Effect of dialysis membrane and patient's age on signs of dialysis-related amyloidosis

Effect of dialysis membrane and patient's age on signs of dialysis-related amyloidosis. This 12 center study was designed to assess factors affecting the development and progression of β2-microglobulin amyloidosis in long-term dialysis. A total of 221 patients who were on hemodialysis for more than five years, and who were treated the entire time only with AN69, a biocompatible, highly permeable membrane, or cuprophane, a less permeable, poorly biocompatible membrane (Cell) were evaluated for time on dialysis, development of carpal tunnel syndrome, and cystic bone lesions X-ray documentation was taken in a minimum of four of the six following joints: both hips, wrists and shoulders. The data demonstrate that patients treated solely by AN69 membranes display signs of bone amyloidosis less frequently than do those treated by Cell membranes. Age at onset of dialysis was found to have a striking correlation with the development of carpal tunnel syndrome and bone amyloidosis, while no significant influence was found for hyperparathyroidism, sex or year of first dialysis

Heroes and villains of world history across cultures

© 2015 Hanke et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedEmergent properties of global political culture were examined using data from the World History Survey (WHS) involving 6,902 university students in 37 countries evaluating 40 figures from world history. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis techniques found only limited forms of universality in evaluations across Western, Catholic/Orthodox, Muslim, and Asian country clusters. The highest consensus across cultures involved scientific innovators, with Einstein having the most positive evaluation overall. Peaceful humanitarians like Mother Theresa and Gandhi followed. There was much less cross-cultural consistency in the evaluation of negative figures, led by Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. After more traditional empirical methods (e.g., factor analysis) failed to identify meaningful cross-cultural patterns, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to identify four global representational profiles: Secular and Religious Idealists were overwhelmingly prevalent in Christian countries, and Political Realists were common in Muslim and Asian countries. We discuss possible consequences and interpretations of these different representational profiles.This research was supported by grant RG016-P-10 from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (http://www.cckf.org.tw/). Religion Culture Entropy China Democracy Economic histor

Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate simulation over Greenland

A simulation of the 1991 summer has been performed over south Greenland with a coupled atmosphere–snow regional climate model (RCM) forced by the ECMWF re-analysis. The simulation is evaluated with in-situ coastal and ice-sheet atmospheric and glaciological observations. Modelled air temperature, specific humidity, wind speed and radiative fluxes are in good agreement with the available observations, although uncertainties in the radiative transfer scheme need further investigation to improve the model’s performance. In the sub-surface snow-ice model, surface albedo is calculated from the simulated snow grain shape and size, snow depth, meltwater accumulation, cloudiness and ice albedo. The use of snow metamorphism processes allows a realistic modelling of the temporal variations in the surface albedo during both melting periods and accumulation events. Concerning the surface albedo, the main finding is that an accurate albedo simulation during the melting season strongly depends on a proper initialization of the surface conditions which mainly result from winter accumulation processes. Furthermore, in a sensitivity experiment with a constant 0.8 albedo over the whole ice sheet, the average amount of melt decreased by more than 60%, which highlights the importance of a correctly simulated surface albedo. The use of this coupled atmosphere–snow RCM offers new perspectives in the study of the Greenland surface mass balance due to the represented feedback between the surface climate and the surface albedo, which is the most sensitive parameter in energy-balance-based ablation calculations.Peer reviewe

“Heroes” and “Villains” of world history across cultures

Emergent properties of global political culture were examined using data from the World History Survey (WHS) involving 6,902 university students in 37 countries evaluating 40 figures from world history. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis techniques found only limited forms of universality in evaluations across Western, Catholic/Orthodox, Muslim, and Asian country clusters. The highest consensus across cultures involved scientific innovators, with Einstein having the most positive evaluation overall. Peaceful humanitarians like Mother Theresa and Gandhi followed. There was much less cross-cultural consistency in the evaluation of negative figures, led by Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. After more traditional empirical methods (e.g., factor analysis) failed to identify meaningful cross-cultural patterns, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to identify four global representational profiles: Secular and Religious Idealists were overwhelmingly prevalent in Christian countries, and Political Realists were common in Muslim and Asian countries. We discuss possible consequences and interpretations of these different representational profiles.This research was supported by grant RG016-P-10 from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (http://www.cckf.org.tw/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Are natural climate forcings able to counteract the projected anthropogenic global warming?

A two-dimensional global climate model is used to assess the climatic changes associated with the new IPCC SRES emissions scenarios and to determine which kind of changes in total solar irradiance and volcanic perturbations could mask the projected anthropogenic global warming associated to the SRES scenarios. Our results suggest that only extremely unlikely changes in total solar irradiance and/or volcanic eruptions would be able to overcome the simulated anthropogenic global warming over the century. Nevertheless, in the critical interval of the next two decades the externally-driven natural climate variability might possibly confuse the debate about temperature trends and impede detection of the anthropogenic climate change signal

Simulations of the annual sea-ice cover in the Weddell Sea

A modelof sea-ice formation has been developed and applied to a sector of the Southern Ocean, including the Weddell Sea and the Drake Passage; it describes the annual cycle of sea-ice thickness and its spatial extent. This sea-ice model with leads consists of two parts: - the thermodynamical component which manages the freezing and melting processes due to energy fluxes between the atmosphere, ice and ocean. This component computes also the heat and salt transfers between mixed layer and deep ocean; - the dynamical component limited in the present version of the model to the computation of ice movement due to wind and surface current. The surface energy budget, heat and salt exchanges and momentum transfers are modelled and/or parameterised frorn monthly-averaged climatological data (wind, air temperature, dew point, cloudiness and snowfall) and annually- averaged values of temperature and salinity in the ocean. These data and the results of the sea-ice model, including ice thickness, temperature, mixed-layer depth and ice extent, are presented and discussed at specific points (offshore and coastal) and for the whole area. The sea-ice model has been applied to the Weddell Sea according to two methods: the "layer method" where the ocean depth is limited to a chosen value and the "robust-diagnostic method" where the obervations constrain the model with a short damping time. The results of both methods show good agreement with the observed amplitude for ice extent and the mean oceanic heat fluxes exchanged between ice and ocean. The sea-ice model using the robust-diagnostic method gives a smaller ice thickness than the layer method and better conserves salt and energy

Sea-ice simulations in the Weddell Sea

A model of sea-ice formation and movement has been developed and applied to a sector of the Southern Ocean including the Weddell Sea and the Drake Passage. This sea-ice model with leads is described in two parts : - the thermodynamical component, which represents the freezing and melting processes due to energy fluxes , between the atmosphere, ice, and ocean; - the dynamical component, presently limited to the computation of ice movement due to wind. Results from this model, including ice thickness, temperature. and spatial extent, will be presented and discussed for a particular point and for the whole area

Effects of relative humidity and temperature on sulphate aerosol optical properties

During their interaction with water vapor, hygroscopic aerosols modify their size, shape and refractive index, which alters their radiative properties. Furthermore, when the temperature changes, the equilibrium between the water vapor pressure above the surface of the liquid aerosols and the ambient water vapor pressure is affected, leading to a modification on the aerosol size and refractive index. This paper presents a study of the influence of temperature on sulphate aerosol optical properties. Our results indicate that both sulphate specific extinction and asymmetry factor are affected by temperature changes via the temperature dependence of the growth factor and of the refractive index of the humidified particles. However these changes appears to be of minor importance compared to the modifications introduced in response to relative humidity changes. This finding seems to give credence to the often adopted assumption of using optical constants and thermodynamic properties of the aerosol chemical species at fixed temperature of 25°C at which the major measurement have been made