Hospital admissions due to diseases of arteries and veins peaked at physiological equivalent temperature −10 to 10 °C in Germany in 2009–2011

We aimed to understand relationships of the weather as biometeorological and hospital admissions due to diseases of arteries and veins by subtypes, which have been scarcely studied, in a national setting in recent years. This is an ecological study. Ten percent of daily hospital admissions from the included hospitals (n?=?1,618) across Germany that were available between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2011 (n?=?5,235,600) were extracted from Statistisches Bundesamt, Germany. We identified I70-I79 Diseases of arteries, arterioles and capillaries and I80-I89 Diseases of veins, lymphatic vessels and lymph nodes by International Classification of Diseases version 10 as the study outcomes. Daily weather data from 64 weather stations that covered 13 German states including air temperature, humidity, wind speed, cloud cover, radiation flux and vapour pressure were obtained and generated into physiologically equivalent temperature (PET). Two-way fractional-polynomial prediction was plotted with 95 % confidence intervals. For most of the subtypes from diseases of arteries and veins, hospital admissions slightly peaked in spring and dropped when PET was at 10 °C. There were no other large differences across 12 months. Admissions of peripheral vascular diseases, arterial embolism and thrombosis, phlebitis and thrombophlebitis, oesophageal varices and nonspecific lymphadenitis peaked when PET was between 0 and ?10 °C, while others peaked when PET was between 0 and 10 °C. More medical resources could have been needed on days when PETs were at ?10 to 10 °C than on other days. Adaptation to such weather change for health professionals and the general public would seem to be imperative.     

SNOTEL,the Soil Climate Analysis Network,and water supply forecasting at the Natural Resources Conservation Service: Past,present, and future

The Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting (SSWSF) Program and the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) of the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) generate key observational and predictive information for water managers. Examples include mountain climate and snow monitoring through manual snow surveys and the SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) and SNOtel LITE networks, in situ soil moisture data acquisition through the SCAN and SNOTEL networks, and water supply forecasting using river runoff prediction models. The SSWSF Program has advanced continuously over the decades and is a major source of valuable water management information across the western United States, and the SCAN network supports agricultural and other water users nationwide. Product users and their management goals are diverse, and use-cases range from guiding crop selection to seasonal flood risk assessment, drought monitoring and prediction, avalanche and fire prediction, hydropower optimization, tracking climate variability and change, environmental management, satisfying international treaty and domestic legal requirements, and more. Priorities going forward are to continue innovating to enhance the accuracy and completeness of the observational and model-generated data products these programs deliver, including expanded synergies with the remote sensing community and uptake of artificial intelligence while maintaining long-term operational reliability and consistency at scale.     

Habitat loss through disruption of constrained dispersal networks.

Large losses of habitat could be caused by land use change that disrupts the dispersal networks used by migratory species. We assessed the relative losses of habitat for diadromous fish (i.e., those migrating between sea and freshwater) due to physical barriers, degradation of migratory passage associated with catchment land use, and site-scale land use characteristics on the West Coast, South Island, New Zealand. Fish occurrence, land use data, and river network models were analyzed in a GIS and subjected to a three-level hierarchical analysis. To identify accessible habitat not restricted by physical barriers, we used the migratory distance and maximum downstream slope encountered to identify accessible sites in least-impacted catchments and applied the results to all catchments within the study area. For two fish species, banded kokopu (Galaxias fasciatus) and koaro (G. brevipinnis), sites modeled as accessible using logistic regression in least-impacted catchments were then used to assess the impacts of catchment-scale deforestation and downstream land uses on habitat loss. Finally, sites not restricted by physical barriers or land-use-related impacts on migratory passage were used to model the effects of local land use. The models indicated that koaro and banded kokopu potentially had access to 28,000 km and 5300 km, respectively, of the 40,600 km of streams within the study area. Impacts due to intensive agricultural land use downstream in catchments affecting migratory passage were predicted to reduce the accessible habitats for koaro and banded kokopu by 55% and 70%, respectively. Local land use further reduced koaro and banded kokopu habitats to 70% and 90%, respectively, of total accessible habitat. Habitat lost through disruption of the dispersal network was disproportionately large because potentially useable habitat was rendered inaccessible.     

Swarming and mating behavior of a mayfly Baetis bicaudatus suggest stabilizing selection for male body size

Large size often confers a fitness advantage to female insects because fecundity increases with body size. However, the fitness benefits of large size for male insects are less clear. We investigated the mating behavior of the mayfly Baetis bicaudatus to determine whether the probability of male mating success increased with body size. Males formed mating aggregations (swarms) ranging from a few to hundreds of individuals, 1-4 m above the ground for about 1.5-2 h in the early morning. Females that flew near swarms were grabbed by males, pairs dropped to the vegetation where they mated and then flew off individually. Some marked males returned to swarms 1, 2 or 3 days after marking. Larger males swarmed near spruce trees at the edges of meadows, but the probability of copulating was not a function of male body size (no large male advantage). Furthermore, the potential fitness advantage of mating with larger, more fecund females was not greater for large males (no size-assortative mating). However, the sizes of copulating males were significantly less variable than those of non-mating males collected at random in swarms. Intermediate male size may be optimal during mating because of trade-offs between flight agility and longevity or competitive ability. Results of this study are consistent with the hypotheses that there is stabilizing selection on adult male body size during mating, and that male body size in this species may be influenced more by selection pressures acting on larvae than on adults.