#paperalert | Ricardo Barros Lourenço

Is that (happy) day, again. A nice collaboration with Wen Zhuo ☺️ #paperalert 🚨🚨🚨 Title: Exploring causal pathways among soil moisture, climate and ocean–atmosphere teleconnection patterns over the drought-prone Greater Horn of Africa Authors: Wen Zhuo, 房世波, XINRAN GAO, Ricardo Barros Lourenço, Yanru Yu, Jiahao Han and Alemu Gonsamo Abstract: Drought over the Greater Horn of Africa (GHOA) is a recurring phenomenon primarily associated with precipitation deficit which leads to decreased soil moisture. Understanding the interactions among atmosphere, ocean, climate, and soil is therefore necessary for water resource management, drought monitoring, and disaster prevention. Assessing those interactions so far primarily focused on dynamic climate models and statistic models. However, the former model is proven to have well-known biases in simulating both the strength and the timing of rainfall in GHOA, and the latter model often fails to discover causal relationship due to autocorrelation and high dimensionality within time series variables. Here, we use a data driven causal graph discovery algorithm called PCMCI+ to discover causal relationships among El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) teleconnection patterns, precipitation, temperature and soil moisture (SM) during 1980–2022 over drought-prone GHOA. Additionally, we quantitatively calculated the causal effects of teleconnection patterns on SM mediated through different climate paths, and the correlation with regional drought conditions are further explored. Results suggest that IOD generally presents higher causal effects on climate variables (temperature and precipitation) or on SM through both climate pathways than ENSO over most parts of GHOA, and the strongest correlation with drought conditions are generally found during different IOD phases. Moreover, precipitation is a more vital path through which teleconnection patterns causally impact SM in GHOA. Our study provides the first attempt to quantitatively analyze the causal effects of teleconnection patterns on SM through both precipitation and temperature pathways, and it highlights the causal relationships within atmosphere–ocean-climate-soil interactions, which could help for better understanding of climate change impact on drought over GHOA. Paper link in the comments section. Please let me know if you have any issue when trying to access it.

How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds

The opioid giant Mallinckrodt, selling more in the US than Purdue Pharma, was forced by the courts to publish more than 1.3 million internal documents. Sergio Sismondo and Maud Bernisson sift through nearly 900 contracts to reveal the tricks used to shape scientific and medical opinions Mallinckrodt may be the largest seller of prescription opioids in the US that has garnered the fewest headlines. With $18bn (£14.1bn; €16.6bn) in sales from 2006 to 2012 and nearly 40% of all opioid pills sold on the US market, it was the lead producer of prescription opioids during that time.12 The more notorious Purdue Pharma ranked third. Mallinckrodt, with its baby blue 30 mg oxycodone tablets and various other opioids, paved a “blue highway” along the Appalachians to Florida.3 These tablets were so popular that counterfeits in the same hue and with Mallinckrodt’s “M30” marking—but containing fentanyl—are still sold on the street today.4 Mallinckrodt survives as a multimillion dollar corporation, despite settling with the US government for lax handling of its opioid supply and later being ordered to pay $1.7bn over accusations of misleading and deceptive marketing practices to boost opioid sales. It has twice filed for bankruptcy and has largely avoided paying,5 but it did have to turn over 1.3 million internal documents, mostly from 2009 to 2017, which became public. Mallinckrodt wasn’t the first drug manufacturer forced by litigation into legal discovery, but unlike Purdue it didn’t fight tooth and nail to keep its documents out of the public eye.6 The Washington Post , which had an exclusive first look at the Mallinckrodt files in 2022, revealed that the company “cultivated a reliable stable of hundreds of doctors it could count on to write a steady stream of prescriptions for pain pills.” A company spokesperson …

Long-term stimulation by implanted pacemaker enables non-atrophic treatment of bilateral vocal fold paresis in a human-like animal model - Scientific Reports

A wide variety of treatments have been developed to improve respiratory function and quality of life in patients with bilateral vocal fold paresis (BVFP). One experimental method is the electrical activation of the posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscle with a laryngeal pacemaker (LP) to open the vocal folds. We used an ovine (sheep) model of unilateral VFP to study the long-term effects of functional electrical stimulation on the PCA muscles. The left recurrent laryngeal nerve was cryo-damaged in all animals and an LP was implanted except for the controls. After a reinnervation phase of six months, animals were pooled into groups that received either no treatment, implantation of an LP only, or implantation of an LP and six months of stimulation with different duty cycles. Automated image analysis of fluorescently stained PCA cross-sections was performed to assess relevant muscle characteristics. We observed a fast-to-slow fibre type shift in response to nerve damage and stimulation, but no complete conversion to a slow-twitch-muscle. Fibre size, proportion of hybrid fibres, and intramuscular collagen content were not substantially altered by the stimulation. These results demonstrate that 30 Hz burst stimulation with duty cycles of 40% and 70% did not induce PCA atrophy or fibrosis. Thus, long-term stimulation with an LP is a promising approach for treating BVFP in humans without compromising muscle conditions.

PRX Energy on Twitter

“Wave reflection, transmission, and absorption in a row of wave-energy converters are represented in a simple geometrical framework, providing a visual guide to the optimization of wave-power extraction in a wave farm. @ramirogodoy @PMMH_lab @ESPCI_Paris https://t.co/Y9mU8n3KpD”

Cell Systems on Twitter

“Kimmel et al. analyze the cellular location, essentiality, function, and in selected cases, the interactome of all unknown non-secretory proteins encoded on an entire P. falciparum chromosomes. https://t.co/cHViuCW1ze”

Modal equity of accessibility to healthcare in Recife, Brazil | Journal of Transport and Land Use