Population evacuation is an important component of emergency management planning for a variety of hazards, especially hurricanes and tropical storms that threaten coastal communities. This study ...examined previous evacuation decisions and evacuation intentions across 13 southeast Louisiana coastal parishes. Overall, the results indicate that most people will evacuate from strong storms, especially when ordered to do so. Future evacuation intentions correlated with previous evacuation decisions and corresponded to storm strength and official evacuation orders. Demographic factors had varying effects on behavior and intentions, with gender and race having the most consistent effects. The effects of income, education, homeownership, and housing type varied by storm strength and had different effects for intentions than previous behaviors. Previous flooding and wind damage had minimal effects on evacuation intentions. Risk perception, especially perception of the safety of one's own home, had strong effects on evacuation intentions. Qualitative results support the quantitative findings showing that people continue to rely on storm strength, especially Category or wind speed, as an indicator of risk and that persons who would not evacuate felt their homes were safe or had jobs that required them to report for duty. The results call for more research into how predictors of actual behaviors and intentions vary even while behaviors and intentions are correlated and how individuals determine that their house is safe.
Numerous recent catastrophic disasters have underscored the need to better plan and manage regional traffic associated with mass evacuations. Over the past three decades, traffic simulation has been ...applied to evaluate traffic management options and to forecast regional traffic patterns associated with evacuations. As the level of sophistication of simulation systems has increased, so have expectations for ever more detailed assessments of larger and more complex road networks, especially for evacuations. Historically, traffic modeling has required a fundamental trade-off between wide area analyses with low resolution or high resolution analyses over comparatively small areas. Recent advancements in agent-based traffic modeling, however, now permit very large areas to be simulated at high resolution. In this paper, results from a series of projects in which the TRANSIMS agent- based traffic simulation system was applied to assess and evaluate traffic conditions associated with various threat conditions and the regional traffic management approaches are summarized. These findings are valuable to enhance the understanding of the mass emergency movement of traffic and can be applied more-practically for wide-scale, regional, and even multi-state evacuation planning.
Silicon carbide (SiC) is an indirect wide band gap semiconductor that is utilized in many industrial applications due to its extreme physical properties. SiC nanoparticles (NPs) exhibit a versatile ...surface chemistry, fluoresce from the ultraviolet to the near‐infrared spectral ranges, and their sizes can be tuned from one to hundreds of nanometers. Yet, fluorescent SiC NPs have received far less attention by the scientific community. This review summarizes the state‐of‐the‐art in fluorescent SiC NPs. Nanoparticle fabrication methods, characterization techniques, nanoparticle surface chemistry, and SiC NPs fluorescence properties are assessed in detail. Atomic defects and impurities in the SiC crystal lattice (so‐called color centers), surface‐induced fluorescence, quantum confinement, and band‐edge fluorescence are identified as the main sources of fluorescence in SiC NPs. While many color centers are reported in bulk SiC, only few are identified in SiC NPs and interface‐related defects remain poorly understood, creating enormous potential for scientific discovery. Finally, an overview of demonstrated and emerging potential applications of SiC NPs in the areas of bioimaging and quantum sensing is provided.
Silicon carbide nanoparticles (SiC NPs) have extreme and versatile physical and chemical properties. SiC NP fluorescence can have many origins including crystal defects in the particle core, band edge and surface‐related fluorescence, and quantum confinement. This review summarizes the fabrication and characterization methods, optical properties, and applications of fluorescent SiC NPs.
Immediately following the Dobbs decision, Ohio prohibited abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity. We aimed to characterize changes in the uptake of long-acting reversible ...contraception (LARC) and permanent contraception following the abrupt enactment of restrictive abortion legislation.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study using electronic medical record data of patients aged 15 to 55 who underwent permanent contraception (tubal ligation, vasectomy) or LARC placement (intrauterine device, contraceptive implant) at a multihospital system in northeast Ohio from January 1, 2022 to Decemeber 31, 2022, 6 months before and after Dobbs. We compared procedure volumes and patient characteristics.
We identified 4247 tubal ligation and LARC procedures pre-Dobbs, including 725 (17.1%) permanent contraception and 3522 (82.9%) LARC. Post-Dobbs, the total number of tubal ligation and LARC procedures increased by 15.8% (4916), and there was a significant increase in the proportion of permanent contraception, (p < 0.001). Vasectomy volume increased by 33.3% post-Dobbs, from 1193 to 1590 procedures. Compared to pre-Dobbs, patients undergoing contraceptive procedures post-Dobbs were younger (tubal ligation and LARC, 30.9 median years 24.5, 36.8 vs 31.5 25.2, 36.9, p = 0.011; vasectomy, median 36.6 years 32.9, 39.6 vs 37.2 34.2, 40.4, p < 0.001) and more likely to report single relationship status (57.4% vs 55.9% for tubal ligation and LARC, p = 0.028% and 23.0% vs 18.1% for vasectomy, p = 0.002).
This study demonstrates increased uptake of contraceptive procedures following the Dobbs decision. This rise in permanent contraception suggests a relationship between abortion policy and contraceptive decision-making, especially among younger patients.
Increased permanent and long-acting reversible contraception procedures following Dobbs reveal shifting contraceptive choices, particularly among younger individuals, indicating a connection between abortion policy and reproductive decisions.
Endothelial alpha globin is a nitrite reductase Keller, 4th, T C Stevenson; Lechauve, Christophe; Keller, Alexander S ...
Nature communications,
10/2022, Letnik:
13, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Resistance artery vasodilation in response to hypoxia is essential for matching tissue oxygen and demand. In hypoxia, erythrocytic hemoglobin tetramers produce nitric oxide through nitrite reduction. ...We hypothesized that the alpha subunit of hemoglobin expressed in endothelium also facilitates nitrite reduction proximal to smooth muscle. Here, we create two mouse strains to test this: an endothelial-specific alpha globin knockout (EC Hba1Δ/Δ) and another with an alpha globin allele mutated to prevent alpha globin's inhibitory interaction with endothelial nitric oxide synthase (Hba1WT/Δ36-39). The EC Hba1Δ/Δ mice had significantly decreased exercise capacity and intracellular nitrite consumption in hypoxic conditions, an effect absent in Hba1WT/Δ36-39 mice. Hypoxia-induced vasodilation is significantly decreased in arteries from EC Hba1Δ/Δ, but not Hba1WT/Δ36-39 mice. Hypoxia also does not lower blood pressure in EC Hba1Δ/Δ mice. We conclude the presence of alpha globin in resistance artery endothelium acts as a nitrite reductase providing local nitric oxide in response to hypoxia.
Human genome variation contributes to diversity in neurodevelopmental outcomes and vulnerabilities; recognizing the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms will require scalable approaches. ...Here, we describe a “cell village” experimental platform we used to analyze genetic, molecular, and phenotypic heterogeneity across neural progenitor cells from 44 human donors cultured in a shared in vitro environment using algorithms (Dropulation and Census-seq) to assign cells and phenotypes to individual donors. Through rapid induction of human stem cell-derived neural progenitor cells, measurements of natural genetic variation, and CRISPR-Cas9 genetic perturbations, we identified a common variant that regulates antiviral IFITM3 expression and explains most inter-individual variation in susceptibility to the Zika virus. We also detected expression QTLs corresponding to GWAS loci for brain traits and discovered novel disease-relevant regulators of progenitor proliferation and differentiation such as CACHD1. This approach provides scalable ways to elucidate the effects of genes and genetic variation on cellular phenotypes.
Display omitted
•Brief overexpression of NGN2 converts human stem cells to functional NPCs•Molecular and cellular phenotypes are measured in hPSC-derived NPC “villages”•An IFITM3 SNP explains most inter-donor variation in NPC viral susceptibility•CACHD1 is a novel regulator of neurogenesis
Wells et al. describe an experimental platform that pools rapidly generated neural progenitor cells from multiple human donors into the same culture flask to detect the genetic factors associated with molecular phenotypes and to identify an IFITM3 single nucleotide polymorphism that explains a sizable proportion of inter-donor variation in Zika virus vulnerability.
A Telecom O‑Band Emitter in Diamond Mukherjee, Sounak; Zhang, Zi-Huai; Oblinsky, Daniel G. ...
Nano letters,
04/2023, Letnik:
23, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Color centers in diamond are promising platforms for quantum technologies. Most color centers in diamond discovered thus far emit in the visible or near-infrared wavelength range, which are ...incompatible with long-distance fiber communication and unfavorable for imaging in biological tissues. Here, we report the experimental observation of a new color center that emits in the telecom O-band, which we observe in silicon-doped bulk single crystal diamonds and microdiamonds. Combining absorption and photoluminescence measurements, we identify a zero-phonon line at 1221 nm and phonon replicas separated by 42 meV. Using transient absorption spectroscopy, we measure an excited state lifetime of around 270 ps and observe a long-lived baseline that may arise from intersystem crossing to another spin manifold.
Arteriolar endothelial cell-expressed (EC-expressed) α-globin binds endothelial NOS (eNOS) and degrades its enzymatic product, NO, via dioxygenation, thereby lessening the vasodilatory effects of NO ...on nearby vascular smooth muscle. Although this reaction potentially affects vascular physiology, the mechanisms that regulate α-globin expression and dioxygenase activity in ECs are unknown. Without β-globin, α-globin is unstable and cytotoxic, particularly in its oxidized form, which is generated by dioxygenation and recycled via endogenous reductases. We show that the molecular chaperone α-hemoglobin-stabilizing protein (AHSP) promotes arteriolar α-globin expression in vivo and facilitates its reduction by eNOS. In Ahsp-/- mice, EC α-globin was decreased by 70%. Ahsp-/- and Hba1-/- mice exhibited similar evidence of increased vascular NO signaling, including arteriolar dilation, blunted α1-adrenergic vasoconstriction, and reduced blood pressure. Purified α-globin bound eNOS or AHSP, but not both together. In ECs in culture, eNOS or AHSP enhanced α-globin expression posttranscriptionally. However, only AHSP prevented oxidized α-globin precipitation in solution. Finally, eNOS reduced AHSP-bound α-globin approximately 6-fold faster than did the major erythrocyte hemoglobin reductases (cytochrome B5 reductase plus cytochrome B5). Our data support a model whereby redox-sensitive shuttling of EC α-globin between AHSP and eNOS regulates EC NO degradation and vascular tone.
PDF
