Search

Atmospheric rivers, or long but narrow regions of enhanced water vapor transport, are an important component of the hydrologic cycle as they are responsible for much of the poleward transport of water vapor and result in precipitation, sometimes extreme in intensity. Despite their importance, much uncertainty remains in the detection of atmospheric rivers in large datasets such as reanalyses and century scale climate simulations. To understand this uncertainty, the Atmospheric River Tracking Method Intercomparison Project (ARTMIP) developed tiered experiments, including the Tier 2 Reanalysis Intercomparison that is presented here. Eleven detection algorithms submitted hourly tags--binary fields indicating the presence or absence of atmospheric rivers--of detected atmospheric rivers in the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' Reanalysis Version 5 (ERA5) as well as six-hourly tags in the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55). Due to a higher climatological mean for integrated water vapor transport in MERRA-2, atmospheric rivers were detected more frequently relative to the other two reanalyses, particularly in algorithms that use a fixed threshold for water vapor transport. The finer horizontal resolution of ERA5 resulted in narrower atmospheric rivers and an ability to detect atmospheric rivers along resolved coastlines. The fraction of hemispheric area covered by ARs varies throughout the year in all three reanalyses, with different atmospheric river detection tools having different seasonal cycles.

Surgical site infections (SSIs), mainly caused by Staphylococcus aureus , pose a significant economic burden in Europe, leading to increased hospitalization duration, mortality, and treatment costs, particularly with drug-resistant strains such as meticillin-resistant S. aureus. To conduct a case–control study on the economic impact of S. aureus SSI in adult surgical patients across high-volume centres in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, aiming to assess the overall and procedure-specific burden across Europe. The SALT study is a multinational, retrospective cohort study with a nested case–control analysis focused on S. aureus SSI in Europe. The study included participants from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK who underwent invasive surgery in 2016 and employed a micro-costing approach to evaluate health economic factors, matching S. aureus SSI cases with controls. In 2016, among 178,904 surgical patients in five European countries, 764 developed S. aureus SSI. Matching 744 cases to controls, the study revealed that S. aureus SSI cases incurred higher immediate hospitalization costs (€8,810), compared to controls (€6,032). Additionally, S. aureus SSI cases exhibited increased costs for readmissions within the first year post surgery (€7,961.6 versus €5,298.6), with significant differences observed. Factors associated with increased surgery-related costs included the cost of hospitalization immediately after surgery, first intensive care unit (ICU) admission within 12 months, and hospital readmission within 12 months, as identified through multivariable analysis. The higher rates of hospitalization, ICU admissions, and readmissions among S. aureus SSI cases highlight the severity of these infections and their impact on healthcare costs, emphasizing the potential benefits of evidence-based infection control measures and improved patient care to mitigate the economic burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atmospheric River (AR) Tracking Method Intercomparison Project (ARTMIP) is a community effort to systematically assess how the uncertainties from AR detectors (ARDTs) impact our scientific understanding of ARs. This study describes the ARTMIP Tier 2 experimental design and initial results using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Phases 5 and 6 multi‐model ensembles. We show that AR statistics from a given ARDT in CMIP5/6 historical simulations compare remarkably well with the MERRA‐2 reanalysis. In CMIP5/6 future simulations, most ARDTs project a global increase in AR frequency, counts, and sizes, especially along the western coastlines of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We find that the choice of ARDT is the dominant contributor to the uncertainty in projected AR frequency when compared with model choice. These results imply that new projects investigating future changes in ARs should explicitly consider ARDT uncertainty as a core part of the experimental design. Plain Language Summary: Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are a type of weather pattern known to be important for moving water from the warm, moist tropics to the cool, dry polar regions; when they reach midlatitudes in the winter time, they are commonly associated with heavy precipitation. Recent studies that assess the impacts of global climate change on ARs tend to agree that there will be more ARs in a warmer climate, and that ARs will tend to be more extreme. However, it has been increasingly recognized by the AR research community that these results may depend on the method used to identify ARs and the choice of climate model. This study reports results from a controlled experiment, involving an international research community, that aims to show how different AR identification methods and climate models might impact our scientific understanding of ARs in the future. Results show that there will likely be more ARs in the future, and that ARs will generally have a larger spatial footprint. This experiment also shows that uncertainty in these results are large, with the uncertainty from AR identification methods outweighing that of climate models. Future efforts to better understand the physics of ARs may help us reduce this uncertainty. Key Points: Uncertainty associated with atmospheric river (AR) definition dominates model uncertainty for projections of Pacific and Atlantic landfalling ARsMost AR detection algorithms show an increase in AR frequency in future simulationsAR statistics in CMIP 5‐and‐6 models compare remarkably well with reanalysis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE: Although the natural compound curcumin exerts antitumor properties in vitro, its clinical application is hampered due to rapid metabolism. Light exposure following curcumin application has been demonstrated to improve curcumin's bioavailability. Therefore, this investigation was directed towards evaluating whether light exposure in addition to curcumin application enhances curcumin's efficacy against bladder cancer cell adhesion and migration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: RT112, UMUC3, and TCCSUP cells were incubated with low curcumin concentrations (0.1-0.4 μg/ml) and then exposed to 1.65 J/cm2 visible light for 5 min. Controls remained untreated or were treated with curcumin or light alone. Cell adhesion to Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), to immobilized collagen or fibronectin and chemotactic behavior, integrin α and β receptor expression with functional relevance, as well as focal adhesion kinase (total and phosphorylated FAK) were evaluated. RESULTS: Curcumin plus light, but neither curcumin nor light alone, significantly altered tumor cell adhesion and suppressed chemotaxis. Integrin α and β subtypes were dissimilarly modified, depending on the cell line. Suppression of pFAK was noted in RT112 and UMUC3, but not in TCCSUP cells. The integrins α3, α5, and β1 were involved in curcumin's regulation of adhesion and migration. Blocking studies revealed α3, α5, and β1 to be associated with TCCSUP adhesion and migration, whereas α5 and β1, but not α3 contributed to UMUC3 adhesion and migration. Integrin α5 and β1 controlled RT112 chemotaxis as well, but only α5 was involved in the RT112 adhesion process. CONCLUSIONS: Combining curcumin with light exposure enhances curcumin's anti-tumor potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main form of processed guava consumption is the sweet guava paste. The aim of this work was determine the main bioactive compounds of red guava and stability of the compounds in conventional and light sweet guava paste during processing and storage. Guava fruit, variety Paluma, were obtained from region of Pelotas-RS-Brazil. The pulp and the sweet guava pastes were prepared, than the sweet guava paste were stored for 12 months at room temperature, in the dark. Bioactive compounds, antioxidant activity and color of pulp and sweet guava paste every three months were analyzed. Red guava pulp and sweet guava paste showed high rates of phenolic compounds, whilst the main carotenoid was lycopene. L-ascorbic acid content were high in guava pulp and in sweet guava paste stored up to six months. Results show that guava pulp and sweet guava paste contain significant amounts of compounds with high antioxidant potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]