Salud, interculturalidad y Buen Vivir: respeto a la diversidad y mutuo beneficio en el intercambio de saberes y experiencias

La configuración de espacios de diálogo entre varios interlocutores es la mayor expresión de la tolerancia, el respeto, la diferencia, la convivencia armónica, incluso la libertad. El resultado, como en el caso de esta obra, contribuye a la edificación de sociedades más justas, equitativas y solidarias, compromiso que profesionales y académicos de diferentes instituciones de Educación Superior del Ecuador asumieron en el I Congreso Internacional “interculturalidad y Buen Vivir, celebrado en 2018, en Cuenca, Ecuador. El libro se compone de tres partes. La primera parte, La sociedad y la búsqueda del bien común, propone al lector puntos de vista acerca de cómo son interpretados hoy los conceptos de la interculturalidad y de Buen Vivir. La segunda, Ciencia y tecnología y sabiduría ancestral: casos de investigación aplicada al contexto ecuatoriano, presenta los resultados de investigaciones realizadas en ámbitos disciplinarios distintos como la educación, la comunicación digital, la química, la medicina y la informática, acomunadas por la intención de asociar el desarrollo tecnológico al conocimiento, patrimonio de culturas ancestrales. La tercera parte pone en la mesa los resultados de investigaciones científicas que evidencian cómo la medicina, uno de los ámbitos científicos y sociales más importantes y tecnológicamente avanzados de nuestra era, resulte en múltiples expresiones de profunda raíz cultural que relaciona prácticas ancestrales y convencionales

Altimetry for the future: Building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the ‘‘Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Altimetry for the future: building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the “Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Ku-/Ka-Band Extrapolation of the Altimeter Cross Section and Assessment With Jason2/AltiKa Data

International audienceA simple extrapolation technique is proposed for the intercalibration of the Ku- and Ka-band altimeter data based on a recent analytical scattering model referred to as “GO4.” This method is tested with AltiKa and Jason2-Ku altimeters using one year of reprocessed data with the improved retracking algorithm ICENEW. The variations of the normalized radar cross section with respect to the main oceanic parameters are investigated in the Ku and Ka bands; the latter band is shown to have an increased sensitivity to wind speed, significant wave height as well as sea surface temperature. As a by-product of this analysis, we derive an original expression for the swell impact on the mean square slope, which allows to correct the GO4 model for the contribution of long waves. We show that the Ku/Ka prediction agrees within 0.25 dB with the respective levels of AltiKa and Jason2-Ku cross sections at wind speed larger than 4 m/s

Benefits of the Adaptive algorithm for retracking altimeter nadir echoes: results from simulations and CFOSAT/SWIM observations

International audienceThe accuracy of sea surface parameters retrieved from altimeter missions is predominantly governed by the choice of the so-called "retracking" algorithm, i.e. the model and inversion method implemented to obtain the surface parameters from the backscattered waveform. For continuity reasons, the choice of space agencies is usually to apply the same retracker from one satellite mission to the other to ensure long time homogeneous series. Here, taking the opportunity of a new configuration of the nadir pointing measurements on-board the recently launched CFOSAT satellite with the SWIM (Surface Waves Investigation and Monitoring) instrument (Hauser et al, 2020), the retracking method was upgraded, by implementing a novel algorithm, called "Adaptive" retracker. It combines the improvements brought by Poisson et al (2018) for the estimation of surface parameters from peaked waveforms over sea-ice, improvements in the way the instrumental characteristics are taken into account in the model (mispointing, point target response) and a more accurate consideration of speckle statistics. In this paper, we first show from simulations carried out in the instrumental configuration of SWIM that the Adaptive algorithm has better accuracy and performances than the classical MLE4 algorithm. Then, the geophysical parameters obtained with real data from SWIM are analyzed with comparisons to reference data sets (model and products from altimeters). We show that this new algorithm has several benefits with respect to the classical MLE4 method: no need of look-up tables to correct biases, significant noise reduction on all geophysical variables especially the significant wave height, and performance of inversion over a large set of echo shapes, resulting from standard oceanic scenes as well as highly specular conditions such as over bloom or sea-ice

Using a Tandem Flight Configuration between Sentinel-6 and Jason-3 to Compare SAR and Conventional Altimeters in Sea Surface Signatures of Internal Solitary Waves

Satellite altimetry has been providing a continuous record of ocean measurements with numerous applications across the entire range of ocean sciences. A reference orbit has been used since 1992 with TOPEX/Poseidon, which was repeated in the Jason missions, and in the newly launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich (in November 2020) to continually monitor the trends of sea level rise and other properties of the sea surface. These multidecadal missions have evolved alongside major technological advances, whose measurements are unified into a single data record owing to continuous intercalibration and validation efforts. However, the new Sentinel-6 provides synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, which improves the along-track resolution of conventional altimeters from a few kilometres (e.g., for Jason-3) to about 300 m. This means a major leap in sampling towards higher frequencies of the ocean spectrum, which inevitably means reconciling the assumption of a uniform Brown surface between the footprints of the larger kilometre-scale conventional altimetry and those of the finer-scale SAR altimetry. To explore this issue, this study uses the vantage point of the Sentinel-6/Jason-3 tandem phase to compare simultaneous sea surface signatures of large-scale Internal Solitary Waves (ISWs) between SAR and conventional altimetry. These waves can modulate the sea surface into arrayed sections of increased and decreased roughness with horizontal scales up to 10 km, which inflict sharp transitions between increased and decreased backscatter in the radar altimeters. It is found that Sentinel-6 can provide more detailed structures of ISWs in standard level-2 products, when compared with those from the conventional Jason-3 (similarly to previous results reported from the SAR altimeter from Sentinel-3). However, a new and striking feature is found when comparing the radar backscatter between Sentinel-6 and Jason-3, which are in opposite phases in the ISWs. These intriguing results are discussed in light of the intrinsically different acquisition geometries of SAR and conventional altimeters as well as possible implications thereof

CAL/VAL Phase for the Swim Instrument Onboard cFOSAT

International audienceThe Chinese-French oceanography satellite, CFOSAT, was launched on October 2018. Two Ku-band scatterometers are on-board: SCAT for the wind observation and SWIM for the wave observation. This paper presents the most recent results on the SWIM data quality analysis a few months after the end of the CAL/VAL phase

New observations from the SWIM radar on board CFOSAT: instrument validation and ocean wave measurement assessment

International audienceThis paper describes first results obtained from the SWIM (Surface Waves Investigation and Monitoring) instrument carried by CFOSAT (China France Oceanography Satellite), which was launched on October 29th, 2018. SWIM is a Ku-Band radar with a near-nadir scanning beam geometry. It was designed to measure the spectral properties of surface ocean waves. First, the good behavior of the instrument is illustrated. It is then shown that the nadir products (significant wave height, normalized radar cross-section and wind speed) exhibit an accuracy similar to standard altimeter missions, thanks to a new retracking algorithm, which compensates a lower sampling rate compared to standard altimetry missions. The off-nadir beam observations are analyzed in details. The normalized radar cross-section varies with incidence and wind speed as expected from previous studies presented in the literature. We illustrate that, in order to retrieve the wave spectra from the radar backscattering fluctuations, it is crucial to apply a speckle correction derived from the observations. Directional spectra of ocean waves and their mean parameters are then compared to wave model data at the global scale and to in situ data from a selection of case studies. The good efficiency of SWIM to provide the spectral properties of ocean waves in the wavelength range [70m-500m] is illustrated. The main limitations are discussed, and the perspectives to improve data quality are presented

Death in hospital following ICU discharge: insights from the LUNG SAFE study

ackground: To determine the frequency of, and factors associated with, death in hospital following ICU discharge to the ward. Methods: The Large observational study to UNderstand the Global impact of Severe Acute respiratory FailurE study was an international, multicenter, prospective cohort study of patients with severe respiratory failure, conducted across 459 ICUs from 50 countries globally. This study aimed to understand the frequency and factors associated with death in hospital in patients who survived their ICU stay. We examined outcomes in the subpopulation discharged with no limitations of life sustaining treatments ('treatment limitations'), and the subpopulations with treatment limitations. Results: 2186 (94%) patients with no treatment limitations discharged from ICU survived, while 142 (6%) died in hospital. 118 (61%) of patients with treatment limitations survived while 77 (39%) patients died in hospital. Patients without treatment limitations that died in hospital after ICU discharge were older, more likely to have COPD, immunocompromise or chronic renal failure, less likely to have trauma as a risk factor for ARDS. Patients that died post ICU discharge were less likely to receive neuromuscular blockade, or to receive any adjunctive measure, and had a higher pre- ICU discharge non-pulmonary SOFA score. A similar pattern was seen in patients with treatment limitations that died in hospital following ICU discharge. Conclusions: A significant proportion of patients die in hospital following discharge from ICU, with higher mortality in patients with limitations of life-sustaining treatments in place. Non-survivors had higher systemic illness severity scores at ICU discharge than survivors