Impact of ENSO longitudinal position on teleconnections to the NAO

While significant improvements have been made in understanding how the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts both North American and Asian climate, its relationship with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) remains less clear. Observations indicate that ENSO exhibits a highly complex relationship with the NAO-associated atmospheric circulation. One critical contribution to this ambiguous ENSO/NAO relationship originates from ENSO’s diversity in its spatial structure. In general, both eastern (EP) and central Pacific (CP) El Niño events tend to be accompanied by a negative NAO-like atmospheric response. However, for two different types of La Niña the NAO response is almost opposite. Thus, the NAO responses for the CP ENSO are mostly linear, while nonlinear NAO responses dominate for the EP ENSO. These contrasting extra-tropical atmospheric responses are mainly attributed to nonlinear air-sea interactions in the tropical eastern Pacific. The local atmospheric response to the CP ENSO sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies is highly linear since the air-sea action center is located within the Pacific warm pool, characterized by relatively high climatological SSTs. In contrast, the EP ENSO SST anomalies are located in an area of relatively low climatological SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Here only sufficiently high positive SST anomalies during EP El Niño events are able to overcome the SST threshold for deep convection, while hardly any anomalous convection is associated with EP La Niña SSTs that are below this threshold. This ENSO/NAO relationship has important implications for NAO seasonal prediction and places a higher requirement on models in reproducing the full diversity of ENSO

Study of hadronic event-shape variables in multijet final states in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Constraints on parton distribution functions and extraction of the strong coupling constant from the inclusive jet cross section in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for Dark Matter and Supersymmetry with a Compressed Mass Spectrum in the Vector Boson Fusion Topology in Proton-Proton Collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Saturated Fatty Acids and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: Modulation by Replacement Nutrients

Despite the well-established observation that substitution of saturated fats for carbohydrates or unsaturated fats increases low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in humans and animal models, the relationship of saturated fat intake to risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in humans remains controversial. A critical question is what macronutrient should be used to replace saturated fat. Substituting polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat reduces LDL cholesterol and the total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio. However, replacement of saturated fat by carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates and added sugars, increases levels of triglyceride and small LDL particles and reduces high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, effects that are of particular concern in the context of the increased prevalence of obesity and insulin resistance. Epidemiologic studies and randomized clinical trials have provided consistent evidence that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, but not carbohydrates, is beneficial for coronary heart disease. Therefore, dietary recommendations should emphasize substitution of polyunsaturated fat and minimally processed grains for saturated fat

A comparison of Child-Pugh, APACHE II and APACHE III scoring systems in predicting hospital mortality of patients with liver cirrhosis

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic accuracy of Child-Pugh and APACHE II and III scoring systems in predicting short-term, hospital mortality of patients with liver cirrhosis. METHODS: 200 admissions of 147 cirrhotic patients (44% viral-associated liver cirrhosis, 33% alcoholic, 18.5% cryptogenic, 4.5% both viral and alcoholic) were studied prospectively. Clinical and laboratory data conforming to the Child-Pugh, APACHE II and III scores were recorded on day 1 for all patients. Discrimination was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and area under a ROC curve (AUC). Calibration was estimated using the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test. RESULTS: Overall mortality was 11.5%. The mean Child-Pugh, APACHE II and III scores for survivors were found to be significantly lower than those of nonsurvivors. Discrimination was excellent for Child-Pugh (ROC AUC: 0.859) and APACHE III (ROC AUC: 0.816) scores, and acceptable for APACHE II score (ROC AUC: 0.759). Although the Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic revealed adequate goodness-of-fit for Child-Pugh score (P = 0.192), this was not the case for APACHE II and III scores (P = 0.004 and 0.003 respectively) CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that, of the three models, Child-Pugh score had the least statistically significant discrepancy between predicted and observed mortality across the strata of increasing predicting mortality. This supports the hypothesis that APACHE scores do not work accurately outside ICU settings

ANCA-associated vasculitis.

The anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitides (AAVs) are a group of disorders involving severe, systemic, small-vessel vasculitis and are characterized by the development of autoantibodies to the neutrophil proteins leukocyte proteinase 3 (PR3-ANCA) or myeloperoxidase (MPO-ANCA). The three AAV subgroups, namely granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), microscopic polyangiitis and eosinophilic GPA (EGPA), are defined according to clinical features. However, genetic and other clinical findings suggest that these clinical syndromes may be better classified as PR3-positive AAV (PR3-AAV), MPO-positive AAV (MPO-AAV) and, for EGPA, by the presence or absence of ANCA (ANCA+ or ANCA-, respectively). Although any tissue can be involved in AAV, the upper and lower respiratory tract and kidneys are most commonly and severely affected. AAVs have a complex and unique pathogenesis, with evidence for a loss of tolerance to neutrophil proteins, which leads to ANCA-mediated neutrophil activation, recruitment and injury, with effector T cells also involved. Without therapy, prognosis is poor but treatments, typically immunosuppressants, have improved survival, albeit with considerable morbidity from glucocorticoids and other immunosuppressive medications. Current challenges include improving the measures of disease activity and risk of relapse, uncertainty about optimal therapy duration and a need for targeted therapies with fewer adverse effects. Meeting these challenges requires a more detailed knowledge of the fundamental biology of AAV as well as cooperative international research and clinical trials with meaningful input from patients

Diffractive Dijet Production at s = 630 and 1800 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron

We report a measurement of the diffractive structure function F-jj(D) of the antiproton obtained from a study of dijet events produced in association with a leading antiproton in (p) over barp collisions at roots = 630 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron. The ratio of F-jj(D) at roots = 630 GeV to F-jj(D) obtained from a similar measurement at roots = 1800 GeV is compared with expectations from QCD factorization and other theoretical predictions. We also report a measurement of the xi (x-Pomeron) and beta (x of parton in Pomeron) dependence of F-jj(D) at roots = 1800 GeV . In the region 0.035 < &xi; < 0.095 , \t\ < 1 GeV2 , and &beta; < 0.5 , F-jj(D)(beta, xi) is found to be of the form beta(-1.0+/-0.1) xi(-0.9+/-0. 1) , which obeys beta-xi factorization

Measurement of the average time-integrated mixing probability of b-flavored hadrons produced at the Fermilab Tevatron

We have measured the number of like-sign (LS) and opposite-sign (OS) lepton pairs arising from double semileptonic decays of b and (b) over bar hadrons, pair produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data samples were collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab during the 1992-1995 collider run by triggering on the existence of mumu or emu candidates in an event. The observed ratio of LS to OS dileptons leads to a measurement of the average time-integrated mixing probability of all produced b-flavored hadrons which decay weakly, (χ) over bar =0.152+/-0.007 (stat)+/-0.011 (syst), that is significantly larger than the world average (χ) over bar =0.118+/-0.005