| 1. |
- Nogueira, C. C., et al.
(författare)
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Atlas of Brazilian Snakes: Verified Point-Locality Maps to Mitigate the Wallacean Shortfall in a Megadiverse Snake Fauna
- 2019
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Ingår i: South American Journal of Herpetology. - : Brazilian Herpetological Society. - 1808-9798. ; 14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Accurate and detailed species distribution maps are fundamental for documenting and interpreting biological diversity. For snakes, an ecologically diverse group of reptiles, syntheses and detailed data on distribution patterns remain scarce. We present the first comprehensive collection of detailed, voucher-based, point-locality, range maps for all described and documented Brazilian snakes, with the major aim of mitigating the Wallacean shortfall and as a contribution towards a better understanding of this rich, threatened, and poorly studied megadiverse fauna. We recorded a total of 412 snake species in Brazil on the basis of an extensive and verified point-locality database of 163,498 entries and 75,681 unique records (available here as Online Supporting Information). Our results reveal previously undocumented patterns of distribution, sampling effort, richness, and endemism levels, resulting in a more objective view of snake diversity in the Neotropics. Apart from these achievements, we understand that the most relevant and enduring contribution of the present atlas is to stimulate researchers to publish corrections, additions, and new discoveries.
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| 2. |
- Afan, Haitham Abdulmohsin, et al.
(författare)
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Thermal and Hydraulic Performances of Carbon and Metallic Oxides-Based Nanomaterials
- 2022
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Ingår i: Nanomaterials. - : MDPI AG. - 2079-4991. ; 12:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- For companies, notably in the realms of energy and power supply, the essential requirement for highly efficient thermal transport solutions has become a serious concern. Current research highlighted the use of metallic oxides and carbon-based nanofluids as heat transfer fluids. This work examined two carbon forms (PEG@GNPs & PEG@TGr) and two types of metallic oxides (Al2O3 & SiO2) in a square heated pipe in the mass fraction of 0.1 wt.%. Laboratory conditions were as follows: 6401 ≤ Re ≤ 11,907 and wall heat flux = 11,205 W/m2. The effective thermal–physical and heat transfer properties were assessed for fully developed turbulent fluid flow at 20–60 °C. The thermal and hydraulic performances of nanofluids were rated in terms of pumping power, performance index (PI), and performance evaluation criteria (PEC). The heat transfer coefficients of the nanofluids improved the most: PEG@GNPs = 44.4%, PEG@TGr = 41.2%, Al2O3 = 22.5%, and SiO2 = 24%. Meanwhile, the highest augmentation in the Nu of the nanofluids was as follows: PEG@GNPs = 35%, PEG@TGr = 30.1%, Al2O3 = 20.6%, and SiO2 = 21.9%. The pressure loss and friction factor increased the highest, by 20.8–23.7% and 3.57–3.85%, respectively. In the end, the general performance of nanofluids has shown that they would be a good alternative to the traditional working fluids in heat transfer requests.
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| 3. |
- Kind, R., et al.
(författare)
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Scandinavia : A former Tibet?
- 2013
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Ingår i: Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 1525-2027. ; 14:10, s. 4479-4487
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau are uplifted by the ongoing northward underthrusting of the Indian continental lithosphere below Tibet resulting in lithospheric stacking. The layered structure of the Tibetan upper mantle is imaged by seismic methods, most detailed with the receiver function method. Tibet is considered as a place where the development of a future craton is currently under way. Here we study the upper mantle from Germany to northern Sweden with seismic S receiver functions and compare the structure below Scandinavia with that below Tibet. Below Proterozoic Scandinavia, we found two low-velocity zones on top of each other, separated by a high-velocity zone. The top of the upper low-velocity zone at about 100 km depth extends from Germany to Archaean northern Sweden. It agrees with the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) below Germany and Denmark. Below Sweden it is known as the 8 degrees discontinuity, or as a mid-lithospheric discontinuity (MLD), similar to observations in North America. Seismic tomography places the LAB near 200 km in Scandinavia, which is close to the top of our deeper low-velocity zone. We also observed the bottom of the asthenosphere (the Lehmann discontinuity) deepening from 180 km in Germany to 260 km below Sweden. Remnants of old subduction in the upper about 100 km below Scandinavia and Finland are known from controlled source seismic experiments and local earthquake studies. Recent tomographic studies indicate delamination of the lithosphere below southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. We are suggesting that the large-scale layered structure in the Scandinavian upper mantle may be caused by processes similar to the ongoing lithospheric stacking in Tibet.
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| 4. |
- Tao, Hai, et al.
(författare)
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Machine learning algorithms for high-resolution prediction of spatiotemporal distribution of air pollution from meteorological and soil parameters
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environment International. - : Elsevier. - 0160-4120 .- 1873-6750. ; 175
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study uses machine learning (ML) models for a high-resolution prediction (0.1°×0.1°) of air fine particular matter (PM2.5) concentration, the most harmful to human health, from meteorological and soil data. Iraq was considered the study area to implement the method. Different lags and the changing patterns of four European Reanalysis (ERA5) meteorological variables, rainfall, mean temperature, wind speed and relative humidity, and one soil parameter, the soil moisture, were used to select the suitable set of predictors using a non-greedy algorithm known as simulated annealing (SA). The selected predictors were used to simulate the temporal and spatial variability of air PM2.5 concentration over Iraq during the early summer (May-July), the most polluted months, using three advanced ML models, extremely randomized trees (ERT), stochastic gradient descent backpropagation (SGD-BP) and long short-term memory (LSTM) integrated with Bayesian optimizer. The spatial distribution of the annual average PM2.5 revealed the population of the whole of Iraq is exposed to a pollution level above the standard limit. The changes in temperature and soil moisture and the mean wind speed and humidity of the month before the early summer can predict the temporal and spatial variability of PM2.5 over Iraq during May-July. Results revealed the higher performance of LSTM with normalized root-mean-square error and Kling-Gupta efficiency of 13.4% and 0.89, compared to 16.02% and 0.81 for SDG-BP and 17.9% and 0.74 for ERT. The LSTM could also reconstruct the observed spatial distribution of PM2.5 with MapCurve and Cramer's V values of 0.95 and 0.91, compared to 0.9 and 0.86 for SGD-BP and 0.83 and 0.76 for ERT. The study provided a methodology for forecasting spatial variability of PM2.5 concentration at high resolution during the peak pollution months from freely available data, which can be replicated in other regions for generating high-resolution PM2.5 forecasting maps.
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| 5. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(författare)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
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Ingår i: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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| 6. |
- Alawi, Omer A., et al.
(författare)
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Heat transfer and hydrodynamic properties using different metal-oxide nanostructures in horizontal concentric annular tube : An optimization study
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nanomaterials. - : MDPI AG. - 2079-4991. ; 11:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Numerical studies were performed to estimate the heat transfer and hydrodynamic properties of a forced convection turbulent flow using three-dimensional horizontal concentric annuli. This paper applied the standard k–ε turbulence model for the flow range 1 × 104 ≤ Re ≥ 24 × 103. A wide range of parameters like different nanomaterials (Al2O3, CuO, SiO2 and ZnO), different particle nanoshapes (spherical, cylindrical, blades, platelets and bricks), different heat flux ratio (HFR) (0, 0.5, 1 and 2) and different aspect ratios (AR) (1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3) were examined. Also, the effect of inner cylinder rotation was discussed. An experiment was conducted out using a field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) to characterize metallic oxides in spherical morphologies. Nano-platelet particles showed the best enhancements in heat transfer properties, followed by nano-cylinders, nano-bricks, nano-blades, and nano-spheres. The maximum heat transfer enhancement was found in SiO2, followed by ZnO, CuO, and Al2O3, in that order. Meanwhile, the effect of the HFR parameter was insignificant. At Re = 24,000, the inner wall rotation enhanced the heat transfer about 47.94%, 43.03%, 42.06% and 39.79% for SiO2, ZnO, CuO and Al2O3, respectively. Moreover, the AR of 2.5 presented the higher heat transfer improvement followed by 3, 2, and 1.5.
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| 7. |
- Alawi, Omer A., et al.
(författare)
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Thermohydraulic performance of thermal system integrated with twisted turbulator inserts using ternary hybrid nanofluids
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nanotechnology Reviews. - : Walter de Gruyter. - 2191-9089 .- 2191-9097. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mono, hybrid, and ternary nanofluids were tested inside the plain and twisted-tape pipes using k-omega shear stress transport turbulence models. The Reynolds number was 5,000 ≤ Re ≤ 15,000, and thermophysical properties were calculated under the condition of 303 K. Single nanofluids (Al2O3/distilled water [DW], SiO2/DW, and ZnO/DW), hybrid nanofluids (SiO2 + Al2O3/DW, SiO2 + ZnO/DW, and ZnO + Al2O3/DW) in the mixture ratio of 80:20, and ternary nanofluids (SiO2 + Al2O3 + ZnO/DW) in the mixture ratio of 60:20:20 were estimated in different volumetric concentrations (1, 2, 3, and 4%). The twisted pipe had a higher outlet temperature than the plain pipe, while SiO2/DW had a lower Tout value with 310.933 K (plain pipe) and 313.842 K (twisted pipe) at Re = 9,000. The thermal system gained better energy using ZnO/DW with 6178.060 W (plain pipe) and 8426.474 W (twisted pipe). Furthermore, using SiO2/DW at Re = 9,000, heat transfer improved by 18.017% (plain pipe) and 21.007% (twisted pipe). At Re = 900, the pressure in plain and twisted pipes employing SiO2/DW reduced by 167.114 and 166.994%, respectively. In general, the thermohydraulic performance of DW and nanofluids was superior to one. Meanwhile, with Re = 15,000, DW had a higher value of η Thermohydraulic = 1.678
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| 8. |
- Azevedo, Josué, et al.
(författare)
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Museums and cradles of diversity are geographically coincident for narrowly distributed Neotropical snakes
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecography. - : Wiley. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587. ; 43:2, s. 328-339
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Factors driving the spatial configuration of centres of endemism have long been a topic of broad interest and debate. Due to different eco-evolutionary processes, these highly biodiverse areas may harbour different amounts of ancient and recently diverged organisms (paleo- and neo-endemism, respectively). Patterns of endemism still need to be measured at distinct phylogenetic levels for most clades and, consequently, little is known about the distribution, the age and the causes of such patterns. Here we tested for the presence of centres with high phylogenetic endemism (PE) in the highly diverse Neotropical snakes, testing the age of these patterns (paleo- or neo-endemism), and the presence of PE centres with distinct phylogenetic composition. We then tested whether PE is predicted by topography, by climate (seasonality, stability, buffering and relictualness), or biome size. We found that most areas of high PE for Neotropical snakes present a combination of both ancient and recently diverged diversity, which is distributed mostly in the Caribbean region, Central America, the Andes, the Atlantic Forest and on scattered highlands in central Brazil. Turnover of lineages is higher across Central America, resulting in more phylogenetically distinct PE centres compared to South America, which presents a more phylogenetically uniform snake fauna. Finally, we found that elevational range (topographic roughness) is the main predictor of PE, especially for paleo-endemism, whereas low paleo-endemism levels coincide with areas of high climatic seasonality. Our study highlights the importance of mountain systems to both ancient and recent narrowly distributed diversity. Mountains are both museums and cradles of snake diversity in the Neotropics, which has important implications for conservation in this region.
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| 9. |
- Beverborg, Niels Grote, et al.
(författare)
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Phospholamban antisense oligonucleotides improve cardiac function in murine cardiomyopathy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - Stockholm : Karolinska Institutet, Dept of Cell and Molecular Biology. - 2041-1723.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Heart failure (HF) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, highlighting an urgent need for novel treatment options, despite recent improvements. Aberrant Ca2+ handling is a key feature of HF pathophysiology. Restoring the Ca2+ regulating machinery is an attractive therapeutic strategy supported by genetic and pharmacological proof of concept studies. Here, we study antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) as a therapeutic modality, interfering with the PLN/SERCA2a interaction by targeting Pln mRNA for downregulation in the heart of murine HF models. Mice harboring the PLN R14del pathogenic variant recapitulate the human dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) phenotype; subcutaneous administration of PLN-ASO prevents PLN protein aggregation, cardiac dysfunction, and leads to a 3-fold increase in survival rate. In another genetic DCM mouse model, unrelated to PLN (Cspr3/Mlp−/−), PLN-ASO also reverses the HF phenotype. Finally, in rats with myocardial infarction, PLN-ASO treatment prevents progression of left ventricular dilatation and improves left ventricular contractility. Thus, our data establish that antisense inhibition of PLN is an effective strategy in preclinical models of genetic cardiomyopathy as well as ischemia driven HF.
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| 10. |
- El Zaher, Haidi Abd, et al.
(författare)
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Role of the triad of procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, and white blood cell count in the prediction of anastomotic leak following colorectal resections
- 2022
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Ingår i: World Journal of Surgical Oncology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1477-7819. ; 20:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program expedites patient recovery after major surgery. This study aimed to investigate the role of the triad of procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and white blood cells (WBC) trajectories as a predictive biomarker for the anastomotic leak (AL) after colorectal surgery. Method: Patients who had colorectal anastomosis were prospectively included. Postoperative clinical and laboratory parameters and outcomes were collected and analyzed. The 5-day trajectories of PCT, CRP, and WBC were evaluated. Based on the trajectory of the three biomarkers, we compared patients with and without AL as detected during the first 30 days after surgery using the area under receiver operator characteristic curves (AUC) for logistic estimation. Results: This study included 205 patients, of whom 56% were men and 43.9% were women with a mean age of 56.4 ± 13.1 years. Twenty-two patients (10.7%) had AL; 77.3% underwent surgery, and 22.7% were treated with drainage and antibiotics. Procalcitonin was the best predictor for AL compared to CRP and WBC at three days postoperatively (AUC: 0.84, 0.76, 0.66, respectively). On day 5, a cutoff value of 4.93 ng/mL for PCT had the highest sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value. The predictive power of PCT was substantially improved when combined with either CRP or WBC, or both (AUC: 0.92, 0.92, 0.93, respectively). Conclusion: The 5-day trajectories of combined CRP, PCT, and WBC had a better predictive power for AL than the isolated daily measurements. Combining the three parameters may be a reliable predictor of early patient discharge, which would be highly beneficial to ERAS programs.
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