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Large sample datasets of in situ evapotranspiration (ET) measurements with well documented data provenance and quality assurance are critical for water management and many fields of earth science research. We present a post-processed ET oriented dataset at daily and monthly timesteps, from 161 stations, including 148 eddy covariance flux towers, that were chosen based on their data quality from nearly 350 stations across the contiguous United States. In addition to ET, the data includes energy and heat fluxes, meteorological measurements, and reference ET downloaded from gridMET for each flux station. Data processing techniques were conducted in a reproducible manner using open-source software. Most data initially came from the public AmeriFlux network, however, several different networks (e.g., the USDA-Agricultural Research Service) and university partners provided data that was not yet public. Initial half-hourly energy balance data were gap-filled and aggregated to daily frequency, and turbulent fluxes were corrected for energy balance closure error using the FLUXNET2015/ONEFlux energy balance ratio approach. Metadata, diagnostics of energy balance, and interactive graphs of time series data are included for each station. Although the dataset was developed primarily to benchmark satellite-based remote sensing ET models of the OpenET initiative, there are many other potential uses, such as validation for a range of regional hydrologic and atmospheric models.

Irrigation and other agricultural management practices play a key role in land surface fluxes and their interactions with atmospheric processes. California's Central Valley agricultural productivity is strongly linked to water availability associated with conveyance infrastructure and groundwater, but greater scrutiny over agricultural water use requires better practices particularly during extended and severe drought conditions. The future of irrigated agriculture in California is expected to be characterized neither by perpetual scarcity nor by widespread abundance. Thus, further advancing irrigation technologies and improving management practices will be key for California's agriculture sustainability. In this study, we present micrometeorological observations from the Grape Remote Sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment (GRAPEX) project. Daily, seasonal, and inter-seasonal surface flux patterns and relationships across five vineyards over three distinct California wine production regions were investigated. Vineyard actual evapotranspiration showed significant differences at the sub-daily and daily scale when comparisons across wine production regions and varieties were performed. Water use in vineyards in the Central Valley was about 70% greater in comparison to the vineyards at the North Coast area due to canopy size, atmospheric demand, and irrigation inputs. Inter-annual variability of surface fluxes was also significant, even though, overall weather conditions (i.e., air temperature, vapor pressure deficit, wind speed, and solar radiation) were not significantly different. Thus, not only irrigation but also other management practices played a key role in seasonal water use, and given these differences, we conclude that further advancing ground-based techniques to quantify crop water use at an operational scale will be key to facing California's agriculture present and future water challenges.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00271-022-00784-0.

Band gaps in polythiophene (T) and the related polymers with a fused benzene ring or a fused pyrazine ring have been estimated using a variety of methods. In conclusion, the aromatic/quinoid character of the TB oligomer units is discussed and the extrapolation of DFT HOMO--LUMO energies also give reasonable band gap predictions.

The poem "Alva and the Magnetic Resonance" by L. S. MCKEE is presented. First Line: There is a cage over her head; Last Line: another way of being held.

Background Current orthodoxy suggests that patients need to be provided with full information about their care and that treatment options should be discussed with patients and family members. This imperative is especially challenging when there is a lack of consensus about treatment effectiveness and equivocacy over different types of interventions. In the case of prostate cancer, evidence is contested as to the efficacy of different treatments. Thus, involving patients and their family members in treatment choices is complex and little is known about how patients and their partners process these decisions when there is uncertainty about different outcomes. This paper has reviewed the literature on the way couples approach such decision making in relation to treatment for prostate cancer. Objective A meta-ethnographic synthesis of published qualitative papers that focused on the influences on patients', and their partners' treatment decision making for prostate cancer, was conducted in order to identify and understand barriers and facilitators which impact on this process. Results Our synthesis indicates that the couples' relationship 'dynamic' provides a contextual background against which treatment decisions are negotiated and made. Discussion and conclusions We propose that the findings from this synthesis can enhance the potential for shared decision making for patients, and their partners, when facing a treatment decision for prostate cancer. By understanding the couples' relationship dynamic pre-diagnosis, clinicians may be able to tailor the communication and information provision to both patients and their partners, providing a personalized approach to treatment decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research and clinical experience suggest that Huntington’s disease (HD) can considerably affect family life, particularly for young people (YP) at risk. The goal of this study was to describe the experiences of YP from families affected by HD. YP were identified through the regional genetics clinic and the Scottish Huntington’s Association. In-depth interviews were used to explore YP’s experiences of finding out about HD in the family; perceptions of their own risk; caring activities; protective or risk factors; and the impact of HD on relationships with siblings, parents, extended family members, and the wider community. Thirty-three YP between the ages of 9 and 28 years were interviewed. A qualitative thematic analysis was undertaken. The analysis revealed four main themes: YP as carers, the worried well, those who cope, and those at risk/in need. These themes highlight the varied experience of growing up in a family affected by HD. Whilst some YP successfully coped, others experienced considerable problems and were at risk of physical and/or emotional harm. In understanding why some cope better than others, our findings suggest protective and risk factors within these themes. In particular, participants who grew up knowing about HD from an early age seemed to cope better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication about genetic risk in families is an important issue for genetic counsellors. The objective of this study was to explore the barriers and facilitators in family communication about genetic risk. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with patients in the Northeast of Scotland who had attended genetic counselling for risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer and Huntington's disease, and with some spouses/partners. The interviews confirmed that the issue of disclosure was a problem for some, and that there were generic communication issues common to both groups. Telling family members about genetic risk was generally seen as a family responsibility and family structures, dynamics and ‘rules’ influenced disclosure decisions. A sense of responsibility towards younger generations was also important. The level of certainty felt by a person in relation to his or her own risk estimate also influenced what he or she could tell other family members. Communication within a family about genetic risk is a complex issue and is influenced by both pre-existing familial and cultural factors and individuals' responses to risk information. If genetic counsellors understood how these factors operate in individual families they might be able to identify effective strategies to promote considered decisions and prevent unnecessary emotional distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correct regulation of intercellular communication is a fundamental requirement for cell differentiation. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the female germline differentiates from a single somatic ovule cell that becomes encased in β-1,3-glucan, a water insoluble polysaccharide implicated in limiting pathogen invasion, regulating intercellular trafficking in roots, and promoting pollen development. Whether β-1,3-glucan facilitates germline isolation and development has remained contentious, since limited evidence is available to support a functional role. Here, transcriptional profiling of adjoining germline and somatic cells revealed differences in gene expression related to β-1,3-glucan metabolism and signalling through intercellular channels (plasmodesmata). Dominant expression of a β-1,3-glucanase in the female germline transiently perturbed β-1,3-glucan deposits, allowed intercellular movement of tracer molecules, and led to changes in germline gene expression and histone marks, eventually leading to termination of germline development. Our findings indicate that germline β-1,3-glucan fulfils a functional role in the ovule by insulating the primary germline cell, and thereby determines the success of downstream female gametogenesis., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Objective: To investigate which organisational characteristics of primary care dental practices influence the implementation of evidence-based guidance., Design: A multimethod study set within primary care dentistry in Scotland comprising: (1) Semistructured interviews with dental teams to inform development of a self-report questionnaire exploring the translation of guidance in primary care dentistry and (2) A questionnaire-based survey and case studies exploring which organisational characteristics influence knowledge translation., Results: Interview data identified three themes: leadership, communication and context. Survey data revealed compliance with recommendations from three topics of dental guidance to be variable, with only 41% (emergency dental care), 19% (oral health assessment and review) and 4% (drug prescribing) of respondents reporting full compliance. Analysis revealed no significant relationship between practice characteristics and compliance with emergency dental care or drug prescribing recommendations. Positive associations were observed between compliance with oral health assessment and review recommendations and having a practice manager, as well as with the type of treatment offered, with fully private practices more likely, and fully National Health Service practices less likely to comply, when compared with those offering a mixture of treatment. Synthesis of the data identified leadership and context as key drivers of guidance uptake., Conclusions: Evidence-based dental recommendations are not routinely translated into practice, with variable leadership and differing practice contexts being central to poor uptake. Guidelines should aim to tailor recommendations and implementation strategies to reflect the complexities and varying contexts that exist in primary care dentistry, thus facilitating the implementation of evidence-based guidance., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Advancements in understanding and engineering of virus-based nanomaterials (VBNs) for biomedical applications motivate a need to explore the interfaces between VBNs and other biomedically-relevant chemistries and materials. While several strategies have been used to investigate some of these interfaces with promising initial results, including VBN-containing slow-release implants and VBN-activated bioceramic bone scaffolds, there remains a need to establish VBN-immobilized three dimensional materials that exhibit improved stability and diffusion characteristics for biosensing and other analyte-capture applications. Silica sol-gel chemistries have been researched for biomedical applications over several decades and are well understood; various cellular organisms and biomolecules (e.g., bacteria, algae, enzymes) have been immobilized in silica sol-gels to improve viability, activity, and form factor (i.e., ease of use). Here we present the immobilization of an antibody-binding VBN in silica sol-gel by pore confinement. We have shown that the resulting system is sufficiently diffuse to allow antibodies to migrate in and out of the matrix. We also show that the immobilized VBN is capable of antibody binding and elution functionality under different buffer conditions for multiple use cycles. The promising results of the VBN and silica sol-gel interface indicate a general applicability for VBN-based bioseparations and biosensing applications., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

There are medical treatment vulnerabilities in longer-duration space missions present in the current International Space Station crew health care system with risks, arising from spaceflight-accelerated pharmaceutical degradation and resupply lag times. Bioregenerative life support systems may be a way to close this risk gap by leveraging in situ resource utilization (ISRU) to perform pharmaceutical synthesis and purification. Recent literature has begun to consider biological ISRU using microbes and plants as the basis for pharmaceutical life support technologies. However, there has not yet been a rigorous analysis of the processing and quality systems required to implement biologically produced pharmaceuticals for human medical treatment. In this work, we use the equivalent system mass (ESM) metric to evaluate pharmaceutical purification processing strategies for longer-duration space exploration missions. Monoclonal antibodies, representing a diverse therapeutic platform capable of treating multiple space-relevant disease states, were selected as the target products for this analysis. We investigate the ESM resource costs (mass, volume, power, cooling, and crew time) of an affinity-based capture step for monoclonal antibody purification as a test case within a manned Mars mission architecture. We compare six technologies (three biotic capture methods and three abiotic capture methods), optimize scheduling to minimize ESM for each technology, and perform scenario analysis to consider a range of input stream compositions and pharmaceutical demand. We also compare the base case ESM to scenarios of alternative mission configuration, equipment models, and technology reusability. Throughout the analyses, we identify key areas for development of pharmaceutical life support technology and improvement of the ESM framework for assessment of bioregenerative life support technologies., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 McNulty, Berliner, Negulescu, McKee, Hart, Yates, Arkin, Nandi and McDonald.)

Daily evapotranspiration ( ET d ) plays a key role in irrigation water management and is particularly important in drought-stricken areas, such as California and high-value crops. Remote sensing allows for the cost-effective estimation of spatial evapotranspiration ( ET ), and the advent of small unmanned aerial systems ( sUAS ) technology has made it possible to estimate instantaneous high-resolution ET at the plant, row, and subfield scales. sUAS estimates ET using "instantaneous" remote sensing measurements with half-hourly/hourly forcing micrometeorological data, yielding hourly fluxes in W/m 2 that are then translated to a daily scale (mm/day) under two assumptions: (a) relative rates, such as the ratios of ET -to-net radiation ( R n ) or ET -to-solar radiation ( R s ), are assumed to be constant rather than absolute, and (b) nighttime evaporation ( E ) and transpiration ( T ) contributions are negligible. While assumption (a) may be reasonable for unstressed, full cover crops (no exposed soil), the E and T rates may significantly vary over the course of the day for partially vegetated cover conditions due to diurnal variations of soil and crop temperatures and interactions between soil and vegetation elements in agricultural environments, such as vineyards and orchards. In this study, five existing extrapolation approaches that compute the daily ET from the "instantaneous" remotely sensed sUAS ET estimates and the eddy covariance ( EC ) flux tower measurements were evaluated under different weather, grapevine variety, and trellis designs. Per assumption (b), the nighttime ET contribution was ignored. Each extrapolation technique (evaporative fraction ( EF ), solar radiation ( R s ), net radiation-to-solar radiation ( R n /R s ) ratio, Gaussian ( GA ), and Sine) makes use of clear skies and quasi-sinusoidal diurnal variations of hourly ET and other meteorological parameters. The sUAS ET estimates and EC ET measurements were collected over multiple years and times from different vineyard sites in California as part of the USDA Agricultural Research Service Grape Remote Sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment ( GRAPEX ). Optical and thermal sUAS imagery data at 10 cm and 60 cm, respectively, were collected by the Utah State University AggieAir sUAS Program and used in the Two-Source Energy Balance ( TSEB ) model to estimate the instantaneous or hourly sUAS ET at overpass time. The hourly ET from the EC measurements was also used to validate the extrapolation techniques. Overall, the analysis using EC measurements indicates that the R s , EF , and GA approaches presented the best goodness-of-fit statistics for a window of time between 1030 and 1330 PST (Pacific Standard Time), with the R s approach yielding better agreement with the EC measurements. Similar results were found using TSEB and sUAS data. The 1030-1330 time window also provided the greatest agreement between the actual daily EC ET and the extrapolated TSEB daily ET , with the R s approach again yielding better agreement with the ground measurements. The expected accuracy of the upscaled TSEB daily ET estimates across all vineyard sites in California is below 0.5 mm/day, ( EC extrapolation accuracy was found to be 0.34 mm/day), making the daily scale results from TSEB reliable and suitable for day-to-day water management applications., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Background: Vaginal mesh implants are medical devices used in a number of operations to treat stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Although many of these operations have delivered good outcomes, some women have experienced serious complications that have profoundly affected their quality of life. To ensure that evolving patient information is up-to-date, accurate and appropriate, the Transvaginal Mesh Oversight Group 'user-tested' a newly developed Scottish patient resource, the first to focus exclusively on the issue of complications. The aim of this research was to gather feedback on usability, content, language and presentation to inform the development of the resource from a user perspective., Methods: The experience of using the patient resource was captured through semi-structured interviews that followed a 'think-aloud' protocol. The interviewer observed each participant as they went through the resource, asking questions and making field notes. Participants' comments were then categorised using a validated model of user experience and subsequently analysed thematically., Results: Thirteen people participated in the user testing interviews, including women with lived experience of mesh implants (n = 7), a convenience sample of staff working for Healthcare Improvement Scotland (n = 5) and a patient's carer (n = 1). The majority of participants considered the resource as clear and helpful. Respondents reported that some presentational aspects promoted usability and understandability, including the use of a font that is easy to read, bullet lists, coloured headings and simple language. Barriers included the reliance on some technical language and an explicit anatomical diagram. Participants endorsed the valuable role of health professionals as co-mediators of patient information., Conclusions: The findings illustrate the value of undertaking in-depth user-testing for patient information resources before their dissemination. The study highlighted how the direct guidance or navigation of a patient information resource by a health professional could increase its salience and accuracy of interpretation by patients, their families and carers. These insights may also be useful to other developers in improving patient information.

Background: In highly segmented and complex healthcare organizations social capital is assumed to be of high relevance for the coordination of tasks in healthcare. So far, comprehensively validated instruments on social capital in healthcare organizations are lacking. The aim of this work is to validate an instrument measuring social capital in healthcare organizations., Methods: This validation study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 1050 hospital employees from 49 German hospitals which specialize in breast cancer care. Social capital was assessed by a six-item scale. Reliability analyses and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to determine the content validity of items within the theory-driven one-dimensional scale structure. The scale's associations with measures of the social aspects of the work environment (identification, social support, open communication climate) were estimated to test convergent validity. Criterion-related validity was evaluated by conducting structural equation modelling to examine the predictive validity of the scale with measures of work engagement, well-being and burnout., Results: A one-dimensional structure of the instrument could be identified (CFI = .99; RMSEA = .06). Convergent validity was shown by hypothesis-consistent correlations with social support offered by supervisors and colleagues, a climate of open communication, and employee commitment to the organization. Criterion-related validity of the social capital scale was proved by its prediction of employee work engagement (R 2  = .10-.13 for the three subscales), well-being (R 2  = .13), and burnout (R 2  = .06-.11 for the three subscales)., Conclusions: The confirmed associations between social capital and work engagement, burnout as well as well-being stress the importance of social capital as a vital resource for employee health and performance in healthcare organizations. In healthcare organizations this short instrument can be used as an efficient instrument to measure the organizations' social capital.