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Legislation in the State of California mandates reductions in emissions of short‐lived climate pollutants of 40% from 2013 levels by 2030 for CH_4. Identification of the sector(s) responsible for these emissions and their temporal and spatial variability is a key step in achieving these goals. Here, we determine the emissions of CH_4 in Los Angeles from 2011–2017 using a mountaintop remote sensing mapping spectrometer. We show that the pattern of CH_4 emissions contains both seasonal and nonseasonal contributions. We find that the seasonal component peaks in the winter and is correlated (R^2 = 0.58) with utility natural gas consumption from the residential and commercial sectors and not from the industrial and gas‐fired power plant sectors. The nonseasonal component is (22.9 ± 1.4) Gg CH_4/month. If the seasonal correlation is causal, about (1.4 ± 0.1)% of the commercial and residential natural gas consumption in Los Angeles is released into the atmosphere.

Background Advanced vessel sealing devices are widely used in laparoscopic surgery. However, there remains a lack of adequately powered trials comparing laparoscopic advanced vessel sealing devices in the clinical setting, especially in gynaecology. Aims This single-blinded randomised controlled trial aims to compare the surgical outcomes of total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH) using either the Gyrus PKS™ LYONS dissecting forceps or the LigaSure™ Maryland jaw vessel sealer/divider. Materials and methods Women who required TLHs for benign indications were randomised to having their surgeries performed using either Gyrus PKS™ or LigaSure™. Time to haemostasis (from initial skin incision to detachment of the uterus with secured haemostasis) was the primary outcome; a 20% difference in time was considered clinically significant. Secondary outcomes measured were intra-operative blood loss, complications, conversions, post-operative analgesia use, and length of stay. This study was registered with the Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12615000639516. Results Sixty-four women were included in the study - 33 and 31 in the Gyrus PKS™ and LigaSure™ arms, respectively. TLHs performed by LigaSure™ had statistically significantly shorter time to haemostasis compared to Gyrus PKS™ by 10.6 min (95% CI 1.3-2.0, P = 0.03). There were no differences in any of the other secondary outcomes measured. Conclusions This trial suggests there is no difference between using either device. TLHs performed using LigaSure™ have statistically significantly shorter time to haemostasis than those using Gyrus PKS™; however, the difference is not considered clinically significant as it was only 14.2%. No other differences in surgical outcomes were detected.

Medical management of miscarriage is an acceptable option available to women, and has advantages of providing timely treatment, while avoiding exposure to surgery and anaesthesia. This retrospective cohort study aimed to determine factors predictive of successful medical management, utilising a single dose protocol of 800 µg vaginal misoprostol. In this cohort, the success rate was 67% (199/296), and smaller mean gestational sac diameter independent of gestational age predicted success (P = 0.046). Success is not significantly related to parity, miscarriage type, pelvic pain or vaginal bleeding at the outset of treatment.

We report continuous surface observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) from the Los Angeles (LA) Megacity Carbon Project during 2015. We devised a calibration strategy, methods for selection of background air masses, calculation of urban enhancements, and a detailed algorithm for estimating uncertainties in urban scale CO2 and CH4 measurements. These methods are essential for understanding carbon fluxes from the LA megacity and other complex urban environments globally. We estimate background mole fractions entering LA using observations from four "extra-urban" sites including: two "coastal/marine" sites, one "continental" site in the high desert northeast of LA, and one "continental/mid-troposphere" site located in the San Gabriel Mountains. We find that a local marine background can be established to within roughly 1 ppm CO2 and 10 ppb CH4 using these local measurement sites. We also show that continental sites may not be relevant for selecting background observations during summer months due to the prevalence of onshore flow, which could transport CO2 and CH4 from the LA Basin to relatively remote sites. Overall, atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels are highly variable across Los Angeles. "Urban" and "suburban" sites show moderate to large CO2 and CH4 enhancements relative to a marine background to estimate. An urban site near Downtown LA has a median enhancement of roughly 20 ppm CO2 and 150 ppb CH4 during all hours, and roughly 15 ppm CO2 and 80 ppb ΔCH4 during midday hours (roughly 12–16:00 LT, local time), which is the typical period of focus for flux inversions. The estimated measurement uncertainty is typically better than 0.1 ppm CO2 and 1 ppb CH4 based on the repeated standard gas measurements from the LA sites during the last 1–2 years, similar to Andrews et al. (2014). The largest component of the measurement uncertainty is due to the observations being elevated relative to the single-point calibration method; however the uncertainty in the background mole fraction is much larger than the measurement uncertainty. The approach to identifying background mole fractions described here results in uncertainty ranging from roughly 5 and 15 % of the enhancement near downtown LA for CO2 and CH4, respectively, during afternoon hours. Overall, analytical and background uncertainties are small relative to the local CO2 and CH4 enhancements, however, our results suggest that reducing the uncertainty to less than 5 % of the enhancement will require detailed assessment of the impact of meteorology on background conditions.

Routine adsorption procedures to remove autoantibodies from patients’ serum often require many hours to perform. This time-consuming process can create significant delays that affect patient care. This study modified the current adsorption method to reduce total adsorption time to 1 hour. A ratio of one part serum to three parts red blood cells (RBCs; 1:3 method) was maintained for all samples. The one part serum was split into three tubes. Each of these three aliquots of serum was mixed with one full part RBCs, creating three adsorbing tubes. All tubes were incubated for 1 hour with periodic mixing. Adsorbed serum from the three tubes was harvested, combined, and tested for reactivity. Fifty-eight samples were evaluated using both the current method and the 1:3 method. Forty-eight (83%) samples successfully adsorbed using both methods. Twenty (34.5%) samples contained underlying alloantibodies. The 1:3 method demonstrated the same antibody specificities and strengths in all 20 samples. Eight samples failed to adsorb by either method. The 1:3 method found previously undetected alloantibodies in three samples. Two samples successfully autoadsorbed but failed to alloadsorb by either method. The 1:3 method proved to be efficient and effective for quick removal of autoantibodies while allowing for the detection of underlying alloantibodies. Immunohematology 2013;29:5–10.

CH4 is a potent greenhouse gas with a 100-year Global Warming Potential more than thirty times larger than CO2 if carbon-climate feedbacks are considered. In urban areas such as Los Angeles, anthropogenic methane emissions are poorly characterized because of the large diversity of sources: landfills, sewage treatment plants, agriculture, leaks in the natural gas distribution system, cattle and dairy farms, thermogenic emissions from oil fields and seeps. The California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (CLARS), operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a mountaintop facility overlooking most of the Los Angeles basin, equipped with JPL-built Fourier transform spectrometers for measurements of the slant column abundances of several greenhouse gases including methane with high spatial and temporal resolution. This presentation will cover several topics including the design features of the two FTS instruments, spectroscopic issues associated with the retrieval of slant column abundances, and uncertainty analysis. One FTS has been in continuous operation since 2011, providing sufficient data to identify several CH4 emission hot spots in the LA basin. On October 23, 2015, a well pipe suffered a failure in a natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, northwest of downtown Los Angeles resulting in a massive CH4 plume transported by winds throughout the LA basin. The CLARS FTS captured the plume propagation throughout the 4-month duration of the leak. We will show how the emission ratio method may be employed to derive a lower bound to the CH4 emission rate from the leaking well without the use of complex atmospheric transport models. The CLARS measurement system provides a small-scale example of the data that would be acquired by an imaging FTS on a geostationary space platform.a

Patients requiring chronic transfusion support are at risk of alloimmunization after red blood cell (RBC) transfusion because of a disparity between donor and recipient antigen profiles. This research explored the probability of obtaining an exact extended phenotype match between blood donors randomly selected from our institution and patients randomly selected from particular ethnic groups. Blood samples from 1,000 blood donors tested by molecular method were evaluated for the predicted phenotype distribution of Rh, Kell, Kidd, Duffy, and MNS. A random subsample of 800 donor phenotypes was then evaluated for the probability of obtaining an exact match with respect to phenotype with a randomly selected patient from a particular ethnic group. Overall, there was a greater than 80 percent probability of finding an exact donor-recipient match for the K/k alleles in the Kell system. The probability ranged from 3 percent to 38 percent, depending on the ethnicity and disparities in phenotypic profiles, for the Rh, Kidd, Duffy, and MNS systems. A significant donor-recipient phenotype mismatch ratio exists with certain blood group antigens such that, with current routine ABO and D matching practices, recipients of certain ethnic groups are predisposed to alloimmunization. Immunohematology 2011; 27:12–19.

The anatomical position of the inferior epigastric artery (IEA) subjects it to risk of injury during abdominal procedures that are close to the artery, such as laparoscopic trocar insertion, insertion of intra-abdominal drains, Tenckhoff(®) catheter (peritoneal dialysis catheter) and paracentesis. This article aims to raise the awareness of the anatomical variations of the course of the IEA in relation to abdominal landmarks in order to define a safer zone for laparoscopic ancillary trocar placement. Methods of managing the IEA injury as well as techniques to minimise the risk of injury to the IEA are reviewed and discussed.

The chemical removal of NOx at night in urban areas remains poorly constrained due to uncertainties in the contribution of various loss pathways and the impact of the suppressed nocturnal vertical mixing. Here we present long-path differential optical absorption spectroscopy observations of nocturnal vertical concentration profiles of O3, NO2, and NO3 in the lower atmosphere (33–556 m above ground level) measured during the CalNex-LA 2010 study. Positive nocturnal vertical gradients of O3 and NO3 and negative gradients of NO2 were observed during the night. Relatively short lifetime of nocturnal NO3 (less than 1000 s) and high nighttime steady state N2O5 mixing ratios (up to 2 ppb) indicated active nocturnal chemistry during CalNex. Comparison of modeled and observed altitude-resolved NO3 loss frequencies shows that hydrolysis of N2O5 on aerosols was the dominant loss pathway of NO3 and NOx. Based on this argument, the nocturnal loss rates of NOx, L(NOx), at different altitudes and averaged over the lowest 550 m of the atmosphere were calculated. The nocturnally averaged L(NOx) ranged between 0.8 and 1.3 ppb h−1 for the lower atmosphere with the L(NOx) for the first 8 days at about 1 ppb h−1. This number is close to the one previously determined in Houston in 2009 of ~0.9 ppb h−1. Comparisons between daytime NOx loss due to the OH + NO2 reaction and nighttime L(NOx) show that during CalNex, nocturnal chemistry contributed an average of 60% to the removal of NOx in a 24 h period in the lower atmosphere.

Patients requiring chronic transfusion support are at risk of alloimmunization after red blood cell (RBC) transfusion because of a disparity between donor and recipient antigen profiles. This research explored the probability of obtaining an exact extended phenotype match between blood donors randomly selected from our institution and patients randomly selected from particular ethnic groups. Blood samples from 1,000 blood donors tested by molecular method were evaluated for the predicted phenotype distribution of Rh, Kell, Kidd, Duffy, and MNS. A random subsample of 800 donor phenotypes was then evaluated for the probability of obtaining an exact match with respect to phenotype with a randomly selected patient from a particular ethnic group. Overall, there was a greater than 80 percent probability of finding an exact donor-recipient match for the K/k alleles in the Kell system. The probability ranged from 3 percent to 38 percent, depending on the ethnicity and disparities in phenotypic profiles, for the Rh, Kidd, Duffy, and MNS systems. A significant donor-recipient phenotype mismatch ratio exists with certain blood group antigens such that, with current routine ABO and D matching practices, recipients of certain ethnic groups are predisposed to alloimmunization.

A procedure is described for estimating the chance of paternity from HLA-typing results. Phenotypes consisting of HLA-A and HLA-B antigens are divided into four groups. For each group, formulas have been derived to calculate the chance of passing a specific haplotype; those for common phenotypes have been predetermined and compiled into concise tables. Consequently, the paternity index can be derived in four simple steps. In reporting, paternity index is best expressed in percentages as relative chance of paternity and nonpaternity. In this way, the positive and negative aspects of estimation are both spelled out.