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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 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 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 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 articleMaddah Sadatieh MS, Tsiampousi A, Paschalis A, 2025,
Numerical study of the effect of soil-plant-atmosphere interaction under future climate projections and different vegetation covers
, Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment, Vol: 43Soil-plant-atmosphere interaction (SPAI) plays a significant role on the safety and serviceably of geotechnical infrastructure. The mechanical and hydraulic soil behaviour varies with the soil water content and pore water pressures (PWP), which are in turn affected by vegetation and weather conditions. Focusing on the hydraulic reinforcement that extraction of water through the plant roots offers, this study couples advances in ecohydrological modelling with advances in geotechnical modelling, overcoming previous crude assumptions around the application of climatic effects on the geotechnical analysis. A methodology for incorporating realistic ecohydrological effects in the geotechnical analysis is developed and validated, and applied in the case study of a cut slope in Newbury, UK, for which field monitoring data is available, to demonstrate its successful applicability in boundary value problems. The results demonstrate the positive effect of vegetation on the infrastructure by increasing the Factor of Safety. Finally, the effect of climate change and changes in slope vegetation cover are investigated. The analysis results demonstrate that slope behaviour depends on complex interactions between the climate and the soil hydraulic properties and cannot be solely anticipated based on climate data, but suctions and changes in suction need necessarily to be considered.
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Journal articleWood J, McLeod JS, Lyster SJ, et al., 2025,
Reply to comment on ‘Rivers of the Variscan Foreland: fluvial morphodynamics in the Pennant Formation of South Wales, UK’
, Journal of the Geological Society, Vol: 182, ISSN: 0016-7649 -
Journal articleMillar O, Ma L, Karmpadakis I, 2025,
Tsunami-induced loads on coastal structures: Experimental investigation and prediction
, Ocean Engineering, Vol: 336, Pages: 121762-121762, ISSN: 0029-8018 -
Journal articleAlmalki YR, Swan C, Karmpadakis I, 2025,
Experimental investigation of pile-supported Oscillating Water Column devices
, Renewable Energy, Vol: 248, ISSN: 0960-1481The present study investigates the impact of key geometric parameters in the design of an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) integrated into a pile-supported breakwater. This is achieved through an extensive experimental campaign and a systematic investigation of key device parameters. Specifically, the present study examines the pneumatic efficiency of the OWC, the geometric characteristics of both the OWC and the breakwater, as well as the position of the OWC within the breakwater. The effect of these device characteristics on the performance of the OWC is assessed by considering monochromatic waves of varying steepness and effective water depths. The performance of the OWC is evaluated in terms of its wave transmission and reflection coefficients, as well as its energy generation efficiency. In turn, these are quantified using arrays of collocated sensors and high-speed imaging. Taken together, the parametric study provides physical insights into the effect of key device parameters on the efficiency of the OWC. Once optimal configurations are employed, the power output of the device is shown to increase by up to 164%, while wave transmission is reduced by 55%, compared to the initial design configuration. These results offer a valuable perspective for the development of more efficient wave energy converters.
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