Extreme Loss Research Articles

Diversification processes in Gerp's mouse lemur demonstrate the importance of rivers and altitude as biogeographic barriers in Madagascar's humid rainforests.

Madagascar exhibits exceptionally high levels of biodiversity and endemism. Models to explain the diversification and distribution of species in Madagascar stress the importance of historical variability in climate conditions which may have led to the formation of geographic barriers by changing water and habitat availability. The relative importance of these models for the diversification of the various forest-adapted taxa of Madagascar has yet to be understood. Here, we reconstructed the phylogeographic history of Gerp's mouse lemur (Microcebus gerpi) to identify relevant mechanisms and drivers of diversification in Madagascar's humid rainforests. We used restriction site associated DNA (RAD) markers and applied population genomic and coalescent-based techniques to estimate genetic diversity, population structure, gene flow and divergence times among M. gerpi populations and its two sister species M. jollyae and M. marohita. Genomic results were complemented with ecological niche models to better understand the relative barrier function of rivers and altitude. We show that M. gerpi diversified during the late Pleistocene. The inferred ecological niche, patterns of gene flow and genetic differentiation in M. gerpi suggest that the potential for rivers to act as biogeographic barriers depended on both size and elevation of headwaters. Populations on opposite sides of the largest river in the area with headwaters that extend far into the highlands show particularly high genetic differentiation, whereas rivers with lower elevation headwaters have weaker barrier functions, indicated by higher migration rates and admixture. We conclude that M. gerpi likely diversified through repeated cycles of dispersal punctuated by isolation to refugia as a result of paleoclimatic fluctuations during the Pleistocene. We argue that this diversification scenario serves as a model of diversification for other rainforest taxa that are similarly limited by geographic factors. In addition, we highlight conservation implications for this critically endangered species, which faces extreme habitat loss and fragmentation.

Distinct adaptations of endocrine and cognitive functions may contribute to high variability in long-term weight loss outcome after bariatric surgery

Background: Bariatric surgery has been widely recognized as the most efficient long-term treatment method in severe obesity, yet therapy success shows considerable interindividual variability. Postoperative metabolic adaptations, including improved gut hormone secretion (GLP-1, PYY and ghrelin), and restored executive function may play an explanatory role in weight loss, yet causes for poor success in individual patients remain unknown. This study investigates gut-hormonal and cognitive characteristics in extreme weight loss responders to bariatric surgery. Methods: Patients (n = 47) with high or low excessive weight loss (EWL) at least 2 years after Roux-en-Y-gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy were allocated into good responders (GR, EWL 82.4 ± 11.6%) and poor responders (PR, EWL 24.0 ± SD 12.8%) to study differences in postprandial secretion of GLP-1, PYY, ghrelin and in working memory (WM). Results: Mean BMI was 47.1 ± 6.2 kg/m² in PR (n = 21) and 28.9 ± 3.1 kg/m² in GR (n = 26, p < 0.001). Fasted GLP-1 and PYY were comparable for GR and PR (p > 0.2) and increased strongly after a standardized test meal (300 kcal liquid meal) with a peak at 15 to 30 min. The increase was stronger in GR compared to PR (GLP-1, PYY: Time x Group p < 0.05). Plasma ghrelin levels already differed between groups at fasted state, showing significantly higher levels for GR (p < 0.05). Postprandially, ghrelin secretion was suppressed in both groups, but suppression was higher in GR (Time x Group p < 0.05). GR showed significantly higher WM scores than PR (p < 0.05). Postprandial ghrelin (iAUC), but not GLP-1 or PYY plasma levels, significantly mediated the relationship between EWL and a WM subscore (IS score, CI = 0.07 - 1.68), but not WM main score (MIS score, CI = -0.07 - 1.54), in mediation analyses. Conclusion: Excess weight loss success after bariatric surgical procedures is associated with distinct profiles of gut-hormones at fasted and postprandial state, and differences in working memory. Better working memory performance in GR might be mediated by higher postprandial reduction in ghrelin plasma levels. Future studies need to integrate longitudinal data, larger samples and more sensitive cognitive tests.

Large-scale sports events, sports gambling market and promotion risk management: Theoretical model and case analysis based on option hedging theory.

Large-scale sports events have become a good opportunity for major enterprises to promote due to their high social attention; however, they also force enterprises to confront the risks of uncertainty and extreme loss. During the 2018 Russia World Cup, Vatti Co., Ltd.'s promotion activity "If France Wins, Get a Full Refund" suffered double losses economically and reputationally due to France's victory and the company's failure to fulfill its promise. This paper uses option hedging theory, and the risk management tools to construct a risk management model. Case analysis and program improvement were carried out. The research results show that using the winning odds can effectively control the risks. Companies should determine their promotion plan based on sale returns and the maximum implicit income generated by promotional activities. The research paper opens a new field using derivative financial instruments to control corporate promotion risks.

A semi-supervised network-based tissue-aware contrast enhancement method for CT images

To propose a tissue- aware contrast enhancement network (T- ACEnet) for CT image enhancement and validate its accuracy in CT image organ segmentation tasks. The original CT images were mapped to generate low dynamic grayscale images with lung and soft tissue window contrasts, and the supervised sub-network learned to recognize the optimal window width and level setting of the lung and abdominal soft tissues via the lung mask. The self-supervised sub-network then used the extreme value suppression loss function to preserve more organ edge structure information. The images generated by the T-ACEnet were fed into the segmentation network to segment multiple abdominal organs. The images obtained by T-ACEnet were capable of providing more window setting information in a single image, which allowed the physicians to conduct preliminary screening of the lesions. Compared with the suboptimal methods, T-ACE images achieved improvements by 0.51, 0.26, 0.10, and 14.14 in SSIM, QABF, VIFF, and PSNR metrics, respectively, with a reduced MSE by an order of magnitude. When T-ACE images were used as input for segmentation networks, the organ segmentation accuracy could be effectively improved without changing the model as compared with the original CT images. All the 5 segmentation quantitative indices were improved, with the maximum improvement of 4.16%. The T-ACEnet can perceptually improve the contrast of organ tissues and provide more comprehensive and continuous diagnostic information, and the T-ACE images generated using this method can significantly improve the performance of organ segmentation tasks.

ПРИМЕНЕНИЕ ГИГИЕНИЧЕСКОГО ПРОТОКОЛА ДЛЯ ПРЕДУПРЕЖДЕНИЯ РАЗВИТИЯ ОСЛОЖНЕНИЙ СО СТОРОНЫ ОРГАНОВ И ТКАНЕЙ ПОЛОСТИ РТА У ОНКОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ ПАЦИЕНТОВ В ПЕРИОД ХИМИОТЕРАПИИ

An increase in diagnostic capabilities contributes to the early detection of oncological diseases, which is statistically reflected in the number of detected pathologies. The prevalence of cancer is increasing every year. Chemotherapy is one of the leading methods of treatment in oncology. According to the literature, from 20 to 80% of cancer patients experience complications of chemotherapy treatment from the organs and tissues of the oral cavity. The most common complication is oral mucositis. Such damage to the oral mucosa causes discomfort, pain, difficulty in eating, swallowing, and interferes with speech function. In advanced cases, oral mucositis leads to extreme weight loss, sepsis, and premature death. The development of oral mucositis is a complex multi-step process. Despite the fact that it is based on damage to the DNA structure of the cells of the oral mucosa, the microflora of the oral cavity plays an important role in the further development of the process. The influence of representatives of the microflora on the development of inflammatory processes is enormous. In the oral cavity, microorganisms are presented in the form of microbial communities - biofilms. Biofilm management is the basis for preventing inflammation of the oral mucosa and destruction of hard dental tissues. Due to the negative effect of chemotherapeutic drugs on the local immunity of the oral cavity, on salivation, there is a deterioration in the hygienic status of cancer patients. Taking into account the available data, we decided to conduct a study on the effect of mechanical action on oral biofilms in order to prevent complications from the organs and tissues of the oral cavity during chemotherapy treatment. The obtained results demonstrate the influence of the hygienic protocol on the state of the oral cavity of cancer patients during chemotherapy.

The Influence of Liking and Wanting on Eating Disorders

The appropriate methods of losing weight are a popular topic since losing weight is an important task for more and more people. Meanwhile, as the number of people losing weight increases, so do eating disorders because of incorrect and extreme weight loss methods. From an eating perspective, understanding food rewards is essential to knowing how to lose weight healthily. Food rewards include wanting and liking. The paper uses the literature review research method to summarize and discuss two opposite opinions about wanting and liking different or combined systems and the relationship between food rewards and eating control methods. The paper finds that wanting and liking are different systems. Understanding and identifying the difference between them reveals the appropriate eating control methods. People will realize they are hungry or they are greedy. People need to eat food when they feel hungry, but there is no need to eat food when they are greedy.

Accurate compressed traffic detection via traffic analysis using Graph Convolutional Network based on graph structure feature

As the application of data compression technology expands in areas such as IoT, webpage, and video data transmission, there are problems such as leakage of compressed but unencrypted user data, difficulty in supervising compressed data, and confusion between compressed and private encrypted traffic. Existing compressed traffic detection methods are significantly affected by data length and rely on binary classification in one step using random tests. It remains a challenging task to conduct accurate and efficient compressed traffic detection. In this paper, we present GCN-RTG, a compressed traffic detection method using Graph Convolutional Network. We investigate the randomness feature transformation pattern of packet sequences, propose a graph structure based on this pattern, and design a powerful GCN-based classifier to detect compressed traffic. The experimental results show that GCN-RTG achieves 94% accuracy in compressed traffic detection, remarkably improving by nearly 10% accuracy compared with traditional machine learning methods and approximately 5% compared with CNN and LSTM. Considering the effect of private encrypted traffic, GCN-RTG attains an accuracy of 89% for detecting compressed traffic. Furthermore, GCN-RTG can maintain an 83% accuracy even in the most extreme packet loss scenario and reach an outstanding accuracy of up to 95% of compressed traffic detection in real-world network data sized 4GB from the Jiangsu education backbone network in China.

Geographic Disparities in Case Fatality and Discharge Disposition Among Patients With Primary Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Background We evaluate nationwide trends and urban-rural disparities in case fatality (in-hospital mortality) and discharge dispositions among patients with primary intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Methods and Results In this repeated cross-sectional study, we identified adult patients (≥18 years of age) with primary ICH from the National Inpatient Sample (2004-2018). Using a series of survey design Poisson regression models, with hospital location-time interaction, we report the adjusted risk ratio (aRR), 95% CI, and average marginal effect (AME) for factors associated with ICH case fatality and discharge dispositions. We performed a stratified analysis of each model among patients with extreme loss of function and minor to major loss of function. We identified 908 557 primary ICH hospitalizations (overall mean age [SD], 69.0 [15.0] years; 445 301 [49.0%] women; 49 884 [5.5%] rural ICH hospitalizations). The crude ICH case fatality rate was 25.3% (urban hospitals: 24.9%, rural hospitals:32.5%). Urban (versus rural) hospital patients had a lower likelihood of ICH case fatality (aRR, 0.86 [95% CI, 0.83-0.89]). ICH case fatality is declining over time; however, it is declining faster in urban hospitals (AME, -0.049 [95% CI, -0.051 to -0.047]) compared with rural hospitals (AME, -0.034 [95% CI, -0.040 to -0.027]). Conversely, home discharge is increasing significantly among urban hospitals (AME, 0.011 [95% CI, 0.008-0.014]) but not significantly changing in rural hospitals (AME, -0.001 [95% CI, -0.010 to 0.007]). Among patients with extreme loss of function, hospital location was not significantly associated with ICH case fatality or home discharge. Conclusions Improving access to neurocritical care resources, particularly in resource-limited communities, may reduce the ICH outcomes disparity gap.

A Novel Printed Circuit Board Laminate for High Frequency Electronics

A novel PCB material that is advantaged at the 10-100+ GHz range has been developed. It consists of a 3 layer laminate, nominally with a total thickness of 140 microns, and individual laminates can be stacked to make multilayer boards. The outer two layers of the laminate consist of the polymer Topas, 50 microns thick and the middle layer is Corning’s ribbon alumina, 40 microns thick. For brevity, the laminate is called “TAT”. The permittivities of the Topas and alumina are 2.5 and 10 respectively, and that of the 50/40/50 TAT laminate is 3.2 in a direction transverse to the plane of the laminate. The individual loss tangents are about 0.0002, and the loss tangent of the TAT laminate has about the same value. Thus, TAT has significantly lower loss with a lower effective permittivity than other PCB materials currently available. These dielectric properties have been measured experimentally at 10 and 15 GHz. The permittivity and loss tangents can also be predicted accurately using extremely simple analytical formulae. This makes predicting the properties of TAT structures with different dimensions very easy. A TAT strip line has been modeled and found to have an effective permittivity of 2.3. The machining of TAT is somewhat incompatible with conventional PCB shop practice. However, laser drilling and cutting are perfectly practicable. In-house processes have been successfully developed, and an external vendor has also developed these capabilities. Copper sheet adheres strongly to the TAT, and the conductivity of the resulting traces is high. Boards for a 77 GHz radar demonstrate the manufacturability of TAT. Mechanical testing of TAT has been carried out, and the measured flexural modulus and stress at failure compare well with calculations. Environmental tests at 80 °C and 80% humidity indicate that TAT is quite robust. Moreover, it is quite possible that TAT itself may satisfy the UL94 criteria, since the alumina may act as a flame retardant. The feasibility of loading Topas with ceramic or fluoropolymer powders to reduce flammability has been investigated, and it has been found that the addition of these powders causes negligible dielectric loss. In summary, laminates of this type are plausible extreme low loss candidates for PCBs for very advanced applications such as 5G and 6G devices.

Weight normalization optimization movie recommendation algorithm based on three-way neural interaction networks

Heterogeneous information networks are increasingly used in recommendation algorithms. However, they lack an explicit representation of meta-paths. In using bidirectional neural interaction models for recommendation models, interaction between users and items is often ignored, with an integral impact on the accuracy of the recommendations. To better apply the interaction information, this study proposes a weight-normalized movie recommendation model (SCLW_MCRec) based on a three-way neural interaction network. The model constructs a three-way neural interaction network langle user, meta-path, itemrangle from meta-path contextual information, introducing meta-paths on top of the user-item representation to represent the user-item interaction information. Introduction of a two-layer, one-dimensional convolutional neural network helps capture higher-order interaction features between the user and the item, making the model more powerful in terms of interaction. Adding a dropout layer to the interaction model and using a two-layer convolutional neural network can prevent overfitting and discard irrelevant information features to improve the recommendation. In addition, an extreme cross-entropy loss (argmaxminloss) that incorporates the properties of the argmin and argmax functions is designed to reduce the model loss. A weight-normalization optimization approach is used to better optimize the model and accelerate convergence of the stochastic gradient descent optimization. Compared to current state-of-the-art recommendation models, the SCLW_MCRec model improves the Prec evaluation index by 2.94–35.8%, Recall by 1.15–53.51%, and NDCG by 6.7–49.37% on the MovieLens dataset. The framework provides a significant improvement in recommendation accuracy and also solves the cold-start problem with application of interaction information.

A-39 year old, nulligravida woman with giant leiomyomas: a case report

Introduction: The most common neoplasm of the uterus, uterine leiomyomas, or fibroids, are benign growths that affect 20–30% of women between the ages of 30 and 50. The smooth muscle of the uterus gives rise to leiomyomas. In this case report, we sought to highlight the case of a 39-year-old nulligravida lady with a fast expanding abdominal mass and abdominal pain. Case Presentation: The gynecologist department at Dr. Kariadi General Hospital Semarang received a visit from a 39-year-old nulligravida lady complaining of a fast-expanding lump in her belly and extreme weight loss over the past year. During the abdominal exam, an immovable mass that could have been an 8-month pregnancy was felt in the midline of the abdominal area, extending from the lower abdomen to the epigastric area. Ascites were also discovered. The multislice computerized tomography (MSCT) results showed a solid lobulated inhomogeneous mass with internal calcification which extended from the abdominal cavity to the pelvic cavity and visualized the size of (anteroposterior 21.7 cm x laterolateral 24.1 cm x craniocaudal 36.8 cm), compressing the surrounding bowel structures, liver, spleen, and bladder. Several lymphadenopathies were also discovered. A frozen section, a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, and a total abdominal hysterectomy were performed. The results of the histology suggested a benign leiomyoma. Her vital signs were steady after surgery, and she fully recovered. The patient was called for a follow-up one week after being released for surgical suture removal and evaluation. The patient was discharged on the sixth postoperative day in good condition. Conclusion: In determining if uterine smooth muscle tumors are benign or malignant, clinical characteristics, physical examination, imaging, and pathological findings are still considered very useful. The histopathology examination is still the most reliable diagnostic tool. The decision to perform a hysterectomy on this patient was determined accordingly to the tumor's size, probability of malignancy, and increasing morbidity.

Forecasting extreme negative returns in gold and silver: A discrete‐duration approach to POT models

AbstractSudden and massive drops in precious metal prices severely impact the investment risk on these commodity markets. In this study, we examine the dynamics of extreme negative returns on gold and silver, as well as propose the discrete‐duration version of the autoregressive conditional duration peaks‐over‐threshold (ACD‐POT) model for measuring market risk. The model is tailored for the dynamics of extreme events in precious metal markets; this is because it can exhibit both the strong clustering of extreme‐event days, and the serial correlation in the magnitudes of extreme losses. From an econometric perspective, our approach complements the existing dynamic versions of POT models; this is so that the time interval (i.e., duration) between the extreme negative returns is treated not as a continuous variable, but as a discrete one. The discrete hazard function in our model represents the daily extreme loss event probability and it can be used to derive one‐day‐ahead forecasts of both the value at risk and expected shortfall for investments in gold and silver. Formal backtesting methods show that the discretized version of the POT model has a superior in‐sample fit and forecasting performance than the continuous‐duration POT models.

Antibiotics for Dental Implant Surgery: Extracting Available Evidence, Risks, Benefits, and Insights to Consider.

Antibiotics for Dental Implant Surgery: Extracting Available Evidence, Risks, Benefits, and Insights to Consider.

Interaction of Credit and Market Risks and Impact on Banks’ Economic Capital

Banks often measure the magnitudes of credit and market risks separately, and then add up the two to estimate economic capital. This approach ignores the complex interactions between the two risk types. We develop a model in which these risks are estimated jointly. We used both Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CoVaR) risk measures to analyze the relation between market and credit risks interconnectedness among banks during financial stress. Our model is based on the market returns and total provisions in 37 banks in Asia, Europe, and North America. The results show that deliberately ignoring the interaction between these types of risk leads to either an under or overestimation of the sum of the magnitudes of the two risks, and hence, results in an over or underestimation of economic capital. It was concluded that during times of financial distress, an increase in a bank’s provision would lead to an extreme loss in stock returns that were higher than the VaR value. This proves that underestimating credit risk can lead to an increase in the market risk faced by banks during financial distress.

Frugal Gaussian clustering of huge imbalanced datasets through a bin-marginal approach

Clustering conceptually reveals all its interest when the dataset size considerably increases since there is the opportunity to discover tiny but possibly high value clusters which were out of reach with more modest sample sizes. However, clustering is practically faced to computer limits with such high data volume, since possibly requiring extremely high memory and computation resources. In addition, the classical subsampling strategy, often adopted to overcome these limitations, is expected to heavily failed for discovering clusters in the highly imbalanced cluster case. Our proposal first consists in drastically compressing the data volume by just preserving its bin-marginal values, thus discarding the bin-cross ones. Despite this extreme information loss, we then prove generic identifiability property for the diagonal mixture model and also introduce a specific EM-like algorithm associated to a composite likelihood approach. This latter is extremely more frugal than a regular but unfeasible EM algorithm expected to be used on our bin-marginal data, while preserving all consistency properties. Finally, numerical experiments highlight that this proposed method outperforms subsampling both in controlled simulations and in various real applications where imbalanced clusters may typically appear, such as image segmentation, hazardous asteroids recognition and fraud detection.

Comparison of thermal stability of Mo/Si multilayers with different crystallinities of Mo layers.

To investigate the thermal stability of Mo/Si multilayers with different initial crystallinities of Mo layers, two kinds of Mo/Si multilayers were deposited by DC magnetron sputtering and annealed at 300°C and 400°C. The period thickness compactions of multilayers with crystalized and quasi-amorphous Mo layers were 0.15nm and 0.30nm at 300°C, respectively, and the stronger the crystallinity, the lower the extreme ultraviolet reflectivity loss. At 400°C, the period thickness compactions of multilayers with crystalized and quasi-amorphous Mo layers were 1.25nm and 1.04nm, respectively. It was shown that multilayers with a crystalized Mo layer had better thermal stability at 300°C but were less stable at 400°C than multilayers with a quasi-amorphous Mo layer. These changes in stability at 300°C and 400°C were due to the significant transition of the crystalline structure. The transition of the crystal structure leads to increased surface roughness, more interdiffusion, and compound formation.

A Nationwide Analysis of Gunshot Wounds of the Head and Neck: Morbidity, Mortality, and Cost.

Gun violence in the United States rose continuously from 2010 to 2022, spiking during the pandemic, and peaking in 2021 at 48,830 deaths (14.8 per 100,000). Previous reports investigated health and financial burden associated with gunshot wounds (GSWs) during 2004 to 2013; however estimates related specifically to head and neck (H&N) injuries have been lacking. This population-based study aims to examine incidence, morbidity, mortality, and health resource utilization of H&N injuries utilizing the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database. A population-based study was undertaken using the National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample (NIS) database (2015Q4-2017Q4). The International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes were used to create a composite variable (inclusive of brain, eye, facial nerve, and facial fractures) resulting from GSW to the H&N. Incidence per 100,000 hospitalizations and case fatality rates were calculated to determine the health burden of H&N injuries. Length of hospital stay, and inflation- adjusted hospital charges were compared among H&N and non-H&N injuries. Χ 2 (classical and bootstrapped) and Mann-Whitney tests were used to compare groups. Of 101,300 injuries caused by firearms, 16,140 injuries (15.9%) involved H&N region. The average incidence of H&N injuries was 20.1 cases per 100,000 hospitalizations, with intentional injuries having the highest case fatality rates of 32.4%. Patients with H&N injuries had extreme loss of function (33.4% versus 18.3%, P <0.001) and extreme likelihood of mortality (27.0% versus 11.3%, P <0.001) than non-H&N injuries. Statistically significant differences in the median length of stay (4.8d versus 3.7d; P <0.001) and median inflation-adjusted hospital charges ($80,743 versus $58,946, P <0.001) were found among H&N and non-H&N injuries. Injuries due to GSW remain an inordinate health care and financial burden, with trauma to the H&N carrying an especially high cost in dollars, morbidity, and mortality.

Pax4-Ghrelin mediates the conversion of pancreatic ε-cells to β-cells after extreme β-cell loss in zebrafish

Pancreatic ε-cells producing ghrelin are one type of endocrine cell found in islets, which have been shown to influence other intra-islet cells, especially in regulating the function of β cells. However, the role of such cells during β-cell regeneration is currently unknown. Here, using a zebrafish nitroreductase (NTR)-mediated β-cell ablation model, we reveal that ghrelin-positive ε-cells in the pancreas act as contributors to neogenic β-cells after extreme β-cell loss. Further studies show that the overexpression of ghrelin or the expansion of ε-cells potentiates β-cell regeneration. Lineage tracing confirms that a proportion of embryonic ε-cells can transdifferentiate to β-cells, and that the deletion of Pax4 enhances this transdifferentiation of ε-cells to β-cells. Mechanistically, Pax4 binds to the ghrelin regulatory region and represses its transcription. Thus, deletion of Pax4 derepresses ghrelin expression and causes producing more ghrelin-positive cells, enhancing the transdifferentiation of ε-cells to β-cells and consequently potentiating β-cell regeneration. Our findings reveal a previously unreported role for ε-cells during zebrafish β-cell regeneration, indicating that Pax4 regulates ghrelin transcription and mediates the conversion of embryonic ε-cells to β-cells after extreme β-cell loss.

Glacier Surface Heatwaves Over the Tibetan Plateau

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP) has warmed at a rate twice the global average and presents unique warming patterns in surface temperature changes. However, key characteristics of glacier surface heatwave duration and intensity over the TP during the present extreme warming period are still unknown. In this study, we show that surface temperatures in glacial regions of the TP (0.37 ± 0.10°C per decade) have increased faster than those in non‐glacial areas (0.29 ± 0.05°C per decade) between 2001 and 2020. Moreover, the duration (5.3 ± 3.2 days per decade) and cumulative intensity (24.9 ± 16.3 days °C per decade) of glacier surface heatwaves have increased significantly during autumn. Our results demonstrate an elevation dependence to these key warming characteristics, which we also suggest are associated with extreme glacier mass loss. Here, we highlight potential threats to the sustainability of glacier water resources and increasing risk of glacier related hazards at the “roof of the world.”

Children of Holocaust Survivors: The Experience of Engaging with a Traumatic Family History

This study explored the motivation and the experiences of children of Holocaust survivors who were actively engaged with the traumatic histories of their parents. Our findings are consistent with contemporary views of the intergenerational transmission of the effects of trauma to descendants of Holocaust survivors and reflect a mixture of resilience and vulnerabilities. We interviewed 24 siblings from 11 families who were adult children of Holocaust survivors, alongside the experience of the first author (IK), also a child of Holocaust survivors. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of those interviews identified two overarching themes related to the motivation to gather information about their parents’ stories and their experience of seeking this knowledge. Two themes relate to motivation. The first captured a sense of immersion without choice in the family story emanating from extreme loss and grief and a deep awareness of the communal nature of Jewish history. The second theme encompassed a compulsion and desire to leave a meaningful legacy of their parents’ experiences for future generations. These themes were linked to themes capturing the experience of engaging with their parents’ traumatic stories and describing intense ambivalence. One theme reflected a reluctance to gather information detailing the parents’ trauma. Yet, the other theme emphasised positive outcomes derived from knowledge, including appreciation of their parents’ resilience and opportunities to bear witness to and support their ageing parents. Overall, the data reveal the close links between family histories and adjustment to a traumatic past.