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Journal articleLim A, Shearer FM, Sewalk K, et al., 2025,
The overlapping global distribution of dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever
, Nature Communications, Vol: 16Arboviruses 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.
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Journal articleAl-Kaisy R, Bhatt S, Duchêne DA, 2025,
Distinct evolutionary regimes across domains of the Plasmodium falciparum CSP gene
, Scientific Reports, Vol: 15Malaria disease caused by parasites of genus Plasmodium places an enormous disease burden across tropical regions of the world. The circumsporozoite protein (CSP) of Plasmodium has several key functions in binding and accessing host cells, with functions subdivided across multiple protein regions. While its key roles during infection make the gene a primary target for malaria vaccine development, the evolutionary dynamics that could affect the forecasting of useful strains remain poorly understood. We tested whether the gene undergoes multiple DNA substitution processes and whether these are divided across gene regions using a phylogenetic mixture model, and a global sample of CSP sequences specific to P. falciparum. These analyses reveal evolutionary processes unique to the central repeat region and the C-terminus. The central repeat region is dominated by synonymous substitutions (putatively neutral) and heavy C-T substitution bias, while the C-terminus undergoes mostly non-synonymous changes. These evolutionary processes are not strongly geographically restricted, and lineages from Africa and Asia where the parasite is most abundant appear to drive evolution across all CSP gene regions. We propose that insights about DNA substitution processes can help forecast the variants of importance to vaccine development, aided by state-of-the-art evolutionary modelling.
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Journal articlePayne DS, Swisdak M, Eastwood JP, et al., 2025,
In-situ observations of the magnetothermodynamic evolution of electron-only reconnection
, Communications Physics, Vol: 8Field-particle energy exchange is important to the magnetic reconnection process, but uncertainties regarding the time evolution of this exchange remain. We investigate the temporal dynamics of field-particle energy exchange during magnetic reconnection, using Magnetospheric Multiscale mission observations of an electron-only reconnection event in the magnetosheath. The electron energy is in local minimum at the x-line due to a density depletion, while the magnetic energy is in local maximum due to a guide field enhancement. The electromagnetic energy transport comes almost entirely from guide field contributions and is confined within the reconnection plane, while the most significant contribution to electron energy transport is independent of the drift velocity with additional out-of-plane signatures. Multi-spacecraft analysis suggests that the guide field energy is decreasing while the electron density is increasing, both evolving such that the system is moving toward a more uniform distribution of magnetic and thermal energy.
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Journal articleLiu M, Prentice IC, Menviel L, et al., 2025,
Correction to: Past rapid warmings as a constraint on greenhouse-gas climate feedbacks (Communications Earth & Environment, (2022), 3, 1, (196), 10.1038/s43247-022-00536-0)
, Communications Earth and Environment, Vol: 6Correction to:Communications Earth & Environmenthttps://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00536-0, published online 30 August 2022 In the version of this article originally published, three estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from different sources were used to convert feedback strength into the unitless measure – gain – on the assumption that these were independent. In fact, these were not independent, and so combining them yields a too-narrow uncertainty range. The authors decided to only use the “very likely” (instead of “likely”) range from IPCC WG1 AR6 and treat it as a 90% confidence interval. Additionally, the gain is not normally distributed but is highly asymmetric, as it is the negative of the ratio of two approximately normally distributed variables, feedback strength (c) and the net feedback parameter (α<inf>net</inf>), with a non-zero centre. There is no standard way to derive confidence intervals from standard error for such a variable. Therefore, in the correct version, only the standard error of the gain is provided, instead of giving confidence intervals. Besides, since calculating standard error by the error propagation rule requires the input variables to be at least approximately normally distributed, the gain was calculated directly from the net feedback parameter (α<inf>net</inf>, which is assumed to be normally distributed) corresponding to ECS (which is not normally distributed). The changes implemented have no impact on the calculated feedback strengths, but they do have an impact on the estimated gains. Since confidence intervals are no longer provided for the gains, the comparison is focused on the feedback strengths. The authors would like to thank Dr. B. B. Cael from the National Oceanography Centre for bringing this issue to their attention with advice about the choice of ECS and how the very likely range should be interpreted into confidence int
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Journal articleAhmed AN, Fornace KM, Iwamura T, et al., 2025,
Human animal contact, land use change and zoonotic disease risk: a protocol for systematic review
, Systematic Reviews, Vol: 14Background: Zoonotic diseases pose a significant risk to human health globally. The interrelationship between humans, animals, and the environment plays a key role in the transmission of zoonotic infections. Human-animal contact (HAC) is particularly important in this relationship, where it serves as the pivotal interaction for pathogen spillover to occur from an animal reservoir to a human. In the context of disease emergence linked to land-use change, increased HAC as a result of land changes (e.g., deforestation, agricultural expansion, habitat degradation) is frequently cited as a key mechanism. We propose to conduct a systematic literature review to map and assess the quality of current evidence linking changes in HAC to zoonotic disease emergence as a result of land-use change. Method: We developed a search protocol to be conducted in eight (8) databases: Medline, Embase, Global Health, Web of Science, Scopus, AGRIS, Africa-Wide Info, and Global Index Medicus. The review will follow standard systematic review methods and will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The search will consist of building a search strategy, database search, and a snowballing search of references from retrieved relevant articles. The search strategy will be developed for Medline (through PubMed) and EMBASE databases. The search strategy will then be applied to all eight (8) databases. Retrieved articles will be exported to EndNote 20 where duplicates will be removed and exported to Rayyan®, to screen papers using their title and abstract. Screening will be conducted by two independent reviewers and data extraction will be performed using a data extraction form. Articles retrieved will be assessed using study quality appraisal tools (OHAT-Office for Health Assessment and Technology Risk of Bias Rating Tool for Human and Animal Studies, CCS-Case Control Studies, OCCSS-Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectio
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Journal articleZhang-Zheng H, Malhi Y, Ziemińska K, et al., 2025,
A test of ecophysiological theories on tropical forest functional traits along a VPD gradient
, Communications Biology, Vol: 8Forest primary production is a crucial process for both ecosystem functioning and global carbon cycling. Primary production responds to both temperature and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) through separate mechanisms. Vegetation models need to quantify both responses. However, due to their often high correlations, most observational data sets used to test models or theories hardly distinguish them. Here we evaluate ecophysiological theories on the effect of VPD using tree trait data collected along a VPD gradient in West Africa. Study sites spanned an annual rainfall range of 1200–2050 mm, with varying seasonality but minimal temperature variation. Most photosynthetic traits show trends consistent with predictions from optimality theory, including higher net CO2 assimilation rates and greater photosynthetic capacity at drier sites. These patterns were associated with greater deciduousness, increased respiration rates and enhanced water transport at drier sites. In contrast, hydraulic traits showed weaker consistency with theoretical predictions or global trends, particularly those based on the xylem efficiency-safety tradeoff. Our findings suggest that vegetation models should account for higher photosynthetic capacity in drier regions, but that further research is needed to incorporate hydraulic traits into models.
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Journal articleEvangelopoulos D, Wood D, Butland BK, et al., 2025,
Measurement error correction methods for the effects of ambient air pollution on mortality and morbidity using the UK Biobank cohort: the MELONS study
, Environmental Research, Vol: 284, ISSN: 0013-9351Epidemiological cohort studies associating long-term exposure to ambient air pollution with health outcomes most often do not account for individually assigned exposure measurement error. Here, we implemented Cox proportional hazards models to explore the relationships between NO<inf>2</inf>, PM<inf>2.5</inf> and ozone exposures with the incidence of natural-cause mortality and several morbidity outcomes in 61,797 London-dwelling respondents of the UK Biobank cohort. Data from an existing personal monitoring campaign was used as an external validation dataset to estimate measurement error structures between “true” personal exposure and several surrogate (measured and modelled) estimates of assigned exposure, allowing for the application of two health effect estimate correction methodologies: regression calibration (RCAL) and simulation extrapolation (SIMEX). Uncorrected hazard ratios (HRs) suggested an increase in the risk of natural-cause mortality for modelled NO<inf>2</inf> estimates (HR: 1.028 [0.983, 1.074] per IQR increment of 14.54 μg/m<sup>3</sup>) and no statistically significant association was observed for PM<inf>2.5</inf> surrogate exposure measures. Measurement error corrected HRs were generally larger in magnitude, although exhibited wider confidence intervals than uncorrected effect estimates. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was associated with increased exposure to modelled NO<inf>2</inf> (1.087 [1.022, 1.155]). Both RCAL and SIMEX correction resulted in increased HRs (1.254 [1.061, 1.482] and 1.192 [1.093, 1.301], respectively). SIMEX correction of modelled PM<inf>2.5</inf> (IQR: 1.72 μg/m<sup>3</sup>) associations with COPD increased the HR (1.079 [1.001, 1.164]) in comparison to uncorrected (1.042 [0.988, 1.099]). These findings suggest that health effect estimates not corrected for exposure measurement error may lead to u
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Journal articleLi X, Wang Y, Buytaert W, et al., 2025,
A framework for impact analysis of small hydropower on river ecological integrity
, Water Research, Vol: 285, ISSN: 0043-1354Under the pressure of small hydropower development, the ecological integrity of small- and medium-sized rivers in mountainous regions has deteriorated, hindering the normal functioning of mountain ecosystem processes and diminishing the value of ecosystem services. Government agencies and environmental organizations worldwide have enacted legislation and guidelines aimed at assessing the integrity of river ecosystems. However, the mechanisms for maintaining river ecological integrity across different disciplines remain unclear, and there is a lack of analytical frameworks for the quantitative assessment of small hydropower impacts on river ecosystems. This study used a typical mountain river affected by small hydropower development as a case study and conceptualized river ecological integrity in terms of hydrological, habitat, and biological dimensions. A total of 10 hydrological indicators, 7 habitat indicators, and 17 biological indicators were identified as core indicators for describing ecological integrity. Comprehensive indexes for hydrological, habitat, and biological integrity were established and applied to a systematic quantitative assessment of the river's ecological integrity. For rivers impacted by small hydropower development in mountainous regions, extreme flow events and flow dynamics were identified as the key elements in describing hydrological integrity, while connectivity, hydrodynamics, and riparian conditions were essential for characterizing habitat integrity. Biological integrity was described from the aspects of algae, macroinvertebrates, and fish species. The results showed that ecological integrity was degraded after the development of small hydropower. Significant degradations in ecological integrity were found in the water-reduced sections, with the integrity indexes of hydrology, habitat and biology declining by 48 %, 73 % and 8 % respectively. The findings provide new insights for addressing the degradation of river ecological integrit
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Journal articleWarder SC, Piggott MD, 2025,
Mapping global offshore wind wake losses, layout optimisation potential, and climate change effects
, Energy, Vol: 331, ISSN: 0360-5442This study assesses global offshore wind energy resources, wake-induced losses, array layout optimisation potential and climate change impacts. Global offshore ambient potential is first mapped based on reanalysis data. Wake-induced losses are then estimated using an engineering wake model, revealing that locations with low (high) resource typically experience larger (smaller) percentage losses. However, the specific wind speed distribution is found to be important, with narrower distributions generally leading to greater losses. This is due to the overlap between the wind speed distribution and the high-sensitivity region of the turbine thrust and power curves. Broadly, this leads to much stronger wake-induced losses in the tropics (which experience the trade winds) than mid-latitudes. However, the tropics also experience a narrower wind direction distribution; the results of this study demonstrate that this leads to greater potential for mitigation of wake effects via layout optimisation. Finally, projected changes in wind potential and wake losses due to climate change under a high-emission scenario are assessed. Many regions are projected to decrease in ambient wind resources, and furthermore these regions will typically experience greater wake-induced losses, exacerbating the climate change impact. These results highlight the different challenges and opportunities associated with exploiting offshore wind resources across the globe.
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Journal articleMillar O, Ma L, Karmpadakis I, 2025,
Tsunami-induced loads on coastal structures: experimental investigation and prediction
, Ocean Engineering, Vol: 336, ISSN: 0029-8018Tsunami events can have devastating impacts on coastal communities. In order to minimise fatalities and destruction of critical infrastructure, recent design codes provide methods for estimation of tsunami forces. However, loads are heavily dependent upon incident wave properties, and interaction with the surrounding structural arrangement. This study presents the results of an experimental investigation into the effect of wave condition and structural arrangement on loading. A new experimental apparatus is developed to enable simultaneous measurement of local loads on individual structures, and global forces on arrangements at city block scale. Wave breaking behaviour is varied through changing initial inundation. These results enable insight into the progression of wave loading through structural arrangements. The accuracy of loading predictions from design codes and a new momentum-flux method is investigated. These are implemented using kinematics and free surface inputs from SWASH and OpenFOAM simulations. Their validity is assessed through comparison to the laboratory results. Design code estimates using a drag formulation and the momentum-flux model satisfactorily recreate experimental measurements when provided with appropriately modelled wave inputs from OpenFOAM. The momentum-flux approach, which requires no empirical inputs, is shown to be more robust, demonstrating its potential for estimation of tsunami loads on coastal infrastructure.
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