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Background: Grip strength had become a potential tool for clinical assessments, while the predictive value of the grip strength of community-based populations had some limitations. Aims: To identify the shapes of the association between grip strength and all-cause mortality in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) cohort. Methods: Based on the SHARE cohort, 13,231 subjects aged 65 years and older were included in this study. Cox models with penalized splines (P-splines) were employed to characterize the shapes of the association between grip strength and all-cause mortality with the adjustment of covariates including sociodemographic characteristics, health characteristics, behavioral habits, and illness status. Then grip strength was analyzed as a categorical variable in quintile to examine the impact of low grip strength on all-cause mortality. Results: Inversely linear associations were found between grip strength and mortality both in males and females after adjustment for covariates. The hazard ratios (HRs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each 5 kg decrease in grip strength to all-cause mortality were 1.11 (1.06–1.18) in males and 1.17 (1.08–1.28) in females. In comparison with subjects in the fifth quintile, the adjusted HRs and 95% CIs of all-cause mortality in the first quintile was 2.39 (1.79–3.19) in males and 1.84 (1.34–2.51) in females. Which were statistically significant in the second quintile compared with the fifth quintile [Males: 2.06 (1.56, 2.74), Females: 1.83 (1.35, 2.48)]. Conclusions: Grip strength is inversely linear association with all-cause mortality and the low grip strength at the first and second quintile are a robust predictor of all-cause mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the North Atlantic atmospheric rivers (ARs) making landfall over western Europe in the present and future climate from the multimodel ensemble of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Overall, CMIP5 captures the seasonal and spatial variations of historical landfalling AR days, with the large intermodel variability strongly correlated with the intermodel spread of historical near-surface westerly jet position. Under representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5), AR frequency is projected to increase significantly by the end of this century, with 127%-275% increase at peak AR frequency regions (45°-55°N). While thermodynamics plays a dominant role in the future increase of ARs, wind changes associated with the midlatitude jet shifts also significantly contribute to AR changes, resulting in dipole change patterns in all seasons. In the North Atlantic, the model-projected jet shifts are strongly correlated with the simulated historical jet position. As models exhibit predominantly equatorward biases in the historical jet position, the large poleward jet shifts reduce AR days south of the historical mean jet position through the dynamical connections between the jet positions and AR days. Using the observed historical jet position as an emergent constraint, dynamical effects further increase future AR days over the equatorward flank above the increases from thermodynamical effects. Compared to the present, both total and extreme precipitation induced by ARs in the future contribute more to the seasonal mean and extreme precipitation, primarily because of the increase in AR frequency. While AR precipitation intensity generally increases more relative to the increase in integrated vapor transport, AR extreme precipitation intensity increases much less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determination of slant total electron content (STEC) between satellites and receivers is the first step for establishing an ionospheric model. However, the leveling errors, caused by the smoothed ambiguity solutions in the carrier-to-code leveling (CCL) method, degrade the performance of ionosphere modeling and differential code bias (DCB) estimation. To reduce the leveling errors, an uncombined and undifferenced precise point positioning (PPP) method with ambiguity resolution (AR) was used to directly extract the STEC. Firstly, the ionospheric observables were estimated with CCL, PPP float-ambiguity solutions, and PPP fixed-ambiguity solutions, respectively, to analyze the short-term temporal variation of receiver DCB in zero or short baselines. Then, the global ionospheric map (GIM) was modeled using three types of ionospheric observables based on the single-layer model (SLM) assumption. Compared with the CCL method, the slight variations of receiver DCBs can be obviously distinguished using high precise ionospheric observables, with a 58.4% and 71.2% improvement of the standard deviation (STD) for PPP float-ambiguity and fixed-ambiguity solutions, respectively. For ionosphere modeling, the 24.7% and 27.9% improvements for posteriori residuals were achieved for PPP float-ambiguity and fixed-ambiguity solutions, compared to the CCL method. The corresponding improvement for residuals of the vertical total electron contents (VTECs) compared with the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) final GIM products in global accuracy was 9.2% and 13.7% for PPP float-ambiguity and fixed-ambiguity solutions, respectively. The results show that the PPP fixed-ambiguity solution is the best one for the GIM product modeling and satellite DCBs estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a method, ArchaicSeeker 2.0, to identify introgressed hominin sequences and model multiple-wave admixture. The new method enabled us to discern two waves of introgression from both Denisovan-like and Neanderthal-like hominins in present-day Eurasian populations and an ancient Siberian individual. We estimated that an early Denisovan-like introgression occurred in Eurasia around 118.8-94.0 thousand years ago (kya). In contrast, we detected only one single episode of Denisovan-like admixture in indigenous peoples eastern to the Wallace-Line. Modeling ancient admixtures suggested an early dispersal of modern humans throughout Asia before the Toba volcanic super-eruption 74 kya, predating the initial peopling of Asia as proposed by the traditional Out-of-Africa model. Survived archaic sequences are involved in various phenotypes including immune and body mass (e.g., ZNF169), cardiovascular and lung function (e.g., HHAT), UV response and carbohydrate metabolism (e.g., HYAL1/HYAL2/HYAL3), while "archaic deserts" are enriched with genes associated with skin development and keratinization., (© 2021. The Author(s).)