Exacerbated fires in Mediterranean Europe due to anthropogenic warming projected with non-stationary climate-fire models

The observed trend towards warmer and drier conditions in southern Europe is projected to continue in the next decades, possibly leading to increased risk of large fires. However, an assessment of climate change impacts on fires at and above the 1.5 °C Paris target is still missing. Here, we estimate future summer burned area in Mediterranean Europe under 1.5, 2, and 3 °C global warming scenarios, accounting for possible modifications of climate-fire relationships under changed climatic conditions owing to productivity alterations. We found that such modifications could be beneficial, roughly halving the fire-intensifying signals. In any case, the burned area is robustly projected to increase. The higher the warming level is, the larger is the increase of burned area, ranging from ~40% to ~100% across the scenarios. Our results indicate that significant benefits would be obtained if warming were limited to well below 2 °C

IGF1 Is a Common Target Gene of Ewing's Sarcoma Fusion Proteins in Mesenchymal Progenitor Cells

The EWS-FLI-1 fusion protein is associated with 85-90% of Ewing's sarcoma family tumors (ESFT), the remaining 10-15% of cases expressing chimeric genes encoding EWS or FUS fused to one of several ets transcription factor family members, including ERG-1, FEV, ETV1 and ETV6. ESFT are dependent on insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) for growth and survival and recent evidence suggests that mesenchymal progenitor/stem cells constitute a candidate ESFT origin. To address the functional relatedness between ESFT-associated fusion proteins, we compared mouse progenitor cell (MPC) permissiveness for EWS-FLI-1, EWS-ERG and FUS-ERG expression and assessed the corresponding expression profile changes. Whereas all MPC isolates tested could stably express EWS-FLI-1, only some sustained stable EWS-ERG expression and none could express FUS-ERG for more than 3-5 days. Only 14% and 4% of the total number of genes that were respectively induced and repressed in MPCs by the three fusion proteins were shared. However, all three fusion proteins, but neither FLI-1 nor ERG-1 alone, activated the IGF1 promoter and induced IGF1 expression. Whereas expression of different ESFT-associated fusion proteins may require distinct cellular microenvironments and induce transcriptome changes of limited similarity, IGF1 induction may provide one common mechanism for their implication in ESFT pathogenesis

The impact of surgical delay on resectability of colorectal cancer: An international prospective cohort study

AIM: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to explore the impact of surgical delays on cancer resectability. This study aimed to compare resectability for colorectal cancer patients undergoing delayed versus non-delayed surgery. METHODS: This was an international prospective cohort study of consecutive colorectal cancer patients with a decision for curative surgery (January-April 2020). Surgical delay was defined as an operation taking place more than 4 weeks after treatment decision, in a patient who did not receive neoadjuvant therapy. A subgroup analysis explored the effects of delay in elective patients only. The impact of longer delays was explored in a sensitivity analysis. The primary outcome was complete resection, defined as curative resection with an R0 margin. RESULTS: Overall, 5453 patients from 304 hospitals in 47 countries were included, of whom 6.6% (358/5453) did not receive their planned operation. Of the 4304 operated patients without neoadjuvant therapy, 40.5% (1744/4304) were delayed beyond 4 weeks. Delayed patients were more likely to be older, men, more comorbid, have higher body mass index and have rectal cancer and early stage disease. Delayed patients had higher unadjusted rates of complete resection (93.7% vs. 91.9%, P = 0.032) and lower rates of emergency surgery (4.5% vs. 22.5%, P < 0.001). After adjustment, delay was not associated with a lower rate of complete resection (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.90-1.55, P = 0.224), which was consistent in elective patients only (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.69-1.27, P = 0.672). Longer delays were not associated with poorer outcomes. CONCLUSION: One in 15 colorectal cancer patients did not receive their planned operation during the first wave of COVID-19. Surgical delay did not appear to compromise resectability, raising the hypothesis that any reduction in long-term survival attributable to delays is likely to be due to micro-metastatic disease

MitraClip in end-stage heart failure: a realistic alternative to surgery?

This editorial refers to 'MitraClip (R) therapy in patients with end-stage systolic heart failure' by O. Franzen et al., published in this issue on page 569-576

Independence of Future Changes of River Runoff in Europe from the Pathway to Global Warming

The outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement triggered a number of climate impact assessments, such as for floods and droughts, to focus on future time frames corresponding to the years of reaching specific levels of global warming. Yet, the links between the timing of the warming levels and the corresponding greenhouse gas concentration pathways to reach them, remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we compare projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5&amp;deg;C and 2&amp;deg;C under scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels is then evaluated. Results show that in the majority of Europe (&amp;gt;95% of the surface area for the annual mean discharge, &amp;gt;98% for high and low extremes), the changes projected in the two pathways are statistically indistinguishable. These results suggest that in studies of changes at specific warming levels the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the unified ensemble, findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharge are statistically significant in large portions of Europe.</jats:p

Independence of Future Changes of River Runoff in Europe from the Pathway to Global Warming

The outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement triggered a number of climate impact assessments, such as for floods and droughts, to focus on future time frames corresponding to the years of reaching specific levels of global warming. Yet, the links between the timing of the warming levels and the corresponding greenhouse gas concentration pathways to reach them remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we compared projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5 °C and 2 °C under Representative Concentration Pathways RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels was then evaluated. The results show that in the majority of Europe (&gt;95% of the surface area for the annual mean discharge, &gt;98% for high and low extremes), the changes projected in the two pathways were statistically indistinguishable. These results suggest that in studies of changes at global warming levels, the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the unified ensemble, the findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharge were statistically significant in large portions of Europe.</jats:p

Independence of Future Changes of River Runoff in Europe from the Pathway to Global Warming

The outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement triggered a number of climate impact assessments, such as for floods and droughts, to focus on future time frames corresponding to the years of reaching specific levels of global warming. Yet, the links between the timing of the warming levels and the corresponding greenhouse gas concentration pathways to reach them, remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we compare projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5&amp;deg; and 2&amp;deg; under scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels is then evaluated. Results show that in the majority of Europe (&amp;gt;95% for the annual mean discharge, &amp;gt;98% for high and low extremes), the changes projected in the two pathways are statistically indistinguishable. These results suggest that in studies of changes at specific warming levels the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the unified ensemble, findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharge are statistically significant in large portions of Europe.</jats:p

Independence of Future Changes of River Runoff in Europe from the Pathway to Global Warming

The outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement triggered a number of climate impact assessments, such as for floods and droughts, to focus on future time frames corresponding to the years of reaching specific levels of global warming. Yet, the links between the timing of the warming levels and the corresponding greenhouse gas concentration pathways to reach them remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we compared projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5 &deg;C and 2 &deg;C under Representative Concentration Pathways RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels was then evaluated. The results show that in the majority of Europe (&gt;95% of the surface area for the annual mean discharge, &gt;98% for high and low extremes), the changes projected in the two pathways were statistically indistinguishable. These results suggest that in studies of changes at global warming levels, the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the unified ensemble, the findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharge were statistically significant in large portions of Europe

On the independence from the emission pathway of the projected changes of river runoff

&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;After the Paris Agreement of 2015 many studies on climate impact assessment, e.g. of floods, water resources and droughts, focused on understanding the projected changes at the time frame when a specific warming level is reached. The results of these studies assume that the pathway to reach a certain greenhouse concentration and corresponding warming level plays a minor role in the change of the physical variables that define the hazard. However, this hypothesis should be verified for each variable, as the links between the timing of the warming levels and the projected changes of the geophysical variables are not yet fully understood. To address this gap, in this contribution we compared the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5&amp;amp;#176;C and 2&amp;amp;#176;C under scenarios RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of Regional Climate Model simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels has been then evaluated versus the other sources of uncertainty, through an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results show that in the majority of Europe (&amp;gt;95% of the surface area for the annual mean discharge, &amp;gt;98% for high and low extremes), the differences in the changes projected in the two pathways are statistically small. These results suggest that in studies of changes at specific warming levels the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the merged ensemble, findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high and extreme low river discharges are statistically significant in large portions of Europe. Merging the 2 pathways comes with a two-fold advantage with respect to the separate treatment of the 2 scenarios. On the one hand, it improves the estimation of the statistical significance of the projected change, by increasing its size and by better taking into account the pathway-related uncertainty (the emission pathways are set ex-ante as a hypothesis for the CMIP experiment, and the related uncertainty is usually neglected). On the other hand, a multi-pathway ensemble can simplify the discussion of the projected changes by removing from the analysis the dependency from the emission pathway, and making the results clearer and more understandable by a non-scientific public.&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; </jats:p