How well would modern-day oceanic property distributions be known with paleoceanographic-like observations?

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 31 (2016): 472–490, doi:10.1002/2015PA002917.Compilations of paleoceanographic observations for the deep sea now contain a few hundred points along the oceanic margins, mid-ocean ridges, and bathymetric highs, where seawater conditions are indirectly recorded in the chemistry of buried benthic foraminiferal shells. Here we design an idealized experiment to test our predictive ability to reconstruct modern-day seawater properties by considering paleoceanographic-like data. We attempt to reconstruct the known, modern-day global distributions by using a state estimation method that combines a kinematic tracer transport model with observations that have paleoceanographic characteristics. When a modern-like suite of observations (Θ, practical salinity, seawater δ18O, inline image, PO4, NO3, and O2) is used from the sparse paleolocations, the state estimate is consistent with the withheld data at all depths below 1500 m, suggesting that the observational sparsity can be overcome. Physical features, such as the interbasin gradients in deep inline image and the vertical structure of Atlantic inline image, are accurately reconstructed. The state estimation method extracts useful information from the pointwise observations to infer distributions at the largest oceanic scales (at least 10,000 km horizontally and 1500 m vertically) and outperforms a standard optimal interpolation technique even though neither dynamical constraints nor constraints from surface boundary fluxes are used. When the sparse observations are more realistically restricted to the paleoceanographic proxy observations of δ13C, δ18O, and Cd/Ca, however, the large-scale property distributions are no longer recovered coherently. At least three more water mass tracers are likely needed at the core sites in order to accurately reconstruct the large-scale property distributions of the Last Glacial Maximum.NSF Grant Numbers: 1124880, 11254222016-10-0

Ultrasound morphology of carotid plaque and its link with lipid: protein content and 3d microstructure of the plaque.

the 22nd Meeting of the European Society of Neurosonology and Cerebral Hemodynamics (ESNCH), 19-21 May 2017. Berlin, Germany, and published in the International Journal of Stroke 12(1S): 57 (Poster 101), May 2017. ISSN: 1747-4930, eISSN: 1747-4949

Epidemiology of Stroke in the MENA Region: A Systematic Review.

Introduction: Stroke is a major burden on the health system due to high fatality and major disability in survivors. Whilst Stroke incidence has declined in the developed world, it continues to increase in developing nations, including the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This may reflect different risk factors and strategies to treat and manage patients prior to and after Stroke. Methods: We have conducted a systematic review of the prevalence, incidence and mortality of Stroke in the 23 countries of MENA region following the PRISMA guidelines. Results: 8,874 published papers were retrieved through both PubMed and Embase. Of those, 38 studies were found to be eligible for inclusion in this review. Only thirteen countries in the MENA region had data points for the critical stroke parameters. Of these qualified studies, 14 were prospective, population-based studies. In the age-adjusted studies, incidence ranged widely between 16/100,000 in a prospective population-based in Iran to 162/100,000 in Libya. Age-adjusted prevalence was available only from Tunisia at 184/100,000. Mortality for all strokes from the eight countries reporting this measure found the 30 day-case fatality ranged from 9.3% in Qatar to 30% in Pakistan. Most stroke studies in the MENA region were small sized, hospital-based, lacked confidence intervals and did not provide prevalence and mortality figures. Conclusion: National policymakers, public health and medical care stakeholders need more reliable epidemiologic studies on Stroke from the MENA region to plan more effective preventive and therapeutic strategies