All-Cause Mortality up to and After Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke Events in European Middle-Aged Men The PRIME Study

Background and Purpose-The aim was to investigate prospectively the all-cause mortality risk up to and after coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke events in European middle-aged men.

Methods-The study population comprised 10 424 men 50 to 59 years of age recruited between 1991 and 1994 in France (N=7855) and Northern Ireland (N=2747) within the Prospective Epidemiological Study of Myocardial Infarction. Incident CHD and stroke events and deaths from all causes were prospectively registered during the 10-year follow-up. In Cox's proportional hazards regression analysis, CHD and stroke events during follow-up were used as time-dependent covariates.

Results-A total of 769 CHD and 132 stroke events were adjudicated, and 569 deaths up to and 66 after CHD or stroke occurred during follow-up. After adjustment for study country and cardiovascular risk factors, the hazard ratios of all-cause mortality were 1.58 (95% confidence interval 1.18-2.12) after CHD and 3.13 (95% confidence interval 1.98-4.92) after stroke.

Conclusions-These findings support continuous efforts to promote both primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Holocene vegetation change in relation to fire and volcanic events in Jilin, Northeastern China

Volatiles erupted from large-scale explosive volcanic activities have a significant impact on climate and environmental changes. As an important ecological factor, the occurrence of fire is affected by vegetation cover, and fire can feed back into both vegetation and climatic change. The causes of fire events are diverse; and can include volcanic eruptions. The amount of charcoal in sediment sequences is related to the frequency and intensity of fire, and hence under good preservation conditions fire history can be reconstructed from fossil charcoal abundance. Until now, little research on the role of fire has been carried out in northeastern China. In this study, through research on charcoal and tephra shards from Gushantun and Hanlongwan, Holocene vegetation change in relation to fire and volcanic events in Jilin, Northeastern China, was investigated. Where tephra shards are present in Gushantun it is associated with low level of both conifers and broadleaved trees, and is also associated with a pronounced charcoal peak. This suggests forest cover was greatly reduced from a fire caused by an eruption of the Tianchi volcano. We also detected one tephra layer in Hanlongwan, which also has the almost same depth with low level forest pollen values and one charcoal peak. This was caused probably by an eruption of the Jinlongdingzi volcano.

Evolving southwest African response to abrupt deglacial North Atlantic climate change events

Climate change during the last deglaciation was strongly influenced by the „bipolar seesaw‟, producing antiphase climate responses between the North and South Atlantic. However, mounting evidence demands refinements of this model, with the occurrence of abrupt events in southern low to mid latitudes occurring in-phase with North Atlantic climate. Improved constraints on the north-south phasing and spatial extent of these events are therefore critical to
understanding the mechanisms that propagate abrupt events within the climate system. We present a 19,400 year multi-proxy record of climate change obtained from a rock hyrax midden in southernmost Africa. Arid anomalies in phase with the Younger Dryas and 8.2 ka events are apparent, indicating a clear shift in the influence of the bipolar seesaw, which diminished as the Earth warmed, and was succeeded after ~14.6 ka by the emergence of a dominant interhemispheric atmospheric teleconnection.

Impact of smoking and smoking cessation on cardiovascular events and mortality among older adults: meta-analysis of individual participant data from prospective cohort studies of the CHANCES consortium

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact of smoking and smoking cessation on cardiovascular mortality, acute coronary events, and stroke events in people aged 60 and older, and to calculate and report risk advancement periods for cardiovascular mortality in addition to traditional epidemiological relative risk measures.

DESIGN: Individual participant meta-analysis using data from 25 cohorts participating in the CHANCES consortium. Data were harmonised, analysed separately employing Cox proportional hazard regression models, and combined by meta-analysis.

RESULTS: Overall, 503,905 participants aged 60 and older were included in this study, of whom 37,952 died from cardiovascular disease. Random effects meta-analysis of the association of smoking status with cardiovascular mortality yielded a summary hazard ratio of 2.07 (95% CI 1.82 to 2.36) for current smokers and 1.37 (1.25 to 1.49) for former smokers compared with never smokers. Corresponding summary estimates for risk advancement periods were 5.50 years (4.25 to 6.75) for current smokers and 2.16 years (1.38 to 2.39) for former smokers. The excess risk in smokers increased with cigarette consumption in a dose-response manner, and decreased continuously with time since smoking cessation in former smokers. Relative risk estimates for acute coronary events and for stroke events were somewhat lower than for cardiovascular mortality, but patterns were similar.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study corroborates and expands evidence from previous studies in showing that smoking is a strong independent risk factor of cardiovascular events and mortality even at older age, advancing cardiovascular mortality by more than five years, and demonstrating that smoking cessation in these age groups is still beneficial in reducing the excess risk.

Statistical Analysis of Small Ellerman Bomb Events

The properties of Ellerman bombs (EBs), small-scale brightenings in the Hα line wings, have proved difficult to establish because their size is close to the spatial resolution of even the most advanced telescopes. Here, we aim to infer the size and lifetime of EBs using high-resolution data of an emerging active region collected using the Interferometric BIdimensional Spectrometer (IBIS) and Rapid Oscillations of the Solar Atmosphere (ROSA) instruments as well as the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We develop an algorithm to track EBs through their evolution, finding that EBs can often be much smaller (around 0.3″) and shorter-lived (less than one minute) than previous estimates. A correlation between G-band magnetic bright points and EBs is also found. Combining SDO/HMI and G-band data gives a good proxy of the polarity for the vertical magnetic field. It is found that EBs often occur both over regions of opposite polarity flux and strong unipolar fields, possibly hinting at magnetic reconnection as a driver of these events.The energetics of EB events is found to follow a power-law distribution in the range of a nanoflare (1022-25 ergs).

Progress towards improving chronologies for marine sediment records.

The North Atlantic has played a key role in abrupt climate changes due to the sensitivity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to the location and strength of deep water formation. It is crucial for modelling future climate change to understand the role of the AMOC in the rapid warming and gradual cooling cycles known as Dansgaard-Oescher (DO) events which are recorded in the Greenland ice cores. However, palaeoceanographic research into DO events has been hampered by the uncertainty in timing due largely to the lack of a precise chronological time frame for marine records. While tephrochronology provides links to the Greenland ice core records at a few points, radiocarbon remains the primary dating method for most marine cores. Due to variations in the atmospheric and oceanic 14C concentration, radiocarbon ages must be calibrated to provide calendric ages. The IntCal Working Group provides a global estimate of ocean 14C ages for calibration of marine radiocarbon dates, but the variability of the surface marine reservoir age in the North Atlantic particularly during Heinrich or DO events, makes calibration uncertain. In addition, the current Marine09 radiocarbon calibration beyond around 15 ka BP is largely based on 'tuning' to the Hulu Cave isotope record, so that the timing of events may not be entirely synchronous with the Greenland ice cores. The use of event-stratigraphy and independent chronological markers such as tephra provide the scope to improve marine radiocarbon reservoir age estimates particularly in the North Atlantic where a number of tephra horizons have been identified in both marine sediments and the Greenland ice cores. Quantification of timescale uncertainties is critical but statistical techniques which can take into account the differential dating between events can improve the precision. Such techniques should make it possible to develop specific marine calibration curves for selected regions.

Numerical analysis of impact events in a centrifugal impact pin mill

Milling is an important operation in many industries, such as mining and pharmaceutical. Although the comminution process during milling has been extensively studied, the material fragmentation mechanisms in a mill are still not well understood partly because of the lack of an understanding on the local stressing and dynamic information under operational conditions in mills. This paper presents a DEM simulation of particle dynamics and impact events in a centrifugal impact pin mill. The main focus is the statistical characteristics of the dominant stressing modes during the milling process. The frequency, velocity and force of the different impact events between particles and mill components, or between particles, are analysed. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Low alanine aminotransferase levels and higher number of cardiovascular events in people with Type 2 diabetes: analysis of the Fenofibrate Intervention and Event Lowering in Diabetes (FIELD) study.

AIMS: To determine whether alanine aminotransferase or gamma-glutamyltransferase levels, as markers of liver health and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, might predict cardiovascular events in people with Type 2 diabetes.

METHODS: Data from the Fenofibrate Intervention and Event Lowering in Diabetes study were analysed to examine the relationship between liver enzymes and incident cardiovascular events (non-fatal myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary and other cardiovascular death, coronary or carotid revascularization) over 5 years.

RESULTS: Alanine aminotransferase level had a linear inverse relationship with the first cardiovascular event occurring in participants during the study period. After adjustment, for every 1 sd higher baseline alanine aminotransferase value (13.2 U/l), the risk of a cardiovascular event was 7% lower (95% CI 4-13; P=0.02). Participants with alanine aminotransferase levels below and above the reference range 8-41 U/l for women and 9-59 U/l for men, had hazard ratios for a cardiovascular event of 1.86 (95% CI 1.12-3.09) and 0.65 (95% CI 0.49-0.87), respectively (P=0.001). No relationship was found for gamma-glutamyltransferase.

CONCLUSIONS: The data may indicate that in people with Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with higher alanine aminotransferase levels because of prevalent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a low alanine aminotransferase level is a marker of hepatic or systemic frailty rather than health. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

A role for local mechanisms in perceived duration of brief visual events

Background: Spatially localized duration compression of a briefly presented moving stimulus following adaptation in the same location is taken as evidence for modality-specific neural timing mechanisms.

Aims: The present study used random dot motion stimuli to investigate where these mechanisms may be located.

Method: Experiment 1 measured duration compression of the test stimulus as a function of adaptor speed and revealed that duration compression is speed tuned. These data were then used to make predictions of duration compression responses for various models which were tested in experiment 2. Here a mixed-speed adaptor stimulus was used with duration compression being measured as a function of the adaptor’s ‘speed notch’ (the removal of a central band from the speed range).

Results: The results were consistent with a local-mean model.

Conclusions: Local-motion mechanisms are involved in duration perception of brief events.