There is a large amount of evidence that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are related to cardiovascular toxicity, which has aroused concern regarding their safety. However, few studies ...have evaluated the effects of SSRIs on cardiac injury biomarkers, such as creatine kinase (CK) and creatine kinase isoenzyme (CK-MB). The purpose of our study was to determine whether SSRIs elevated CK and CK-MB levels of prior medicated depressive patients (PMDP) compared to first-episode drug-naïve depressive patients (FDDPs). We performed an observational and retrospective study involving 128 patients with major depressive disorder. Patients who had never used any type of antidepressant were designated FDDP; patients who had used only one type of SSRI but were not treated after a recent relapse were designated PMDP. Serum CK and CK-MB levels were measured before and after using SSRIs for a period of time. The duration of current treatment in the FDDP and PMDP groups was 16.200 ± 16.726 weeks and 15.618 ± 16.902 weeks, respectively. After SSRI treatment, levels of serum CK in the PMDP group were significantly higher than in the FDDP group. Univariate ANCOVA results revealed that PMDP was 22.313 times more likely to elevate CK (OR 22.313, 95% CI 9.605-35.022) and 2.615 times more likely to elevate CK-MB (OR 2.615, 95% CI 1.287-3.943) than FDDP. Multivariate ANCOVA revealed an interaction between the group and sex of CK and CK-MB. Further pairwise analysis of the interaction results showed that in female patients, the mean difference (MD) of CK and CK-MB in PMDP was significantly greater than that in FDDP (MD = 33.410, P = 0.000, 95% CI 15.935-50.886; MD = 4.613, P = 0.000, 95% CI 2.846-6.381). Our findings suggest that patients, especially females, who had previously used SSRI antidepressants were more likely to have elevated CK and CK-MB, indicators of myocardial muscle injury. Use of SSRIs should not be assumed to be completely safe and without any cardiovascular risks.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
North China, or Huabei in Chinese, is one of the most severely polluted regions in China. There are many large, complex and strong emission sources in Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan (together called ...Jing-Jin-Tang in Chinese) and other urban and industrial centers in Huabei, and the chemical characteristics of air masses coming from these pollution centers are expected to be quite different. As part of the project “Influence of Pollution on Aerosols and Cloud Microphysics in North China (IPAC-NC)”, surface ozone and related trace gases were measured at the Xin'an rural station (39.73°N, 117.51°E), located in the central part of larger Jing-Jin-Tang area, during 2 April-16 May 2006. Here we investigate the chemical characteristics and impact of air masses from these different pollution hotspots on the regional distributions of ozone and nitrogen oxides in Huabei, based on measurement data as well as a regional chemical transport model. Simulated reactive nitrogen compounds are attributed to the different emission sources in the Huabei region using the tracer-tagging method implemented in the model. We find that the chemical characteristics of pollution plumes from different urban and industrial centers are rather different. The OPEx, defined as ozone production efficiency of nitrogen oxides (NOx), for general pollution plumes from Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan and Shijiazhuang are estimated to be 3.35, 2.75, 1.43 and 2.33 mol mol−1, respectively. During the IPAC-NC field campaign period, the Xin'an site was influenced alternatively by air masses from Beijing and Tianjin megacities and the Tangshan industrial area. The estimated OPEx in Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan air masses arriving at Xin'an are comparable to those in their general pollution plumes. This indicates that air masses from different urban and industrial centers in Huabei also maintain their different chemical characteristics while being transported to the rural areas.
► The tracer-tagging technique was applied in a regional chemical transport model. ► Chemical characteristics of plumes from major cities in Huabei were investigated. ► OPEx in the plumes from different urban and industrial centers are very different.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This paper aims at constructing an emission source inversion model using a variational processing method and adaptive nudging scheme for the Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ) based on ...satellite data to investigate the applicability of high resolution OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) column concentration data for air quality forecasts over the North China. The results show a reasonable consistency and good correlation between the spatial distributions of NO
2
from surface and OMI satellite measurements in both winter and summer. Such OMI products may be used to implement integrated variational analysis based on observation data on the ground. With linear and variational corrections made, the spatial distribution of OMI NO
2
clearly revealed more localized distributing characteristics of NO
2
concentration. With such information, emission sources in the southwest and southeast of North China are found to have greater impacts on air quality in Beijing. When the retrieved emission source inventory based on high-resolution OMI NO
2
data was used, the coupled Weather Research Forecasting CMAQ model (WRF-CMAQ) performed significantly better in forecasting NO
2
concentration level and its tendency as reflected by the more consistencies between the NO
2
concentrations from surface observation and model result. In conclusion, satellite data are particularly important for simulating NO
2
concentrations on urban and street-block scale. High-resolution OMI NO
2
data are applicable for inversing NO
x
emission source inventory, assessing the regional pollution status and pollution control strategy, and improving the model forecasting results on urban scale.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
A major challenge for air quality forecasters is to reduce the uncertainty of air pollution emission inventory. Error in the emission data is a primary source of error in air quality forecasts, much ...like the effect of error in the initial conditions on the accuracy of weather forecasting. Data assimilation has been widely used to improve weather forecasting by correcting the initial conditions with weather observations. In a similar way, observed concentrations of air pollutants can be used to correct the errors in the emission data. In this study, a new method is developed for estimating air pollution emissions based on a Newtonian relaxation and nudging technique. Case studies for the period of 1–25 August 2006 in 47 cities in China indicate that the nudging technique resulted in improved estimations of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions in the majority of these cities. Predictions of SO₂ and NO₂ concentrations in January, April, August, and October using the emission estimations derived from the nudging technique showed remarkable improvements over those based on the original emission data.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The diurnal variations of gaseous pollutants and the dynamical and thermodynamic structures of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABE) in the Beijing area from January to March 2001 are analyzed in this ...study using data from the Beijing City Air Pollution Observation Field Experiment (BECAPEX). A heavy pollution day (22 February) and a good air quality day (24 February) are selected and individually analyzed and compared to reveal the relationships between gaseous pollutants and the diurnal variations of the ABL. The results show that gaseous pollutant concentrations exhibit a double-peak-double-valley-type diurnal variation and have similar trends but with different magnitudes at different sites in Beijing. The diurnal variation of the gaseous pollutant concentrations is closely related to (with a 1-2 hour delay of) changes in the atmospheric stability and the mean kinetic energy in the ABL.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The effect of city’s peripheral pollution sources is one of the key issues urgent to be solved in the decision-making of Beijing’s environmental pollution control. This paper comprehensively analyses ...the surface observations, and the satellite remote sensing data of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) during the Beijing City Atmospheric Pollution Experiment (BECAPEX) from January to March, 2001, presents an “upstream” wind field resultant vector method for tracing peripheral pollution sources, and finds that the features of the urban heavy pollution processes of Beijing are significantly correlated with the impact of the emission sources of southern peripheral cities, and the pollutants transferred northwards from distant upstream sources are retarded by the U-shaped “valley” topography in Beijing’s periphery. The two factors are responsible for the formation of the S-N zonal influencing domain of pollutants from the southern peripheral areas to Beijing. The paper also comprehensively analyses the features of flow field in the heavy pollution process in the Beijing region, and compares the heavy pollution process with samples of good air-quality days from January to March, 2001. The experiment of Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLIT-4) further reveals the diffusion trajectory of pollutants of the cities in Hebei and Shandong provinces and Tianjin city in the heavy pollution process of Beijing, and the simulations of the Regional Atmosphere Model System (RAMS) confirm the possible contribution of peripheral sources to the exceptionally heavy pollution process of the urban area of Beijing, thus revealing that the input of pollutants from southern peripheral cities is one of the important factors responsible for aggravating urban heavy pollution processes.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Measurements of gaseous SO
2, NH
3, and O
3 using IVL passive sampler technology were obtained during a pilot measurement program initiated as a key component of the newly established WMO/GAW Urban ...Research Meteorology and Environment (GURME) project. Monthly measurements were obtained at 50 stations in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe. The median SO
2 concentrations vary from a high of 13
ppb at Linan, China, to <0.03
ppb at four stations. At 30 of 50 regional stations, the observed median concentrations are <1
ppb. Median ammonia concentrations range from 20
ppb at Dhangadi, India, to <1
ppb at nine stations. At 27 of regional stations, the ambient ammonia levels exceed 1
ppb. The median ozone concentrations vary from a maximum of 45
ppb at Waliguan Mountain, China, to 8
ppb in Petit Saut, French Guiana. In general, the highest ozone values are found in the mid-latitudes, with the Northern hemisphere mid-latitude values exceeding the Southern hemisphere mid-latitude levels, and the lowest values are typically found in the tropical regions.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
NIOST should also have a great impact on the meteorological and hydrological operations and technical development in these areas, such as the enhancement of numerical weather prediction, development ...of scientific infrastructure and training of a new generation of scientists, and improvement of PBL parameterizations over the plateau and data analysis/assimilation tools.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Gully feature mapping is an indispensable prerequisite for the motioning and control of gully erosion which is a widespread natural hazard. The increasing availability of high-resolution Digital ...Elevation Model（DEM） and remote sensing imagery, combined with developed object-based methods enables automatic gully feature mapping. But still few studies have specifically focused on gully feature mapping on different scales. In this study, an object-based approach to two-level gully feature mapping, including gully-affected areas and bank gullies, was developed and tested on 1-m DEM and Worldview-3 imagery of a catchment in the Chinese Loess Plateau. The methodology includes a sequence of data preparation, image segmentation, metric calculation, and random forest based classification. The results of the two-level mapping were based on a random forest model after investigating the effects of feature selection and class-imbalance problem. Results show that the segmentation strategy adopted in this paper which considers the topographic information and optimal parameter combination can improve the segmentation results. The distribution of the gully-affected area is closely related to topographic information, however, the spectral features are more dominant for bank gully mapping. The highest overall accuracy of the gully-affected area mapping was 93.06% with four topographic features. The highest overall accuracy of bank gully mapping is 78.5% when all features are adopted. The proposed approach is a creditable option for hierarchical mapping of gully feature information, which is suitable for the application in hily Loess Plateau region.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
An analysis of 50 ozonesondings in Xining (36.43°N, 101.45°E, 2296 m, ASL), between April 1995 and August 1996 is presented. General vertical distribution characteristics and seasonal changing of ...ozone profile are reported. The analysis indicates that the stratospheric ozone concentrations of Autumn and Summer are lower than those of Spring and Winter; and the highest value of the tropospheric ozone concentrations is found in Summer; ozone concentration changing is bigger from the troposphere to the lower stratosphere altitude region, while it is stable in the middle and upper stratosphere region; there is a lower ozone concentration region in 10-15 km altitude; the result why higher ozone concentration of the troposphere occurs in Summer is the ozone injecting from the middle and upper stratosphere.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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