The Third Pole (TP) is experiencing rapid warming and is currently in its warmest period in the past 2,000 years. This paper reviews the latest development in multidisciplinary TP research associated ...with this warming. The rapid warming facilitates intense and broad glacier melt over most of the TP, although some glaciers in the northwest are advancing. By heating the atmosphere and reducing snow/ice albedo, aerosols also contribute to the glaciers melting. Glacier melt is accompanied by lake expansion and intensification of the water cycle over the TP. Precipitation has increased over the eastern and northwestern TP. Meanwhile, the TP is greening and most regions are experiencing advancing phenological trends, although over the southwest there is a spring phenological delay mainly in response to the recent decline in spring precipitation. Atmospheric and terrestrial thermal and dynamical processes over the TP affect the Asian monsoon at different scales. Recent evidence indicates substantial roles that mesoscale convective systems play in the TP’s precipitation as well as an association between soil moisture anomalies in the TP and the Indian monsoon. Moreover, an increase in geohazard events has been associated with recent environmental changes, some of which have had catastrophic consequences caused by glacial lake outbursts and landslides. Active debris flows are growing in both frequency of occurrences and spatial scale. Meanwhile, new types of disasters, such as the twin ice avalanches in Ali in 2016, are now appearing in the region. Adaptation and mitigation measures should be taken to help societies’ preparation for future environmental challenges. Some key issues for future TP studies are also discussed.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Activation of the innate immune system is commonly associated with depression. Immunomodulatory drugs may have efficacy for depressive symptoms that are co-morbidly associated with inflammatory ...disorders. We report a large-scale re-analysis by standardized procedures (mega-analysis) of patient-level data combined from 18 randomized clinical trials conducted by Janssen or GlaxoSmithKline for one of nine disorders (N = 10,743 participants). Core depressive symptoms (low mood, anhedonia) were measured by the Short Form Survey (SF-36) or the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and participants were stratified into high (N = 1921) versus low-depressive strata based on baseline ratings. Placebo-controlled change from baseline after 4-16 weeks of treatment was estimated by the standardized mean difference (SMD) over all trials and for each subgroup of trials targeting one of 7 mechanisms (IL-6, TNF-α, IL-12/23, CD20, COX2, BLγS, p38/MAPK14). Patients in the high depressive stratum showed modest but significant effects on core depressive symptoms (SMD = 0.29, 95% CI 0.12-0.45) and related SF-36 measures of mental health and vitality. Anti-IL-6 antibodies (SMD = 0.8, 95% CI 0.20-1.41) and an anti-IL-12/23 antibody (SMD = 0.48, 95% CI 0.26-0.70) had larger effects on depressive symptoms than other drug classes. Adjustments for physical health outcome marginally attenuated the average treatment effect on depressive symptoms (SMD = 0.20, 95% CI: 0.06-0.35), but more strongly attenuated effects on mental health and vitality. Effects of anti-IL-12/23 remained significant and anti-IL-6 antibodies became a trend after controlling for physical response to treatment. Novel immune-therapeutics can produce antidepressant effects in depressed patients with primary inflammatory disorders that are not entirely explained by treatment-related changes in physical health.
The most recent version of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Clinical Practice Guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was published in ...2018, and covered the diagnosis, management, treatment and follow-up of early, intermediate and advanced disease. At the ESMO Asia Meeting in November 2018 it was decided by both the ESMO and the Taiwan Oncology Society (TOS) to convene a special guidelines meeting immediately after the Taiwan Joint Cancer Conference (TJCC) in May 2019 in Taipei. The aim was to adapt the ESMO 2018 guidelines to take into account both the ethnic and the geographic differences in practice associated with the treatment of HCC in Asian patients. These guidelines represent the consensus opinions reached by experts in the treatment of patients with intermediate and advanced/relapsed HCC representing the oncology societies of Taiwan (TOS), China (CSCO), India (ISMPO) Japan (JSMO), Korea (KSMO), Malaysia (MOS) and Singapore (SSO). The voting was based on scientific evidence, and was independent of the current treatment practices, the drug availability and reimbursement situations in the individual participating Asian countries.
Abstract
A set of 464 minutes of high-resolution high-cadence observations were acquired for a region near the Sun’s disk center using the Interferometric BI-dimensional Spectrometer installed at the ...Dunn Solar Telescope. Ten sets of Dopplergrams are derived from the bisector of the spectral line corresponding approximately to different atmospheric heights, and two sets of Dopplergrams are derived using an MDI-like algorithm and center-of-gravity method. These data are then filtered to keep only acoustic modes, and phase shifts are calculated between Doppler velocities of different atmospheric heights as a function of acoustic frequency. The analysis of the frequency- and height-dependent phase shifts shows that, for evanescent acoustic waves, oscillations in the higher atmosphere lead those in the lower atmosphere by an order of 1 s when their frequencies are below about 3.0 mHz, and lags behind by about 1 s when their frequencies are above 3.0 mHz. Nonnegligible phase shifts are also found in areas with systematic upward or downward flows. All these frequency-dependent phase shifts cannot be explained by vertical flows or convective blueshifts, but are likely due to complicated hydrodynamics and radiative transfer in the nonadiabatic atmosphere in and above the photosphere. These phase shifts in the evanescent waves pose great challenges to the interpretation of some local helioseismic measurements that involve data acquired at different atmospheric heights or in regions with systematic vertical flows. More quantitative characterization of these phase shifts is needed so that they can either be removed during measuring processes or be accounted for in helioseismic inversions.
Chimerism is defined as the presence of 2 or more than 1 genetically distinct cell populations in an organism. Dispermic chimeras are derived from the fertilization of 1 or 2 matured nuclei by 2 ...sperms. We here report detection of a healthy and phenotypically normal female with normal ABO red blood cell typing in whom dispermic chimerism was suspected after 3 alleles were identified at multiple human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci using molecular HLA analysis. Molecular HLA typing showed the donor to have 3 HLA‐A, ‐B, ‐C, ‐DRB1, ‐DQB1 and ‐DPB1 alleles in blood, saliva and nail samples. In addition, 3 of her 9 short tandem repeat loci also showed to have 3 distinct alleles in blood, nail and saliva specimens. In all investigations, the third alleles were attributed to a dual paternal contribution. This case represents a dispermic chimerism, with 2 paternal and 1 maternal haplotypes variably distributed throughout body tissues in a healthy and phenotypically normal female without abnormalities in erythrocyte ABO blood group. The origin of this chimerism is probably due to the fertilization of a single egg and its polar body, or a parthenogenetic egg, by 2 sperms.
Heterogeneous inorganic nanotube structures consisting of multiwalled carbon nanotubes coated by long, continuous MoS2 sheets with tunable sheet number are synthesized using a carbon‐nanotube sponge ...as a template. The resulting 3D porous hybrid sponges have potential applications as high‐performance freestanding anodes for Li‐ion batteries with excellent specific capacity and cycling stability.
Resistance mutations A2058G and A2059G, within the 23S rRNA gene of Treponema pallidum, have been reported to cause treatment failures in patients receiving azithromycin for syphilis. Genotyping of ...T. pallidum strains sequentially isolated from patients with recurrent syphilis is rarely performed. From September 2009 to August 2013, we collected 658 clinical specimens from 375 patients who presented with syphilis for genotyping to examine the number of 60-bp repeats in the acidic repeat protein (arp) gene, T. pallidum repeat (tpr) polymorphism, and tp0548 gene, and to detect A2058G and A2059G point mutations by restriction fragment length polymorphism. Treponemal DNA was identified in 45.2% (n = 298) of the specimens that were collected from 216 (57.6%) patients; 268 (40.7%) specimens tested positive for the 23S rRNA gene, and were examined for macrolide resistance. Two isolates (0.7%) harboured the A2058G mutation, and no A2059G mutation was identified. A total of 14 strains of T. pallidum were identified, with 14f/f (57.5%) and 14b/c (10.0%) being the two predominant strains. Forty patients who presented with recurrent episodes of syphilis had T. pallidum DNA identified from the initial and subsequent episodes, with five cases showing strain discrepancies. One patient had two strains identified from different clinical specimens collected in the same episode. Our findings show that 14f/f is the most common T. pallidum strain in Taiwan, where the prevalence of T. pallidum strains that show A2058G or A2059G mutation remains low. Different genotypes of T. pallidum can be identified in patients with recurrent episodes of syphilis.
A small printed antenna is described with a reduced ground-plane effect for ultrawideband (UWB) applications. The radiator and ground plane of the antenna are etched onto a piece of printed circuit ...board (PCB) with an overall size of 25mmtimes25 mmtimes1.5 mm. A notch is cut from the radiator while a strip is asymmetrically attached to the radiator. The simulation and measurement show that the miniaturized antenna achieves a broad operating bandwidth of 2.9-11.6 GHz for a 10-dB return loss. In particular, the ground-plane effect on impedance performance is greatly reduced by cutting the notch from the radiator because the electric currents on the ground plane are significantly suppressed at the lower edge operating frequencies. The antenna features three-dimensional omni-directional radiation with high radiation efficiency of 79%-95% across the UWB bandwidth. In addition, a parametric study of the geometric and electric parameters of the proposed antenna will be able to provide antenna engineers with more design information
ABSTRACT We present nebular-phase imaging and spectroscopy for the hydrogen-poor superluminous supernova (SLSN) SN 2015bn, at redshift z = 0.1136, spanning +250-400 days after maximum light. The ...light curve exhibits a steepening in the decline rate from 1.4 mag (100 days)−1 to 1.7 mag (100 days)−1, suggestive of a significant decrease in the opacity. This change is accompanied by a transition from a blue continuum superposed with photospheric absorption lines to a nebular spectrum dominated by emission lines of oxygen, calcium, and magnesium. There are no obvious signatures of circumstellar interaction or large 56Ni mass. We show that the spectrum at +400 days is virtually identical to a number of energetic SNe Ic such as SN 1997dq, SN 2012au, and SN 1998bw, indicating similar core conditions and strengthening the link between "hypernovae"/long gamma-ray bursts and SLSNe. A single explosion mechanism may unify these events that span absolute magnitudes of −22 < MB < −17. Both the light curve and spectrum of SN 2015bn are consistent with an engine-driven explosion ejecting 7-30 M of oxygen-dominated ejecta (for reasonable choices in temperature and opacity). A strong and relatively narrow O i λ7774 line, seen in a number of these energetic events but not in normal supernovae, may point to an inner shell that is the signature of a central engine.
Recently, commercial graphite and other carbon‐based materials have shown promising properties as the anode for potassium‐ion batteries. A fundamental problem related to those carbon electrodes, ...significant volume expansion, and structural instability/collapsing caused by cyclic K‐ion intercalation, remains unsolved and severely limits further development and applications of K‐ion batteries. Here, a multiwalled hierarchical carbon nanotube (HCNT) is reported to address the issue, and a reversible specific capacity of 232 mAh g−1, excellent rate capability, and cycling stability for 500 cycles are achieved. The key structure of the HCNTs consists of an inner CNT with dense‐stacked graphitic walls and a loose‐stacked outer CNT with more disordered walls, and individual HCNTs are further interconnected into a hyperporous bulk sponge with huge macropore volume, high conductivity, and tunable modulus. It is discovered that the inner dense‐CNT serves as a robust skeleton, and collectively, the outer loose‐CNT is beneficial for K‐ion accommodation; meanwhile the hyperporous sponge facilitates reaction kinetics and offers stable surface capacitive behavior. The hierarchical carbon nanotube structure has great potential in developing high‐performance and stable‐structure electrodes for next generation K and other metal‐ion batteries.
A hierarchical carbon nanotube (HCNT) consists of two coaxial, seamless arranged parts, including a dense‐stacked inner CNT and a loose‐stacked outer CNT. Those HCNTs are interconnected into a hyperporous bulk sponge with a huge macropore volume, high conductivity, and tunable modulus. Such unique materials have potential applications as high‐performance freestanding anodes for K‐ion batteries with excellent specific capacity and cycling stability.
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