The effect of horizontal resolution on the representation of the global monsoon annual cycle in Atmospheric General Circulation Models

The sensitivity of the representation of the global monsoon annual cycle to horizontal resolution is compared in three Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs): the Met Office Unified Model-Global Atmosphere 3.0 (MetUM-GA3), the Meteorological Research Institute AGCM3 (MRI-AGCM3) and Global High Resolution AGCM from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL-HiRAM). For each model, we use two horizontal resolution configurations for the period 1998–2008. Increasing resolution consistently improves simulated precipitation and low-level circulation of the annual mean and the first two annual cycle modes, as measured by pattern correlation coefficient and Equitable Threat Score. Improvements in simulating the summer monsoon onset and withdrawal are region-dependent. No consistent response to resolution is found in simulating summer monsoon retreat. Regionally, increased resolution reduces the positive bias in simulated annual mean precipitation, the two annual-cycle modes over the West African monsoon and Northwestern Pacific monsoon. An overestimation of the solstitial mode and an underestimation of the equinoctial asymmetric mode of the East Asian monsoon are reduced in all high-resolution configurations. Systematic errors exist in lower-resolution models for simulating the onset and withdrawal of the summer monsoon. Higher resolution models consistently improve the early summer monsoon onset over East Asia and West Africa, but substantial differences exist in the responses over Indian monsoon region, where biases differ across the three low-resolution AGCMs. This study demonstrates the importance of a multi-model comparison when examining the added value of resolution and the importance of model physical parameterizations for the Indian monsoon simulation

Added value of high resolution models in simulating global precipitation characteristics

Climate models tend to overestimate percentage of the contribution (to total precipitation) and frequency of light rainfall while underestimate the heavy rainfall. This article investigates the added value of high resolution of atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) in simulating the characteristics of global precipitation, in particular extremes. Three AGCMs, global high resolution atmospheric model from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL-HiRAM), the Meteorological Research Institute-atmospheric general circulation model (MRI-AGCM) and the Met Office Unified Model (MetUM), each with one high and one low resolution configurations for the period 1998–2008 are used in this study. Some consistent improvements are found across all three AGCMs with increasing model resolution from 50–83 to 20–35 km. A reduction in global mean frequency and amount percentile of light rainfall (20 mm day−1) are shown in high resolution models of GFDL-HiRAM and MRI-AGCM, while the improvement in MetUM is not obvious. A consistent response to high resolution across the three AGCMs is seen from the increase of light rainfall frequency and amount percentile over the desert regions, particularly over the ocean desert regions. It suppresses the overestimation of CDD over ocean desert regions and makes a better performance in high resolution models of GFDL-HiRAM and MRI-AGCM, but worse in MetUM-N512. The impact of model resolution differs greatly among the three AGCMs in simulating the fraction of total precipitation exceeding the 95th percentile daily wet day precipitation. Inconsistencies among models with increased resolution mainly appear over the tropical oceans and in simulating extreme wet conditions, probably due to different reactions of dynamical and physical processes to the resolution, indicating their crucial role in high resolution modelling

FlyBase: genomes by the dozen

FlyBase () is the primary database of genetic and genomic data for the insect family Drosophilidae. Historically, Drosophila melanogaster has been the most extensively studied species in this family, but recent determination of the genomic sequences of an additional 11 Drosophila species opens up new avenues of research for other Drosophila species. This extensive sequence resource, encompassing species with well-defined phylogenetic relationships, provides a model system for comparative genomic analyses. FlyBase has developed tools to facilitate access to and navigation through this invaluable new data collection

Efficient gene editing in adult mouse livers via adenoviral delivery of CRISPR/Cas9

AbstractWe developed an adenovirus-based CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing in vivo. In the liver, we demonstrated that the system could reach the level of tissue-specific gene knockout, resulting in phenotypic changes. Given the wide spectrum of cell types susceptible to adenoviral infection, and the fact that adenoviral genome rarely integrates into its host cell genome, we believe the adenovirus-based CRISPR/Cas9 system will find applications in a variety of experimental settings

Inferring Group-Wise Consistent Multimodal Brain Networks via Multi-View Spectral Clustering

Quantitative modeling and analysis of structural and functional brain networks based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MRI (fMRI) data have received extensive interest recently. However, the regularity of these structural and functional brain networks across multiple neuroimaging modalities and also across different individuals is largely unknown. This paper presents a novel approach to inferring group-wise consistent brain sub-networks from multimodal DTI/resting-state fMRI datasets via multi-view spectral clustering of cortical networks, which were constructed upon our recently developed and validated large-scale cortical landmarks - DICCCOL (Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks). We applied the algorithms on DTI data of 100 healthy young females and 50 healthy young males, obtained consistent multimodal brain networks within and across multiple groups, and further examined the functional roles of these networks. Our experimental results demonstrated that the derived brain networks have substantially improved inter-modality and inter-subject consistency

Direct and indirect effects of climatic variations on the interannual variability in net ecosystem exchange across terrestrial ecosystems

Climatic variables not only directly affect the interannual variability (IAV) in net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) but also indirectly drive it by changing the physiological parameters. Identifying these direct and indirect paths can reveal the underlying mechanisms of carbon (C) dynamics. In this study, we applied a path analysis using flux data from 65 sites to quantify the direct and indirect climatic effects on IAV in NEE and to evaluate the potential relationships among the climatic variables and physiological parameters that represent physiology and phenology of ecosystems. We found that the maximum photosynthetic rate was the most important factor for the IAV in gross primary productivity (GPP), which was mainly induced by the variation in vapour pressure deficit. For ecosystem respiration (RE), the most important drivers were GPP and the reference respiratory rate. The biome type regulated the direct and indirect paths, with distinctive differences between forests and non-forests, evergreen needleleaf forests and deciduous broadleaf forests, and between grasslands and croplands. Different paths were also found among wet, moist and dry ecosystems. However, the climatic variables can only partly explain the IAV in physiological parameters, suggesting that the latter may also result from other biotic and disturbance factors. In addition, the climatic variables related to NEE were not necessarily the same as those related to GPP and RE, indicating the emerging difficulty encountered when studying the IAV in NEE. Overall, our results highlight the contribution of certain physiological parameters to the IAV in C fluxes and the importance of biome type and multi-year water conditions, which should receive more attention in future experimental and modelling research

DICCCOL: Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-Based Cortical Landmarks

Is there a common structural and functional cortical architecture that can be quantitatively encoded and precisely reproduced across individuals and populations? This question is still largely unanswered due to the vast complexity, variability, and nonlinearity of the cerebral cortex. Here, we hypothesize that the common cortical architecture can be effectively represented by group-wise consistent structural fiber connections and take a novel data-driven approach to explore the cortical architecture. We report a dense and consistent map of 358 cortical landmarks, named Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity–based Cortical Landmarks (DICCCOLs). Each DICCCOL is defined by group-wise consistent white-matter fiber connection patterns derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. Our results have shown that these 358 landmarks are remarkably reproducible over more than one hundred human brains and possess accurate intrinsically established structural and functional cross-subject correspondences validated by large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging data. In particular, these 358 cortical landmarks can be accurately and efficiently predicted in a new single brain with DTI data. Thus, this set of 358 DICCCOL landmarks comprehensively encodes the common structural and functional cortical architectures, providing opportunities for many applications in brain science including mapping human brain connectomes, as demonstrated in this work

A multicentre single arm phase 2 trial of neoadjuvant pyrotinib and letrozole plus dalpiciclib for triple-positive breast cancer.

peer reviewedCurrent therapies for HER2-positive breast cancer have limited efficacy in patients with triple-positive breast cancer (TPBC). We conduct a multi-center single-arm phase 2 trial to test the efficacy and safety of an oral neoadjuvant therapy with pyrotinib, letrozole and dalpiciclib (a CDK4/6 inhibitor) in patients with treatment-naïve, stage II-III TPBC with a Karnofsky score of ≥70 (NCT04486911). The primary endpoint is the proportion of patients with pathological complete response (pCR) in the breast and axilla. The secondary endpoints include residual cancer burden (RCB)-0 or RCB-I, objective response rate (ORR), breast pCR (bpCR), safety and changes in molecular targets (Ki67) from baseline to surgery. Following 5 cycles of 4-week treatment, the results meet the primary endpoint with a pCR rate of 30.4% (24 of 79; 95% confidence interval (CI), 21.3-41.3). RCB-0/I is 55.7% (95% CI, 44.7-66.1). ORR is 87.4%, (95% CI, 78.1-93.2) and bpCR is 35.4% (95% CI, 25.8-46.5). The mean Ki67 expression reduces from 40.4% at baseline to 17.9% (P < 0.001) at time of surgery. The most frequent grade 3 or 4 adverse events are neutropenia, leukopenia, and diarrhoea. There is no serious adverse event- or treatment-related death. This fully oral, chemotherapy-free, triplet combined therapy has the potential to be an alternative neoadjuvant regimen for patients with TPBC