Statistical issues arising in modelling univariate extremes of a random sample have been successfully used in the most diverse fields, such as biometrics, finance, insurance and risk theory. ...Statistics of univariate extremes (SUE), the subject to be dealt with in this review paper, has recently faced a huge development, partially because rare events can have catastrophic consequences for human activities, through their impact on the natural and constructed environments. In the last decades, there has been a shift from the area of parametric SUE, based on probabilistic asymptotic results in extreme value theory, towards semi-parametric approaches. After a brief reference to Gumbel's block methodology and more recent improvements in the parametric framework, we present an overview of the developments on the estimation of parameters of extreme events and on the testing of extreme value conditions under a semi-parametric framework. We further discuss a few challenging topics in the area of SUE.
The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence and risk factors for handball injuries in Brazilian elite handball players. Overall, 339 athletes from 21 handball teams who participated in the ...two main Brazilian championships were followed up during a season. In total, 312 injuries were reported by 201 athletes. The injury incidence rate during training was 3.7/1000 h, and during matches was 20.3/1000 matches. Ankle (19.4%, n = 46) and knee (13.5%, n = 32) were the body regions most affected by traumatic injuries. Shoulders (44.0%, n = 33) and knee (26.7%, n = 20) were the body regions most affected by overuse injuries. Muscle injuries (27.1%, n = 68) was the traumatic injury type most reported. Tendinopathy (91.8%, n = 56) was the overuse injury type most observed. Previous injury (OR: 2.42, CI 95%: 1.51–3.89) and an additional match per week (OR: 1.31, CI 95%: 1.05–1.62) were associated with a higher risk of overuse injury. Female athletes (OR: 1.56, CI 95%: 1.08–2.25) and an additional hour of training per week (OR: 1.09, CI 95%: 1.02–1.15) were associated with a higher risk of traumatic injury. This study showed that athletes with previous injury have shown a high risk of developing an overuse injury.
Tuberculosis incidence is disproportionately high among people in poverty. Cash transfer programs have become an important strategy in Brazil fight inequalities as part of comprehensive poverty ...alleviation policies. This study was aimed at assessing the effect of being a beneficiary of a governmental cash transfer program on tuberculosis (TB) treatment cure rates.
We conducted a longitudinal database study including people ≥18 years old with confirmed incident TB in Brazil in 2015. We treated missing data with multiple imputation. Poisson regression models with robust variance were carried out to assess the effect of TB determinants on cure rates. The average effect of being beneficiary of cash transfer was estimated by propensity-score matching.
In 2015, 25,084 women and men diagnosed as new tuberculosis case, of whom 1,714 (6.8%) were beneficiaries of a national cash transfer. Among the total population with pulmonary tuberculosis several determinants were associated with cure rates. However, among the cash transfer group, this association was vanished in males, blacks, region of residence, and people not deprived of their freedom and who smoke tobacco. The average treatment effect of cash transfers on TB cure rates, based on propensity score matching, found that being beneficiary of cash transfer improved TB cure rates by 8% Coefficient 0.08 (95% confidence interval 0.06-0.11) in subjects with pulmonary TB.
Our study suggests that, in Brazil, the effect of cash transfer on the outcome of TB treatment may be achieved by the indirect effect of other determinants. Also, these results suggest the direct effect of being beneficiary of cash transfer on improving TB cure rates.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•The impact of the urban context on buildings' solar energy potential was assessed.•3D GIS was used to build a city block in Lisbon and surrounding urban context.•Three solar radiation tools ...associated with 2.5D and 3D approaches were used.•Influence of context size, relief, built surroundings and claddings were evaluated.•The mean effect of relief and built surroundings over the city block was about 30%.
Buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO₂ emissions in the European Union. To bring these levels down, governments are striving to promote a more efficient use of energy resources and an increase adoption of renewable energy technologies, as photovoltaic panels and solar collectors on the building envelopes. To fully exploit the potential of these technologies, a detailed analysis of the incident solar radiation on buildings roofs and facades is mandatory taking into account the geographical and urban environments.
Three solar radiation tools, in association with two different modelling approaches (2.5D and 3D) handled by a 3D GIS tool, were applied to a city block of downtown Lisbon for both the winter and summer solstices and for different levels of detail of the surrounding context.
The study showed that both built surroundings and topographic relief have an important impact on solar potential of buildings in urban areas. An average difference of about 30% in the results was observed between the simulations with and without the geographical and the urban environments included. The study also showed that the 3D approach has high potential to fully evaluate solar access in complex urban layouts, for accounting the irradiation of all sun-exposed surfaces of the buildings.
•Thermal, luminous and energy efficiency of single-glass with solar films is assessed.•Experimental data was used to calibrate a simulation model in EnergyPlus program.•Films with internal and ...external application on the side of the glass were analyzed.•Cooling, heating and lighting energy savings assessed for several solar orientations.•A decision-making framework based on performance criteria is provided.
This paper examines the thermal and luminous performance of single-glazed windows with and without solar control films (SCFs) and a venetian blind in actual working conditions. SCF is a passive solution to modify the solar-optical properties of glazing systems, in order to reduce the solar gains and the energy use and to increase the indoor comfort conditions. An experimental campaign was carried out simultaneously in both cooling and heating seasons in two similar office rooms, one with a SCF applied on the internal surface of the glass and the other without any SCF. The experimental data was used to calibrate a model in EnergyPlus and to assess the energy performance of several SCFs with different thermal and optical characteristics for different orientations of the façade. A decision-making framework was applied to identify the potential use of SFCs as retrofitting solutions for single-glazed windows based on energy performance criteria. The results show that SCFs have a real impact in reducing the cooling energy use for South, East and West solar orientations (SCFs with low solar transmittance coefficients show reductions of the cooling energy use up to 86%) due to the reduction of solar gains, while there is an increase in the heating and lighting energy use.
Dental pulp (DP) can be extracted from child's primary teeth (deciduous), whose loss occurs spontaneously by about 5 to 12 years. Thus, DP presents an easy accessible source of stem cells without ...ethical concerns. Substantial quantities of stem cells of an excellent quality and at early (2-5) passages are necessary for clinical use, which currently is a problem for use of adult stem cells. Herein, DPs were cultured generating stem cells at least during six months through multiple mechanical transfers into a new culture dish every 3-4 days. We compared stem cells isolated from the same DP before (early population, EP) and six months after several mechanical transfers (late population, LP). No changes, in both EP and LP, were observed in morphology, expression of stem cells markers (nestin, vimentin, fibronectin, SH2, SH3 and Oct3/4), chondrogenic and myogenic differentiation potential, even after cryopreservation. Six hours after DP extraction and in vitro plating, rare 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) positive cells were observed in pulp central part. After 72 hours, BrdU positive cells increased in number and were found in DP periphery, thus originating a multicellular population of stem cells of high purity. Multiple stem cell niches were identified in different zones of DP, because abundant expression of nestin, vimentin and Oct3/4 proteins was observed, while STRO-1 protein localization was restricted to perivascular niche. Our finding is of importance for the future of stem cell therapies, providing scaling-up of stem cells at early passages with minimum risk of losing their "stemness".
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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•Variation in susceptibility/exposure responds to selection by natural infection.•Selection on susceptibility/exposure flattens epidemic curves.•Models with incomplete heterogeneity ...overestimate intervention impacts.•Individual variation lowered the natural herd immunity threshold for SARS-CoV-2.
Individual variation in susceptibility and exposure is subject to selection by natural infection, accelerating the acquisition of immunity, and reducing herd immunity thresholds and epidemic final sizes. This is a manifestation of a wider population phenomenon known as “frailty variation”. Despite theoretical understanding, public health policies continue to be guided by mathematical models that leave out considerable variation and as a result inflate projected disease burdens and overestimate the impact of interventions. Here we focus on trajectories of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in England and Scotland until November 2021. We fit models to series of daily deaths and infer relevant epidemiological parameters, including coefficients of variation and effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions which we find in agreement with independent empirical estimates based on contact surveys. Our estimates are robust to whether the analysed data series encompass one or two pandemic waves and enable projections compatible with subsequent dynamics. We conclude that vaccination programmes may have contributed modestly to the acquisition of herd immunity in populations with high levels of pre-existing naturally acquired immunity, while being crucial to protect vulnerable individuals from severe outcomes as the virus becomes endemic.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent age-related dementia affecting millions of people worldwide. Its main pathological hallmark feature is the formation of insoluble protein deposits of ...amyloid-β and hyperphosphorylated tau protein into extracellular plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, respectively. Many of the mechanistic details of this process remain unknown, but a well-established consequence of protein aggregation is synapse dysfunction and neuronal loss in the AD brain. Different pathways including mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, and metal metabolism have been suggested to be implicated in this process. In particular, a body of evidence suggests that neuronal metal ions such as copper, zinc, and iron play important roles in brain function in health and disease states and altered homeostasis and distribution as a common feature across different neurodegenerative diseases and aging. In this focused review, we overview neuronal proteins that are involved in AD and whose metal binding properties may underlie important biochemical and regulatory processes occurring in the brain during the AD pathophysiological process.
It is acknowledged that marine invertebrates produce bioactive natural products that may be useful for developing new drugs. By exploring untapped geographical sources and/or novel groups of ...organisms one can maximize the search for new marine drugs to treat human diseases. The goal of this paper is to analyse the trends associated with the discovery of new marine natural products from invertebrates (NMNPI) over the last two decades. The analysis considers different taxonomical levels and geographical approaches of bioprospected species. Additionally, this research is also directed to provide new insights into less bioprospected taxa and world regions. In order to gather the information available on NMNPI, the yearly-published reviews of Marine Natural Products covering 1990-2009 were surveyed. Information on source organisms, specifically taxonomical information and collection sites, was assembled together with additional geographical information collected from the articles originally describing the new natural product. Almost 10000 NMNPI were discovered since 1990, with a pronounced increase between decades. Porifera and Cnidaria were the two dominant sources of NMNPI worldwide. The exception was polar regions where Echinodermata dominated. The majority of species that yielded the new natural products belong to only one class of each Porifera and Cnidaria phyla (Demospongiae and Anthozoa, respectively). Increased bioprospecting efforts were observed in the Pacific Ocean, particularly in Asian countries that are associated with the Japan Biodiversity Hotspot and the Kuroshio Current. Although results show comparably less NMNPI from polar regions, the number of new natural products per species is similar to that recorded for other regions. The present study provides information to future bioprospecting efforts addressing previously unexplored taxonomic groups and/or regions. We also highlight how marine invertebrates, which in some cases have no commercial value, may become highly valuable in the ongoing search for new drugs from the sea.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
► This study presents a statistical bias correction methodology that allows climate model output temperature and precipitation to be used as forcing for impact models. ► The methodology is tested ...with a state-of-the–art climate model and observational dataset. ► A methodology is also presented to keep track of the uncertainty associated with the statistical bias correction process.
A statistical bias correction methodology for global climate simulations is developed and applied to daily land precipitation and mean, minimum and maximum daily land temperatures. The bias correction is based on a fitted histogram equalization function. This function is defined daily, as opposed to earlier published versions in which they were derived yearly or seasonally at best, while conserving properties of robustness and eliminating unrealistic jumps at seasonal or monthly transitions. The methodology is tested using the newly available global dataset of observed hydrological forcing data of the last 50
years from the EU project WATCH (WATer and global CHange) and an initial conditions ensemble of simulations performed with the ECHAM5 global climate model for the same period. Bias corrections are derived from 1960 to 1969 observed and simulated data and then applied to 1990–1999 simulations. Results confirm the effectiveness of the methodology for all tested variables. Bias corrections are also derived using three other non-overlapping decades from 1970 to 1999 and all members of the ECHAM5 initial conditions ensemble. A methodology is proposed to use the resulting “ensemble of bias corrections” to quantify the error in simulated scenario projections of components of the hydrological cycle.
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