Atlas of the climates of Texas ; based on the 50 year period 1910-1959

"Final report the study of weather modification."UT Librarie

Investigation of the relation between solar variations and weather on earth as shown by study of simultaneous data from the sun, Mariner II, near-earth satellites and the atmosphere below the mesosphere

Relation of solar variations and wind to weather on earth shown by data from sun, Mariner II, ATMOSPHERE, and near-earth satellite

Kinetics and Mechanisms of Atrazine Adsorption and Desorption in Soils Under No-Till and Conventional Management

Both soils (Maury silt loam and Sadler) exhibited three apparent mechanisms of atrazine adsorption. The first two mechanisms were very rapid (10 minutes) and were assigned to soil-clay surface adsorption reactions via hydrogen bonding. The quantity of atrazine involved in these two reactions for the 0.5 mg/1 solution atrazine varied, depending on the soil, from 67 μg/100 g clay to 219 μg/100 g clay. The reason there were two possible atrazine sinks in this range of atrazine adsorption was believed to be the presence of two types of reactive surfaces, the clay inorganic phase and the organic carbon phase. The latter phase exhibited more influence on the Maury silt loam soil than on the Sadler soil, where the Maury silt loam soil contained more organic carbon than the Sadler soil. The third mechanism involved an atrazine condensation mechanism. It was a relatively slow reaction and it appeared to persist for at least 2 hours. This mechanism accounted for about three fourths of the total atrazine adsorbed. After 75 minutes of solution flow the total atrazine adsorbed by the soil clay samples varied from 333 μg/100 g to 710 μg/100 g. Reversibility of the adsorption process was shown to be limited. Approximately one-third of the adsorbed atrazine was desorbed after a 2 hour leaching with l mmol L-1 CaCl2 solution. The desorption process was shown to be controlled by two types of reactions. A short rapid one and a long extremely slow one (diffusion controlled). The above findings suggest that the amount of atrazine leaching into surface water or groundwater would depend on the amount of time atrazine had to react with the soil. If it rained immediately following atrazine application then most of the atrazine would be carried in the runoff, making water the main mechanism of atrazine movement. If, on the other hand, a significant amount of time passed after atrazine was applied then a much smaller proportion of the applied atrazine would be leached, making soil erosion the main mechanism of atrazine movement. Equations for all these processes have been developed to aid in modeling the movement of atrazine during rain fall events

Inhibition of Progenitor Dendritic Cell Maturation by Plasma from Patients with Peripartum Cardiomyopathy: Role in Pregnancy-associated Heart Disease

Dendritic cells (DCs) play dual roles in innate and adaptive immunity based on their functional maturity, and both innate and adaptive immune responses have been implicated in myocardial tissue remodeling associated with cardiomyopathies. Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a rare disorder which affects women within one month antepartum to five months postpartum. A high occurrence of PPCM in central Haiti (1 in 300 live births) provided the unique opportunity to study the relationship of immune activation and DC maturation to the etiology of this disorder. Plasma samples from two groups (n = 12) of age- and parity-matched Haitian women with or without evidence of PPCM were tested for levels of biomarkers of cardiac tissue remodeling and immune activation. Significantly elevated levels of GM-CSF, endothelin-1, proBNP and CRP and decreased levels of TGF- were measured in PPCM subjects relative to controls. Yet despite these findings, in vitro maturation of normal human cord blood derived progenitor dendritic cells (CBDCs) was significantly reduced (p < 0.001) in the presence of plasma from PPCM patients relative to plasma from post-partum control subjects as determined by expression of CD80, CD86, CD83, CCR7, MHC class II and the ability of these matured CBDCs to induce allo-responses in PBMCs. These results represent the first findings linking inhibition of DC maturation to the dysregulation of normal physiologic cardiac tissue remodeling during pregnancy and the pathogenesis of PPCM

The Chlamydia outer membrane protein OmcB is required for adhesion and exhibits biovar-specific differences in glycosaminoglycan binding

Chlamydia pneumoniae, an obligate intracellular human pathogen, causes a number of respiratory diseases. We explored the role of the conserved OmcB protein in C. pneumoniae infections, using yeast display technology. (i) Yeast cells presenting OmcB were found to adhere to human epithelial cells. (ii) Pre-incubation of OmcB yeast cells with heparin, but not other glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), abrogated adhesion. (iii) Pre-treatment of the target cells with heparinase inhibited adherence, and GAG-deficient CHO cell lines failed to bind OmcB yeast. (iv) A heparin-binding motif present near the N-terminus of OmcB is required for host cell binding. (v) Pre-treatment of chlamydial elementary bodies (EBs) with anti-OmcB antibody or pre-incubation of target cells with recombinant OmcB protein reduced infectivity upon challenge with C. pneumoniae. (vi) Adhesion of fluorescently labelled EBs to epithelial or endothelial cells was abrogated by prior addition of heparin or OmcB protein. Thus, C. pneumoniae OmcB is an adhesin that binds heparan sulphate-like GAGs. OmcB from Chlamydia trachomatis serovar L1 also adheres to human cells in a heparin-dependent way, unlike its counterpart from serovar E. We show that a single position in the OmcB sequence determines heparin dependence/independence, and variations there may reflect differences between the two serovars in cell tropism and disease pattern

Characterising droughts in Central America with uncertain hydro-meteorological data

Central America is frequently affected by droughts that cause significant socio-economic and environmental problems. Drought characterisation, monitoring and forecasting are potentially useful to support water resource management. Drought indices are designed for these purposes, but their ability to characterise droughts depends on the characteristics of the regional climate and the quality of the available data. Local comprehensive and high-quality observational networks of meteorological and hydrological data are not available, which limits the choice of drought indices and makes it important to assess available datasets. This study evaluated which combinations of drought index and meteorological dataset were most suitable for characterising droughts in the region. We evaluated the standardised precipitation index (SPI), a modified version of the deciles index (DI), the standardised precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and the effective drought index (EDI). These were calculated using precipitation data from the Climate Hazards Group Infra-Red Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS), the CRN073 dataset, the Climate Research Unit (CRU), ECMWF Reanalysis (ERA-Interim) and a regional station dataset, and temperature from the CRU and ERA-Interim datasets. The gridded meteorological precipitation datasets were compared to assess how well they captured key features of the regional climate. The performance of all the drought indices calculated with all the meteorological datasets was then evaluated against a drought index calculated using river discharge data. Results showed that the selection of database was more important than the selection of drought index and that the best combinations were the EDI and DI calculated with CHIRPS and CRN073. Results also highlighted the importance of including indices like SPEI for drought assessment in Central America.Universidad de Costa Rica/[805-B0-810]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-A9-532]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B3-600]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B0-065]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B3-413]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B4-227]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B4-228]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[805-B5-295]/UCR/Costa RicaUppsala University/[54100006]//SueciaMarie Curie Intra-European Fellowship/[No.329762]//EuropaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigaciones Geofísicas (CIGEFI)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Básicas::Facultad de Ciencias::Escuela de Físic