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BackgroundThe development and approval of an efficacious pharmacotherapy for stimulant use disorders has been limited by the lack of a meaningful indicator of treatment success, other than sustained abstinence.MethodsIn March, 2015, a meeting sponsored by Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION) was convened to discuss the current state of the evidence regarding meaningful outcome measures in clinical trials for stimulant use disorders. Attendees included members of academia, funding and regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and healthcare organizations. The goal was to establish a research agenda for the development of a meaningful outcome measure that may be used as an endpoint in clinical trials for stimulant use disorders.Results and conclusionsBased on guidelines for the selection of clinical trial endpoints, the lessons learned from prior addiction clinical trials, and the process that led to identification of a meaningful indicator of treatment success for alcohol use disorders, several recommendations for future research were generated. These include a focus on the validation of patient reported outcome measures of functioning, the exploration of patterns of stimulant abstinence that may be associated with physical and/or psychosocial benefits, the role of urine testing for validating self-reported measures of stimulant abstinence, and the operational definitions for reduction-based measures in terms of frequency rather than quantity of stimulant use. These recommendations may be useful for secondary analyses of clinical trial data, and in the design of future clinical trials that may help establish a meaningful indicator of treatment success.

Abstract. Coastal seas, shelf seas and marginal ice zones are dominated by small-scale ocean surface dynamic processes that play a vital role in the transport and exchange of climate-relevant properties like carbon, heat, water and nutrients between land, ocean, ice and atmosphere. Mounting evidence indicates that ocean scales below 10 km have far-ranging impacts on airsea interactions, lateral ocean dispersion, vertical stratification, ocean carbon cycling, and marine productivity -- governing exchanges across key interfaces of the Earth System, the global ocean and atmosphere circulation and climate. Yet, these processes remain poorly observed at the fine spatial and temporal scales necessary to resolve them. The Ocean Surface Current Airborne Radar (OSCAR) is a new airborne instrument with the capacity to inform these questions by mapping vectorial fields of total ocean surface currents and winds at high resolution over a wide swath. Developed for the European Space Agency ESA), OSCAR is the airborne demonstrator of the satellite mission concept 'SeaSTAR', which aims to map total surface current and ocean wind vectors with unprecedented accuracy, spatial resolution and temporal revisit across all coastal seas, shelf seas and marginal ice zones. Like SeaSTAR, OSCAR is an active microwave Synthetic Aperture Radar Along-Track Interferometer (SAR-ATI) with optimal three-azimuth sensing enabled by unique highly-squinted beams. In May 2022, OSCAR was flown over the Iroise Sea, France, in its first scientific campaign as part of the ESA-funded SEASTARex project. The campaign successfully demonstrated the capabilities of OSCAR to produce high-resolution 2D images of total surface current vectors and near-surface ocean vector winds, simultaneously, in a highly dynamic, macrotidal coastal environment. OSCAR current and wind vectors show excellent agreement against ground-based X-band radar derived surface currents, numerical model outputs and NovaSAR-1 satellite SAR imagery, with Root-Mean-Square differences against X-band radar better than 0.2 m s-1 for currents at 200 m resolution. These results are the first demonstration of simultaneous retrieval of total current and wind vectors from a high-squint three-look SAR-ATI instrument, and the first geophysical validation of the OSCAR and SeaSTAR observing principle. OSCAR presents a remarkable new ocean observing capability to support the study of small-scale ocean dynamics and air-sea interactions across the Earth's coastal, shelf and polar seas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal seas, shelf seas and marginal ice zones are dominated by small-scale ocean surface dynamic processes that play a vital role in the transport and exchange of climate-relevant properties like carbon, heat, water and nutrients between land, ocean, ice and atmosphere. Mounting evidence indicates that ocean scales below 10 km have far-ranging impacts on air-sea interactions, lateral ocean dispersion, vertical stratification, ocean carbon cycling, and marine productivity – governing exchanges across key interfaces of the Earth System, the global ocean and atmosphere circulation and climate. Yet, these processes remain poorly observed at the fine spatial and temporal scales necessary to resolve them. Ocean Surface Current Airborne Radar (OSCAR) is a new airborne instrument with the capacity to inform these questions by mapping vectorial fields of total ocean surface currents and winds at high resolution over a wide swath. Developed for the European Space Agency (ESA), OSCAR is the airborne demonstrator of the satellite mission concept 'SeaSTAR', which aims to map total surface current and ocean wind vectors with unprecedented accuracy, spatial resolution and temporal revisit across all coastal seas, shelf seas and marginal ice zones. Like SeaSTAR, OSCAR is an active microwave Synthetic Aperture Radar Along-Track Interferometer (SAR-ATI) with optimal three-azimuth sensing enabled by unique highly-squinted beams. In May 2022, OSCAR was flown over the Iroise Sea, France, in its first scientific campaign as part of the ESA-funded SEASTARex project. The campaign successfully demonstrated the capabilities of OSCAR to produce high-resolution 2D images of total surface current vectors and near-surface ocean vector winds, simultaneously, in a highly dynamic, macrotidal coastal environment. OSCAR current and wind vectors show excellent agreement against ground-based X-band radar derived surface currents, numerical model outputs and NovaSAR-1 satellite SAR imagery, with Root-Mean-Square differences against X-band radar better than 0.2 m s-1 for currents at 200 m resolution. These results are the first demonstration of simultaneous retrieval of total current and wind vectors from a high-squint three-look SAR-ATI instrument, and the first geophysical validation of the OSCAR and SeaSTAR observing principle. OSCAR presents a remarkable new ocean observing capability to support the study of small-scale ocean dynamics and air-sea interactions across the Earth's coastal, shelf and polar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]