Meteorological, chemical and biological evaluation of the coupled chemistry-climate WRF-Chem model from regional to urban scale. An impact-oriented application for human health.

Extreme climatic conditions, like heat waves or cold spells, associated to high concentrations of air pollutants are responsible for a broad range of effects on human health. Consequently, in the recent years, the question on how urban and peri-urban forests may improve both air quality and surface climate conditions at city-scale is receiving growing attention by scientists and policymakers, with previous studies demonstrating how nature-based solutions (NBS) may contribute to reduce the risk of population to be exposed to high pollutant levels and heat stress, preventing, thus, premature mortality. In this study we present a new modeling framework designed to simulate air quality and meteorological conditions from regional to urban scale, allowing thus to assess the impacts of both air pollution and heat stress on human health at urban level. To assess the model reliability, we evaluated the model's performances in reproducing several relevant meteorological, chemical, and biological variables. Results show how our modeling system can reliably reproduce the main meteorological, chemical, and biological variables over our study areas, thus this tool can be used to estimate the impact of air pollution and heat stress on human health. As an example of application, we show how common heat stress and air pollutant indices used for human health protection change when computed from regional to urban scale for the cities of Florence (Italy) and Aix en Provence (France).

[Superinfection of Libman-Sacks endocarditis in a lupus patient: a case report]. / Surinfection d'une endocardite de Libman-Sacks chez une patiente lupique: rapport de cas.

Libman-Sacks endocarditis is an uncommon cardiac manifestation of lupus, characterized by noninfective heart valve vegetations. Most patients are asymptomatic. However, clinical manifestations of acute forms can mimic infectious endocarditis and complicate both differential diagnosis and treatment. We here report the case of a 28-year-old female patient with lupus erythematosus followed up from 2018. She had signs and symptoms supporting the diagnosis of infective endocarditis. Assessments allowed for the diagnosis of superinfection Libman-Sacks endocarditis. The patient died despite the combination of bi-antibiotic therapy and corticosteroids.

Ozone weekend effect in cities: Deep insights for urban air pollution control.

Studying weekend-weekday variation in ground-level ozone (O3) allows one to better understand O3 formation conditions, with a potential for developing effective strategies for O3 control. Reducing inappropriately the O3 precursors emissions can either produce no reduction or increase surface O3 concentrations. This paper analyzes the weekend-weekday differences of O3 at 300 rural and 808 urban background stations worldwide from 2005 to 2014, in order to investigate the O3 weekend effect over time and assess the effectiveness of the precursors emissions control policies for reducing O3 levels. Data were analyzed with the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen estimator. Rural sites typically did not experience a weekend-weekday effect. In all urban stations, the mean O3 concentration on the weekend was 12% higher than on weekdays. Between 2005 and 2014, the annual mean of daily O3 concentrations increased at 74% of urban sites worldwide (+ 0.41 ppb year-1) and decreased in the United Kingdom (- 0.18 ppb year-1). Over this time period, emissions of O3 precursors declined significantly. However, a greater decline in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions caused an increase in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) to NOx ratios leading to O3 formation. In France, South Korea and the United Kingdom, most urban stations showed a significant upward trend (+ 1.15% per year) for O3 weekend effect. Conversely, in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United States, the O3 weekend effect showed a significant downward trend (- 0.26% per year). Further or inappropriate control of anthropogenic emissions in Canada, Southern Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States might result in increased daily O3 levels in urban areas.