Decadal climate prediction at the BSC

Initialised decadal climate predictions have been made available for users as a potential source of near-term climate information with the aim of supporting climate-related decisions in key economic and societal sectors such as energy, agriculture and insurance. Observed climate variability on the decadal timescale can be described as the superimposition of an anthropogenically-driven trend on natural variability of the climate system. The trend can be considered to be driven by changes in anthropogenic emissions (mainly greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols). Natural variability is generated internally by interactions between and within different components of the climate system (atmosphere, ocean and sea ice) or by external factors such as volcanic eruptions and solar activity. The variability modes on timescales of several years and longer can then provide a source of potential predictability and thus lead to skill of decadal predictions. In this context, there is a growing interest from many stakeholders for climate services on 1-10 year timescales, but some efforts are still needed from the climate science community to assess the forecast quality on such timescales

Conflicto constructivo e integración en la obra de Mary Parker Follet

La historia de la ciencia ni es lineal ni transparente, aunque la cita reiterada de determinadas obras y autores los convierte en hitos que dan la apariencia de linealidad y transparencia. En el ámbito que nos ocupa, el de la perspectiva psicosocial del conflicto en las organizaciones, cualquier persona interesada en el mismo reconocería como hitos las aportaciones de Morton Deutsch (1969, 1973), Kenneth E. Boulding (1964), Kenneth W. Thomas (1976, 1992) o las más recientes del interesante grupo de profesores holandeses nucleados en torno a Evert van de Vliert (1998) y hasta integraría con facilidad a sociólogos como Louis Coser (1956, 1967) o Ralph Dahrendorf (1959)1. E incluso se puede encontrar una cierta linealidad que muestra cómo el conflicto inicialmente es tratado como un elemento negativo en las organizaciones (las perspectivas de la sociología funcionalista y de la organización científica del trabajo son claros ejemplos), para centrarse posteriormente en la causalidad debida a elementos disfuncionales (individuos, grupos o funciones -comunicación principalmente-), para más adelante considerar las posibles bondades del conflicto, y recientemente aceptar el conflicto como un elemento más de las organizaciones. Este relato da una coherencia a los esfuerzos en la comprensión del conflicto en las organizaciones que nos la muestra como si hubiese sido el resultado de una comunidad relativamente pequeña de investigadores, que se asombran, con una cadencia temporal relativamente constante, de las intuiciones geniales de uno de los compañeros del grupo que hace progresar el conocimiento del ámbito de estudio. Poco hay que explicar a cualquier persona cercana al ámbito académico de la inconsistencia de tal relato, aunque quizá tenga su valor didáctico mostrándose como una suerte de "historia del conflicto en las organizaciones contada a los alumnos". En un siglo de esfuerzos intelectuales, ha estado implicado un número literalmente incontable de personas. Algunas, pocas, de esas personas son conocidas. Tras ellas permanecen todas las demás, algunas de las cuales tienen un merecido anonimato por la falta de aportaciones significativas, pero otras han caído en un injusto e inexplicable olvido. Mary Parker Follett merece un análisis en profundidad de su obra y un lugar entre los referentes de la ciencia social. En este artículo vamos a centrarnos en una pequeña obra suya, que adoptó a veces la forma de artículo y otras la de conferencia, y en la que aborda de forma explícita la gestión del conflicto en las organizaciones, aunque sus intereses desbordan con mucho este ámbito tan restringido2. Además, y precisamente por las dimensiones de su olvido y desconocimiento como científica social, hemos incluido una breve referencia a su vida y obra con el objetivo de contextualizar tanto el texto que hemos traducido como el excepcional reconocimiento que tuvo entre sus contemporáneos

Sphingomyelin Synthases in Neuropsychiatric Health and Disease

Sphingomyelin synthases (SMS) catalyze the conversion of ceramide and phosphatidylcholine to sphingomyelin and diacylglycerol and are thus crucial for the balance between synthesis and degradation of these structural and bioactive molecules. SMS thereby play an essential role in sphingolipid metabolism, cell signaling, proliferation and differentiation processes. Although tremendous progress has been made toward understanding the involvement of SMS in physiological and pathological processes, literature in the area of neuropsychiatry is still limited. In this review, we summarize the main features of SMS as well as the current methodologies and tools used for their study and provide an overview of SMS in the central nervous system and their implications in neurological as well as psychiatric disorders. This way, we aim at establishing a basis for future mechanistic as well as clinical investigations on SMS in neuropsychiatric health and diseases

Psicología social y postmodernidad

En los años setenta tuvo lugar en la psicología social un proceso de autorreflexión conocido como la "crisis" de la psicología social. Tras una década de publicaciones en la que se denuncio su irrelevancia social, la no representatividad de las muestras, la inadecuación de la exclusividad del método experimental, etc. La crisis se disolvió por agotamiento mas que por resolución. Algunos autores insatisfechos con este desenlace convergieron en los años ochenta con un proceso de critica general a la modernidad que ha sido conocido como "postmodernidad". El maridaje puede ser reconocido en la ciencia social por la textualización de la realidad y su virtualización, así como la disolución del sujeto en sus relaciones, siendo el construccionismo social, la psicología social retórica y el análisis de discurso sus expresiones mas reconocibles en la psicología social. Pero la critica a la modernidad puede hacerse desde dentro de esta. La obra de haber mas puede ser un referente para desarrollar el debate modernidad vs postmodernidad dentro de la disciplin

Few Shot Learning in Histopathological Images:Reducing the Need of Labeled Data on Biological Datasets

Although deep learning pathology diagnostic algorithms are proving comparable results with human experts in a wide variety of tasks, they still require a huge amount of well annotated data for training. Generating such extensive and well labelled datasets is time consuming and is not feasible for certain tasks and so, most of the medical datasets available are scarce in images and therefore, not enough for training. In this work we validate that the use of few shot learning techniques can transfer knowledge from a well defined source domain from Colon tissue into a more generic domain composed by Colon, Lung and Breast tissue by using very few training images. Our results show that our few-shot approach is able to obtain a balanced accuracy (BAC) of 90% with just 60 training images, even for the Lung and Breast tissues that were not present on the training set. This outperforms the finetune transfer learning approach that obtains 73% BAC with 60 images and requires 600 images to get up to 81% BAC.This study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 732111 (PICCOLO project)

Identificación y especularidad en los espectadores de violencia en televisión: una reconstrucción a partir del discurso.

Numerosos autores han vinculado la experiencia de ver violencia en televisión con procesos de identificación. La investigación ha descubierto dimensiones que no recogen con precisión la experiencia peculiar de los espectadores. El objetivo de este trabajo es reconstruir la noción de identificación a partir del discurso. Se analizaron ocho grupos focales con visionado de fragmentos de programas con violencia real o ficticia. Los resultados muestran que la identificación está conectada a la especularidad, la posibilidad de experimentar la misma emoción e impacto de los personajes, según la similitud o preferencia de los espectadores. Por último, se discuten las implicaciones sobre los efectos de la violencia en televisió

Robust multi-year climate impacts of volcanic eruptions in decadal prediction systems

Major tropical volcanic eruptions have a large impact on climate, but there have only been three major eruptions during the recent relatively well-observed period. Models are therefore an important tool to understand and predict the impacts of an eruption. This study uses five state-of-the-art decadal prediction systems that have been initialized with the observed state before volcanic aerosols are introduced. The impact of the volcanic aerosols is found by subtracting the results of a reference experiment where the volcanic aerosols are omitted. We look for the robust impact across models and volcanoes by combining all the experiments, which helps reveal a signal even if it is weak in the models. The models used in this study simulate realistic levels of warming in the stratosphere, but zonal winds are weaker than the observations. As a consequence, models can produce a pattern similar to the North Atlantic Oscillation in the first winter following the eruption, but the response and impact on surface temperatures is weaker than in observations. Reproducing the pattern, but not the amplitude, may be related to a known model error. There are also impacts in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This work contributes towards improving the interpretation of decadal predictions in the case of a future large tropical volcanic eruption

Trends, variability and predictive skill of the ocean heat content in North Atlantic: an analysis with the EC-Earth3 model

This study investigates linear trends, variability and predictive skill of the upper ocean heat content (OHC) in the North Atlantic basin. This is a region where strong decadal variability superimposes the externally forced trends, introducing important differences in the local warming rates and leading in the case of the Central Subpolar North Atlantic to an overall long-term cooling. Our analysis aims to better understand these regional differences, by investigating how internal and forced variability contribute to local trends, exploring also their role on the local prediction skill. The analysis combines the study of three ocean reanalyses to document the uncertainties related to observations with two sets of CMIP6 experiments performed with the global coupled climate model EC-Earth3: a historical ensemble to characterise the forced signals, and a retrospective decadal prediction system to additionally characterise the contributions from internal climate variability. Our results show that internal variability is essential to understand the spatial pattern of North Atlantic OHC trends, contributing decisively to the local trends and providing high levels of predictive skill in the Eastern Subpolar North Atlantic and the Irminger and Iceland Seas, and to a lesser extent in the Labrador Sea. Skill and trends in other areas like the Subtropical North Atlantic, or the Gulf Stream Extension are mostly externally forced. Large observational and modeling uncertainties affect the trends and interannual variability in the Central Subpolar North Atlantic, the only region exhibiting a cooling during the study period, uncertainties that might explain the very poor local predictive skill.Teresa Carmo-Costa, Ana Teles-Machado and Emanuel Dutra would like to acknowledge the financial support from FCT through projects FCT-UIDB/50019/2020 and PD/BD/142785/2018. Furthermore, Ana Teles-Machado acknowledges SARDINHA2020 (MAR2020) and ROADMAP (JPIOCEANS/ 0001/2019). Roberto Bilbao was supported by the European Commission H2020 projects EUCP (Grant no. 776613). Pablo Ortega was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness through the Ramon y Cajal grant RYC-2017-22772.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Antitumor effect of allogenic fibroblasts engineered to express Fas ligand (FasL)

Fas ligand is a type II transmembrane protein which can induce apoptosis in Fas-expressing cells. Recent reports indicate that expression of FasL in transplanted cells may cause graft rejection and, on the other hand, tumor cells may lose their tumorigenicity when they are engineered to express FasL. These effects could be related to recruitment of neutrophils by FasL with activation of their cytotoxic machinery. In this study we investigated the antitumor effect of allogenic fibroblasts engineered to express FasL. Fibroblasts engineered to express FasL (PA317/FasL) did not exert toxic effects on transformed liver cell line (BNL) or colon cancer cell line (CT26) in vitro, but they could abrogate their tumorigenicity in vivo. Histological examination of the site of implantation of BNL cells mixed with PA317/FasL revealed massive infiltration of polymorphonuclear neutrophils and mononuclear cells. A specific immune protective effect was observed in animals primed with a mixture of BNL or CT26 and PA317/FasL cells. Rechallenge with tumor cells 14 or 100 days after priming resulted in protection of 100 or 50% of animals, respectively. This protective effect was due to CD8+ cells since depletion of CD8+ led to tumor formation. In addition, treatment of pre-established BNL tumors with a subcutaneous injection of BNL and PA317/FasL cell mixture at a distant site caused significant inhibition of tumor growth. These data demonstrate that allogenic cells engineered with FasL are able to abolish tumor growth and induce specific protective immunity when they are mixed with neoplastic cells

WMO global annual to decadal climate update: a prediction for 2021–25

As climate change accelerates, societies and climate-sensitive socioeconomic sectors cannot continue to rely on the past as a guide to possible future climate hazards. Operational decadal predictions offer the potential to inform current adaptation and increase resilience by filling the important gap between seasonal forecasts and climate projections. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has recognized this and in 2017 established the WMO Lead Centre for Annual to Decadal Climate Predictions (shortened to “Lead Centre” below), which annually provides a large multimodel ensemble of predictions covering the next 5 years. This international collaboration produces a prediction that is more skillful and useful than any single center can achieve. One of the main outputs of the Lead Centre is the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (GADCU), a consensus forecast based on these predictions. This update includes maps showing key variables, discussion on forecast skill, and predictions of climate indices such as the global mean near-surface temperature and Atlantic multidecadal variability. it also estimates the probability of the global mean temperature exceeding 1.5°C above preindustrial levels for at least 1 year in the next 5 years, which helps policy-makers understand how closely the world is approaching this goal of the Paris Agreement. This paper, written by the authors of the GADCU, introduces the GADCU, presents its key outputs, and briefly discusses its role in providing vital climate information for society now and in the future.LH and AS were supported by the EUCP project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, Grant Agreement 776613 and supported by the U.K.–China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund. AS, DS, and MS were supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS and Defra. The EC-Earth simulations at SMHI were performed on resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at PDC and NSC and have been performed as part of the NordForsk-funded Nordic Centre of Excellence project (Award 76654) Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies (ARCPATH). SY and TT were supported by the ARCPATH (NordForsk Award 76654) and the Danish state-funded National Centre for Climate Research [Nationalt Center for Klimaforskning (NCFK)]. SY was also partly supported by the EUCP project (Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement 776613). The EC-Earth simulations at BSC were performed using resources from the Red Española de Supercomputación. HP and WM received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) project MiKlip (FKZ 01LP1519A). Takahito Kataoka and Hiroaki Tatebe were supported by the Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (TOUGOU) Grant JPMXD0717935457 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan. MIROC simulations were performed on the Earth Simulator at JAMSTEC. NK, YW, FC, and IB were supported by the Trond Mohn Foundation (Grant BFS2018TMT01; Bjerknes Climate Prediction Unit).Peer Reviewed"Article signat per 45 autors/es: Leon Hermanson, Doug Smith, Melissa Seabrook, Roberto Bilbao, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Etienne Tourigny, Vladimir Lapin, Viatcheslav V. Kharin, William J. Merryfield, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Panos Athanasiadis, Dario Nicoli, Silvio Gualdi, Nick Dunstone, Rosie Eade, Adam Scaife, Mark Collier, Terence O’Kane, Vassili Kitsios, Paul Sandery, Klaus Pankatz, Barbara Früh, Holger Pohlmann, Wolfgang Müller, Takahito Kataoka, Hiroaki Tatebe, Masayoshi Ishii, Yukiko Imada, Tim Kruschke, Torben Koenigk, Mehdi Pasha Karami, Shuting Yang, Tian Tian, Liping Zhang, Tom Delworth, Xiaosong Yang, Fanrong Zeng, Yiguo Wang, François Counillon, Noel Keenlyside, Ingo Bethke, Judith Lean, Jürg Luterbacher, Rupa Kumar Kolli, and Arun Kumar"Postprint (published version