A document by Chayma Soltani. Click on the document to view its contents.

Water pollution is an increasingly prominent global problem. Soil nitrogen (N) loss in water source areas is the main cause to result in eutrophication. But how can we control soil N loss effectively? To address this, we took initiatively a moso bamboo stand in the catchment area of Fushi Reservoir in Anji County—an important water source in the Taihu Lake Basin in China—as a test plot. Through field observations and analysis, it was found that by interplanting broadleaf trees in the bamboo plantation and thus modifying the stand structure, it could inhibit bacterial nitrification and consequently decreasing nitrate-N (the main form of soil N loss), accordingly alleviating N loss. The results indicate that through optimization of stand structure, the soil microbial community can be influenced, soil physical and chemical properties can be changed, and N loss can be reduced. This means that the code to halt N loss through modifying stand structure is revealed. No doubt, building a well-structured water source conservation forest is an effective and practicable measure to control N loss. Thus, it is expected that this novel research will help in controlling non-point source pollution and ensuring drinking water safety worldwide.

Title: Generalized Pustular Psoriasis Triggered by ChAdOx1nCoV-19 Vaccine: a case reportAuthors:Salviano LMOBreda BJRomiti R (MD, PhD)Hirayama ALS (MD)Arnone M (MD)Institution: Department of Dermatology, Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo, São Paulo (SP), BrazilAddress of Institution:Av. Dr Eneas Carvalho de Aguiar, 255, Cerqueira Cesar,São Paulo, SP, Brazil; Post code: 0540300Corresponding author Livia Maria Oliveira Salvianopostal address: Rua Oscar Freire, 1523, apartment 1523, Pinheiros, São Paulo, Brazil; Post code: 05409010E-mail: liviasalviano@gmail.comTelephone number: +55 62 982518945Count: Manuscript: 474 wordsTables: 2Conflict of interestLivia Maria Oliveira Salviano has no conflict of interest.Bruno Jose Breda has no conflict of interest.Ricardo Romiti , MD, PhD, is/has served as a scientific consultant, speaker, or clinical study investigator for AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, Galderma, Janssen-Cilag, Eli-Lilly, Leo-Pharma, Novartis, Pfizer, TEVA, and UCBAndre Hirayama , MD, is/has served as scientific consultant, speaker, or clinical study investigator for Abbvie, Boeheringer-Ingelheim,Janssen, Lilly, Pharma Novartis, Pfizer and RocheMarcelo Arnone , MD, is/has served as scientific consultant, speaker, or clinical study investigator for Abbvie, Boeheringer-Ingelheim, Glenmark, Janssen, Lilly, Leo-Pharma Novartis, Pfizer and UCB BiopharmaShort running title: Pustular Psoriasis after ChAdOx1nCoV-19

This paper documents the bankline dynamics of the Brahmaputra River along the India and Bangladesh region during the period 1976 to 2018. Multiple approaches, including satellite image-based interpretations, fieldwork, and meta-analysis, are performed to explore the factors responsible for the morphological dynamics of the river. Results suggest that the Brahmaputra River has lost ~2686 sq. km of land in the last four decades. Brahmaputra river has also widened ~1.7 km (mean value over the studied reach) during the period. We identified five active erosional sections along the river. The high erosions along these sections are promoted by the past avulsion and the lowlands areas in the floodplain of Brahmaputra. Interestingly, progressive erosions along the active sections of the Brahmaputra River have been sustained for decades to centuries. Sustained and dominant peripheral second order channels (dominant channels) have largely decided such progressive erosions. Interpretation based on historical maps suggests that the observed morphological changes of the Brahmaputra River are the continuation of the river’s recent planform evolution that can be traced back to 2-3 centuries. These rapid morphological changes in Brahmaputra River are conceivably due to high sediment flux, where seismic activities look to be a pragmatic factor.

Abstract : Although COVID-19 is milder in young than adults. However, it can cause pneumonia in children eventually requiring hospitalization. Clinical similarity between COVID-19, other viral, and bacterial pneumonia at initial presentation of the disease caused a great challenge. We aimed to differentiate COVID-19 pneumonia from other viral and bacterial pneumonia in children, and to characterize it . Materials and Methods: This study included 300 children, who were hospitalized with clinically and radiologically confirmed pneumonia during COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical symptoms were collected and analyzed . Cultures , real time polymerase chain transcriptase test for some respiratory viruses and SARS-COV2, C-reactive protein, serum procalcitonin ,serum ferritin , complete blood counts , and ferritin/procalcitonin ratio were done for all patients Results: This study showed that COVID-19 pneumonia was only 15 % of all admitted pneumonia cases. It had low proportion of high fever , mild course, significant lymphopenia , significant thrombocytopenia, low procalcitonin , low C-reactive protein , higher ferritin / procalcitonin ratio , and higher neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio , significant high percentage of ground glass , and less percentage of consolidation in CT images . Conclusion: During ( COVID-19) outbreak, pneumonia due to COVID-19 was less common , and less severe than that caused by other viruses or bacteria in children. Naso- pharyngeal swabs for multi-respiratory pathogen, including SARS-COV-2, are required to not to attribute most pneumonia cases to be due to COVID-19. However , further large-sample studies are needed to have full blown picture about COVID-19 pneumonia in children.

This case report describes a patient with non-occlusive mesenteric ischemia that developed due to diabetic ketoacidosis. We believe that early diagnosis and intervention may improve the prognosis of non-occlusive mesenteric ischemia that has low vascular risk, with the major risk factor being dehydration due to diabetic ketoacidosis.

In this paper, we study the following eigenvalue problem for Kirchhoff type equation with Hartree nonlinearity: \begin{equation} -M\left(\int_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}|\nabla u|^{2}dx\right)\Delta u+\mu V(x)u=\left( I_{\alpha }\ast Q\left\vert u\right\vert^{p}\right) Q\vert u\vert ^{p-2}u+\lambda f(x)u \quad \text{in}\quad \mathbb{R}^{N}, \end{equation} where $N\geq3, a, \mu>0$ parameters, $M(t)=at+1$, $V\in C(\mathbb{R}^{N},\mathbb{R}% ^{+}) $, $I_{\alpha }$ is the Riesz potential, $Q(x)\in L^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^{N})$ with changes sign in $\overline{\Omega}:=\left\{V(x)=0\right\}$, and $0

Desert expansions can cause tremendous losses to human well-being. However, the process of shifting from the non-desert state to the desert state, a representation of a system regime shift, remains unclear on the global scale. Clarifying the underpinning pattern, predictors and signals of this process is of great value in advancing understanding of both ecosystem resilience and sustainable developments. Here, we combine the climate classification map and long-term observational land cover data to assess the global desert distribution and its changes from 2000 to 2019. The identified desert areas cover approximately 7.53% of the global land in the past two decades. Only approximately 16.03% of these deserts shows expanding trends, especially in countries such as Tunisia, Tajikistan and Peru. After assessing 26 climatic, ecological and socioeconomic factors that could potentially modify desert expansion rates, vegetation cover diversity was identified as the strongest predictor in both hot and cold deserts, followed by cattle density in hot deserts and desert size in cold deserts. In addition, pronounced high fluctuation in satellite vegetation productivity and flickering between land cover states could serve as two signals for desert conversion and fast expansion, respectively. Our results provide not only a long-term overview of global desert changing patterns but also possible guidance for constraining desert expansion.

In this paper, the ongoing new coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic is being investigated using a mathematical model. The model depicts the dynamics of infection with several transmission pathways given by general infection functions plus it highlights the significance of the environment as a reservoir for the disease’s propagation and dissemination. We have studied the qualitative behavior of the proposed model representing a system of fractional order differential equations. Under a set of conditions on the general functions and the parameters, we have proven the global asymptotic stability of all equilibria by using the Lyapunov method and LaSalle’s invariance principle. We also carried numerical results using real-world data to confirm the analytical results we obtained.

Implementation of the Natural Forest Protection Project and Grain for Green Programme in China has promoted forest restoration, increased productivity, and enhanced the carbon stocks. However, few studies have characterized temporal and spatial variation in productivity and ecological stability in planted and natural forests and evaluated the factors driving such variation. In this study, we used 1399 permanent forest plots to identify change patters in the productivity and temporal stability of above-ground biomass (AGB) and evaluated the factors driving these changes in planted and natural forests in Sichuan Province, China. The mean temporal stability of AGB was higher for natural forest than for planted forest from 1979 to 2017; While, the productivity of planted forest was higher. The stability decreased at a rate of -0.013 yr-1 in entire natural forest and -0.011 yr-1 in planted forests, and the productivity of natural forest decreased significantly over time, with a slope of -0.0065 Mg ha-1 yr-1 per calendar year. Altitude, latitude, annual precipitation, and stand age dominated variability in the productivity and AGB stability of natural forest. Richness, tree density, and stand age were the determinants of productivity and stability in planted forest. Our results suggest that selective thinning and enriching species richness and forest stand age can effectively balance the productivity and biomass temporal stability of planted forests. Older natural forests still need to be strictly protected under climate change.

Soft tissue malignant tumours of the foot and ankle are rare. Diagnostic imaging and interventional biopsy are vital to establish the nature and grading of a suspicious tumour prior to surgical intervention.

Chikungunya is an arboviral disease caused by a virus with wide geographical distribution in endemic areas. This case report documents a patient with Antisynthetase Syndrome post-chikungunya infection. Autoimmune diseases result from breakdown of immune tolerance. Among all triggers, viruses represent the greatest environmental potential to precipitate inflammatory myopathy.

The artificial planting of grassland serves as the most important means of grassland ecological restoration; however, the impact of artificial planting on soil microbial communities is not well understood. In this study, the evolution of the microbial community structure was studied using 16S and ITS gene sequencing techniques, and the microbial community differences between different forage grasses were analyzed, including different density cropping schemes, multi-year degraded grassland and natural grassland. It was found that the high-density planting scheme of multiple pastures exerts a great impact on soil nutrients as well as on the soil microbial community, effectively increasing the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and Basidiomycota, while the microbial community structure was found to be similar to that of natural grassland. However, in artificial planting treatment, the key node microflora group was noted to be bacteria, which was different from that in natural grassland, in which the key node microflora group was fungi. In comparison, fungi were found to be more sensitive than bacteria to different plantings.The rise in soil fungal diversity did not improve phosphate mineralization.Overall, this study may contribute to understanding the influence of artificial grassland on soil properties as well as the succession of microbial communities, How to accelerate the succession process of grassland ecosystem. which are of great significance in promoting artificial technology to restore the ecological environment.

A 60yr old hypertensive patient presented with inferior wall myocardial infarction. His coronary angiogram showed ectatic coronaries, with a large thrombus in an aneurysmally dilated right coronary artery. Emergency coronary artery bypass grafting was performed, and he was discharged on the seventh post operative day.

We present a framework for derivation of closed-form continuum equations governing mesoscale dynamics of large particle systems. Balance equations for spatial averages such as density, linear momentum, and energy were previously derived by a number of authors. These equations are exact, but are not in closed form because the stress and the heat flux (e.g. stress in the momentum balance equation) cannot be evaluated without the knowledge of particle positions and velocities. Recently, we proposed a method for approximating exact fluxes by true constitutive equations, that is, using non-local operators acting only on the average density and velocity. In the paper, constitute operators are obtained by using filtered regularization methods from the theory of ill-posed problems. We also formulate conditions on fluctuation statistics which permit approximating these operators by local equations. The performance of the method is tested numerically using Fermi-Pasta-Ulam particle chains with two different potentials: the classical Lennard-Jones, and the purely repulsive potential used in granular materials modeling. The initial conditions incorporate velocity fluctuations on scales that are smaller than the size of the averaging window. Simulation results show good agreement between the exact stress and its closed form approximation.

Coccolithophores have global ecological and biogeochemical significance as the most important calcifying marine phytoplankton group. The structure and selection of prokaryotic communities associated with the most abundant coccolithophore and bloom-forming species, Emiliania huxleyi, are still poorly known. In this study, we assessed the diversity of bacterial communities associated with an E. huxleyi bloom in the Celtic Sea, exposed axenic E. huxleyi cultures to prokaryotic communities derived from bloom and non-bloom conditions and followed the dynamics of their microbiome composition over one year. Bloom-associated prokaryotic communities were dominated by SAR11, Marine group II Euryarchaeota, Rhodobacterales and contained substantial proportions of known indicators of phytoplankton bloom demises such as Flavobacteriaceae and Pseudoalteromonadaceae. Taxonomic richness of replicated co-cultures resulting from natural communities with axenic E. huxleyi rapidly shifted and then stabilized over time, presumably by ecological selection favoring more beneficial populations. Recruited microbiomes from the environment were consistently dependent on the composition of the initial bacterioplankton community. Phycosphere-associated communities derived from the E. huxleyi bloom depth were highly similar to one another, suggesting deterministic processes, whereas cultures from non-bloom conditions show an effect of both deterministic processes and stochasticity. Overall, this work sheds new light on the importance of the initial inoculum composition in microbiome recruitment and elucidates the temporal dynamics of its composition and long-term stability.

Despite sustained global efforts to avoid, reduce, and reverse land degradation, estimates of land degradation nationally and regionally vary considerably. Land degradation reduces agricultural productivity, impacts the provision of vital ecosystem services, and disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, through Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15.3, sets out to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) by improving the livelihoods of those most affected and building resilience in areas affected by or at risk from degradation. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) leads the charge in creating a spatially-explicit framework for monitoring and reporting on LDN goals that countries can integrate into their land planning policies. However, it remains difficult to operationalize the integration of biophysical indicators of land degradation with climatic and socio-economic indicators to assess the impact of land degradation on vulnerable populations. We present an integrative framework that demonstrates how freely available global geospatial datasets can be leveraged through an open-source platform (Trends.Earth) to simplify and operationalize monitoring and reporting on progress towards achieving LDN. Then, we summarize a suite of datasets and approaches that can be used to understand and quantify the socio-ecological interactions between drought, land degradation and population exposed to desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD). We discuss how improvements in Earth Observation (EO) datasets and algorithms will allow UNCCD land-based progress sub-indicators (changes in primary productivity, land cover, soil organic carbon, drought, and population exposure) to be computed at enhanced spatial resolutions.

Here, we propose a method to obtain local analytic approximate solutions of ordinary differential equations with variable coefficients, or even some non-linear equations, inspired in the Lyapunov method, where instead of polynomial approximations, we use truncated Fourier series with variable coefficients as approximate solutions. In the case of equations admitting periodic solutions, an averaging over the coefficients gives global solutions. We show that, under some restrictive condition, the method is equivalent to the Picard-Lindel\”of method. After some numerical experiments showing the efficiency of the method, we apply it to equations of interest in Physics, in which we show that our method possesses an excellent precision even with low iterations.

The paper investigates the low-symmetric state of the compensating field of the distortion tensor and proves that there is a gap in this state. It is shown that the distortion tensor is the compensating field of the minimal interaction induced by a translation subgroup. In this paper, for the first time, an exact wave solution for sound pressure in a continuous medium is obtained from the equations of state for the distortion tensor. It is shown that the sound is described as “massive” wave of the distortion tensor, the spectrum of which has the minimal frequency, which corresponds to a gap. The presence of a gap in the low-symmetric state gives reason to believe that the distortion tensor, as the compensating interaction field, describes a strong fundamental interaction. As it is known, the description of the gap in the strong fundamental interaction has been declared a Millennium problem by the Clay Mathematical Institute.

Increasing evidence suggests that fungal communities are key components of biogeochemical cycles in coastal ecosystems. While several studies highlighted strong spatial patterns in fungal abundance and diversity, there are very few studies using a more integrative approach to study the spatio-temporal distribution of fungi, taking also the active part of the community into account. To better understand the consequences of anthropogenic activities, e.g. marine aquaculture, for fungal community composition and activities, we simultaneously evaluated the temporal (four different seasons) and spatial dynamics in total (DNA) and active (RNA) fungal communities in relation to several major physicochemical properties. Fungal communities were highly diverse, but showed the ubiquitous dominance of Dikarya and the occasional predominance of Glomeromycota, Mucoromycota, Mortierellomycota, Chytridiomycota, Mortierellomycota, Olpidiomycota, and Rozellomycota. Thereby, fungal diversity indices showed a much higher seasonal variation than with the degree of aquaculture activity, for both total and active communities. This notion is supported by co-occurrence networks exhibiting a clear seasonal pattern. Furthermore, fungal community structure in coastal waters showed distinct relationships with environmental factors varying both with season and in space. For both, total and active fungal communities, a combination of environmental variables such as temperature, DO and NO2- exhibited the greatest impact on community structure. Our study demonstrates a distinct spatio-temporal dynamics of both, total and active fungi and provides a foundation to better understand the ecological roles of marine fungi in coastal ecosystems in relation to mariculture activities.

The use of sutureless valves in infective endocarditis has been previously reported. Singh et al have reported a single-center successful surgical treated pulmonary endocarditis in 2 cases with a sutureless bioprosthesis.

A document by Jordan Llerena-Velastegui. Click on the document to view its contents.

AbstractThe persistence of a gender gap in academic medicine has been documented in thousands of studies in the last decade. Notable disparity between representation by men and women is present in leadership positions, invited keynote speakers, and publication counts. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an additional context for this disparity; while many journals continue to experience rapid increases in manuscript submissions, these submissions are disproportionately from men. The results of efforts aimed at raising awareness and advocating for women have been underwhelming. Allowing this disparity to continue significantly limits the diversity and quality of vision in leadership and research. We can—and must—do better. How do we bridge the gaps between intention, interpretation, and results? How can advocates ensure that they aren’t unintentionally creating situations that undermine the very women they seek to empower? Until these questions are answered, the goal of ending gender discrimination risks being unattainable. In this critical review we argue that the gender gap is a symptom of a much larger issue. Specifically, the power of social expectations, culture and gender stereotypes remains a resistant force against calls for action. The power of stereotypes shapes the decisions that men and women make about their careers. In turn, these decisions impact the amount of time that women can dedicate to leadership, self-promotion, and research. Drawing on our combined lived experiences and a rich multidisciplinary literature, we offer a practical guide to allies in the fight against the gender gap.

Modeling splicing is essential for tackling the challenge of variant interpretation as each nucleotide variation can be pathogenic by affecting pre-mRNA splicing via disruption/creation of splicing motifs such as 5’/3’ splice sites, branch sites or splicing regulatory elements. Unfortunately, most in silico tools focus on a specific type of splicing motif, which is why we developed the Splicing Prediction Pipeline (SPiP) to perform, in one single bioinformatic analysis based on machine learning approach, comprehensive assessment of variant effect on different splicing motifs. We gathered a curated set of 4,616 variants scattered all along the sequence of 227 genes, with their corresponding splicing studies. Bayesian analysis provided us the number of control variants, i.e. variants without impact on splicing, to mimic the deluge of variants from high throughput sequencing data. Results show that SPiP can deal with the diversity of splicing alterations, with 83.13% sensitivity and 99% specificity to detect spliceogenic variants. Overall performance as measured by area under the receiving operator curve was 0.986, significantly better than 0.965 spliceAI for the same dataset. SPiP lends itself to a unique suite for comprehensive prediction of spliceogenicity in the genomic medicine era. SPiP is available at: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/splicing-prediction-pipeline/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/splicing-prediction-pipeline/)