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Background: Road-traffic noise may influence the development of cardiovascular events such as stroke and myocardial infarction, but etiological mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to assess the relationship between long-term road-traffic noise exposure and coronary atherosclerosis in Sweden. Methods: In the Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study (SCAPIS) cohort, including 30,154 subjects a

In recent years, remote sensing data have revealed considerable potential in unraveling crucial information regarding water balance dynamics due to their unique spatiotemporal distribution characteristics, thereby advancing multi-objective optimization algorithms in hydrological model parameter calibration. However, existing optimization frameworks based on the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT

The long-term carbon storage capacity of the boreal forest is under threat from the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. In addition to the direct carbon emissions during a fire, the burnt forest often turns into a net carbon emitter after fire, leading to large additional losses of carbon over several years. Understanding how quickly forests recover after a fire is therefore vital to

Climate change and land-use change represent a dual threat to terrestrial ecosystem functioning. In the tropics, forest conversion to agriculture is occurring alongside warming and more pronounced periods of drought. Rainfall after drought induces enormous dynamics in microbial growth (potential soil carbon storage) and respiration (determining carbon loss), affecting the ecosystem carbon budget.

Bee-mediated pollination plays a crucial role in sustaining global food production. However, while the demand for these pollination services is increasing, many bee species are in decline. To address this discrepancy, farmers use managed bee species to improve crop pollination. One key factor affecting pollination efficiency is the affinity for the crop of interest (i.e., the extent to which a bee

Japan’s rich archaeological record, supported by well-established chronological and typological frameworks, offers valuable opportunities to investigate prehistoric socio-cultural responses to climate change, although comprehensive studies remain limited. This exploratory paper examines the impact of climatic disruptions—particularly the 8.2 ka event—on Jomon foragers in Kyushu, aiming to develop

Introduction: The I-MOVE-COVID-19 and VEBIS hospital networks have been measuring COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in participating European countries since early 2021. Aim: We aimed to measure VE against PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 in patients ≥20 years hospitalised with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) from December 2021 to July 2022 (Omicron-dominant period). Methods: In both networks,

Purpose: The 2021 guidelines endorsed by the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) recommend using highly malignant electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns (HMEP; suppression or burst-suppression) at > 24 h after cardiac arrest (CA) in combination with at least one other concordant predictor to prognosticate poor neurological outcome. We evalu

Drought and rainfall events will become more frequent and intense with climate change. At the same time, soil moisture is one of the major factors controlling soil microbial processes such as carbon cycling. When challenged with drought there are two main growth responses microorganisms can use: (1) they can maintain growth rates during drought (i.e., resistance) and (2) they can recover growth ra

The order Picornavirales includes viruses that infect different kinds of eukaryotes and that share similar properties. The capsid proteins (CPs) of viruses in the order that infect unicellular organisms, such as algae, presumably possess certain characteristics that have changed little over the course of evolution, and thus these viruses may resemble the Picornavirales ancestor in some respects. H

Stem cell transplantation is a cornerstone in the treatment of blood malignancies. The most common method to harvest stem cells for transplantation is by leukapheresis, requiring mobilization of CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) from the bone marrow into the blood. Identifying the genetic factors that control blood CD34+ cell levels could reveal new drug targets for HSPC mobili

Due to the high input of means of production and productivity, environmental issues have been highlighted in horticulture for some years. They concern the impact of horticultural production systems on the environment in a narrow (i.e., occupational, crop) and broader (CO2 emission, nutrient leakage, chemical pollution) sense. In all production systems, multiple plant-microbial interactions occur.

Crop evapotranspiration (ET) is a fundamental component of the hydrological cycle, especially in arid/semi-arid regions. The FAO-56 offers an operational method for deriving ET from the reduction (dual crop coefficient Kc) of the atmospheric evaporative demand (ET0). The dual coefficient approach (FAO-2Kc) is intended to improve the daily estimation of ET by separating the contribution of bare soi

Climate warming could destabilise the Earth's largest terrestrial store of reactive carbon (C), by accelerating the decomposition of soil organic matter. A third of that C store resides in the tropics. The potential for tropical soils to sequester C, or to act as an additional source of CO2, will depend on the balance of C inputs and outputs, mediated by the response of soil microbial communities

Background: Randomised clinical trials with a factorial design may assess the effects of multiple interventions in the same population. Factorial trials are carried out under the assumption that the trial interventions have no interactions on outcomes. Here, we present a protocol for a simulation study investigating the consequences of different levels of interactions between the trial interventio

The influence of climate on soil microorganisms governs the input and output fluxes of carbon (C) from soils. The study of the drastic responses to drying-rewetting offers an opportunity to assess an aspect of ‘soil health’ via evaluating the role of microbes in soil biochemistry and C cycling. Recent evidence has consistently shown that communities exposed to extreme moisture fluctuations recurre

Insect herbivory is one of the most important ecological processes affecting plant–soil feedbacks and overall forest ecosystem health. In this study, we assess how elevated carbon dioxide (eCO2) impacts (i) leaf level insect herbivory and (ii) the stand-level herbivore-mediated transfer of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) from the canopy to the ground in a natural mature oak temperate forest community

The present thesis explores how the tourist experience is re-articulated through the mediation of smartphones. I adopt the postphenomenological theory of mediation as the overarching ontological position, placing the role of technologies on an ontological level, as mediators of perception and experience. The new tourist that emerges from smartphone mediation is the smartphoned tourist, that is a t