A wide-ranging study that illuminates the connection between epidemic diseases and societal change, from the Black Death to Ebola This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at ...how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world's preparedness for the next generation of diseases.
Land surface temperature (LST) is an important physical quantity at the land-atmosphere interface. Since 2016 the Collection 6 (C6) MODIS LST product is publicly available, which includes three ...refinements over bare soil surfaces compared to the Collection 5 (C5) MODIS LST product. To encourage the use of the C6 MODIS LST product in a wide range of applications, it is necessary to evaluate the accuracy of the C6 MODIS LST product. In this study, we validated the C6 MODIS LST product using temperature-based method over various land cover types, including grasslands, croplands, cropland/natural vegetation mosaic, open shrublands, woody savannas, and barren/sparsely vegetated. In situ measurements were collected from various sites under different atmospheric and surface conditions, including seven SURFRAD sites (BND, TBL, DRA, FPK, GCM, PSU, and SXF) in the United States, three KIT sites (EVO, KAL, and GBB) in Portugal and Namibia, and three HiWATER sites (GBZ, HZZ, and HMZ) in China. The spatial representativeness of the in situ measurements at each site was separately evaluated during daytime and nighttime using all available clear-sky ASTER LST products at 90 m spatial resolution. Only six sites during daytime are selected as sufficiently homogeneous sites despite the usually high spatial thermal heterogeneity, whereas during nighttime most sites can be considered to be thermally homogeneous and have similar LST and air temperature. The C6 MODIS LST product was validated using in situ measurements from the selected homogeneous sites during daytime and nighttime: except for the GBB site, large RMSE values (>2 K) were obtained during daytime. However, if only satellite LST with a high spatial thermal homogeneity on the MODIS pixel scale are used for LST validation, the best daytime accuracy (RMSE <1.3 K) for the C6 MODIS LST product is achieved over the BND and DRA sites. Except for the DRA site, the RMSE values during nighttime are <2 K at the selected homogeneous sites. Furthermore, the accuracy of the C6 MODIS LST product was compared with that of the C5 MODIS LST product during nighttime at the selected homogeneous sites. Except for the GBB site, there are only small differences (<0.4 K) between the RMSE values for the C5 and C6 MODIS LST products.
•C6 MODIS LST product was validated using the temperature-based method.•We compared with C5 and C6 MODIS LST products over various land cover types.•Except for bare soil sites, the RMSE difference between C5 and C6 is <0.4 K.•The existing issues of C6 MODIS LST product were analyzed and discussed.
The purpose of this review was to provide an updated overview on the use of antimicrobial agents in livestock, the associated problems for humans and current knowledge on the effects of reducing ...resistance in the livestock reservoir on both human health and animal production. There is still limiting data on both use of antimicrobial agents, occurrence and spread of resistance as well as impact on human health. However, in recent years, emerging issues related to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium difficile, Escherichia coli and horizontally transferred genes indicates that the livestock reservoir has a more significant impact on human health than was estimated 10 years ago, where the focus was mainly on resistance in Campylobacter and Salmonella. Studies have indicated that there might only be a marginal if any benefit from the regular use of antibiotics and have shown that it is possible to substantially reduce the use of antimicrobial agents in livestock production without compromising animal welfare or health or production. In some cases, this should be done in combination with other measures such as biosecurity and use of vaccines. To enable better studies on both the global burden and the effect of interventions, there is a need for global harmonized integrated and continuous surveillance of antimicrobial usage and antimicrobial resistance, preferably associated with data on production and animal diseases to determine the positive and negative impact of reducing antimicrobial use in livestock.
Poor diet quality is strongly associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. This scientific statement emphasizes the importance of dietary patterns beyond ...individual foods or nutrients, underscores the critical role of nutrition early in life, presents elements of heart-healthy dietary patterns, and highlights structural challenges that impede adherence to heart-healthy dietary patterns. Evidence-based dietary pattern guidance to promote cardiometabolic health includes the following: (1) adjust energy intake and expenditure to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight; (2) eat plenty and a variety of fruits and vegetables; (3) choose whole grain foods and products; (4) choose healthy sources of protein (mostly plants; regular intake of fish and seafood; low-fat or fat-free dairy products; and if meat or poultry is desired, choose lean cuts and unprocessed forms); (5) use liquid plant oils rather than tropical oils and partially hydrogenated fats; (6) choose minimally processed foods instead of ultra-processed foods; (7) minimize the intake of beverages and foods with added sugars; (8) choose and prepare foods with little or no salt; (9) if you do not drink alcohol, do not start; if you choose to drink alcohol, limit intake; and (10) adhere to this guidance regardless of where food is prepared or consumed. Challenges that impede adherence to heart-healthy dietary patterns include targeted marketing of unhealthy foods, neighborhood segregation, food and nutrition insecurity, and structural racism. Creating an environment that facilitates, rather than impedes, adherence to heart-healthy dietary patterns among all individuals is a public health imperative.
The emergence of the novel human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China has caused a worldwide epidemic of respiratory disease (COVID-19). Vaccines and targeted therapeutics for treatment of this ...disease are currently lacking. Here we report a human monoclonal antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 (and SARS-CoV) in cell culture. This cross-neutralizing antibody targets a communal epitope on these viruses and may offer potential for prevention and treatment of COVID-19.
Land Surface Temperature (LST) is increasingly important for various studies assessing land surface conditions, e.g., studies of urban climate, evapotranspiration, and vegetation stress. The Landsat ...series of satellites have the potential to provide LST estimates at a high spatial resolution, which is particularly appropriate for local or small-scale studies. Numerous studies have proposed LST retrieval algorithms for the Landsat series, and some datasets are available online. However, those datasets generally require the users to be able to handle large volumes of data. Google Earth Engine (GEE) is an online platform created to allow remote sensing users to easily perform big data analyses without increasing the demand for local computing resources. However, high spatial resolution LST datasets are currently not available in GEE. Here we provide a code repository that allows computing LSTs from Landsat 4, 5, 7, and 8 within GEE. The code may be used freely by users for computing Landsat LST as part of any analysis within GEE.
COVID-19 led to a massive shutdown of businesses in the second quarter of 2020. Estimates from the Current Population Survey, for example, indicate that the number of active business owners dropped ...by 22% from February to April 2020. We provide the first analysis of losses in sales among the universe of businesses in California using administrative data from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Losses in taxable sales average 17% in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the second quarter of 2019 even though year-over-year sales typically grow by 3-4%. We find that sales losses were largest in businesses affected by mandatory lockdowns such as accommodations, which lost 91%, whereas online sales grew by 180%. Placing business types into different categories based on whether they were considered essential or nonessential (and thus subject to early lockdowns) and whether they have a moderate or high level of person-to-person contact, we find interesting correlations between sales losses and COVID-19 cases per capita across counties in California. The results suggest that local implementation and enforcement of lockdown restrictions as safety measures for public health and voluntary behavioral responses as reactions to the perceived local COVID-19 spread both played a role.
Plain English Summary
Business sales dropped by 17% on average due to the pandemic during the second quarter of 2020 in California. Accommodations lost 91% of sales, whereas online sales grew by 180%. Sales fell more steeply in counties with more COVID-19 cases. We examine how much businesses lost in sales using administrative sales tax data. The average losses of 17% in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the second quarter of 2019 occurred even though year-over-year sales typically grow by 3-4%. We find that sales losses were largest in businesses affected by mandatory lockdowns such as accommodations, drinking places, and arts, entertainment, and recreation. Distinguishing between essential and nonessential businesses, which were subject to early lockdowns, and by the level of person-to-person contact, we find that local implementation and enforcement of lockdown restrictions for public health safety and voluntary responses to the perceived local COVID-19 spread both played a role. The results suggest that small businesses may need more support from governments and consumers to mitigate the strong shift to online vendors, and that the pandemic must be brought under control as a prerequisite to a full recovery.
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) shows great potential for real-time monitoring and identification of infectious disease outbreaks. However, rapid and reliable comparison of data generated in multiple ...laboratories and using multiple technologies is essential. So far studies have focused on using one technology because each technology has a systematic bias making integration of data generated from different platforms difficult. We developed two different procedures for identifying variable sites and inferring phylogenies in WGS data across multiple platforms. The methods were evaluated on three bacterial data sets and sequenced on three different platforms (Illumina, 454, Ion Torrent). We show that the methods are able to overcome the systematic biases caused by the sequencers and infer the expected phylogenies. It is concluded that the cause of the success of these new procedures is due to a validation of all informative sites that are included in the analysis. The procedures are available as web tools.
Abstract
Maximizing the catalytic activity of single-atom catalysts is vital for the application of single-atom catalysts in industrial water-alkali electrolyzers, yet the modulation of the catalytic ...properties of single-atom catalysts remains challenging. Here, we construct strain-tunable sulphur vacancies around single-atom Ru sites for accelerating the alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction of single-atom Ru sites based on a nanoporous MoS
2
-based Ru single-atom catalyst. By altering the strain of this system, the synergistic effect between sulphur vacancies and Ru sites is amplified, thus changing the catalytic behavior of active sites, namely, the increased reactant density in strained sulphur vacancies and the accelerated hydrogen evolution reaction process on Ru sites. The resulting catalyst delivers an overpotential of 30 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm
−2
, a Tafel slope of 31 mV dec
−1
, and a long catalytic lifetime. This work provides an effective strategy to improve the activities of single-atom modified transition metal dichalcogenides catalysts by precise strain engineering.
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