished and marginalised communities. Due to these unique contexts, the prevention and management of emerging and endemic zoonotic diseases in many African countries is a complex undertaking needing evidence-based guidance. In early 2020, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) took on the urgent task to provide an up-to-date, rapid scientific assessment on zoonotic diseases as part of the UNEP’s Frontiers Report Series. The goal of the report is to provide relevant information for policymakers on how to ‘prevent the next pandemic’ by interrogating what is known about zoonotic diseases and how best one can break the chain of transmission. As the world presently faces the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, this timely report helps decisionmakers with evidence-based actions, not only to flatten the curve of COVID-19 incidence, but to answer questions about zoonoses in general and plan for the future. In this Commentary, we give a brief overview of UNEP’s latest report and then relate some of the key messages and recommendations for policymakers to a South African context.http://www.sajs.co.zahj2020Geography, Geoinformatics and MeteorologyMammal Research InstituteZoology and Entomolog

Visibilities and the Politics of Space: Refugee Activism in Berlin

This article examines the ways in which refugee activists attained visibility within the public sphere while they contested, resisted, and helped transform multiple spaitials as part of their movement in Berlin, Germany. Scholarship on refugee and immigrant protests has focused on demonstrations and every day acts of resistance in refugee camps or accommodation. However, there has been less focus on the ways in which refugees engage in spatial politics. This article focuses on urban resistance in Berlin where refugee activists in alliance with supporters occupied several spaces and transformed them to political sites

Genetic structure, behaviour and invasion history of the Argentine ant supercolony in Australia

Biological invasions have significant ecological, evolutionary and economic consequences. Ants are exemplary invaders and their invasion success is frequently attributed to a shift in social structure between native and introduced populations. Here, we use a multidisciplinary approach to determine the social structure, origin and expansion of the invasive Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, in Australia by linking behavioural and genetic studies with indicators of dispersal pathways and propagule pressure. Behavioural assays revealed a complete absence of aggression within and between three cities – Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth – spanning 2700 km across Australia. Microsatellite analyses showed intracity genetic homogeneity and limited but significant intercity genetic differentiation. Exceptions were two Perth nests that likely represent independent translocations from Adelaide. These patterns suggest efficient local gene flow with more limited jump dispersal via transport corridors between cities. Microsatellite analyses of L. humile from potential source regions, combined with data from port interceptions, trade pathways and the timeline of spread within Australia, implicate the main European supercolony as the source of L. humile in Melbourne. Such an introduction probably then redistributed across Australia and spread to New Zealand to form an expansive Australasian supercolony