ERA5-Drought: Global drought indices based on ECMWF reanalysis.

Droughts are increasingly intensified by human-induced climate change and pose a growing threat to society. Thus, enhancing our capabilities to monitor drought occurrence and intensity is crucial. This paper introduces a new dataset of drought indices derived from the 5th generation ECMWF reanalysis system (ERA5), which offers long-term monitoring of the global climate in both deterministic and probabilistic forms.

Global data-driven prediction of fire activity.

Recent advancements in machine learning (ML) have expanded the potential use across scientific applications, including weather and hazard forecasting. The ability of these methods to extract information from diverse and novel data types enables the transition from forecasting fire weather, to predicting actual fire activity. In this study we demonstrate that this shift is feasible also within an operational context.

Global seasonal prediction of fire danger.

The European Centre for Medium range weather forecast (ECMWF) on behalf of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) has recently widened the fire danger data offering in the Climate Data Store (CDS) to include a set of fire danger forecasts with lead times up to 7 months. The dataset incorporates fire danger indices for three different models developed in Canada, United States and Australia. The indices are calculated using ECMWF Seasonal Forecasting System 5 (SEAS5) and verified against the relevant reanalysis of fire danger based on the ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA5).

Global warming is shifting the relationships between fire weather and realized fire-induced CO emissions in Europe.

Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980-2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO emissions released during biomass burning across a latitudinal gradient of European IPCC regions. The reported trends indicate that global warming is possibly inducing an incipient change on regional fire dynamics towards increased fire impacts in Europe, suggesting that emerging risks posed by exceptional fire-weather danger conditions may progressively exceed current wildfire suppression capabilities in the next decades and impact forest carbon sinks.

ERA5-based global meteorological wildfire danger maps.

Forest fires are an integral part of the natural Earth system dynamics, however they are becoming more devastating and less predictable as anthropogenic climate change exacerbates their impacts. In order to advance fire science, fire danger reanalysis products can be used as proxy for fire weather observations with the advantage of being homogeneously distributed both in space and time. This manuscript describes a reanalysis dataset of fire danger indices based on the Canadian Fire Weather Index system and the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis dataset, which supersedes the previous dataset based on ERA-Interim.

Dynamical Malaria Forecasts Are Skillful at Regional and Local Scales in Uganda up to 4 Months Ahead.

Malaria forecasts from dynamical systems have never been attempted at the health district or local clinic catchment scale, and so their usefulness for public health preparedness and response at the local level is fundamentally unknown. A pilot preoperational forecasting system is introduced in which the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts ensemble prediction system and seasonal climate forecasts of temperature and rainfall are used to drive the uncalibrated dynamical malaria model VECTRI to predict anomalies in transmission intensity 4 months ahead. It is demonstrated that the system has statistically significant skill at a number of sentinel sites in Uganda with high-quality data.

Cost-effectiveness and budget impact analysis of viscosupplementation with hylan G-F 20 for knee and hip osteoarthritis.

Purpose: To estimate the cost-effectiveness and budget impact of viscosupplementation with one intra-articular (IA) injection of 6 mL hylan G-F 20 (Synvisc-One) and with three injections of 2 mL hylan G-F 20 (Synvisc3×2) in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients compared with conventional support therapy (CST - eg, NSAIDs and acetaminophen) and the cost-effectiveness of one IA injection of 2 mL hylan G-F 20 (Synvisc1×2) in hip OA patients compared with CST from an Italian Health System perspective.

Methods: The model used was a Markov model with states for stages II-IV on the Kellgren-Lawrence scale and runs on 6-month cycles over a 5-year time horizon. A 3.

Mapping combined wildfire and heat stress hazards to improve evidence-based decision making.

Heat stress and forest fires are often considered highly correlated hazards as extreme temperatures play a key role in both occurrences. This commonality can influence how civil protection and local responders deploy resources on the ground and could lead to an underestimation of potential impacts, as people could be less resilient when exposed to multiple hazards. In this work, we provide a simple methodology to identify areas prone to concurrent hazards, exemplified with, but not limited to, heat stress and fire danger.

A 1980-2018 global fire danger re-analysis dataset for the Canadian Fire Weather Indices.

This data descriptor documents a dataset containing over 38 years of global reanalysis of wildfire danger. It consists of seven fields to assess fuel moisture as well as fire behavior. The methodology employed to generate these data is based on the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Danger Rating and utilizes weather forcing from ERA-Interim, a global reanalysis dataset produced by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts.

Caliver: An R package for CALIbration and VERification of forest fire gridded model outputs.

The name caliver stands for CALIbration and VERification of forest fire gridded model outputs. This is a package developed for the R programming language and available under an APACHE-2 license from a public repository. In this paper we describe the functionalities of the package and give examples using publicly available datasets.

Impact analysis of ICH S9 on non-clinical development of anticancer drugs.

Cancer presents a major healthcare challenge worldwide, with several millions new cases a year, and represents a therapeutic area with a high need for new drugs. To respond to this, the parties of the International Conference for Harmonization agreed in 2007 to develop a guideline on nonclinical requirements for oncology therapeutics' development (ICH S9), which came into effect in early 2010. This guideline includes recommendations to facilitate and accelerate the development and marketing of cancer therapeutic agents for serious and life threatening malignancies and aims to address this need through a refinement and a reduction in the use of experimental animals, following the 3Rs principles.

Changes and determination of dosing recommendations for medicinal products recently authorised in the European Union.

Introduction: The quantity and quality of data for determining the dose and treatment schedule of medicinal products is directly related to how safe and efficacious these medicines are and how successful they can be used to treat patients.

Areas Covered: This review provides an analysis of dose-related label modifications of recently approved drugs. It shows which areas could benefit from a better dose-exposure-response understanding, both during initial assessment and after marketing authorisation.

Control of pH responsive peptide self-association during endocytosis is required for effective gene transfer.

Cationic amphipathic histidine rich peptides demonstrate differential nucleic acid binding capabilities at neutral and acidic pH and adopt conformations at acidic pH that enable interaction with endosomal membranes, their subsequent disordering and facilitate entry of cargo to the cell cytosol. To better understand the relative contributions of each stage in the process and consequently the structural requirements of pH responsive peptides for optimal nucleic acid transfer, we used biophysical methods to dissect the series of events that occur during endosomal acidification. Far-UV circular dichroism was used to characterise the solution conformation of a series of peptides, containing either four or six histidine residues, designed to respond at differing pH while a novel application of near-UV circular dichroism was used to determine the binding affinities of the peptides for both DNA and siRNA.

Grooming, rank, and agonistic support in tufted capuchin monkeys.

Studies investigating the relation between allogrooming and social rank in capuchin monkeys (genus Cebus) have yielded inconsistent results. In this study, we investigated the relation between grooming, agonistic support, aggression and social rank in a captive group of tufted capuchin monkeys (C. apella).