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Retreating and thinning glaciers are icons of climate change and impact the local hazard situation, regional runoff as well as global sea level. For past reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), regional glacier change assessments were challenged by the small number and heterogeneous spatio-temporal distribution of in situ measurement series and uncertain representativeness for the respective mountain range as well as by spatial and temporal limitations and technical challenges of geodetic methods. Towards IPCC SROCC and AR6, there have been considerable improvements with respect to available geodetic datasets. Geodetic volume change assessments for entire mountain ranges have become possible thanks to recently available and comparably accurate digital elevation models (e.g., from ASTER or TanDEM-X). At the same time, new spaceborne altimetry (CryoSat-2, IceSat-2) and gravimetry (GRACE-FO) missions are in orbit and about to release data products to the science community. This opens new opportunities for regional evaluations of results from different methods as well as for truly global assessments of glacier mass changes and related contributions to sea-level rise. At the same time, the glacier research and monitoring community is facing new challenges related to the spread of different results as well as new questions with regard to best practises for data processing chains and for related uncertainty assessments.In this presentation, we introduce the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) project of the European Space Agency, which is building on existing activities and the network of the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) working group on Regional Assessments of Glacier Mass Change (RAGMAC) to tackle these challenges in a community effort. We will present our approach to develop a common framework for regional-scale glacier mass-change estimates towards a new data-driven consensus estimate of regional and global mass changes from glaciological, DEM-differencing, altimetric, and gravimetric methods.

Quantifying glacier elevation and volume changes is critical to understanding the response of glaciers to climate change and related impacts, such as regional runoff and global sea-level rise. Spaceborne remote sensing techniques enable the quantification of spatially distributed glacier elevation changes at regional and global scales using multi-temporal digital elevation models (DEMs). A growing number of spaceborne studies exist to assess glacier elevation changes but they show widespread differences often beyond the error bars. Here, we present the results of a community-based inter-comparison experiment using spaceborne optical (ASTER) and radar (TanDEM-X) sensors to assess elevation changes for selected individual glaciers and regional glacier samples. Using a predefined set of DEMs, participating groups provided their own estimates using various processing strategies. For the selected individual glaciers, the results were validated using airborne data. The validation shows that the median of the spaceborne ensemble is biased by a few decimetres per year with a standard deviation of about half a meter per year. An interesting finding is that no sensor and no processing strategy perform significantly better for all experiment sites. At the regional scale, we find that the co-registration of DEMs is the most relevant processing step for an accurate assessment of elevation change. Other corrections such as gap filling, filtering, and radar penetration have less impact in general but can be essential for individual cases. Temporal corrections (i.e. seasonal and annual) can have a great impact; however, they are not yet well resolved by the remote sensing community.Our study confirms that the currently available spaceborne geodetic assessments result in relatively widespread glacier elevation changes. Therefore, we recommend an ensemble approach of observations from multiple observational sources. Furthermore, there is a need to establish best practices for related uncertainty estimates.

CD3-targeted lentiviral vectors (CD3-LVs) mediate selective transduction of human T lymphocytes

Ende Dezember 2019 wurden mehrere Falle schwerer Lungenentzundungen in der chinesischen Provinz Hubei beobachtet. Fast alle Erkrankten hatten Kontakt zum Markt fur Fische und Meeresfruchte, der als der primare Infektionsort vermutet und am 01.01.2020 geschlossen wurde. Die spateren Untersuchungen der chinesischen Gesundheitsbehorde bestatigten, dass es sich bei dem Erreger um ein bis dahin unbekanntes Coronavirus SARS-CoV‑2 (2019-nCoV) aus der Familie der Coronaviridae handelte. Die Erkrankung wurde dann als COVID-19 bezeichnet und breitete sich rasant zunachst in Asien und spater dann weltweit aus. Im Marz 2020 wurde die COVID-19-Infektion als Pandemie von der Weltgesundheitsorganisation eingestuft. Zum Zeitpunkt der Manuskripterstellung sind weltweit mehr als 20 Mio. Menschen mit dem Virus infiziert mit mehr als 500.000 Toten. Dieser Artikel gibt eine allgemeine Ubersicht uber die neuartige COVID-19-Erkrankung mit einem Fokus auf vaskulare Beteiligung. Die Arbeit basiert im Wesentlichen auf Daten aus der jungsten Literatur und auf Eigenerfahrungen der Autoren.

Glaciers in the Russian High Arctic have been subject to extensive atmospheric warming due to global climate change, yet their contribution to sea level rise has been relatively small over the past decades. Here we show surface elevation change measurements and geodetic mass balances of 93 % of all glacierized areas of Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, and Franz Josef Land using interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements taken between 2010 and 2017. We calculate an overall mass loss rate of -22±6 Gt a−1, corresponding to a sea level rise contribution of 0.06±0.02 mm a−1. Compared to measurements prior to 2010, mass loss of glaciers on the Russian archipelagos has doubled in recent years.

Radiation pneumonitis (RP) is a serious complication that can occur after thoracic radiotherapy. The goal of this study is to investigate the incidence of RP after radiochemotherapy with intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in patients with esophageal cancer and correlate this with dose volume histogram (DVH) related parameters. For this purpose, the clinical course of 73 patients was evaluated and irradiation doses to the lungs were extracted from radiotherapy treatment plans. Furthermore, a systematic review on this topic was conducted across PubMed. In our institutional cohort, Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) grade II or higher RP occurred in four patients (5.5%). The systematic review identified 493 titles of which 19 studies reporting 874 patients qualified for the final analysis. No grade IV or V RP after radiochemotherapy with IMRT for esophageal cancer was reported in the screened literature. Grade II or higher RP is reported in 6.6% of the patients. A higher incidence can be seen with increasing values for lung V20. In conclusion, our institutional data and the literature consistently show a low incidence of symptomatic RP after radiochemotherapy in patients with esophageal cancer treated with IMRT. However, efforts should be made to keep the lung V20 below 23% and specific caution is warranted in patients with pre-existing lung conditions.