Why predict climate hazards if we need to understand impacts? Putting humans back into the drought equation.

Virtually all climate monitoring and forecasting efforts concentrate on hazards rather than on impacts, while the latter are a priority for planning emergency activities and for the evaluation of mitigation strategies. Effective disaster risk management strategies need to consider the prevailing "human terrain" to predict who is at risk and how communities will be affected. There has been little effort to align the spatiotemporal granularity of socioeconomic assessments with the granularity of weather or climate monitoring. The lack of a high-resolution socioeconomic baseline leaves methodical approaches like machine learning virtually untapped for pattern recognition of extreme climate impacts on livelihood conditions. While the request for "better" socioeconomic data is not new, we highlight the need to collect and analyze environmental and socioeconomic data together and discuss novel strategies for coordinated data collection via mobile technologies from a drought risk management perspective. A better temporal, spatial, and contextual understanding of socioeconomic impacts of extreme climate conditions will help to establish complex causal pathways and quantitative proof about climate-attributable livelihood impacts. Such considerations are particularly important in the context of the latest big data-driven initiatives, such as the World Bank's Famine Action Mechanism (FAM).

Indian agriculture, air pollution, and public health in the age of COVID.

Emerging evidence supports the intuitive link between chronic health conditions associated with air pollution and the vulnerability of individuals and communities to COVID-19. Poor air quality already imposes a highly significant public health burden in Northwest India, with pollution levels spiking to hazardous levels in November and early December when rice crop residues are burned. The urgency of curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigating a potential resurgence later in the year provides even more justification for accelerating efforts to dramatically reduce open agricultural burning in India.

Publicly Available Metrics Underestimate AJNR Twitter Impact and Follower Engagement.

Social media use by professional organizations has increased as a platform to disseminate information, affording an alternative avenue to engage membership and the public. The American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR) posts cases and articles, hosts Tweet chats, advertises podcasts, and more on its Twitter account (@TheAJNR). The objective of this study was to determine whether user engagement is underestimated on the basis of publicly available metrics and to assess the engagement rate. This study demonstrated that engagement extends beyond visible metrics, suggesting an AJNR "silent" following beyond what is readily apparent. Median engagement rates from the @TheAJNR account from 2017 to 2019 appear stable since last reported in 2016 and are comparable with those reported in other professional medical journals.

The Continued Rise in Professional Use of Social Media at Scientific Meetings: An Analysis of Twitter Use during the ASNR 2018 Annual Meeting.

Professional use of social media continues to increase. We analyzed Twitter use of our own American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR) 2018 annual meeting, reviewing all Twitter posts (3020 tweets from 523 participants) containing the hashtag #ASNR18 from May 21, 2018, to June 12, 2018, extracting the transcripts from Symplur. Then, each tweet was categorized by the role of user, type of tweet, and topic. The dominant user category was neuroradiologist/radiologist (63%). The keynote address, "The Radiology Renaissance: Shaping the Future of Healthcare," presented by Andy DeLao @Cancergeek was the most frequently tweeted topic (10%). Comment on a session was the major type of tweet. When we compared the data with a similar analysis in 2014, our data analysis showed a growth in the use of Twitter in only 4 years.

Bronchoalveolar lavage to evaluate new pulmonary infiltrates in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients: impact on antimicrobial optimization.

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary complications cause significant morbidity and mortality after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (AHSCT). Bronchoscopy with targeted bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) is often used in AHSCT patients with suspected lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) to help guide management. AIM: To evaluate how positive BAL results change antimicrobial management of AHSCT recipients with suspected LRTI. METHODS: We performed a retrospective review of BAL results from January 2014 to July 2016 for 54 AHSCT recipients. A positive BAL was determined by culture, multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Aspergillus galactomannan antigen (AGA), and cytology. FINDINGS: BAL was positive for infectious etiologies in 63%, and antimicrobials were adjusted in 48/54 (89%) of patients. Antibacterial escalation was predicted by a positive BAL bacterial culture (OR 7.61, P=0.017). Antibiotic de-escalation was more likely with an elevated AGA (OR 3.86, P=0.035). Antiviral initiation was more likely with positive BAL multiplex PCR (OR 17.33, P=0.010). Antifungals were more likely to be escalated or changed with an elevated AGA (OR 4.33, P=0.020). The patients with a negative BAL were more likely to be started on steroids (OR 0.19, P= 0.043). CONCLUSIONS: BAL was helpful to determine the etiology of pulmonary complications and optimize antimicrobials. The addition of AGA and multiplex PCR to standard BAL significantly impacted de-escalating antibiotics and adjusting antifungals to provide adequate coverage. The association with an elevated AGA with antibacterial de-escalation highlights a new role for BAL in antimicrobial optimization.

Imaging of Surgical Free Flaps in Head and Neck Reconstruction.

Head and neck surgical reconstruction is complex, and postoperative imaging interpretation is challenging. Surgeons now use microvascular free tissue transfer, also known as free flaps, more frequently in head and neck reconstruction than ever before. Thus, an understanding of free flaps, their expected appearance on cross-sectional imaging, and their associated complications (including tumor recurrence) is crucial for the interpreting radiologist. Despite the complexity and increasing frequency of free flap reconstruction, there is no comprehensive head and neck resource intended for the radiologist. We hope that this image-rich review will fill that void and serve as a go to reference for radiologists interpreting imaging of surgical free flaps in head and neck reconstruction.

Accuracy, Transferability, and Efficiency of Coarse-Grained Models of Molecular Liquids.

Coarse-graining (CG) approaches are becoming essential tools in the study of complex systems because they can considerably speed up computer simulations, with the promise of determining properties in a range of length scales and time scales never before possible. While much progress in this field has been achieved in recent years, application of CG methods is still inhibited by the limited understanding of a number of conceptual points that need to be resolved to open up the field of CG to a wide range of applications in material science and biology. In this paper, we present some of the key findings that emerged from the development of the integral equation theory of coarse-graining (IECG), which addresses some of the fundamental questions in coarse-graining. Although the IECG method pertains to the CG of polymer liquids, and specifically homopolymer melts are illustrated here, many of the results that emerge from the study of the IECG approach are general and apply to the CG of any molecular liquid. Through this method, we developed a formal relation between the statistical mechanics of CG and a number of predicted physical properties. On the basis of the theory of liquids, the IECG affords the analytical solution of the intermolecular potential for macromolecules represented by a Markov chain of CG sites, thus providing a transparent tool for analysis of the properties in coarse-graining. We identify three key requirements that render a CG model useful: accuracy, transferability, and computational efficiency. When these three requirements are fulfilled, the CG model becomes widely applicable and useful for studying regions in the phase space that are not covered by atomistic simulations. In the process, the IECG answers formally a number of relevant questions on how structural, thermodynamic, and dynamical properties are modified during coarse-graining. It sheds light upon how the level of CG affects the shape of the CG potential and how, in turn, the shape of the potential affects the physical properties. It tests the validity of selecting the potential-of-mean force as the effective pairwise CG potential and the role of higher-order many-body corrections to the pairwise potential to recover structural and thermodynamic consistency of the CG model. Because the IECG theory can be analytically formalized, it does not suffer from the problem of transferability and, in the canonical ensemble, leads to consistent pair distribution functions, pressure, isothermal compressibility, and excess free energy at variable levels of CG from the atomistic to the ultra-CG model, where macromolecules are represented as interpenetrable soft spheres.

Glioblastoma stem cells exploit the αvß8 integrin-TGFß1 signaling axis to drive tumor initiation and progression.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a primary brain cancer that contains populations of stem-like cancer cells (GSCs) that home to specialized perivascular niches. GSC interactions with their niche influence self-renewal, differentiation and drug resistance, although the pathways underlying these events remain largely unknown. Here, we report that the integrin αvß8 and its latent transforming growth factor ß1 (TGFß1) protein ligand have central roles in promoting niche co-option and GBM initiation. αvß8 integrin is highly expressed in GSCs and is essential for self-renewal and lineage commitment in vitro. Fractionation of ß8high cells from freshly resected human GBM samples also reveals a requirement for this integrin in tumorigenesis in vivo. Whole-transcriptome sequencing reveals that αvß8 integrin regulates tumor development, in part, by driving TGFß1-induced DNA replication and mitotic checkpoint progression. Collectively, these data identify the αvß8 integrin-TGFß1 signaling axis as crucial for exploitation of the perivascular niche and identify potential therapeutic targets for inhibiting tumor growth and progression in patients with GBM.

Maximizing the Tweet Engagement Rate in Academia: Analysis of the AJNR Twitter Feed.

The use of social media by medical professionals and organizations is increasing, with Twitter receiving the most attention. User engagement is an important goal of social media activity, and engagement metrics represent a viable gauge of value in social media. No thorough analysis of tweet characteristics that increase academic user engagement has yet been published. In this study, the authors analyzed the American Journal of Neuroradiology Twitter feed to determine the tweet characteristics that were associated with higher engagement rates.

Loss of epithelial p53 and αv integrin cooperate through Akt to induce squamous cell carcinoma yet prevent remodeling of the tumor microenvironment.

Most of the squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) of the skin and head and neck contain p53 mutations. The presence of p53 mutations in premalignant lesions suggests that they represent early events during tumor progression and additional alterations may be required for SCC development. Here we show that codeletion of the p53 and αv integrin genes in mouse stratified epithelia induced SCCs in 100% of the mice, more frequently and with much shorter latency than deletion of either gene alone. The SCCs that lacked p53 and αv in the epithelial tumor cells exhibited high Akt activity, lacked multiple types of infiltrating immune cells, contained a defective vasculature and grew slower than tumors that expressed p53 or αv. These results reveal that loss of αv in epithelial cells that lack p53 promotes SCC development, but also prevents remodeling of the tumor microenvironment and delays tumor growth. We observed that Akt inactivation in SCC cells that lack p53 and αv promoted anoikis. Thus, tumors may arise in these mice as a result of the increased cell survival induced by Akt activation triggered by loss of αv and p53, and by the defective recruitment of immune cells to these tumors, which may allow immune evasion. However, the defective vasculature and lack of a supportive stroma create a restrictive microenvironment in these SCCs that slows their growth. These mechanisms may underlie the rapid onset and slow growth of SCCs that lack p53 and αv.

An analytical coarse-graining method which preserves the free energy, structural correlations, and thermodynamic state of polymer melts from the atomistic to the mesoscale.

Structural and thermodynamic consistency of coarse-graining models across multiple length scales is essential for the predictive role of multi-scale modeling and molecular dynamic simulations that use mesoscale descriptions. Our approach is a coarse-grained model based on integral equation theory, which can represent polymer chains at variable levels of chemical details. The model is analytical and depends on molecular and thermodynamic parameters of the system under study, as well as on the direct correlation function in the k → 0 limit, c0. A numerical solution to the PRISM integral equations is used to determine c0, by adjusting the value of the effective hard sphere diameter, dHS, to agree with the predicted equation of state. This single quantity parameterizes the coarse-grained potential, which is used to perform mesoscale simulations that are directly compared with atomistic-level simulations of the same system. We test our coarse-graining formalism by comparing structural correlations, isothermal compressibility, equation of state, Helmholtz and Gibbs free energies, and potential energy and entropy using both united atom and coarse-grained descriptions. We find quantitative agreement between the analytical formalism for the thermodynamic properties, and the results of Molecular Dynamics simulations, independent of the chosen level of representation. In the mesoscale description, the potential energy of the soft-particle interaction becomes a free energy in the coarse-grained coordinates which preserves the excess free energy from an ideal gas across all levels of description. The structural consistency between the united-atom and mesoscale descriptions means the relative entropy between descriptions has been minimized without any variational optimization parameters. The approach is general and applicable to any polymeric system in different thermodynamic conditions.

Effective potentials for representing polymers in melts as chains of interacting soft particles.

This paper outlines the derivation of an analytical pair potential in a coarse grained description of polymer melts where each chain is represented as a collection of soft spheres. Each particle is located at the center of mass of a polymer subchain, while the polymer is divided into an arbitrary number of identical chain subsections, each comprised of a large number of monomers. It is demonstrated that the soft effective pair potentials acting between these center-of-mass sites is described by a soft repulsive region at separation distances less than the average size of each coarse grained unit and a long repulsive tail, with a small attractive component. The attractive component is located at a length scale beyond the size of the coarse grained unit and its form varies with the level of interpenetration between the coarse-grained units. Consistent with numerically derived potentials, it is found that the short range features of the potential dominate the liquid structure, while the long-tail features dominate the virial-route thermodynamics of the system. It follows that the accurate determination of the effective potential in both short and large separation distances is relevant for ensuring structural and thermodynamic consistency in the coarse-grained description of the macromolecular liquid. It is further shown that due to the sensitivity of thermodynamic properties to the large-scale features of the potential, which are irrelevant to the reproducibility of structural correlations, the determination of thermodynamically accurate potentials by numerical optimization of structure alone is not a reliable strategy in the high-density regime for high levels of coarse-graining.

Interspecific chromosomal effects on agronomic traits in Gossypium hirsutum by AD analysis using intermated G. barbadense chromosome substitution lines.

The untapped potential of the beneficial alleles from Gossypium barbadense L. has not been well utilized in G. hirsutum L. (often referred to as Upland cotton) breeding programs. This is primarily due to genomic incompatibility and technical challenges associated with conventional methods of interspecific introgression. In this study, we used a hypoaneuploid-based chromosome substitution line as a means for systematically introgressing G. barbadense doubled-haploid line '3-79' germplasm into a common Upland genetic background, inbred 'Texas marker-1' ('TM-1'). We reported on the chromosomal effects, lint percentage, boll weight, seedcotton yield and lint yield in chromosome substitution CS-B (G. barbadense L.) lines. Using an additive-dominance genetic model, we studied the interaction of alleles located on two alien substituted chromosomes versus one alien substituted chromosome using a partial diallel mating design of selected CS-B lines (CS-B05sh, CS-B06, CS-B09, CS-B10, CS-B12, CS-B17 and CS-B18). Among these parents, CS-B09 and CS-B10 were reported for the first time. The donor parent 3-79, had the lowest additive effect for all of the agronomic traits. All of the CS-B lines had significant additive effects with boll weight and lint percentage. CS-B10 had the highest additive effects for lint percentage, and seedcotton and lint yield among all of the lines showing a transgressive genetic mode of inheritance for these traits. CS-B09 had greater additive genetic effects on lint yield, while CS-B06, CS-B10 and CS-B17 had superior additive genetic effects on both lint and seedcotton yield compared to TM-1 parent. The 3-79 line had the highest dominance effects for boll weight (0.513 g) and CS-B10 had the lowest dominance effect for boll weight (-0.702). Some major antagonistic genetic effects for the agronomic traits were present with most of the substituted chromosomes and chromosome arms, a finding suggested their recalcitrance to conventional breeding efforts. The results revealed that the substituted chromosomes and arms of 3-79 carried some cryptic beneficial alleles with potential to improve agronomic traits including yield, whose effects were masked at the whole genome level in 3-79.

Plerixafor and G-CSF for autologous stem cell mobilization in patients with NHL, Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma: results from the expanded access program.

Before US regulatory approval, an expanded access program provided plerixafor to patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin's lymphoma (HD) or multiple myeloma (MM) who had not previously failed mobilization and were otherwise candidates for auto-SCT. Patients received granulocyte-CSF (G-CSF) 10 mcg/kg daily and plerixafor 0.24 mg/kg starting on day 4 with apheresis on day 5; all repeated daily until collection was complete. Overall, 104 patients received 1 dose of plerixafor. The addition of plerixafor to G-CSF resulted in a median threefold increase in peripheral blood CD34+ cell count between days 4 and 5. Among 43 NHL patients, 74% met the target of 5 × 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg (median, 1 day apheresis, range 1-5 days); among 7 HD patients, 57% met the target of 5 × 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg (median, 2 days apheresis, range 1-3); and among 54 MM patients, 89% met the target of 6 × 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg (median, 1 day apheresis, range 1-4). Overall, 93% of patients had 2 × 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg collected within 1-3 days. Plerixafor-related toxicities were minimal. Engraftment kinetics, graft durability and transplant outcomes demonstrated no unexpected outcomes. Efficacy and safety results were similar to results in phase II and III clinical trials.

Thermodynamic consistency in variable-level coarse graining of polymeric liquids.

Numerically optimized reduced descriptions of macromolecular liquids often present thermodynamic inconsistency with atomistic level descriptions even if the total correlation function, i.e. the structure, appears to be in agreement. An analytical expression for the effective potential between a pair of coarse-grained units is derived starting from the first-principles Ornstein-Zernike equation, for a polymer liquid where each chain is represented as a collection of interpenetrating blobs, with a variable number of blobs, n(b), of size N(b). The potential is characterized by a long tail, slowly decaying with characteristic scaling exponent of N(b)(1/4). This general result applies to any coarse-grained model of polymer melts with units larger than the persistence length, highlighting the importance of the long, repulsive, potential tail for the model to correctly predict both structural and thermodynamic properties of the macromolecular liquid.