Blue LUminous Events (BLUEs) are transient corona discharges occurring in thunderclouds and characterized by strong 337.0 nm light flashes with absent (or weak) 777.4 nm component. We present the ...first nighttime climatology of BLUEs as detected by the Modular Multispectral Imaging Array of the Atmosphere‐Space Interaction Monitor showing their worldwide geographical and seasonal distribution. A total (land and ocean) of ∼11 BLUEs occur around the globe every second at local midnight and the average BLUE land/sea ratio is ∼7:4. The northwest region of Colombia shows an annual nighttime peak. Globally, BLUEs are maximized during the boreal summer‐autumn, contrary to lightning which is maximed in the boreal summer. The geographical distribution of nighttime BLUEs shows three main regions in, by order of importance, the Americas, Europe/Africa and Asia/Australia.
Plain Language Summary
Blue LUminous Events (BLUEs) are transient corona discharges occurring in thunderclouds and characterized by their distinct 337.0 nm light flashes with absent (or negligible) 777.4 nm component. We present the first two year nighttime climatology of BLUEs as detected by the Modular Multispectral Imaging Array of the Atmosphere‐Space Interaction Monitor on board the International Space Station that shows distinct worldwide geographical and seasonal distributions.
Key Points
The first nighttime two‐year climatology of streamer corona discharges (blue luminous events) in thunderclouds is presented
Globally, the rate of blue luminous events at local midnight is ∼11 per second
Zonal and meridional distributions of blue luminous events peak in the northern tropic and the Americas, respectively
Essentials
We performed a pooled analysis of 926 patients with cancer‐associated incidental pulmonary embolism (IPE).
Vitamin K antagonists (VKA) are associated with a higher risk of major ...hemorrhage.
Recurrence risk is comparable after subsegmental and more proximally localized IPE.
Our results support low molecular weight heparins over VKA and similar management of subsegmental IPE.
Summary
Background
Incidental pulmonary embolism (IPE) is defined as pulmonary embolism (PE) diagnosed on computed tomography scanning not performed for suspected PE. IPE has been estimated to occur in 3.1% of all cancer patients and is a growing challenge for clinicians and patients. Nevertheless, knowledge about the treatment and prognosis of cancer‐associated IPE is scarce. We aimed to provide the best available evidence on IPE management.
Methods
Incidence rates of symptomatic recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE), major hemorrhage, and mortality during 6‐month follow‐up were pooled using individual patient data from studies identified by a systematic literature search. Subgroup analyses based on cancer stage, thrombus localization, and management were performed.
Results
In 926 cancer patients with IPE from 11 cohorts, weighted pooled 6‐month risks of recurrent VTE, major hemorrhage and mortality were 5.8% (95% confidence interval CI 3.7–8.3%), 4.7% (95% CI 3.0–6.8%), and 37% (95% CI 28–47%). VTE recurrence risk was comparable under low molecular weight heparins (LMWH) and vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) (6.2% vs. 6.4%; hazard ratio HR 0.9; 95% CI 0.3–3.1), while 12% in untreated patients (HR 2.6; 95% CI 0.91–7.3). Risk of major hemorrhage was higher under VKAs than under LMWH (13% vs. 3.9%; HR 3.9; 95% CI 1.6–10). VTE recurrence risk was comparable in patients with an subsegmental IPE and those with a more proximally localized IPE (HR 1.1; 95% CI 0.50–2.4).
Conclusion
These results support the current recommendation to anticoagulate cancer‐associated IPE with LMWH and argue against different management of subsegmental IPE.
This paper reports the development of a novel electrochemical platform based on graphite electrodes modified with copolymer poly(aniline-4-aminophenol) and anti-triiodothyronine, integrated into the ...design of an electrochemical immunosensor for thyroid hormone, allowing free triiodothyronine (T3) detection in real serum samples. The proposed copolymer showed synergistic characteristics among its original polymers, which led to good results in the biofunctionalization step. A specific antibody for T3 was immobilized on copolymer poly(aniline-4-aminophenol). In the presence of target T3, an immunological reaction occurs with anti-T3, being observed a current decrease proportional to T3 concentration. The decrease was monitored by differential pulse voltammetry, detecting up to 0.60 pg mL
−1
and showing good stability, maintaining 90% of its response after 60 days of storage. This platform shows linear relationship between the anodic current and T3 concentration with linear regression as
y
= 616.79 − 26.03
x
(
r
2
= 0.9976). The immunosensor shows suitable for detection of thyroid hormones in real serum samples, as well as potential for use in detection of other disease biomarkers.
The Auca Mahuida volcanic field lies on the southernmost Payenia Volcanic Province, one of the broadest retroarc volcanic plateaux in the southern Central Andes (~38°S). This voluminous basaltic ...flooding of Quaternary age was originated from a deep asthenospheric source, interpreted as a mantle plume product of changing slab dynamics. The geometry of this source is deduced from magnetotelluric data, but the limited spatial coverage of this array does not allow a detailed resolution of this anomaly. In order to present a detailed geometry of the conductive anomaly and related crustal magmatic bodies, we used multiple data sources. We combined Magnetic and Bouguer anomalies, Curie isotherm depth (Tc), Elastic Thickness (Te) and Moho depth derived from the Global Earth Magnetic Anomaly Grid (EMAG2) and terrestrial gravity measurements, all together in a holistic geophysical analysis. The magnetic data depict a nearly 200‐km‐in‐diameter circular anomaly that would correspond to a dense body according to the Bouguer anomaly. Geoid data from the Gravity Field Model (EIGEN‐6c4) have been filtered in order to isolate deeper mass influences and visualize the asthenospheric upwelling previously described from magnetotelluric data. Moho inversion yields a crustal attenuation at 36‐ to 32‐km depth coinciding with Te below 20‐km depth and a shallow Tc (≤15‐km depth) at the site where Geoid positive undulation was calculated. Finally, surface analysis allowed defining a topographic swell, compatible with the dimensions of the identified magnetic anomaly, where the main rivers deviated, potentially due to a recent base level change.
Key Points
A magmatic intrusion due to an asthenospheric upwelling in the Southern Central Andes was constrained by magnetic anomalies
The Geoid was used to interpret an asthenospheric upwelling
We found a correlation between drainage geometry, its diversion pattern, and magnetic anomalies
While narrow bipolar events (NBEs) could be related with lightning initiation, their intrinsic physics remains in question. Here we report on optical measurements by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions ...Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station (ISS) of blue flashes associated with NBEs. They are observed in a narrow blue band centered at 337 nm, with no simultaneous activity at 777.4 nm, considered a strong lightning emission line. From radio waves measured from the ground, we find that 7 of 10 single‐pulse blue events can be identified as positive NBEs. The source altitudes estimated from optical and radio signals agree and indicate that the sources of the blue flashes are located between ∼8.5 and ∼14 km, in a cloud reaching 14–15 km altitude. The observations suggest that single‐pulse blue flashes are from cold ionization waves, so‐called streamers, and that positive NBEs are corona discharges formed by many streamers.
Plain Language Summary
A special type of cloud electrical discharges called narrow bipolar events (NBEs) could be related with lightning initiation, but their intrinsic physics remains in question. Here we report on optical measurements by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station (ISS) of blue flashes associated with NBEs. They are observed with no simultaneous optical emissions from regular lightning. From radio waves measured from the ground, we find that 70% of the detected single‐pulse blue events can be identified as positive NBEs. The source altitude estimates from optical and radio signals agree and indicate that the sources of the blue events are located between ∼8.5 and ∼14 km inside the thundercloud. The observations suggest that single‐pulse blue flashes are from cold ionization waves, so‐called streamers, and that positive NBEs are corona discharges formed by many streamers.
Key Points
ASIM has detected blue flashes associated with positive narrow bipolar events; no simultaneous lightning 777.4 nm emission was recorded
Source altitudes derived from optical and radio signals agree and locate NBE and blue flash sources between 8.5 and 14 km inside the cloud
Observations suggest that blue flashes are due to streamers, and that positive narrow bipolar events are cloud coronas with many streamers
PRODES and DETER project together turned 33 years-old with an undeniably contribution to the state-of-art in mapping and monitoring tropical deforestation in Brazil. Monitoring systems all over the ...world have taken advantage of big data repositories of remote sensing data as they are becoming freely available together with artificial intelligence. Thus, considering the advent of new generation remote sensing data hubs, online platforms of big data that can fill in spatial and temporal resolutions gaps in current deforestation mapping, this work aims to present recent innovations at INPE´s deforestation monitoring systems in Brazil and how they are gauging new realms of technological levels. Recent innovations at INPE´s monitoring systems are: 1) the development of TerraBrasilis platform of data access and analysis; 2) the adoption of new sensors and cloud detection strategies; 3) the complementary use of multi-sensor images; 4) the complementary adoption of SAR C-band images using cloud data to sample and process Sentinel-1. Future innovations are: 1) development of a Brazilian data cube to be used in deep learning techniques of image classification; 2) Routine uncertainty analysis of PRODES data. Automatization might fasten mapping process, but the real challenge is to succeed in automatization maintaining data quality and historical series. The hyper-availability of remote sensing data, the initiative of a Brazilian Data Cube and promising machine learning techniques applied to land cover change detection, allowed INPE to reinforce its central role in tropical forest monitoring.
Modern tomato (
Solanum lycopersicum
L.) breeding has mainly focused on increasing productivity under unlimited watering. In contrast, some Mediterranean accessions have been traditionally cultivated ...under water shortage and selected on the basis of their water-use efficiency (WUE). Ramellet and Penjar landraces were planted with other traditional, old and modern inbreeds, under full irrigation. In order to found differences between the tomato accessions, gas-exchange and leaf morphology measurements were performed. Despite high variability, Ramellet and Penjar presented clear differences compared to modern cultivars, mostly related to leaf morphology and photosynthetic traits, while no differences were found in WUE. Results highlighted that better leaf CO
2
conductance might be a main factor determining the improvement of net CO
2
assimilation and WUE.
Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) causes economically important losses in many crops, worldwide. In pepper (Capsicum annuum), the best method for disease control has been breeding resistant cultivars ...by introgression of gene Tsw from Capsicum chinense. However, this resistance has two drawbacks: (a) it is not efficient if plants are infected at early growth stages and under prolonged high temperatures, and (b) it is rapidly overcome by TSWV evolution. In this work, we selected and evaluated a new accession from Capsicum baccatum, named PIM26‐1, using a novel approach consisting in measuring how three parameters related to virus infection changed over time, in comparison to a susceptible pepper variety (Negral) and a resistant (with Tsw) accession (PI‐159236): (a) The level of resistance to virus accumulation was estimated as an opposite to absolute fitness, W=eʳ, being r the viral multiplication rate calculated by quantitative RT‐PCR; (b); the level of resistance to virus infection was estimated as the Kaplan–Meier survival time for no infection using DAS‐ELISA to identify TSWV‐infected plants; (c) the level of tolerance was estimated as the Kaplan–Meier survival time for no appearance of severe symptoms. Our results showed that the levels of both resistance parameters against TSWV wild type (WT) and Tsw‐resistance breaking (TBR) isolates were higher in PIM26‐1 than in the susceptible pepper variety Negral and similar to the resistant variety PI‐159236 against the TBR isolate. However, PIM26‐1 showed a very high tolerance (none of the plants developed severe symptoms) to the WT and TBR isolates in contrast to Negral for WT and TBR or PI‐159236 for TBR (most TSWV‐inoculated plants developed severe symptoms). All this indicate that the new accession PIM26‐1 is a good candidate for breeding programmes to avoid damages caused by TSWV TBR isolates in pepper.
Abstract
We describe a procedure to obtain the plasma parameters from the
I-V
Langmuir curve by using the Druyvesteyn equation. We propose to include two new parameters,
q
and
r
, to the usual plasma ...parameters: plasma potential (
V
p
), floating potential (
V
f
), electron density (
n
), and electron temperature (
T
). These new parameters can be particularly useful to represent non-Maxwellian distributions. The procedure is based on the fit of the
I-V
Langmuir curve with the
q
-Weibull distribution function, and is motivated by recent works which use the
q
-exponential distribution function derived from Tsallis statistics. We obtain the usual plasma parameters employing three techniques: the numerical differentiation using Savitzky Golay (SG) filters, the
q
-exponential distribution function, and the
q
-Weibull distribution function. We explain the limitations of the
q
-exponential function, where the experimental data
V
>
V
p
needs to be trimmed beforehand, and this results in a lower accuracy compared to the numerical differentiation with SG. To overcome this difficulty, the
q
-Weibull function is introduced as a natural generalization to the
q
-exponential distribution, and it has greater flexibility in order to represent the concavity change around
V
p
. We apply this procedure to analyze the measurements corresponding to a nitrogen
N
2
cold plasma obtained by using a single Langmuir probe located at different heights from the cathode. We show that the
q
parameter has a very stable numerical value with the height. This work may contribute to clarify some advantages and limitations of the use of non-extensive statistics in plasma diagnostics, but the physical interpretation of the non-extensive parameters in plasma physics remains not fully clarified, and requires further research.
The increasing pressure from agriculture and pasture activities over non-forest vegetation areas revealed the need of INPE to extend forest regular monitoring to non-forested areas. Non-forest ...vegetation consists of savannahs, shrub lands, grasslands or seasonal floodplains that occupy 279 thousand km2 (6,63 %) of Brazilian Amazon biome extension. Addressed ecosystem services of non-forest vegetation vary from climate, soil, carbon storage, biodiversity, water and fire regulation to cultural benefits and living of the population. The challenge in monitoring non-forest removal lies in climatic seasonality, high variability of phytophysiognomies and cloud coverage. In this work we developed a method to map non-forest vegetation from 2000 to 2021 in a pilot area enclosing five municipalities in Roraima and Amapá states. Considering the total area of 47 thousand km2, 58 % was originally forest and 37 % was non-forest vegetation. In 2020, soybean planted areas occupied 60 thousands hectares in these municipalities. We adapted PRODES protocol to non-forest features using visual interpretation of Landsat and SENTINEL-2 satellite images. Regional expertise supported the interpretation keys to distinguish non-forest removal from seasonal changes or other land use changes. A baseline map for 2000 is provided together with biannual and annual increments for 2002–2018 and 2019–2021, respectively. Results show removal of non-forested areas even overpassing deforestation in some municipalities. Accumulated non-forest removal was 3.133,06 km2 or 17,44 % of the non-forest area enclosed. This work consolidated the method to be applied in the Brazilian Amazon biome allowing a uniform historical mapping series of deforestation and non-forest removal.
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