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Humid tropical forests play a dominant role in the functioning of Earth but are under increasing threat from changes in land use and climate. How forest vulnerability varies across space and time and what level of stress forests can tolerate before facing a tipping point are poorly understood. Here, we develop a tropical forest vulnerability index (TFVI) to detect and evaluate the vulnerability of global tropical forests to threats across space and time. We show that climate change together with land-use change have slowed the recovery rate of forest carbon cycling. Temporal autocorrelation, as an indicator of this slow recovery, increases substantially for above-ground biomass, gross primary production, and evapotranspiration when climate stress reaches a critical level. Forests in the Americas exhibit extensive vulnerability to these stressors, while in Africa, forests show relative resilience to climate, and in Asia reveal more vulnerability to land use and fragmentation. TFVI can systematically track the response of tropical forests to multiple stressors and provide early-warning signals for regions undergoing critical transitions. Peer Reviewed

Antecedentes. La valoración del riesgo de violencia es un requisito fundamental en la toma de decisiones profesionales que implican prevenir, intervenir o informar sobre la conducta de las personas. El uso de herramientas estructuradas de evaluación del riesgo de violencia ha mostrado mejoría en la precisión de las evaluaciones basadas exclusivamente en el juicio clínico o en la pericia de un experto en contextos psiquiátricos, penitenciarios y jurídicos.Objetivo. Este estudio presenta los resultados de la primera encuesta sobre las prácticas profesionales asociadas al uso de herramientas de evaluación del riesgo de violencia en España.Materiales y métodos. La información fue recogida mediante la administración de una encuesta en internet que fue distribuida por correo electrónico a los miembros de organizaciones profesionales.Resultados. De manera similar a los contextos profesionales del resto del mundo, las escalas de psicopatía de Robert Hare (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised y Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version) y el Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20 encabezaron la lista de las herramientas más usadas tanto por elección personal como por requisito institucional.Conclusiones. Se ofrecen datos novedosos sobre la prevalencia de uso y la utilidad percibida de las herramientas estructuradas, así como sobre otras cuestiones relacionadas a las prácticas profesionales de evaluación del riesgo de violencia en España que pueden orientar tanto a los profesionales de contextos sanitarios, correccionales y forenses, como a los responsables de las instituciones en la elección de las herramientas a implementar para asistirlos en la toma de decisiones. Background. Violence risk assessment is a key requirement in professional decision making involving prevention, intervention or reporting on human behavior. The use of structured tools for violence risk assessment has shown to improve the accuracy of assessments based exclusively on clinical judgment or expertise in psychiatric, correctional and legal settings.Objectives. This study presents results of the first survey about professional practices associated with tools for violence risk assessment in Spain.Materials and methods. The information was collected by administering an online-based survey that was distributed by e-mail to members of professional organizations around the country.Results. As in professional contexts worldwide, the Robert Hare's psychopathy scales (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version) and the Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20 topped the list of the most used tools both by professional choice and institutional requirement.Conclusions. We provide novel data on the prevalence of use and the perceived utility of specific tools, as well as on other issues related to the professional practice of violence risk assessment in Spain, which can guide professional in the health care, correctional and forensic settings, as well as those responsible for decisions in institutions about choosing which tool to implement.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with marked gender and ethnic disparities. We report a large transancestral association study of SLE using Immunochip genotype data from 27,574 individuals of European (EA), African (AA) and Hispanic Amerindian (HA) ancestry. We identify 58 distinct non-HLA regions in EA, 9 in AA and 16 in HA (∼50% of these regions have multiple independent associations); these include 24 novel SLE regions (P<5 × 10−8), refined association signals in established regions, extended associations to additional ancestries, and a disentangled complex HLA multigenic effect. The risk allele count (genetic load) exhibits an accelerating pattern of SLE risk, leading us to posit a cumulative hit hypothesis for autoimmune disease. Comparing results across the three ancestries identifies both ancestry-dependent and ancestry-independent contributions to SLE risk. Our results are consistent with the unique and complex histories of the populations sampled, and collectively help clarify the genetic architecture and ethnic disparities in SLE. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with a strong ethnic and gender bias. In a transancestral genetic association study, Langefeld et al. identify 24 novel regions associated with risk to lupus and propose a cumulative hits hypothesis for loci conferring risk to SLE.

A search for charged and neutral excited leptons is performed in 217 pb−1 of e+e− collision data collected with the L3 detector at LEP at centre-of-mass energies from 202 up to 209 GeV. The pair- and single-production mechanisms of excited electrons, muons and taus, as well as of excited electron-, muon- and tau-neutrinos, are investigated and no signals are detected. Combining with L3 results from searches at lower centre-of-mass energies, gives improved limits on the masses and couplings of excited leptons. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas

OBJECTIVE The sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor dapagliflozin reduced the risk of cardiovascular mortality and worsening heart failure in the Dapagliflozin and Prevention of Adverse Outcomes in Heart Failure (DAPA-HF) trial. This report explores the effect of dapagliflozin on incident type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the cohort without diabetes enrolled in the trial. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The subgroup of 2,605 patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), no prior history of diabetes, and an HbA1c of &lt;6.5% at baseline was randomized to dapagliflozin 10 mg daily or placebo. In this exploratory analysis, surveillance for new-onset diabetes was accomplished through periodic HbA1c testing as part of the study protocol and comparison between the treatment groups assessed through a Cox proportional hazards model. RESULTS At baseline, the mean HbA1c was 5.8%. At 8 months, there were minimal changes, with a placebo-adjusted change in the dapagliflozin group of −0.04%. Over a median follow-up of 18 months, diabetes developed in 93 of 1,307 patients (7.1%) in the placebo group and 64 of 1,298 (4.9%) in the dapagliflozin group. Dapagliflozin led to a 32% reduction in diabetes incidence (hazard ratio 0.68, 95% CI 0.50–0.94; P = 0.019). More than 95% of the participants who developed T2D had prediabetes at baseline (HbA1c 5.7–6.4%). Participants who developed diabetes in DAPA-HF had a higher subsequent mortality than those who did not. CONCLUSIONS In this exploratory analysis among patients with HFrEF, treatment with dapagliflozin reduced the incidence of new diabetes. This potential benefit needs confirmation in trials of longer duration and in people without heart failure.

We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; SSTC, Belarus; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; CONICYT, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; COLCIENCIAS, Colombia; MSMT CR, MPO CR and VSC CR, Czech Republic; DNRF and DNSRC, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS, CEA-DSM/IRFU, France; GNSF, Georgia; BMBF, HGF, and MPG, Germany; GSRT, Greece; RGC, Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF, I-CORE and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; FOM and NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MNiSW and NCN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MES of Russia and NRC KI, Russian Federation; JINR; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZS, Slovenia; DST/NRF, South Africa; MINECO, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, SNSF and Cantons of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TAEK, Turkey; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF, the Canada Council, CANARIE, CRC, Compute Canada, FQRNT, and the Ontario Innovation Trust, Canada; EPLANET, ERC, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, European Union; Investissements d'Avenir Labex and Idex, ANR, Region Auvergne and Fondation Partager le Savoir, France; DFG and AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos, Thales and Aristeia programmes co-financed by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF; BSF, GIF and Minerva, Israel; BRF, Norway; Generalitat de Catalunya, Generalitat Valenciana, Spain; the Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom. The crucial computing support from all WLCG partners is acknowledged gratefully, in particular from CERN, the ATLAS Tier-1 facilities at TRIUMF (Canada), NDGF (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), CC-IN2P3 (France), KIT/GridKA (Germany), INFN-CNAF (Italy), NL-T1 (Netherlands), PIC (Spa This paper presents a dedicated search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to a pair of new spin-zero particles, H -> aa, where the particle a decays to b-quarks and has a mass in the range of 20-60 GeV. The search is performed in events where the Higgs boson is produced in associationwith aW boson, giving rise to a signature of a lepton (electron or muon), missing transverse momentum, and multiple jets from b-quark decays. The analysis is based on the full dataset of pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV recorded in 2015 by theATLAS detector at theCERNLargeHadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb(-1). No significant excess of events above the Standard Model prediction is observed, and a 95% confidence-level upper limit is derived for the product of the production cross section for pp -> WH times the branching ratio for the decay H -> aa -> 4b. The upper limit ranges from 6.2 pb for an a-boson mass m(a) = 20 GeV to 1.5 pb for m(a) = 60 GeV. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

A search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the two photon decay channel is reported, using 1.08 fb−11.08 fb[superscript −1] of proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector. No significant excess is observed in the investigated mass range of 110–150 GeV. Upper limits on the cross-section times branching ratio of between 2.0 and 5.8 times the Standard Model prediction are derived for this mass range. National Science Foundation (U.S.) United States. Dept. of Energy Brookhaven National Laboratory

We present a measurement of the top quark mass in the dilepton channel based on approximately 370/pb of data collected by the D0 experiment during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron collider. We employ two different methods to extract the top quark mass. We show that both methods yield consistent results using ensemble tests of events generated with the D0 Monte Carlo simulation. We combine the results from the two methods to obtain a top quark mass m_t = 178.1 +/- 8.2 GeV. The statistical uncertainty is 6.7 GeV and the systematic uncertainty is 4.8 GeV. Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5–22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3–19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8–144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries. http://purl.org/eprint/status/PeerReviewed published version Article

The observation of Higgs boson production in association with a top quark pair ($t\bar{t}H$), based on the analysis of proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, is presented. Using data corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 79.8 f$^{−1}$ , and considering Higgs boson decays into $b\bar{b}, WW^⁎ , τ^+ τ^− , γγ$ , and $ZZ^⁎$ , the observed significance is 5.8 standard deviations, compared to an expectation of 4.9 standard deviations. Combined with the $t\bar{t}H$ searches using a dataset corresponding to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb$^{−1}$ at 7 TeV and 20.3 fb$^{−1}$ at 8 TeV, the observed (expected) significance is 6.3 (5.1) standard deviations. Assuming Standard Model branching fractions, the total $t\bar{t}H$ production cross section at 13 TeV is measured to be 670 ± 90 (stat.)$_{−100}^{+110}$ (syst.) fb, in agreement with the Standard Model prediction. Physics letters / B 784, 173 - 191 (2018). doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2018.07.035 Published by North-Holland Publ., Amsterdam