ABSTRACT
The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has affected not only populations around the world but also the environment and natural resources. Lockdowns and restricted lifestyles have had wide-ranging impacts on the environment (e.g., air quality in cities). Although hygiene and disinfection procedures and precautions are effective ways to protect people from Covid-19, they have significant consequences for water usage and resources especially given the increasing impacts of climate change on rainfall patterns, water use and resources. Climate change and public health issues may compound one another, and so we used a drivers, pressures, state, impact, response framework (not previously used to examine the actual and potential impacts of Covid-19 and climate change on water consumption and resources) to scope the main factors that may interact to affect water use and resources (in the form of reservoirs) using evidence from Istanbul, Türkiye, with some discussion of the comparative situation elsewhere. We modified initial views on the framework to account for the regional, city and community level experiences. We note that water consumption in Istanbul has been increasing over the last two decades (except in times of very low rainfall/drought); that there were increases in water consumption in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic; and, despite some increase in rainfall, water levels in reservoirs appeared to decrease during lockdowns (for a range of reasons). Through a new simple way of visualising the data, we also noted that a low resource capacity might be recurring every 6 or 7 years in Istanbul (a similar finding to Thames Reservoir in London). We made no attempt in this paper to quantify the relative contribution that climate change, population growth, etc., are making to water consumption and reservoir levels as we focused on looking at those social, environmental and economic factors that appear to play a role in potential water stress and on developing a drivers, pressures, state, impact, response framework for policy and adaptive management options for Istanbul and other large complex conurbations. If there are periodic water resource issues and temperatures rise as expected in climate projections with an accompanying increase in the duration of hot spells, the subsequent additional stress on water systems might make managing future public health emergencies, such as a pandemic, even more difficult.
ABSTRACT
The correct affiliation of Sabrina Lo Brutto is shown in this paper.
ABSTRACT
Human activity is driving climate change. This is affecting and will affect many aspects of life on earth. The breadth of its impacts is very wide and covers human, animal and plant health, and also the planet's biodiversity and the services that deliver benefits to people from natural capital. Finding solutions to the challenge of climate change will require multidisciplinary action in which the life sciences have a major role to play as this issue of Emerging Topics in Life Sciences indicates. More process and mechanistic knowledge could underpin solutions or even provide early warning of impacts. Any solutions will need to be developed and deployed in ways that gain and maintain public support.
ABSTRACT
Cesarean scar implantation represents a rare, though growing subset of potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. Because of the global increase in cesarean sections as well as the improved diagnostic abilities of transvaginal ultrasound, incidence rates have continued to rise since the first reported case in 1978. Uterine rupture and catastrophic hemorrhage can ensue when diagnosis is delayed. Additionally, a higher rate of concurrent trophoblastic myometrial invasion may increase the incidence of retained products of conception or post procedural bleeding. Endovaginal ultrasound has a reported sensitivity of 85 % for detection. In difficult cases, magnetic resonance imaging is often useful as a problem solving exam in confirming diagnostic suspicions and guiding therapeutic decisions. We present a series of five illustrative cases illustrating the range of clinical and imaging findings.
ABSTRACT
The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) naphthalene, acenaphthylene, acenaphthene, fluorene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo[a]anthracene, chrysene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, benzo[k]fluoranthene, benzo[a]pyrene, ideno[1,2,3,-cd]-pyrene, dibenz[a,h]anthracene, benzo[g,h,i]perylene and the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) 8, 18, 28, 29, 31, 52, 77, 101, 105, 114, 118, 123, 126, 128, 138, 141, 149, 153, 156, 157, 163, 169, 170, 171, 180, 183, 187, 189, 194, 199, 201, 206, and 209 were measured in -200 rural soils across Great Britain (GB). Dominance of soil PAH profiles by heavier compounds (4-6 rings) provided initial evidence for the importance of source in governing soil PAH concentrations. No relationship was found between soil organic matter (SOM) and sum concentration of total and "heavy" PAHs, although there was a weak positive relationship with lighter compounds. A spatial statistical technique showed that highest soil PAH concentrations were usually found close to industrial/urban centers where presumably source intensity is highest. PCBs clustered into seven groups, five of which contained a single "dioxin like" PCB, one contained lighter congeners (2-4 chlorines), and one contained heavy congeners (5-10 chlorines). Linear regressions with SOM explained up to 24.3% of variation for the sum concentration of penta- to deca- congeners, but <1% for the lighter congener groups. No significant relationships were found with latitude. Spatial statistical techniques showed clusters of high soil PCB concentrations predominantly in west and south east GB, either associated with urbanized areas or on the West coast.
