Ultraviolet photochemistry of ethane: implications for the atmospheric chemistry of the gas giants.

Chemical processing in the stratospheres of the gas giants is driven by incident vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light. Ethane is an important constituent in the atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system. The present work describes translational spectroscopy studies of the VUV photochemistry of ethane using tuneable radiation in the wavelength range 112 ≤ ≤ 126 nm from a free electron laser and event-triggered, fast-framing, multi-mass imaging detection methods.

Size-dependent melting point depression of nickel nanoparticles.

We investigate the phase-transition behaviour of nickel nanoparticles (3-6 nm) dynamic TEM. The nanoparticles were synthesized within a reverse microemulsion and then monitored dynamic TEM simultaneously while undergoing controlled heating. The size-dependent melting point depression experimentally observed is compared with, and is in good agreement with existing thermodynamic and molecular dynamic predictions.

CINeMA: Software for semiautomated assessment of the confidence in the results of network meta-analysis.

Network meta-analysis (NMA) compares several interventions that are linked in a network of comparative studies and estimates the relative treatment effects between all treatments, using both direct and indirect evidence. NMA is increasingly used for decision making in health care, however, a user-friendly system to evaluate the confidence that can be placed in the results of NMA is currently lacking. This paper is a tutorial describing the Confidence In Network Meta-Analysis (CINeMA) web application, which is based on the framework developed by Salanti et al (2014, , 9, e99682) and refined by Nikolakopoulou et al (2019, ).

In Vitro and In Vivo Preclinical Testing of Pericyte-Engineered Grafts for the Correction of Congenital Heart Defects.

Background We have previously reported the possibility of using pericytes from leftovers of palliative surgery of congenital heart disease to engineer clinically certified prosthetic grafts. Methods and Results Here, we assessed the feasibility of using prosthetic conduits engineered with neonatal swine pericytes to reconstruct the pulmonary artery of 9-week-old piglets. Human and swine cardiac pericytes were similar regarding anatomical localization in the heart and antigenic profile following isolation and culture expansion.

Considering the Role of Adaptive Evolution in Models of the Ocean and Climate System.

Numerical models have been highly successful in simulating global carbon and nutrient cycles in today's ocean, together with observed spatial and temporal patterns of chlorophyll and plankton biomass at the surface. With this success has come some confidence in projecting the century-scale response to continuing anthropogenic warming. There is also increasing interest in using such models to understand the role of plankton ecosystems in past oceans.

Identification of factors influencing hydrologic model performance using a top-down approach in a large number of U.S. catchments.

Investigating the performance that can be achieved with different hydrological models across catchments with varying characteristics is a requirement for identifying an adequate model for any catchment, gauged or ungauged, just based on information about its climate and catchment properties. As parameter uncertainty increases with the number of model parameters, it is important not only to identify a model achieving good results but also to aim at the simplest model still able to provide acceptable results. The main objective of this study is to identify the climate and catchment properties determining the minimal required complexity of a hydrological model.

The Use of Instrumental Variables in Peer Effects Models.

Instrumental variables are often used to identify peer effects. This paper shows that instrumenting the 'peer average outcome' with 'peer average characteristics' requires the researcher to include the instrument at the individual level as an explanatory variable. We highlight the bias that occurs when failing to do this.

Population trends in emergency cancer diagnoses: The role of changing patient case-mix.

Background: Diagnosis of cancer through an emergency presentation is associated with worse clinical and patient experience outcomes. The proportion of patients with cancer who are diagnosed through emergency presentations has consequently been introduced as a routine cancer surveillance measure in England. Welcome reductions in this metric have been reported over more than a decade but whether reductions reflect true changes in how patients are diagnosed rather than the changing case-mix of incident cohorts in unknown.

How do trees respond to species mixing in experimental compared to observational studies?

For decades, ecologists have investigated the effects of tree species diversity on tree productivity at different scales and with different approaches ranging from observational to experimental study designs. Using data from five European national forest inventories (16,773 plots), six tree species diversity experiments (584 plots), and six networks of comparative plots (169 plots), we tested whether tree species growth responses to species mixing are consistent and therefore transferrable between those different research approaches. Our results confirm the general positive effect of tree species mixing on species growth (16% on average) but we found no consistency in species-specific responses to mixing between any of the three approaches, even after restricting comparisons to only those plots that shared similar mixtures compositions and forest types.

Early Cenozoic Decoupling of Climate and Carbonate Compensation Depth Trends.

Our understanding of the long-term evolution of the Earth system is based on the assumption that terrestrial weathering rates should respond to, and hence help regulate, atmospheric CO and climate. Increased terrestrial weathering requires increased carbonate accumulation in marine sediments, which in turn is expected to result in a long-term deepening of the carbonate compensation depth (CCD). Here, we critically assess this long-term relationship between climate and carbon cycling.

Physiological dynamics, reproduction-maintenance allocations, and life history evolution.

Allocation of resources to competing processes of growth, maintenance, or reproduction is arguably a key process driving the physiology of life history trade-offs and has been shown to affect immune defenses, the evolution of aging, and the evolutionary ecology of offspring quality. Here, we develop a framework to investigate the evolutionary consequences of physiological dynamics by developing theory linking reproductive cell dynamics and components of fitness associated with costly resource allocation decisions to broader life history consequences. We scale these reproductive cell allocation decisions to population-level survival and fecundity using a life history approach and explore the effects of investment in reproduction or tissue-specific repair (somatic or reproductive) on the force of selection, reproductive effort, and resource allocation decisions.

Local adaptation stops where ecological gradients steepen or are interrupted.

Population genetic models of evolution along linear environmental gradients cannot explain why adaptation stops at ecological margins. This is because, unless models impose reductions in carrying capacity at species' edges, the dominant effect of gene flow is to increase genetic variance and adaptive potential rather than swamping local adaptation. This allows the population to match even very steep changes in trait optima.

Role of Greenland Freshwater Anomaly in the Recent Freshening of the Subpolar North Atlantic.

The cumulative Greenland freshwater flux anomaly has exceeded 5,000 km since the 1990s. The volume of this surplus freshwater is expected to cause substantial freshening in the North Atlantic. Analysis of hydrographic observations in the subpolar seas reveals freshening signals in the 2010s.

Our data, our society, our health: A vision for inclusive and transparent health data science in the United Kingdom and beyond.

The last 6 years have seen sustained investment in health data science in the United Kingdom and beyond, which should result in a data science community that is inclusive of all stakeholders, working together to use data to benefit society through the improvement of public health and well-being. However, opportunities made possible through the innovative use of data are still not being fully realised, resulting in research inefficiencies and avoidable health harms. In this paper, we identify the most important barriers to achieving higher productivity in health data science.

A Cross-Cohort Study Examining the Associations of Metabolomic Profile and Subclinical Atherosclerosis in Children and Their Parents: The Child Health CheckPoint Study and Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

Background High-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance profiling of circulating metabolites is suggested as an adjunct for cardiovascular risk evaluation. The relationship between metabolites and subclinical atherosclerosis remains unclear, particularly among children. Therefore, we examined the associations of metabolites with carotid intima-media thickness ( cIMT ) and arterial pulse wave velocity ( PWV ).

Widespread Warming Before and Elevated Barium Burial During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: Evidence for Methane Hydrate Release?

Current climate change may induce positive carbon cycle feedbacks that amplify anthropogenic warming on time scales of centuries to millennia. Similar feedbacks might have been active during a phase of carbon cycle perturbation and global warming, termed the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56 million years ago). The PETM may help constrain these feedbacks and their sensitivity to warming.

Stability of wheat grain yields over three field seasons in the UK.

Ensuring food security in a changing climate is a major contemporary challenge and requires development of climate-resilient crops that perform well under variable environments. The hypothesis that yield stability in suboptimal conditions is linked to yield penalties in optimal conditions was investigated in field-grown wheat in the UK. The phenotypic responses, rate of wheat crop development, and final grain yield to varying sowing date, rainfall, air temperature, and radiation patterns were studied for a panel of 61 elite commercial wheat cultivars grown in the UK in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Marine Geophysical Investigation of the Chain Fracture Zone in the Equatorial Atlantic From the PI-LAB Experiment.

The Chain Fracture Zone is a 300-km-long transform fault that offsets the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. We analyzed new multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, gravity, and magnetic data with 100% multibeam bathymetric data over the active transform valley and adjacent spreading segments as part of the Passive Imaging of the Lithosphere Asthenosphere Boundary (PI-LAB) Experiment. Analyses of these data sets allow us to determine the history and mode of crustal formation and the tectonic evolution of the transform system and adjacent ridges over the past 20 Myr.