The latitude‐altitude map of ammonia mixing ratio shows an ammonia‐rich zone at 0–5°N, with mixing ratios of 320–340 ppm, extending from 40–60 bars up to the ammonia cloud base at 0.7 bars. ...Ammonia‐poor air occupies a belt from 5–20°N. We argue that downdrafts as well as updrafts are needed in the 0–5°N zone to balance the upward ammonia flux. Outside the 0–20°N region, the belt‐zone signature is weaker. At latitudes out to ±40°, there is an ammonia‐rich layer from cloud base down to 2 bars that we argue is caused by falling precipitation. Below, there is an ammonia‐poor layer with a minimum at 6 bars. Unanswered questions include how the ammonia‐poor layer is maintained, why the belt‐zone structure is barely evident in the ammonia distribution outside 0–20°N, and how the internal heat is transported through the ammonia‐poor layer to the ammonia cloud base.
Key Points
The altitude‐latitude map of Jupiter's ammonia reveals unexpected evidence of large‐scale circulation down at least to the 50‐bar level
A narrow equatorial band is the only region where ammonia‐rich air from below the 50‐bar level can reach the ammonia cloud at 0.7 bars
At higher latitudes the ammonia‐rich air appears to be blocked by a layer of ammonia‐poor air between 3 and 15 bars
Plain Language Summary
Jupiter is a fluid planet. It has no solid continents to stabilize the weather. Scientists have wondered what the weather is like below the clouds because it might explain why storms last for decades or hundreds of years on Jupiter. The Juno spacecraft is the first chance we have had to take a look beneath the clouds, and this is the first analysis of the Juno data. The surprise is that, deep down, Jupiter's weather looks a lot like Earth's, with ammonia gas taking the place of water vapor. There is a band of high humidity at the equator and bands of low humidity on either side of the equator, like Earth's tropical and subtropical bands. What is different is that the bands go much deeper than anyone expected and this is all taking place on a planet without an ocean or a solid surface.
Appropriate Antibiotic Therapy Allison, Michael G; Heil, Emily L; Hayes, Bryan D
Emergency medicine clinics of North America,
02/2017, Letnik:
35, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Prescribing antibiotics is an essential component of initial therapy in sepsis. Early antibiotics are an important component of therapy, but speed of administration should not overshadow the ...patient-specific characteristics that determine the optimal breadth of antimicrobial therapy. Cultures should be drawn before antibiotic therapy if it does not significantly delay administration. Combination antibiotic therapy against gram-negative infections is not routinely required, and combination therapy involving vancomycin and piperacillin/tazobactam is associated with an increase in acute kidney injury. Emergency practitioners should be aware of special considerations in the administration and dosing of antibiotics in order to deliver optimal care to septic patients.
Silica gel beads have promise as a non-toxic, cost-effective, portable method for storing environmental DNA (eDNA) immobilized on filter membranes. Consequently, many ecological surveys are turning ...to silica bead filter desiccation rather than ethanol preservation. However, no systematic evaluation of silica bead storage conditions or duration past 1 week has been published. The present study evaluates the quality of filter-immobilized eDNA desiccated with silica gel under different storage conditions for over a year using targeted quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based assays.
While the detection of relatively abundant eDNA target was stable over 15 months from either ethanol- or silica gel-preserved filters at - 20 and 4 °C, silica gel out-performed ethanol preservation at 23 °C by preventing a progressive decrease in eDNA sample quality. Silica gel filter desiccation preserved low abundance eDNA equally well up to 1 month regardless of storage temperature (18, 4, or - 20 °C). However only storage at - 20 °C prevented a noticeable decrease in detectability at 5 and 12 months. The results indicate that brief storage of eDNA filters with silica gel beads up to 1 month can be successfully accomplished at a range of temperatures. However, longer-term storage should be at - 20 °C to maximize sample integrity.
Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), a progressive liver disease that is closely associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidaemia, represents an increasing global public ...health challenge. There is significant variability in the disease course: the majority exhibit only fat accumulation in the liver but a significant minority develop a necroinflammatory form of the disease (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, NASH) that may progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. At present our understanding of pathogenesis, disease natural history and long-term outcomes remain incomplete. There is a need for large, well characterised patient cohorts that may be used to address these knowledge gaps and to support the development of better biomarkers and novel therapies.
The European NAFLD Registry is an international, prospectively recruited observational cohort study that aims to establish a large, highly-phenotyped patient cohort and linked bioresource. Here we describe the infrastructure, data management and monitoring plans, and the standard operating procedures implemented to ensure the timely and systematic collection of high-quality data and samples. Already recruiting subjects at secondary/tertiary care centres across Europe, the Registry is supporting the European Union IMI2-funded LITMUS ‘Liver Investigation: Testing Marker Utility in Steatohepatitis’ consortium, which is a major international effort to robustly validate biomarkers that diagnose, risk stratify and/or monitor NAFLD progression and liver fibrosis stage. The European NAFLD Registry has the demonstrable capacity to support research and biomarker development at scale and pace.
The Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) wrote his erudite Loci theologici for an academic context, and the Schola pietatis and Meditationes sacrae as popular devotional works for a lay ...audience; these works coexist as part of a singular and coherent literary corpus. This article presents the argument that key methodological features bind together Gerhard's academic and popular devotional works. In his Loci theologici, Gerhard both employs and explicitly teaches about theological method. He draws on Aristotelian causality and the synthetic method of theology, and he combines these with his distinctive penchant for pondering each theological theme in relation to the giver (God) and the recipients (humans or creation). In the process, he also analyzes the role of the theologian or pastor in helping those Christians who seek to grow in the habitus of piety. These philosophical considerations of methodology find their practical embodiment in many of his pastoral meditations in the Schola pietatis. There, Gerhard repeatedly leads his readers to consider the themes evoked by the words of Scripture as caused by God and as received by humans, following the methodological patterns established in the Loci theologici. In other words, in his Loci, Gerhard analyzes methodological and theoretical questions with deeply practical pastoral implications, while in the Schola pietatis, he applies the same methodological tools to compose devotional meditations. These notable continuities connect Gerhard's work as an academic theologian to his work as a pastor and popular writer of devotional texts.
Targeted environmental DNA (eDNA) studies mainly rely on quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to amplify extremely low concentrations of DNA present in environmental samples. ...Understanding factors that influence targeted eDNA assay performance and detection in field samples, such as Taq DNA polymerase enzyme type and thermocycle protocol, is critical for the interpretation of qPCR results. We completed a systematic performance evaluation of five distinct targeted eDNA assays (eANFI6, eFISH1, eANBO5, eGLIN1, and eLICA3 targeting sablefish, general fish, Boreal toad, wood turtle, and the American bullfrog) by subjecting the same samples to analysis by five different Taq enzyme reagent mixes (Immolase, Environmental Master Mix (EMM), Amplitaq, QIAcuity, and QuantiNova) and the commonly used 2‐step (95°C, 60°C) and 3‐step (95°C, 64°C, 72°C) thermocycle protocols. We evaluated assay performance using a standardized dilution series of synthetic dsDNA target sequences and calculated limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) and 95% confidence intervals for each combination of Taq enzyme and thermocycle protocol. All assays performed within acceptable performance criteria as defined by the Canadian national standard for targeted eDNA assays. Based on data generated by synthetic dsDNA fragments, the eDNA assays performed comparably regardless of the enzyme reagent mix and protocol used, except for eANFI6 and eGLIN1 using EMM and the 3‐step protocol, where no amplification was observed. On freshwater field samples, EMM and Immolase performed best. On marine field samples, Immolase, EMM, Qiacuity, and QuantiNova performed equally well, although EMM failed to amplify some samples. The work reveals that an enzyme reaction mix or thermocycle protocol can affect the result of an eDNA assay, but the appropriate choice also depends on the nature of the field sample. It is therefore imperative that these are considered when selecting appropriate reaction conditions and that they are clearly reported.
Understanding factors that influence targeted eDNA assay performance and detection in field samples, such as Taq DNA polymerase enzyme type and thermocycle protocol, is critical for the interpretation of qPCR results. We completed a systematic performance evaluation of five distinct targeted eDNA assays by subjecting the same samples to analysis by five different Taq enzyme reagent mixes and commonly used 2‐step and 3‐step thermocycle protocols. The results accentuate the necessity of considering assay sensitivity and potential environmental inhibitors in selecting appropriate reaction conditions.
Cassini radar observations of Saturn's moon Titan over several years show that its rotational period is changing and is different from its orbital period. The present-day rotation period difference ...from synchronous spin leads to a shift of ~0.36° per year in apparent longitude and is consistent with seasonal exchange of angular momentum between the surface and Titan's dense superrotating atmosphere, but only if Titan's crust is decoupled from the core by an internal water ocean like that on Europa.
Metabolic dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) outcomes such as MASH (metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis), fibrosis and cirrhosis are ordinarily determined by ...resource-intensive and invasive biopsies. We aim to show that routine clinical tests offer sufficient information to predict these endpoints.
Using the LITMUS Metacohort derived from the European NAFLD Registry, the largest MASLD dataset in Europe, we create three combinations of features which vary in degree of procurement including a 19-variable feature set that are attained through a routine clinical appointment or blood test. This data was used to train predictive models using supervised machine learning (ML) algorithm XGBoost, alongside missing imputation technique MICE and class balancing algorithm SMOTE. Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) were added to determine relative importance for each clinical variable.
Analysing nine biopsy-derived MASLD outcomes of cohort size ranging between 5385 and 6673 subjects, we were able to predict individuals at training set AUCs ranging from 0.719-0.994, including classifying individuals who are At-Risk MASH at an AUC = 0.899. Using two further feature combinations of 26-variables and 35-variables, which included composite scores known to be good indicators for MASLD endpoints and advanced specialist tests, we found predictive performance did not sufficiently improve. We are also able to present local and global explanations for each ML model, offering clinicians interpretability without the expense of worsening predictive performance.
This study developed a series of ML models of accuracy ranging from 71.9-99.4% using only easily extractable and readily available information in predicting MASLD outcomes which are usually determined through highly invasive means.
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