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Six new species of Cryptochironomus Kieffer, 1918, C. absum Liu, sp. nov., C. beardi Liu, sp. nov., C. dentatus Liu, sp. nov., C. ferringtoni Liu, sp. nov., C. parallelus Liu, sp. nov. and C. taylorensis Liu, sp. nov., are described and illustrated based on adult males. The specimens were collected from various water systems in the United States and preserved by Dr. Leonard Charles Ferrington Jr. An updated key to adult males of all known Cryptochironomus species in the Nearctic region is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological evidence for the adverse effect of phthalate exposure on respiratory health is on the rise, but cross-sectional studies regarding its effects on lung function are limited and contradictory, especially in adults. To assess the associations between individual and a mixture of urinary phthalate metabolites and adult pulmonary function in the United States, and to identify which ones were primarily responsible for impaired respiratory function. We obtained a cross-sectional data on 3788 adults aged 20 years and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007–2012). Respiratory function was evaluated using spirometry, and phthalate exposure was assessed by measuring the levels of ten urinary phthalate metabolites. The effects of individual and mixed phthalate metabolites exposure on lung function were assessed using multivariate linear regression models and the repeated holdout weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression models, respectively, after adjusting for potential confounders including age, gender, family poverty income ratio, body mass index, and serum cotinine. When modeled as continuous variables or quantiles, urinary phthalate metabolites, including mono-ethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl phthalate, mono-iso-butyl phthalate, mono-benzyl phthalate, mono-(2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl) phthalate, mono-(2-ethyl-5-hydroxyhexyl) phthalate, mono-(2-ethyl-5-carboxypentyl) phthalate (MECPP), mono-(3-carboxypropyl) phthalate, and mono-carboxyoctyl phthalate, were identified to be negatively associated with forced vital capacity in percent predicted values (ppFVC) and forced expiratory volume in the first second in percent predicted values (ppFEV1). In addition, per each decile increase in the WQS index, ppFVC (β = −2.87, 95% CI: −3.56, −2.08) and ppFEV1 (β = −2.53, 95% CI: −3.47, −1.54) declined significantly, primarily due to the contribution of MEP and MECPP. Furthermore, there were no significant interactions between co-exposure to urinary phthalate metabolites and each covariate. Our findings reveal that urinary phthalate metabolites are significantly associated with adult respiratory decrements, with diethyl and di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate contributing the most to the impaired lung function. • MEP and MECPP exhibiting the greatest contribution to the adult lung function decline. • Urinary phthalate metabolites co-exposure associated with 2.8% reductions in ppFVC. • Urinary phthalate metabolites co-exposure associated with 2.5% reductions in ppFEV1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is of importance to perform hydrological forecast using a finite hydrological time series. Most time series analysis approaches presume a data series to be ergodic without justifying this assumption. To our knowledge, there are no methods available for test of ergodicity to date. This paper presents a practical approach to analyze the mean ergodic property of hydrological processes by means of augmented Dickey Fuller test, Mann-Kendall trend test, a radial basis function neural network, and the assessment methods derived from the definition of ergodicity. The mean ergodicity of precipitation processes at Newberry, MI, USA, is analyzed using the proposed approach. The results indicate that the precipitations of January, May, and July in Newberry are highly likely to have ergodic property, the precipitations of February, and October through December have tendency toward mean ergodicity, and the precipitations of all the other months are non-ergodic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Weather Research and Forecasting Hydrological (WRF-Hydro) system is a state-of-the-art numerical model that models the entire hydrological cycle based on physical principles. As with other hydrological models, WRF-Hydro parameterizes many physical processes. Hence, WRF-Hydro needs to be calibrated to optimize its output with respect to observations for the application region. When applied to a relatively large domain, both WRF-Hydro simulations and calibrations require intensive computing resources and are best performed on multimode, multicore high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Typically, each physics-based model requires a calibration process that works specifically with that model and is not transferrable to a different process or model. The parameter estimation tool (PEST) is a flexible and generic calibration tool that can be used in principle to calibrate any of these models. In its existing configuration, however, PEST is not designed to work on the current generation of massively parallel HPC clusters. To address this issue, we ported the parallel PEST to HPCs and adapted it to work with WRF-Hydro. The porting involved writing scripts to modify the workflow for different workload managers and job schedulers, as well as to connect the parallel PEST to WRF-Hydro. To test the operational feasibility and the computational benefits of this first-of-its-kind HPC-enabled parallel PEST, we developed a case study using a flood in the midwestern United States in 2013. Results on a problem involving the calibration of 22 parameters show that on the same computing resources used for parallel WRF-Hydro, the HPC-enabled parallel PEST can speed up the calibration process by a factor of up to 15 compared with commonly used PEST in sequential mode. The speedup factor is expected to be greater with a larger calibration problem (e.g., more parameters to be calibrated or a larger size of study area). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal cesium (Cs) vapor, released at an altitude in the upper atmosphere, generates an artificial space plasma cloud with high electron density. It can act as a scatter to realize radio communication across an over-the-horizon distance. A full-life model of radio propagation via an artificial plasma cloud is established based on its space–time evolution in this article. In addition, this model is verified by the sounding data of the rocket release experiment carried out in the United States. The multipath effect of plasma cloud scattering is studied by using ray tracing, and then, the coherent bandwidth is estimated for this spatial channel. Also, the theoretical channel model of artificial plasma cloud is established by using its space–time evolution and atmospheric wind field parameters. Considering common modulation modes and receiver noise levels, the potential communication performance is evaluated by using the proposed channel model, such as the transmission rate, the bit error rate (BER), and the available time for building up and maintaining communication links. It is shown that the maximal communication rate is up to 200 kb/s, BER overall maintains below 10−7, and the available time for a single release is about 30–60 min; for the case of this article, they are release mass of 2–10 kg, communication distances of 400–1200 km, and radio frequencies of 30–70 MHz at the VHF band. This demonstrates that the artificial channel can propagate radio waves at a much higher frequency, wider bandwidth, and higher rate than those of HF communication. Hopefully, it could be a solution to overcome the intolerable shortcoming and adverse effects on HF communication due to ionospheric disturbances especially in cases of maritime, emergency, and minimum communications [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Despite the significant clinical and economic burden associated with glaucoma, studies evaluating the long-term costs of existing treatments are limited. This study compared the 5-year costs of three treatment strategies: medication, laser trabeculoplasty, and filtering surgeries in managing patients with primary open-angle glaucoma whose intra-ocular pressures were not adequately controlled by two medications.Research design and methods: A Markov model was developed to simulate the transition of treatment progression over a 5-year period to evaluate the total treatment costs associated with each strategy. In the medication arm, medications were the only available treatment, whereas in the laser trabeculoplasty and surgery arms, patients would receive concomitant medications both at the time of the procedure and in subsequent years. Treatment states were determined by the rate of success in controlling patients'' intra-ocular pressure in each year. The distribution of treatment states and the transition probabilities between these states were derived from published literature, adjusted or supplemented by the authors'' own treatment experiences. Costs assessed in the model included treatment, complications associated with each treatment, and physician office visits obtained from published literature and standardized fees and schedules.Results: The 5-year cumulative costs were approximately $6571, $4838 and $6363 for patients in the medication, laser trabeculoplasty, and filtering surgery arms, respectively. Costs of third-line medication, first-line medication following laser trabeculoplasty, and post-surgery complications had the greatest impact on the model results in the medication, laser trabeculoplasty, and filtering surgery arms, respectively. Probabilistic sensitivity suggested the results were statistically significant (p < 0.001), favoring the use of laser trabeculoplasty.Conclusions: Over 5 years laser trabeculoplasty was associated with the lowest total costs compared to treatment by medication alone or by filtering surgery for patients who were not adequately controlled by two medications. Future development of glaucoma treatment should focus on reducing the need for post-procedure medical therapy as well as lowering the rate of post-procedure complications. Limited by the availability of the transition probabilities in published literature, the model results need to be validated by prospective or retrospective observational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity multi-criteria decision-making methods have been developed to address different complex decision-making problems, and the analytic network process has been found to be one of the most effective techniques. There is an increase in the quality and quantity of publications related to the analytic network process. This detailed overview can provide the research status and development characteristics of analytic network process research and will be useful to researchers for future research directions. To achieve these goals, bibliometric techniques were used. In addition, past and present hotspots of analytic network process research were concluded, and future research trends were determined. The bibliometric analysis was carried out from various aspects including countries and regions, institutions, journals, authors, research areas, articles and author keywords based on data harvested from the Web of Science database. There were 1485 analytic network process-related publications retrieved from the Web of Science. The results show that Expert Systems with Applications was the most productive journal publishing articles in analytic network process research (118); its number of publications has decreased dramatically since 2013, while Journal of Cleaner Production has shown an upward trend in recent years and ranks second with 47 publications. The most collaborative country is the United States. Taiwan takes a leading position in analytic network process research with 436 publications (29.36%), and National Chiao Tung University, which is located in Taiwan, produced the most articles and has gained the highest h -index (28). The major hot topics that employ analytic network process are sustainability, environmental management and supply chain management. These topics may continue to attract more attention in the future. ∙ The development status of analytic network process was analyzed based on bibliometrics. ∙ Past and present hotspots of analytic network process research were concluded. ∙ Future research trends of analytic network process research were figured out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global digital elevation measurement (DEM) products such as SRTM DEM and GDEM have been widely used for terrain slope retrieval in forests. However, the slope estimation accuracy is generally limited due to the DEMs' low vertical accuracy over complex forest environments. The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission shows excellent potential for slope estimation because of the high elevation accuracy and unique design of beam pairs. This study aimed to explore the possibility of ICESat-2 data for terrain slope retrieval in the United States forests. First, raw ICESat-2 data were processed to obtain accurate ground surfaces. Second, two different methods based on beam pairs were proposed to derive terrain slopes from the ground surfaces. Third, the estimated slopes were validated by airborne LiDAR-derived slopes and compared with SRTM-derived slopes and GDEM-derived slopes. Finally, we further explored the influence of surface topography and ground elevation error on slope estimation from ICESat-2 data. The results show that the ground surface can be accurately extracted from all scenarios of ICESat-2 data, even weak beams in the daytime, which provides the basis for terrain slope retrieval from ICESat-2 beam pairs. The estimated slope has a strong correlation with airborne LiDAR-derived slopes regardless of slope estimation methods, which demonstrates that the ICESat-2 data are appropriate for terrain slope estimation in complex forest environments. Compared with the method based on along- and across-track analysis (method 1), the method based on plane fitting of beam pairs (method 2) has a high estimation accuracy of terrain slopes, which indicates that method 2 is more suitable for slope estimation because it takes full advantage of more ground surface information. Additionally, the results also indicate that ICESat-2 performs much better than SRTM DEMs and GDEMs in estimating terrain slopes. Both ground elevation error and surface topography have a significant impact on terrain slope retrieval from ICESat-2 data, and ground surface extraction should be improved to ensure the accuracy of terrain slope retrieval over extremely complex environments. This study demonstrates for the first time that ICESat-2 has a strong capability in terrain slope retrieval. Additionally, this paper also provides effective solutions to accurately estimate terrain slopes from ICESat-2 data. The ICESat-2 slopes have many potential applications, including the generation of global slope products, the improvement of terrain slopes derived from the existing global DEM products, and the correction of vegetation biophysical parameters retrieved from space-borne LiDAR waveform data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a potentially debilitating autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. Disease-modifying therapies have been shown to slow disease progression but were not believed to prolong the survival of patients with MS. The recent 21-Year Long-Term Follow-Up (21Y-LTF) study found a significant survival advantage for patients receiving early treatment with interferon beta (IFNβ)-1b compared with placebo (no early treatment). Objectives: The aim of this study was to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses estimating the long-term benefit of early treatment with IFNβ-1b among MS patients from a US societal perspective. Methods: A Markov model was developed to simulate the experience of patients with MS from the 21Y-LTF study over a lifetime. Patients were randomized to receive either IFNβ-1b or placebo for up to 5 years and then receive a variety of MS treatments (including no treatment) thereafter. Survival data reported from the 21Y-LTF study were incorporated into the model. The model assumes that patients'' MS was managed in similar ways for both groups during the uncontrolled phase of the 21Y-LTF study (ie, survival difference between the 2 groups is the result of early use of IFNβ-1b). Health outcomes were life-years and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Costs included treatments, direct disease management, informal care, and lost productivities and were reported in 2011 US dollars. Results: In the modeled placebo group, the median age at death was predicted to be 63.7 years, and the median survival time from disease onset was 36.7 years. Early treatment with IFNβ-1b reduced the lost health benefits by 2.8 life-years and 1.9 QALYs, respectively, after discounting. Total discounted cost for IFNβ-1b–treated patients was $86,223 higher than that of patients receiving placebo. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $46,357 per QALY gained and $30,967 per life-year gained. Sensitivity analyses indicate the robustness of the model''s results. Conclusions: Treatment with IFNβ-1b during the earlier disease phase of patients with MS significantly increased patient life-years and QALYs. IFNβ-1b is likely to be a cost-effective intervention for MS. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]