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Observational evidence of increased afternoon rainfall downwind of irrigated areas
Abstract Irrigation plays a vital role in addressing the growing food demand of an increasing global population. It represents one of the most critical and direct human interventions on the coupled water and energy cycles. As irrigated farmland continues to expand, understanding the climate impact of extensive irrigation becomes increasingly important. Yet, the effect on rainfall patterns near irrigated areas remains unclear. Here, using two global, high-resolution, sub-daily precipitation datasets, we show that afternoon rain events occur more often 10 km to 50 km downwind and less often upwind of extensively irrigated land. However, we also find that the total amount of heavy afternoon rain downwind of irrigated areas is lower than upwind. Our results establish large-scale observational evidence of the local precipitation dynamics surrounding irrigated areas; these insights will help constrain the representation of these processes in next-generation climate and weather forecasting models and provide valuable insights for regional water management.
Photonic chips provide a processing boost for AI
Author Correction: AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data
Delayed leaf green-up is associated with fine particulate air pollution in China
Contralesional hippocampal spreading depolarization promotes functional recovery after stroke
Finely tailoring the local ensembles in heterostructured high entropy alloy catalysts through pulsed annealing
The overlapping global distribution of dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever
Abstract Arboviruses transmitted mainly by Aedes ( Stegomyia ) aegypti and Ae. albopictus , including dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, and yellow fever virus in urban settings, pose an escalating global threat. Existing risk maps, often hampered by surveillance biases, may underestimate or misrepresent the true distribution of these diseases and do not incorporate epidemiological similarities despite shared vector species. We address this by generating new global environmental suitability maps for Aedes -borne arboviruses using a multi-disease ecological niche model with a nested surveillance model fit to a dataset of over 21,000 occurrence points. This reveals a convergence in suitability around a common global distribution with recent spread of chikungunya and Zika closely aligning with areas suitable for dengue. We estimate that 5.66 (95% confidence interval 5.64-5.68) billion people live in areas suitable for dengue, chikungunya and Zika and 1.54 (1.53-1.54) billion people for yellow fever. We find large national and subnational differences in surveillance capabilities with higher income more accessible areas more likely to detect, diagnose and report viral diseases, which may have led to overestimation of risk in the United States and Europe. When combined with estimates of uncertainty, these suitability maps can be used by ministries of health to target limited surveillance and intervention resources in new strategies against these emerging threats.
Author Correction: Spatially resolved multiomics of human cardiac niches
Evolution of electronic correlation in highly doped organic two-dimensional hole gas
Pulsed electrosynthesis of glycolic acid through polyethylene terephthalate upcycling over a mesoporous PdCu catalyst
Super-saturated complementary carbon nanotube transistors with intrinsic gain singularities
Intersectional analysis for science and technology
A TLK2-mediated calcium-driven cell death pathway links neuronal degeneration to nuclear envelope disruption
Allosteric targeted drug delivery for enhanced blood-brain barrier penetration via mimicking transmembrane domain interactions
FFAR4-mediated IL-6 release from islet macrophages promotes insulin secretion and is compromised in type-2 diabetes
Abstract The function of islet macrophages is poorly understood. They promote glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) in lean mice, however, the underlying mechanism has remained unclear. We show that activation of the free fatty acid receptor FFAR4 on islet macrophages leads to interleukin-6 (IL-6) release and that IL-6 promotes β-cell function. This mechanism is required for GSIS in lean male mice, but does not function anymore in islets from people with obesity and obese type 2 diabetic male mice. In islets from obese mice, FFAR4 downstream signaling in macrophages is strongly reduced, resulting in impaired FFAR4-mediated IL-6 release. However, IL-6 treatment can still improve GSIS in islets from people with obesity and obese type 2 diabetic mice. These data show that a defect in FFAR4-mediated macrophage activation contributes to reduced GSIS in type 2 diabetes and suggest that reactivating islet macrophage FFAR4 and promoting or mimicking IL-6 release from islet macrophages improves GSIS in type 2 diabetes.