An important question in regional climate downscaling is whether to constrain (nudge) the interior of the limited-area domain toward the larger-scale driving fields. Prior research has demonstrated that interior nudging can increase the skill of regional climate predictions originating from historical data. However, there is concern that nudging may also inhibit the regional model’s ability to properly develop and simulate mesoscale features, which may reduce the value added from downscaling by altering the representation of local climate extremes. Extreme climate events can result in large economic losses and human casualties, and regional climate downscaling is one method for projecting how climate change scenarios will affect extreme events locally. In this study, the effects of interior nudging are explored on the downscaled simulation of temperature and precipitation extremes. Multidecadal, continuous Weather Research and Forecasting model simulations of the contiguous United States are performed using coarse reanalysis fields as proxies for global climate model fields. The results demonstrate that applying interior nudging improves the accuracy of simulated monthly means, variability, and extremes over the multidecadal period. The results in this case indicate that interior nudging does not inappropriately squelch the prediction of temperature and precipitation extremes and is essential for simulating extreme events that are faithful in space and time to the driving large-scale fields.
Projecting climate change to local scales is important for understanding and mitigating the effects of climate change on society and the environment. Many of the current general circulation models (GCMs) for simulating climate are run with a horizontal resolution of about 1° × 1°. Although at this resolution the large-scale atmospheric features that drive weather and climate are well represented, mesoscale features and local topography are not resolved, and consequently the GCM may not accurately represent local changes in temperature and precipitation extremes (Dulière et al. 2011; Werth and Garrett 2011). To predict the local effects of climate change, the GCM fields can be projected to local scales using a regional climate model (RCM) by applying dynamical downscaling techniques (e.g., Giorgi 1990). The RCM may then be used to inform problem-focused climate assessments that address community goals and values (Tryhorn and DeGaetano 2011).
To interpret climate change at the local level, there is great interest in characterizing changes in “extreme events.” Extreme events are rare but important meteorological phenomena such as droughts, floods, extreme heat and cold, and strong wind events that are statistically associated with the tails of a probability distribution (e.g., Meehl et al. 2000b; Garrett and Müller 2008). Extreme weather events have significant societal impacts such as large economic costs and human casualties (e.g., Meehl et al. 2000a). Indices of climate extremes often involve tracking the exceedances of a critical threshold value (e.g., Karl et al. 1999) and may consider the frequency, duration, and areal extent of the exceedance. Changes in the duration and/or intensity of extreme events will impact air quality, water quantity and quality, agriculture (growing season, types of crops, water availability), energy demands and sources, urban infrastructure and building codes, and the overall economy. Because of the spatial heterogeneity in extreme precipitation and temperature events (e.g., Trenberth et al. 2007), RCMs that are used for projecting future changes in frequency and intensity of extreme events must reflect the state-of-the-science.
When using RCMs to downscale GCM fields, interior nudging may reduce errors in RCM predictions compared with applying a constraint only at the lateral boundaries (Miguez-Macho et al. 2004; Castro et al. 2005; Lo et al. 2008; Alexandru et al. 2009; Bowden et al. 2012b). Feser et al. (2011) indicate that constraint toward the atmospheric large scales (i.e., via nudging) when downscaling often increases mesoscale variability and “adds value” to the global climate model forecasts. The balance in the constraint toward the GCM fields against the RCM’s freedom to develop mesoscale features is difficult to determine objectively and has not yet been achieved (e.g., Kanamaru and Kanamitsu 2007; Alexandru et al. 2009; Bowden et al. 2012b). Arritt and Rummukainen (2011) juxtapose that nudging too weakly allows the RCM to diverge from the GCM fields, while nudging too strongly can suppress the development of the finer-scale processes that are sought with the RCM. Christensen et al. (2007) also caution that, while nudging minimizes large-scale error in the RCM, it can also mask model biases. Pielke et al. (2012) argue that nudging can force the RCM to retain and potentially exacerbate errors that exist in the GCM. Although nudging is becoming increasingly common for regional climate modeling, using interior nudging techniques is not universally accepted as a standard practice for dynamical downscaling.
Despite improving the means and retaining large-scale consistency with the driving model, there is some concern that using interior nudging techniques may dampen the extremes and variability. Using the Canadian RCM (CRCM), Alexandru et al. (2009) found that increasing the strength of spectral nudging by initiating spectral nudging closer to the surface decreased the intensity of precipitation during a summer period. Cha et al. (2011), using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with a version of spectral nudging that follows von Storch et al. (2000) and is similar to the CRCM, found that, while spectral nudging reduced errors in the tracks of tropical cyclones, it artificially weakened tropical cyclone intensities. Bowden et al. (2012b) showed that spatial variability with analysis nudging in WRF is decreased as the nudging time scale is decreased.
There are few studies that investigate the ability of RCMs to simulate extreme events, particularly over North America, and none of the following explicitly mention using nudging. Using the Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research mesoscale model (MM5), Lynn et al. (2007) showed that correctly predicting the surface energy balance was essential for predicting extreme summer temperatures over the eastern United States. Dulière et al. (2011) showed that both WRF and the Hadley Centre Regional Model (HadRM) adequately represented local extremes of temperature and precipitation in the U.S. Northwest over a recent 5-yr period. Caldwell et al. (2009) found that WRF driven by 40-yr climate simulations overpredicted precipitation extremes over California and underpredicted the frequency of precipitation events. By contrast, Mladjic et al. (2011) found that the CRCM underpredicted precipitation extremes across Canada for an historical 30-yr period.
This study addresses two relevant questions for dynamical downscaling for the contiguous United States (CONUS): 1) how well can a RCM simulate temperature and precipitation means and extremes for a multidecadal period 2) and how does nudging affect the frequencies and intensities of those extreme events? Colin et al. (2010) created a 23-yr simulation with Aire Limitée Adaptation Dynamique Développement International (ALADIN)-Climate and found that spectral nudging did not adversely affect the prediction of extreme precipitation events over Europe. This study investigates the effects of nudging techniques on predictions of extreme temperatures and precipitation with the WRF model as a RCM to simulate an historical 20-yr period. We evaluate the results against high-resolution analyses and examine the impacts of nudging on simulated extremes across the CONUS to determine whether interior nudging in WRF inappropriately squelches the extremes.
2. Model description
The WRF model version 3.2.1 (WRFv3.2.1; Skamarock et al. 2008) was initialized at 0000 UTC 2 December 1987 and run for a 1-month spinup, then run continuously for 20 years through 0000 UTC 1 January 2008. The two-way-nested modeling domains (108- and 36-km horizontal grid spacing, see Fig. 1) covered North America and the CONUS, respectively. WRF was run with a 34-layer configuration that extended to a model top at 50 hPa. The physics options included the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for global climate models (RRTMG) (Iacono et al. 2008) for longwave and shortwave radiation, the WRF single-moment 6-class microphysics scheme (Hong and Lim 2006), the Grell ensemble convective parameterization scheme (Grell and Dévényi 2002), the Yonsei University planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme (Hong et al. 2006), and the Noah land surface model (Chen and Dudhia 2001). The input data are 2.5° × 2.5° analyses from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)–Department of Energy Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP-II) reanalysis data (Kanamitsu et al. 2002) (hereafter R-2), which are at comparable spatial and temporal resolutions as GCM fields. Since the data are from a historical period, the downscaled runs can be evaluated against higher-resolution reanalysis products. The R-2 fields provide initial, lateral, and surface boundary conditions, and serve as the constraints when interior nudging is used. No further observational data are assimilated into the WRF simulation.
Three 20-yr runs are performed with WRF. One simulation includes nudging only through the lateral boundaries (Davies and Turner 1977) using a 5-point sponge zone—that is, no nudging (NN). The other simulations additionally use one of the two forms of grid-based nudging that are available in public versions of WRF: analysis nudging (AN) and spectral nudging (SN). Both forms of interior nudging can reduce errors in the means in regional climate modeling with WRF (e.g., Lo et al. 2008; Bowden et al. 2012b).
The analysis nudging technique in WRF (Stauffer and Seaman 1990; Deng et al. 2007) is theorized to be most useful when the input data fields are not significantly coarser than the model resolution. In WRF analysis nudging adds a nonphysical term to the prognostic equations that is proportional to the difference between the model state and a value that is interpolated in time and space from the reference analysis. Analysis nudging is applied toward horizontal wind components, potential temperature, and water vapor mixing ratio. The analysis nudging coefficients (Table 1) are set to the default values in WRF for wind and temperature for the 108-km domain, but reduced for moisture (e.g., Otte 2008) and reduced for all coefficients for the 36-km domain (e.g., Stauffer and Seaman 1994). The analysis nudging is only applied above the PBL to maximize the WRF’s freedom to develop mesoscale circulation in the PBL.
Spectral nudging is attractive as a scale-selective interior constraint for regional climate downscaling because it can restrict nudging toward the longer wavelengths. Similar to analysis nudging, spectral nudging affects the model solution through a nonphysical term in the prognostic equations, but instead the term is based on the difference between the spectral decompositions of the model solution and the reference analysis. The spectral nudging in WRFv3.2.1 follows Miguez-Macho et al. (2004) and can be applied toward horizontal wind components, potential temperature, and geopotential. As in the analysis nudging simulation, spectral nudging is only applied above the PBL. Spectral nudging is used to constrain WRF toward synoptic-scale wavelengths and is applied in WRF to wavelengths longer than a threshold that is a function of domain size and a specified cutoff wavenumber. The threshold wavelength for spectral nudging should not be less than the shortest wavelength resolved by the input fields, which is at least 4Δx (Pielke 1984) of the R-2 analyses, or ~1100 km in midlatitudes. Nudging coefficients, threshold wavenumbers used for spectral nudging, and their corresponding wavelengths are given in Table 1.
The three WRF simulations on the 36-km domain are analyzed for the historical period 1988–2007. We seek to determine how nudging affects the representation of 2-m temperature and precipitation extremes over the 20-yr period. Since no interior nudging occurs within the PBL, neither 2-m temperature nor precipitation is directly assimilated.
For a variable with a given statistical distribution, the frequency of extreme events (as measured by threshold exceedances) changes if the mean of the distribution shifts and/or if the variance (width) of the distribution changes (Meehl et al. 2000a). A change in the mean will cause an increase in threshold exceedances on one end (e.g., the number of hot days) and a decrease on the other side of the distribution (e.g., the number of cold days). A change in the variance will affect the frequency and magnitude of extremes on both sides of the distribution and, according to Katz and Brown (1992), it may be more important for changes in extreme outliers (i.e., events more than one standard deviation from the mean). Since the representation of the mean and variance is important for the frequency and severity of extreme events, we first examine how the three downscaling strategies influence the mean 2-m temperature and precipitation from the RCM. Then, to investigate the effects of nudging on the variability in the RCM we compare spatial spectra from the RCM fields with those from the reanalysis fields. Finally, we examine the extremes of 2-m temperature and precipitation in the downscaled runs.
The WRF simulations are compared to the R-2 fields to determine the extent to which the large-scale variability is preserved in the WRF simulation. For near-surface fields, where mesoscale detail is expected to be gained by using a RCM, the WRF simulations are compared to high-resolution reanalyses from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) (Mesinger et al. 2006) and the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) (Saha et al. 2010). Both the NARR and the CFSR should include mesoscale detail that is comparable to what could be produced in the 36-km WRF simulations. The NARR is a 32-km limited-area reanalysis that has 3-h fields and is often used for understanding regional climate and for validation of regional climate modeling studies over North America (e.g., Ruiz-Barradas and Nigam 2006; Bukovsky and Karoly 2007; Lo et al. 2008; Becker et al. 2009; Bowden et al. 2012b). The CFSR is a 0.31° (~35–38 km at midlatitudes) global reanalysis that consists of 6-h analyses supplemented with hourly forecasts. Here, CFSR is used for comparisons of 2-m temperature, and NARR is used for precipitation, as explained below.
Several of the extremes examined in this paper are comparisons of 2-m temperature against threshold values. With 3-h temporal sampling, the NARR is inadequate for counting temperature exceedances. Instead, we use the hourly gridded fields from the CFSR. Saha et al. (2010) show that the multiyear mean and trend of 2-m temperature from CFSR match well with comparable fields used in the climate change community to estimate global warming trends. Wang et al. (2011) show that 2-m temperature from CFSR is more highly correlated with observations than either R-2 or its predecessor R-1 is.
To ensure that the fields from CFSR are qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with a validated source, the mean 2-m temperature for 1988–2007 (i.e., the 20-yr period of the WRF simulations) is computed for both NARR and CFSR interpolated to the 36-km WRF domain at their highest temporal resolutions (i.e., 3- and 1-h fields for the NARR and CFSR, respectively) using WRF preprocessing software. Outside of regions with complex terrain, the 20-yr mean 2-m temperature is consistent between NARR and CFSR (Fig. 2). East of the Rocky Mountains (excluding the southern Appalachian Mountains), the differences in the 20-yr mean 2-m temperature between NARR and CFSR are typically within ±1.5 K. Differences between NARR and CFSR in the 20-yr mean 2-m temperature typically exceed ±2.5 K in areas of complex terrain in the CONUS. Although both NARR and CFSR are reanalysis products that are strongly influenced by observations, neither model assimilates 2-m temperature directly.
Precipitation comparisons are made against NARR fields that have been interpolated to the 36-km WRF domain. Over the CONUS precipitation fields from the NARR are influenced by assimilating hourly precipitation derived from 1/8° daily analyses of rain gauge data, which are then converted to latent heat to constrain the NARR precipitation (Mesinger et al. 2006). The amplitude of the annual cycle of precipitation is well depicted by NARR (Ruiz-Barradas and Nigam 2006) and, overall, NARR precipitation is “virtually indistinguishable” from observations (Nigam and Ruiz-Barradas 2006). Bukovsky and Karoly (2007) conclude that, although NARR is imperfect, it is superior to other reanalysis products for precipitation and it adequately captures extreme events, even over the topography of the western United States. Becker et al. (2009), however, note that NARR has a systematic bias toward more frequent, lighter precipitation and extremes are underestimated in the eastern United States. In accordance with Mesinger et al. (2006), our precipitation comparisons are restricted to land and over the CONUS because NARR is less reliable where limited and coarser-scale data were assimilated. Since the NARR precipitation fields represent the CONUS well, we use NARR instead of CFSR precipitation fields, which have not been adjusted by observational assimilation. Our analysis indicates that CFSR is much wetter than NARR (not shown), which is corroborated by Higgins et al. (2010) and Mo et al. (2011) who showed systematic overprediction of precipitation by CFSR throughout the CONUS.
a. Mean 2-m temperature and precipitation
Although the focus of this work is on simulating extreme events, we first evaluate the mean values of 2-m temperature and total precipitation in the WRF simulations over different temporal scales because changes in the means will affect the extreme values. The 20-yr mean 2-m temperature is computed for each of the three WRF simulations and compared against CFSR (Fig. 2). All three WRF simulations show a slight warm bias (>0.5 K) in the Great Plains (see Fig. 1) and along the southeastern Atlantic coast compared to CFSR. The differences from CFSR are more pronounced in NN, where the warm bias exceeds 1.5 K in the southern Plains and a large area of cool bias of more than 0.5 K extends throughout southeastern Canada. As in the comparison of NARR with CFSR, all three WRF simulations have large differences from CFSR in complex terrain, and the patterns, signs, and magnitudes of the differences in complex terrain are consistent when compared to the difference between NARR and CFSR (Fig. 2). Differences between NARR and the WRF simulations are not as pronounced as in the comparisons with CFSR, especially in complex terrain (not shown), which suggests that the NARR topography may be more consistent with WRF than the topography used in the global CFSR.
The precipitation predicted by WRF is too high compared to NARR throughout much of the domain (Fig. 3). Average annual precipitation in WRF is particularly exaggerated in complex terrain and east of the Rocky Mountains. Although the average annual precipitation in WRF is too high regardless of whether nudging is used, the WRF simulations all correctly predict that the highest precipitation amounts occur along the northwestern coast and in the eastern United States.
The evaluation of the extremes in this paper focuses on the Midwest region (Fig. 1), which has only gradual changes in topography; the other regions are presented in less detail to permit a broader analysis. The differences between NARR and CFSR in 20-yr mean 2-m temperature are typically within ±0.5 K throughout the Midwest (Fig. 2), and those differences are overall the smallest of the regions in Fig. 1. In the Midwest, NN has little bias compared to CFSR (Fig. 2) except for a slight cool bias between −1.5 and −0.5 K around the northern, eastern, and southern peripheries of that region. AN has a slight warm bias (0.5–1.5 K) in the Midwest, and SN is the least biased compared to CFSR for the 20-yr mean 2-m temperature (Fig. 2).
Figure 4 shows a time series of the monthly area-average 2-m temperature difference from CFSR for the Midwest region for each of the three WRF simulations. Although the 20-yr mean 2-m temperature from NN compares well to CFSR and arguably may be as good as or better than AN and SN, examining only the mean 2-m temperature over the 20-yr period can be misleading (cf. Fig. 2 and Fig. 4). The monthly area-average 2-m temperature over the 20-yr period shows deviations greater than 4 K in NN (Fig. 4). These month-to-month differences in NN indicate the RCM's inability to correctly simulate weather conditions that are consistent with the large-scale driving fields and show that the modest mean annual bias (Fig. 2) results from averaging large monthly biases that have opposite sign (Fig. 4). Both AN and SN reduce the monthly deviations from CFSR to less than ±2 K (Fig. 4). Each year the most pronounced monthly cold bias in the Midwest in NN is typically in July or August (Fig. 4), and that cold bias is mitigated by both forms of nudging, slightly more strongly by AN than SN. AN is slightly warmer than SN for most months throughout the 20-yr period, consistent with the relative comparisons of AN and SN to CFSR (Fig. 2). AN and SN improve the average monthly predictions of 2-m temperature throughout the domain compared to NN (Fig. 5). In NN there is a pronounced cold bias (approaching 3 K) in the eastern United States in the summer, which is mitigated by either form of nudging.
The three WRF simulations generally overpredict precipitation by 10–50 mm month−1 compared to NARR (Figs. 4 and 6), which is consistent with the overpredictions in Fig. 3. The largest monthly differences in the Midwest (Fig. 4) are typically in NN, and the differences are progressively reduced in SN and AN. Some months in the 20-yr period also have noticeable underpredictions of area-average precipitation of more than 25 mm, particularly in NN. In addition, the phase of the errors in NN is often not aligned with the errors in AN and SN, which suggests that the individual weather events in NN may be misrepresented. Such large differences in area-average precipitation in NN over a one-month period (both overprediction and underprediction) indicate the RCM’s inability to accurately characterize prolonged periods of heavy rain and dry spells that could contribute to flooding and drought, and the resulting errors in the surface heat fluxes would affect the ability of the RCM to predict extreme temperatures (e.g., Lynn et al. 2007). Overall, using either form of interior nudging improves the regional prediction of monthly precipitation by WRF, and AN gives better predictions than SN for five of the six regions (Fig. 6).
b. Spectra of downscaled fields
Since variability can influence extreme events (Katz and Brown 1992; Meehl et al. 2000a), spectra are examined to determine the effects of nudging on variability at different spatial scales. Spectra represent the contribution of each wavenumber to the total variance and can indicate how well the large-scale fields from R-2 are captured and reproduced by WRF. In addition, comparing the WRF spectra to NARR shows if WRF is producing variability at the smaller scales where value should be added from the downscaling process.
One-dimensional spatial spectra are computed along rows of the 36-km domain (grid-relative west-east) for R-2, NARR, and the three WRF simulations. The spectra are computed every 6 h, and all data for each month are averaged over the 20-yr period. The data are detrended by fitting the fields along each model row to a quadratic least squares regression, then using the regression to remove linear and parabolic trends. After subtracting the row mean, a Hamming window (Kaimal and Kristensen 1991) is used to taper the rows to force periodicity for the spectral computations. Following Kaimal and Kristensen, the final spectra are multiplied by 2.52 to compensate for the reduction of variance from the Hamming window.
In January the variability in the long waves (longer than 4Δx for R-2) in 500-hPa temperature over the 20-yr period is consistent with R-2 in all three WRF simulations at 36-km (Fig. 7). WRF retains much of the large-scale variability from R-2 via the lateral boundaries during January when there is strong synoptic forcing, though there is a slight reduction in variability in NN at long wavelengths compared to the other spectral representations of January. In the mesoscale wavelengths (between 4Δx for R-2 and 4Δx for WRF), both NN and SN add variability at a magnitude consistent with NARR, while AN has reduced variability compared with NARR. Even by weakening the nudging on the 36-km domain compared to model defaults, the analysis nudging technique may be nudging too strongly toward the R-2 fields and, as a result, unrealistically suppressing variability in the wintertime 500-hPa temperature. Thus, the nudging coefficients used for AN should be further revised for regional climate simulations to achieve the optimal balance between mesoscale variability and fidelity to the driving fields. Approaching 4Δx in WRF, all three WRF runs have higher variability than NARR, suggesting the downscaled runs have too much variance at those scales.
In July the long waves in 500-hPa temperature are consistent between R-2 and the nudged WRF simulations. However, there is much greater and unrealistic variability in NN (note the logarithmic ordinate axis in Fig. 7). This suggests that without interior nudging, weak synoptic forcing through the lateral boundaries allows WRF too much freedom to generate variability. Simply comparing the three WRF simulations could lead to the conclusion that using either interior nudging technique in WRF adversely impacts the variability in the multidecadal regional climate prediction. However, the variability in NN is neither present in the large-scale driving fields (R-2) nor is it corroborated by the NARR. At the mesoscale wavelengths AN has reduced the variance compared to SN and NN during July. SN is seemingly effective for producing large-scale variability that is consistent with NARR while also allowing the RCM to develop smaller-scale variability.
Examining 700-hPa water vapor mixing ratio for January and July (Fig. 8) suggests the large-scale moisture fields from R-2 are generally retained, but there is too much variability in all three WRF simulations regardless of whether interior nudging is used. The increased humidity variance in WRF is consistent with the overprediction of precipitation in all WRF simulations. Unlike for 500-hPa temperature (and momentum fields, not shown), the variance of 700-hPa water vapor mixing ratio with AN is not unrealistically suppressed. This suggests that analysis nudging may be adjusting the variance in the moisture fields toward the observed state, which is also consistent with the better predictions of precipitation by AN than SN (Fig. 4), or that the humidity is strongly controlled by fields in the PBL that are not nudged. Recall that the analysis nudging technique in WRF can adjust the water vapor mixing ratio field, while spectral nudging cannot.
To focus on the long waves where the RCM should be consistent with the large-scale driving fields, energy spectra are shown in Fig. 9 with a linear ordinate axis. At 250 hPa the energy in the January meridional wind is reduced for all three WRF simulations compared to the representations in R-2 and NARR. NN has notably lower energy than both AN and SN, where energy in the long waves is increased to approach the reference fields. In July the 250-hPa meridional wind spectra are qualitatively similar to January, but the magnitudes are smaller because the synoptic transport has a smaller meridional component in July in this domain. At 500 hPa for January the distinctions between the WRF runs and the reference fields are small, although NN still has slightly lower energy compared to the other runs. However, at 500 hPa in July NN has greater energy than the other WRF runs and the reference fields (consistent with Fig. 7). In addition, compared to July at 250 hPa, the 500-hPa spectral energy of the meridional wind has the opposite sign of the error, so the distribution of energy in NN in the column is in error, and interior nudging notably acts to mitigate that error under weak synoptic forcing. The analogous zonal wind spectra (not shown) are qualitatively similar to Fig. 9.
As shown in Figs. 7–9, a larger total variance in the RCM simulations is not an indication of added value. Comparing the total variance of RCM simulations only to each other is not enough to determine the best representation of regional climate. The added or reduced variance at the large scales in NN (Figs. 7–9) represents an undesired deviation from the driving fields, and those errors in variance at larger scales may cascade down and contaminate the smaller scales. The spectra suggest that using interior nudging (AN or SN) produces larger-scale features that are more consistent with the driving fields. The adverse impacts of AN at smaller scales may be mitigated by further decreasing the nudging strength (Bowden et al. 2012b).
c. Annual totals of daily exceedances of extreme thresholds
To evaluate extremes, we first examine exceedances of 2-m temperature and precipitation thresholds from the RCM compared to those computed from CFSR (temperature) and NARR (precipitation). For the RCM simulations and the high-resolution reanalyses, the number of days in each year that the threshold was exceeded at each grid cell was tallied. Those annual tallies for each threshold were then area-averaged within each region (see Fig. 1). The thresholds are based on the Annual Climatological Summary maintained by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center. The thresholds also align well with a subset of the 27 extreme indices suggested by the World Climate Research Programme Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (e.g., Karl et al. 1999). Hot and cold thresholds for daily temperature and high daily precipitation thresholds are examined. The analysis for R-2 is not shown because the temperature data are too temporally coarse (6-h) to capture threshold values, and the precipitation estimates from R-2 are biased high (e.g., Guirguis and Avissar 2008; Wang et al. 2011).
Figure 10 shows the area-averaged number of days with 2-m temperature >90°F (32.2°C), or “summer days,” based on hourly data. None of the RCM simulations predicts as many area-average exceedances of the 90°F threshold as the CFSR for the Midwest region in any of the 20 years simulated. Compared to CFSR, NN underestimates the annual number of summer days by as many as 40 days across the Midwest region. Both forms of interior nudging improve the simulation of summer days compared to NN, although AN and SN still typically underestimate the number of summer days by 10–20 days compared with CFSR. For the summer day threshold in the Midwest over this period, AN performs best. The underprediction of summer days in all WRF simulations (Fig. 10) is consistent with a persistent overprediction of precipitation in the region (Figs. 3 and 4) where the surface energy balance is likely tilted more toward latent heating because of the moist ground. In addition, the underprediction of temperatures at the “summer day” threshold is consistent with Fig. 4, which shows the largest underprediction of temperature typically occurs in July and is most pronounced in NN.
Figure 11 shows a comparison of the WRF simulations to CFSR over the Midwest region for three cold thresholds: number of days with temperature <32°F (0°C, frost days), number of days with maximum temperature <32°F (0°C, freeze days), and number of days with temperature <0°F (−17.8°C). For the first decade of the 20-yr simulation, all three WRF simulations tended to underpredict the number of frost days, but the number of area-average frost days for the Midwest was typically within five days of CFSR for all three WRF runs during the second decade. NN often had the largest differences from CFSR. Both AN and SN predicted similar numbers of frost days for most years and represented an improvement over NN throughout the 20-yr period.
For some years during the period, NN approximately predicted the area-average number of freeze days in the Midwest compared to CFSR (Fig. 11), but other years underpredicted the number of freeze days by more than 10. However, AN and SN consistently predicted the number of area-average annual freeze days within five days of CFSR. All three WRF simulations were consistent with CFSR in characterizing the number of very cold days (temperature <0°F) throughout the 20-yr period, though the most notable differences from CFSR occurred in NN.
Across all regions the distributions of the 20-yr annual exceedances of the hot (90°F) and cold (32°F) thresholds are shown in Fig. 12. In NN, there is reduced interannual variability and too few exceedances of the hot threshold in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast, consistent with the strong summer cold biases shown in Fig. 5. In all of those regions both AN and SN increase the interannual variability and the number of exceedances to be more consistent with CFSR. In the Northwest and Southwest NN overpredicts the exceedances of the hot threshold, and this overprediction is mitigated with nudging. For the cold threshold NN tends to artificially increase the interquartile range in the northern regions, where >100 cold days occur annually. For the nudged runs, the interquartile ranges are closer to CFSR than NN is in those regions. Nudging does not suppress the prediction of cold days relative to NN or to CFSR in most regions, although there is a slight reduction in the number of cold days predicted in the Plains in all WRF runs.
To understand the ability of WRF to simulate heavy precipitation events, comparisons are made to NARR estimates of numbers of days with precipitation exceeding thresholds of 0.5 in and 1.0 in (similar to CLIVAR indices of ≥10 mm and ≥20 mm). Fig. 13 shows that, for both precipitation thresholds, all three WRF simulations overpredict the annual area-average number of days that each threshold was surpassed in the Midwest compared to NARR. The overprediction of precipitation at the high thresholds by WRF occurs for each year of the 20-yr simulation period (Figs. 13 and 14), and it is consistent with the general overprediction of precipitation shown in Figs. 3, 4, and 6. In general, the overpredictions occur most frequently in NN, which suggests that without interior nudging the configuration of WRF used here has a tendency to generate more heavy precipitation events than are observed. In general, NN predicts about 10 more days ≥0.5 in and about 5 more days ≥1.0 in per year than were observed in the Midwest (using NARR as the benchmark). At the 0.5 in threshold, the SN simulation tends to overpredict the number of days as often as NN (Figs. 13 and 14). The precipitation event totals at both thresholds are best matched with NARR in AN in five of the six regions, possibly because AN is the only simulation that constrains moisture on the interior of the domain. Radu et al. (2008) showed that spectral nudging exaggerated the intensity of wintertime precipitation events unless a constraint toward specific humidity was introduced. Thus, more heavy precipitation events are erroneously predicted without using interior nudging, and AN appropriately suppresses the number of events toward the observed state.
d. Monthly extremes and interannual variability
Here, extremes are assessed relative to the 20-yr climatology by examining monthly averaged daily maximum and minimum 2-m temperature, monthly averaged diurnal temperature range, and total monthly precipitation. As in the previous subsection, values are tabulated at each grid cell and aggregated to form an area average. For each of the 12 months, the means and standard deviations are computed relative to each model run’s distribution to account for the bias in the RCM predictions (e.g., Figs. 2–4) and to track the annual cycle in the Midwest region. This subsection not only addresses extremes, but also the effects of nudging on the mean, variability, and timing of events in the RCM. To examine the effects of the variability on the extremes, two standard deviations from the mean (±2σ) are considered outlier months. Assuming the data are normally distributed, approximately 1 in 22 values falls outside ±2σ, so those events occurring less than 5% of the time could be considered rare or extreme. Although this criterion is objective and practical, it is limited for precipitation, which does not have a normal distribution, and its lower bound is 0.
Using the ±2σ criterion, the CFSR identifies three exceptionally hot months and four exceptionally cold months in the Midwest region using the monthly area-averaged daily maximum 2-m temperature (Fig. 15). Four of those months (January 2006, September 1993, December 1989, and December 2000) were correctly characterized as exceptional in all three WRF runs, regardless of whether interior nudging was used. The exceptionally cold August 1992 was also identified as the coldest August in all three WRF runs, despite falling short of the −2σ criterion. (August 1992 is obscured for AN and SN in Fig. 15 because August 2004 has a similar value.) This shows that WRF can create credible predictions (e.g., from persistent and strong synoptic forcing through the lateral boundaries) and does not rely on nudging to compensate for shortcomings in physics. However, March 2000 and June 1988 were merely cast as unusually warm in NN, but correctly characterized as extreme by AN and SN. In fact, the summer of 1988 had the hottest June, July, and August of the 20-yr period, a prolonged period of drought in the Midwest. Without interior nudging, NN consistently underpredicted 2-m temperature during the summer months (consistent with Fig. 4) and did not identify 1988 as having a remarkably hot summer. In NN, July 1988 was 0.5 K cooler for the region than July 2006, its hottest July (a false alarm), which was only unusually warm (+1σ) in CFSR, AN, and SN. In addition, April 2006 was the hottest April of the 20-yr period in CFSR, AN, and SN but without interior nudging; NN classified that month as near normal. Without interior nudging WRF captured some of the extreme months during the 20-yr period but had several misses and false alarms. Although imperfect, using interior nudging in WRF improves the representation of the extreme months, eliminates the misses and false alarms, and greatly improves the accuracy in characterizing the relative severity of the events.
As with daily maximum temperature, several months that had exceptionally hot or cold monthly area-averaged daily 2-m temperature minima (June 1992, August 1992, December 1989, December 2000) were correctly characterized in all three WRF runs, regardless of whether nudging was used (Fig. 16). However, without nudging NN misclassified the severity of some months (October 1988 and 2007, which were the coldest and hottest Octobers at ±1σ rather than ±2σ, which suggests reduced interannual variability for October), missed extreme months altogether (June 2003, which was the second coldest in CFSR, AN, and SN but average in NN), or simulated extreme conditions when they did not occur (November 2003, which was the third hottest and +1σ in NN but average in CFSR, AN, and, SN).
The diurnal range of the 2-m temperature can illustrate the effects of precipitation on temperature. As demonstrated with the maxima and minima of the daily 2-m temperature, WRF without nudging can sometimes accurately predict extreme events. February and March 1998 and November 1999 were correctly classified with exceptionally small diurnal range by all three WRF runs (Fig. 17), and June 1988 was exceptionally large in all three WRF runs. In other cases, nudging was necessary to intensify (May 1988, July 1988, November 1992, July–September 1993) or mitigate (November 1997) the magnitude of the diurnal range. Interior nudging was necessary to capture the magnitude of the expanded diurnal range during the extreme hot and dry summer of 1988. In addition, nudging correctly reduced the diurnal range during July–September 1993, following the record-breaking flooding events. The annual variability in the diurnal range in NN is erroneously largest in winter months (and enhanced compared to CFSR, AN, and SN) and smallest in summer months (and suppressed compared to CFSR, AN, and SN). This shows that interior nudging is needed to correctly simulate the intraannual and interannual variability in diurnal range.
Month-by-month area-average precipitation totals for the 20-yr period are shown in Fig. 18. Evaluating monthly precipitation totals over a region allows us to remove acute events (which are also important, but discussed as part of Figs. 13 and 14) and assess prolonged synoptic patterns that either increase or decrease widespread precipitation at some point in the year. Based on NARR for the 20-yr period, there were nine individual months with > +2σ area-average precipitation (exceptionally wet) in the Midwest, and one month with < −2σ area-average precipitation (exceptionally dry) in the Midwest (Fig. 18). Without interior nudging in WRF, NN predicted 10 exceptionally wet months and no exceptionally dry months. However, of the 10 exceptionally wet months identified by NN during the 20-yr period, only four of them actually verified as exceptionally wet; the other six months predicted as exceptionally wet by NN were usually only slightly wetter than average according to NARR. In addition, the exceptionally dry month (June 1988) was predicted to be only abnormally dry (<−1σ) by NN, and it was not even the driest June of the 20-yr period in NN. By contrast, the exceptionally dry year in June 1988 was correctly predicted by both AN and SN at < −2σ. June 1988 had <50% of the area-average monthly precipitation of the next driest June of the 20-yr period in both AN and SN, as in NARR.
AN identified eight exceptionally wet months, and SN identified 10 exceptionally wet months. The months identified by AN and SN as exceptionally wet often matched those identified from NARR as exceptionally wet (see Fig. 18). In cases where there was disagreement on the extremity of the precipitation during the month, often the month was in the wettest year for that month during the period in NARR and the WRF nudging cases, so the 2σ threshold may have been too strict. By contrast, in cases where NN was inconsistent with NARR, the errors in classifying the extremity of the monthly precipitation were much larger. For example, March 1998 was exceptionally wet (>+2σ) as classified by NARR and as predicted by AN and SN, but it was predicted as slightly wetter than average (between ±1σ) by NN. March 2002 was predicted as exceptionally wet by NN, but verified as slightly wetter than average in NARR and was correctly classified by AN and SN. Problems in NN also persisted in summer months, where August 2007 was an exceptionally wet month in NARR and was correctly predicted by AN and SN as the wettest August of the 20-yr period (Fig. 18); NN, however, classified August 2007 as abnormally dry (<−1σ). Lastly, the three wettest months during the 20-yr period in NARR were May 2004, June 1998, and July 1992 (Fig. 18). All three of those months were correctly predicted as the top three wet months by AN and SN, while NN did not identify any of those months among the three wettest. Overall, while imperfect and subject to refinement, applying interior nudging toward the coarse-resolution R-2 fields through AN and SN enabled WRF to identify extreme months in the Midwest region that were better matched to NARR than NN. Without interior nudging NN identified the approximate number of extreme wet months, and NN correctly identified four of the 10 extreme months during the 20-yr simulation period. However, there were six misses and six false alarms for NN predictions of exceptionally wet months during the 20-yr period (and one egregious miss of the exceptionally dry month), which is unreliable for predicting extreme precipitation.
In this paper, the impacts of interior nudging on the prediction of extremes in regional climate modeling were explored. Using the WRF model as the RCM, three continuous simulations covering 1988–2007 were evaluated for which the constraint toward large-scale driving conditions was exercised either only at the lateral boundaries or via one of the two interior nudging techniques in WRF. The simulations were initialized with reanalysis fields from R-2 as a proxy for a coarse-resolution global climate model. Comparisons of the spectra from WRF output fields were made against R-2 to determine if the WRF simulations were consistent with the driving model at large scales. Finer-scale comparisons of the WRF simulations were drawn against comparable-resolution reanalyses from the NARR and CFSR products.
We showed that nudging improves the prediction of monthly means over a multidecadal period, consistent with other studies using shorter (1-yr or less) simulations (e.g., Miguez-Macho et al. 2004; Castro et al. 2005; Lo et al. 2008; Rockel et al. 2008; Alexandru et al. 2009; Bowden et al. 2012b). By constraining only at the lateral boundaries, WRF often, but not always, captures the interannual variability, which is also noted in Bowden et al. (2012a), and some of the extremes. However, interior nudging improves the simulation of the mean 2-m temperature and both hot and cold extreme thresholds, so nudging improves the distribution and does not simply shift a model bias. Using interior nudging is clearly an advantage for simulating extreme wet and dry precipitation periods during the multidecadal period. All WRF runs overpredicted precipitation totals through the multidecadal period (as in Caldwell et al. 2009) regardless of whether nudging was used. Yet, both forms of interior nudging reproduced extreme events with greater accuracy and did not produce the false alarms and misclassifications of events when nudging was not used. Overall, interior nudging preserved the variability in the large scales from the driving fields and adjusted the smaller-scale variability toward the high-resolution reanalyses.
These results should not be used to compare the interior nudging techniques directly because of differences in their fundamental approaches and the variables that are nudged. However, the application of nudging in WRF for regional climate modeling stands to be improved to capitalize on the strengths of both methods. Although analysis nudging is not theoretically applicable for regional climate modeling, using it is preferable to not using interior nudging. Here, the analysis nudging simulation is heuristic because its precipitation means and extremes are consistently more accurate than the other two runs in five of the six regions in our domain, so it is plausible that spectral nudging in WRF can be improved.
Our results clearly indicate that using interior nudging for regional climate modeling with reasonable settings will not inappropriately squelch temperature and precipitation extremes over prolonged periods in midlatitudes. In some cases, increased spatial variability and larger extremes were predicted without using interior nudging, but those predictions were inaccurate. Using an interior constraint toward the large-scale fields is absolutely necessary to consistently predict extreme events that are faithful to the large-scale atmospheric circulation and approach the verified values. Because there is no consensus on whether nudging is appropriate for regional climate modeling (e.g., Rummukainen 2010), this research adds confidence to use nudging for dynamical downscaling particularly when there is an interest in extreme events. Nudging techniques must be used appropriately (i.e., nudging toward synoptic-scale waves for spectral nudging and using relaxation time scales that are sufficiently long for analysis nudging) to maximize the benefit from them. However, we did not explore whether model biases could be masked and/or exacerbated by nudging. If the downscaling techniques are extended to global climate fields (i.e., Type 3 or Type 4 rather than Type 2, following Castro et al. 2005), then the resultant regional climate projections may include the effects of biases in the global climate fields that will not be overcome by nudging. Our results reflect one configuration of WRF, and the generality of our conclusions should be evaluated for other configurations of WRF and other RCMs. Using historical data, WRF provides realistic regional climatology and captures some interannual variability without interior nudging. However, accurately capturing changes in the interannual variability of critical thresholds of 2-m temperature and precipitation are important to generate credible, problem-focused climate assessments (e.g., Tryhorn and DeGaetano 2011), and that can best be achieved today by using interior nudging techniques in the RCM.
Lara Reynolds and Chris Misenis (CSC) provided technical support to generate some of the simulations shown in this paper. Kiran Alapaty and S.T. Rao (U.S. EPA) provided technical feedback on this paper. The critique of three anonymous reviewers served to strengthen the manuscript. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development funded and managed the research described here. It has been subjected to the Agency’s administrative review and approved for publication.
Current affiliation: Institute for the Environment, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


First up, Google Earth is now available on the Web, and you won't require a standalone app to use it. It makes the experience of using the app more immersive, and quite interesting.
However, the Google Earth team did launch a new virtual reality version of the planet-visualising software on the Steam Store previous year, so it would not be surprising if the new app shipped with some VR component. The VR app also has 27 new locations and a new search feature.
Four days ahead of Earth Day, Google has unveiled the revamped version of Google Earth, and it brings a lot of cool new features to the table, such as improved 3D capabilities and professional guided tours.
April warmth, springtime storms for Easter 2017
A warm and calmer spring pattern will continue for several more days as the primary storm track remains well north. There will be a chance of a thundershower or two in northwestern sections of New Hampshire late this afternoon.
Changing the user agent does not help right now to get the new Google Earth to work in other browsers. More adventures will be added to Voyager on a weekly basis. However as noted by AppleInsider, the location sharing feature with Google Maps is not dynamically updated so that's something you might want to take note of. For instance, you can tour the Tanzanian Gombe National Park, led by primate expert Jane Goodall.
Google Earth's rebuild has been two years in the making and comes with a bevy of new features. Initially, Google has partnered with BBC and Sesame Street but the company says it will continue to add more partners in the near future.
Google has today launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence. This simple iMessage app will show you your current location on Google Maps and let you send it to your iMessage chat mates, all without leaving iMessage. Once you've been transported to one of over 20,000 locations you can open "Knowledge Cards" to learn history and facts of the location. If you come across your favorite landmark, then you can share it as a virtual postcard with your friends. That would give Google Earth a more practical position in Google's lineup of products - potentially tying it into other travel-related products, like its personalized travel planner, Google Trips, its online trip planning feature on the web, Google Destinations, or its airfare booking tool, Google Flights. The left-side menu on the Web also has options for sharing and highlighting, both of which are self-explanatory.


text:
I love how this bag has turned out, although had a couple of sweary moments with the pattern instructions. I bought some Echino cheater patchwork print for this bag and matched it with some pink spotty lining.
|Spotty lining again!|
I clearly didn't read the instructions properly as I was quite surprised by the finished size of this bag.
It's massive and so perfect as an exceptionally large beach bag (or gym bag, if I actually went), so I get to kill two bags with one pattern ;-). I am considering making this bag instead though, all I would need to buy is the Jute straps....

domain: design


text:
|Year : 2019 | Volume
| Issue : 2 | Page : 84-88
Cytomorphometric Evaluation of Oral Exfoliated Cells − Its Correlation With Age of an Individual
T. Radhika MDS, Professor , Serab Hussain, S. Adithyan, Nadeem Jeddy, Sai Lakshmi
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and Oral Microbiology, Thai Moogambigai Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
|Date of Submission||16-Aug-2019|
|Date of Decision||26-Sep-2019|
|Date of Acceptance||24-Oct-2019|
|Date of Web Publication||29-Jan-2020|
Dr. T. Radhika
Department of Oral Pathology and Microbiology, Thai Moogambigai Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, Tamilnadu
Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None
Introduction: Age is a vital tool in assessing the mental and physical growth of an individual. Exfoliative cytology, a non-invasive procedure, also has its potential implication in age assessment of an individual. This study aims to correlate and compare the average cell size from oral buccal smears of individuals of varying age groups using cytomorphometric analysis. Materials and Methods: In this study, 100 buccal smears were collected from normal individuals, dividing them into five age groups (Group 1: 10–20, Group 2: 21–30, Group 3: 31–40, Group 4: 41–50, Group 5: 50 and above). The collected smear samples were stained using papanicolau stain. The average sizes of the cells were measured using Dewinter’s image analysis software. Results: Cytomorphometry revealed a decrease in the average cell size as age increases. Analysis using Bonferonni and Post Hoc tests showed statistically significant decrease in the average cell size (P < 0.005). Conclusion: Cytomorphometric evaluation of exfoliated oral cells proves reliable tool for correlation of age. Cytomorphometric analysis of exfoliated cells of buccal mucosa serves a potential alternative non-invasive procedure in evaluation and correlation of age of an individual compared to the other screening modalities, which are usually either invasive or expensive.
Keywords: age estimation, cytomorphometric analysis, exfoliative cytology, image analysis, papanicolau stain
|How to cite this article:|
Radhika T, Hussain S, Adithyan S, Jeddy N, Lakshmi S. Cytomorphometric Evaluation of Oral Exfoliated Cells − Its Correlation With Age of an Individual. J Orofac Sci 2019;11:84-8
|How to cite this URL:|
Radhika T, Hussain S, Adithyan S, Jeddy N, Lakshmi S. Cytomorphometric Evaluation of Oral Exfoliated Cells − Its Correlation With Age of an Individual. J Orofac Sci [serial online] 2019 [cited 2023 Jun 9];11:84-8. Available from: https://www.jofs.in/text.asp?2019/11/2/84/276713
| Introduction|| |
Age is a vital tool in assessing the mental and physical growth of an individual. Age of an individual is not only a source of information, it is also useful in documentation and authentication of the individual. Age and gender are two important parameters in the field of forensic sciences for the identification of a deceased individual where there is no other possible way of identification. Be it in case of deaths occurring from natural calamities, accidents, homicides, determination of age and gender of the deceased individual forms the preliminary step toward the progress of the investigation. Age estimation methods used in forensic investigations include extent of tooth wear, amount of secondary dentin formation, tooth-to-pulp ratio, DNA analysis, and by using the morphology of skeletal system. The pre-existing modalities of age estimation are either expensive or complex, or too simple and less accurate. Age estimation using amount of tooth wear, amount of secondary dentin formation, tooth-to-pulp ratio, etc., are less accurate whereas radiocarbon dating of tooth is not cost effective. Radiological examination of dental and skeletal development also proves less useful in adults than younger individuals.
Exfoliative cytology is a non-invasive, cost-effective, and safe procedure. Though it has primarily been adopted for research and diagnosis pertaining to pathological conditions, cytological examination of normal cells also provides key information about an individual’s physical status. Exfoliative cytology also provides data on other conditions like diabetes mellitus, presence of any malignancies, effects of smoking and alcoholism, iron content in beta thalassemia etc. With the introduction of cytomorphometric image analysis softwares, calculating the size of exfoliated cells has become much easier. Other cellular parameters such as nuclear size and perimeter and cellular perimeter have also been analyzed using cytomorphometry. However, cell size has proved to be a valuable parameter in assessing the age of an individual. The results can be obtained on the very same day within few hours. The armamentarium required is also less and cost effective.
The human body produces cells which undergo changes from layer to layer as it moves from the basal level to top, until it finally exfoliates. However, the effect of senescence does not cause any discrepancies in cellular morphology, which makes it ideal for age estimation. The turnover of cells in individual decreases with age in terms of number as well as size, which acts as an indication for age estimation. Exfoliative cytology is thus a simple, precise, and effective alternative to age estimation tools which involves the collection of buccal smears from the oral cavity of the subject under study, followed by scrutiny under a microscope to evaluate the size of these exfoliated cells and estimate the corresponding age of that individual.
Hence, the objective of this study is to estimate and compare the average cell size from oral buccal smears of individuals of varying age groups using cytomorphometric analysis.
| Materials and Methods|| |
The study subjects were randomly selected from patients reporting to the outpatient (OP) department of our institution. The study sample included 100 samples out of which 50 were males and 50 were females. The samples were divided into five age groups (Group 1: 10–20 years, Group 2: 21–30 years, Group 3: 31–40 years, Group 4: 41–50 years, Group 5: 51–60 years with each group consisting of 20 individuals (10 males and females in each group). The maximum age in group 5 was 57 years. Subjects with any systemic illness and deleterious habits such as tobacco and alcohol consumption were excluded from the study. Informed consent was obtained from study participants. Ethical approval for this study (Dr.MGRDU/TMDCH/2019-20/020719001) was provided by the institutional ethical committee on 02 July 2019.
Oral smear samples were collected from the buccal mucosa of individuals from each age group. The smear samples were collected using moistened wooden spatula in a gentle scraping motion from normal healthy-looking buccal mucosa and were immediately smeared onto a clear glass slide. It was then fixed with 95% ethyl alcohol for 15 minutes before they were subjected to Papanicolau staining technique.
The stained smear samples were observed under a microscope for image analysis. Images were taken at 40x magnification, focusing them on a stage micrometer scale. An average of 20 clearly defined cells was examined and was measured in both horizontal and vertical axis in micrometer. Folded and clumped cells were not included in the measurement. The cells were marked manually using Dewinter’s image analysis software and images were captured and projected onto the computer for image analysis using Lawrence and Mayo LM-52-3001 microscope. The average cell sizes (Cs) were determined and statistically analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Bonferroni comparison tests.
| Results|| |
The mean cell size in group 1 was 0.011 ± 0.002 mm/sq [Figure 1]a. In Group 2, the mean cell size was 0.009 ± 0.003 mm/sq [Figure 1]b. In Group 3, the mean cell size was 0.006 ± 0.002 mm/sq [Figure 1]c. In Group 4, the mean cell size was 0.005 ± 0.001 mm/sq [Figure 1]d. In Group 5, the mean cell size was 0.003 ± 0.001 mm/sq [Figure 1]e. [Table 1] shows the mean value and standard deviation of average cell size in every age group. Statistical analysis using one-way ANOVA, Bonferroni, and Post Hoc tests [Table 2] revealed statistically significant difference in the mean value of each group when individually compared with the other groups (P < 0.005), and confirmed that the cell size decreases with increase in age [Figure 2].
|Figure 1 Decrease in average cell size among different age groups with increase in age.|
Click here to view
|Table 2 Statistically significant difference in the mean value between age groups, where each group (primary group) is individually compared with the other age groups (other groups) using Bonferroni and Post Hoc Tests for multiple comparisons|
Click here to view
| Discussion|| |
Age estimation is of paramount importance in the field of forensic medicine and plays a significant role in medicolegal issues. Of all the available investigative modalities, exfoliative cytology stands out owing to its simplicity and ease in application. Exfoliative cytology is an effective, non-invasive procedure that has been standardized in screening and diagnosis of oral pathologies. Cytomorphometric analysis refers to image analysis of these exfoliated cells which gives us an insight upon the morphological changes taking place inside the cell, be it nuclear or cytoplasmic changes in cytological smears.
The histological section of an oral epithelium comprises of the following cells: stratum basale, stratum spinosum, stratum granulosum, and stratum corneum. The act of collecting smear samples through gentle scrapings may dislodge all the layers of the epithelium, including the stratum basale. The basal cells are small cells with a large nucleus that has a diameter which is one third or one fourth the size of the cell. It has a basophilic cytoplasm. The stratum spinosum or the prickle cell layer is larger than the basal layer but its nucleus is smaller than basal cells. The cell outline is irregular and more flatter.
The staining of these cells varies from pink to light orange. The cells of stratum corneum stain orange as they are orangeophilic. As age increases, the epithelial cells get compressed, flattened and pyknosis occurs, which involves the condensation of nuclear chromatin to a dense structure less mass. Upon further maturation, the nucleus completely disappears.
A recent study by Shetty et al. revealed similar results in which the average cell size seemed to decrease with increase in age groups. However, in our study, we have tried to standardize the ratio of male to female subjects among the 100 sample size, with more variables under consideration. Latti BR et al. have effectively used cytomorphometry to measure and determine increase in cell size in patients with diabetes mellitus. Cytomorphometric analysis has also been used in conditions such as diabetes mellitus, tobacco and alcohol usage, iron content in beta thalassemia, malignant and premalignant conditions, etc., Bloching et al. used cytomorphometry in exfoliative buccal cells to determine cellular changes in precancerous conditions using micronuclei (MN) assay. Nallamala S et al., compared the accuracy of age estimation using exfoliative cytology and radiovisiography and showed exfoliative cytology to be more accurate and reliable tool when it comes to age estimation. A cytomorphometric study by Reddy et al. yielded results similar to our study. The study involved estimation of age by measuring changes in nuclear diameter and cell diameter in three age groups as opposed to our study where we have calculated the average cell size of 100 individuals divided into five age groups. Technical innovations such as computer-aided image analysis is simple and effective than the conventional plainmetric methods.The results of this study shows a significant age-related variation in the cell size which is independent of gender and can be ascribed to cellular senescence. The cells in the oral epithelium only divide until a period of time, after which it ceases. The ability to turnover new cells decreases with age, resulting in the accumulation of senescent cells. The decrease of turnover rate and the cellular activity due to decrease in the cellular organelles could be the reason for decrease in cell size.
There is a significant decrease in the size of the oral exfoliated cells as age increases, when subjected to cytomorphometric analysis. Hence, cytomorphometric analysis of oral cells from buccal smears presents a negative correlation with age of an individual. Further studies on a larger sample size are recommended to yield a significant correlation and also to yield a regression formula for age estimation.
Financial support and sponsorship
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References|| |
Shetty DC, Wadhwan V, Khanna KS, Jain A, Gupta A. Exfoliative cytology: a possible tool in age estimation in forensic odontology. J Forensic Dent Sci 2015;7:63-6.
] [Full text]
Leekha S, Nayar AK, Bakshi P, Sharma A, Parhar S, Soni S. Estimation of iron overloads using oral exfoliative cytology in beta-thalassemia major patients. Cyto Journal 2016;13:6.
Chaudhary R, Sahni P, Shylaja M.D., Patel A. Age estimation by exfoliative cytology: New era of noninvasive forensic science. Int J Forensic Odontol 2018;3:40-3.
Priyadarshini C, Puranik MP, Uma SR. Dental age estimation methods: a review. Int J Adv Health Sci 2015;1:19-25.
Anuradha A, Sivapathasundharam B. Image analysis of normal exfoliated gingival cells. Indian J Dent Res 2007;18:63-6.
] [Full text]
Latti BR, Birajdar SB, Latti RG. Periodic Acid Schiff-Diastase as a key in Exfoliative cytology in diabetics: a pilot study. J Oral Maxillofac Pathol 2015;19:188-91.
] [Full text]
Ogden GR, Cowpe JG, Green MW. Quantitative exfoliative cytology of normal buccal mucosa: Effect of smoking. J Oral Pathol Copenhagen 1990;19:53-5.
Babuta S, Garg R, Mogra K, Dagal N. Cytomorphometrical analysis of exfoliated buccal mucosal cells: effect of smoking. Acta Med Int 2014;1:22-7. [Full text]
Bloching M, Hofmann A, Lautenschläger C, Berghaus A, Grummt T. Exfoliative cytology of normal buccal mucosa to predict the relative risk of cancer in the upper aerodigestive tract using the MN-assay. Oral Oncol 2000;36:550-5.
Nallamala S, Guttikonda VR, Manchikatla PK, Taneeru S. Age estimation using exfoliative cytology and radiovisiography: a comparative study. J Forensic Dent Sci 2017;9:144-8.
] [Full text]
Reddy SV, Kumar SG, Vezhavendhan N. Cytomorphometric analysis of normal exfoliative cells from buccal mucosa in different age groups. IJCDS 2011;2:53-6.
Hande KH, Chaudhary MS. Cytomorphormetric analysis mucosa of tobacco chewers. Rom J Morphol Embryol 2010;51:527–32
[Figure 1], [Figure 2]
[Table 1], [Table 2]

domain: medical


Products | Krieghoff | Hubertus
Visit the Krieghoff UK & Ireland website for the full information section.
Hubertus | Details
In the long-standing tradition of hunting, a single shot rifle has always been a very special gun. It stands for beauty and excellent handling characteristics. To use one in the field often creates moments of unforgettable memories. Therefore, we have named our rifle after the hunting patron St. Hubertus.
Hubertus | Features
The Krieghoff HUBERTUS combines tradition and some new and innovative features. In addition to the superb handling of the rifle, a most important feature is the manual cocking device which is located on the top tang, in the position usually occupied by a conventional safety. It allows to carry the HUBERTUS fully loaded with the hammer uncocked - the safest position since there is no chance of an accidental discharge. Add to that the Universal-Trigger-System and the Combi-Cocking-Device, both standard features of the HUBERTUS, and the result is a rifle with important advantages in practical use.


text:
The council supports their local community by offering various housing schemes to support homelessness and those with various disabilities. However, the area has historically had Anti-Social Behaviour problems; which have been dramatically reduced by our team. Enfield Council have benefited from Systematic’s officers who manage the access control to multiple residential buildings while working closely with the Anti-Social Behaviour team. We also remotely monitor the CCTV for each building
Thames Water is a private utility company holding the responsibility for the public water supply and waste water treatment in large parts of Greater London and other areas of the United Kingdom. Systematic Security Services is utilised to provide mobile patrols and emergency response for flooded sites.
Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust is a provider of award winning, high quality mental health, and dentistry, community and specialist learning disability services throughout Yorkshire. Our multi-site and multi-service delivery covers medical centres and trust offices which include mental health units, doctors’ surgeries, car parks and administration units. Systematic’s officers provide reception and mobile security services that contribute to a safe and secure environment for patients and staff.
Barnet London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Barnet in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 within London. Barnet is divided into 21 wards, each electing three councillors. Barnet Council have benefited from Systematic’s officers who manage the access control to multiple residential buildings while working closely with the Anti-Social Behaviour team. We also remotely monitor the CCTV for each building.
Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated or JLL is an American professional services and investment management company specializing in real estate. Systematic Security Services provide manned guarding, mobile patrol and alarm response services at multiple locations throughout the UK.

domain: geography


text:
Yohane Banda said he meant only for the pop superstar to "raise" his child David, with the long-term outcome being that he would return to Malawi.
He also said he only signed an agreement on the assurance from government officials that Madonna would "look after" David until he had grown up and become independent.
Mr Banda, 32, said yesterday: "Our understanding was that they (Madonna and her British filmmaker husband Guy Ritchie) would educate and take care of our son just as they were doing at the orphanage."
A spokeswoman for Madonna said later the star would not be making a statement.
But she added that it had been stated previously that Madonna would bring David back to Malawi as a grown up.
The spokeswoman added that David would also "of course" be able to decide himself where he wanted to live as an adult.
Mr Banda, a peasant farmer, who makes a living growing onions and tomatoes in his home village of Lipunga, signed adoption papers earlier this month.
That cleared the way for a judge to grant the celebrity couple a "temporary order" to take away the baby, who was flown to London last week.
Earlier this week Mr Banda criticised human rights groups that have gone to court to stop Madonna adopting David.
But his new comments appear to take a different line on the adoption.
He said in a television interview shown on Sky News: "Had they told us that Madonna wanted to adopt my son and make him her own son, we would not have agreed to that.
"I cannot read and write so I relied on what the (government) officials told me, that the papers said Madonna would look after the child the way the orphanage planned to educate him and then he comes back to me."
Mr Banda gave David up to an orphanage at five weeks because he was unable to care for him when the baby's mother died shortly after his birth.
His comments could now throw into question an adoption that has caused a stir in the media across the world.
Earlier this week the singer said she and Ritchie began the adoption process many months ago and had acted "according to the law, like anyone else who adopts a child".
Madonna, 48, said they would undergo an 18-month evaluation as David's temporary custodians, "after which time we hope to make this adoption permanent".
But the superstar sparked anger among some children's charities and human rights groups who claim she has used her celebrity to "buy" a baby and bypass the normal procedures.
Later this week, a coalition of human rights groups will ask a judge in Malawi to review the case, claiming that the country's laws prevent international adoption, even by celebrities.
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domain: sociology


text:
Download Free Temple Run APK Mod for Android on 1mod.io
Welcome to Temple Run game for Mobile. This is an arcade game. This game develops Imangi Studios. It requires Android 4.4 and up. At now, this game is over 500,000,000+ downloads and installs on Google Play. Let’s start Temple Run game now. Don’t forget to enjoy this game with MOD APK free for Android on 1Mod.IO
Temple Run –
The sequel to the famous runner who fell in love with many fans. As in the previous part of the game, you collect gold coins and gold bars. But be careful because you have awakened an ancient guard who is obviously not happy with your presence. Try to escape it unscathed. Run in many locations that have their own unique features and traps. Be careful and avoid all the obstacles and obstacles that are in front of you. Become the richest archaeologist in the Temple Run Mod apk!
Introduce Temple Run
The addictive mega-hit Temple Run is now out for Android! All your friends are playing it – can you beat their high scores?!
You’ve stolen the cursed idol from the temple, and now you have to run for your life to escape the Evil Demon Monkeys nipping at your heels. Test your reflexes as you race down ancient temple walls and along sheer cliffs. Swipe to turn, jump and slide to avoid obstacles, collect coins and buy power ups, unlock new characters, and see how far you can run!
“In every treasure hunting adventure movie there’s one scene in which the plucky hero finally gets his hands on the treasure but then has to navigate a maze of booby traps in order to get out alive. Temple Run is this scene and nothing else. And it’s amazing.” – SlideToPlay.com
★ “Most thrilling and fun running game in a while, possibly ever.” – TheAppera.com
★ “A fast and frenzied experience.” – IGN.com
★ “Very addicting… definitely a very different running game.” – Appolicious.com
★ Voted by TouchArcade Forums as Game of the Week
★ One of TouchArcade’s Best Games of the Month
★ Over 50 MILLION players worldwide!
Absolutely Free to play
And not like other console-graded Android games, Temple Run allows gamers to experience the whole game without having to pay any free. Still, there are some in-app purchases that make the game no very balanced. But overall, you can still make up to this by being active in this game. Complete tough challenges and you’ll earn yourself awesome prizes.
Enjoy with Full Mod APK free on 1Mod.IO
However, if you’re bothered by the in-game purchases and would like to do something about it, then our mod version of this game would certainly satisfy you. To have it installed on your devices, just download the Full Mod APK file on your storage. Follow our instructions and you can easily install Temple Run game.
Proposing to replace some Game
Join us in celebrating these years of escaping from traps, falls and one estranged Demon Monkey.
A gift of gold awaits the players seeking the nostalgia of the adventure that began it all.

domain: game


Gears of War 3 - Boltock Pistol for GTA San Andreas. Post the head of any enemy to shreds, shot from this powerful gun!
The fire goes smoothly from the muzzle
- The weapon is excellent in the hands
- Its icon
Free download mod Gears of War 3 - Boltock Pistol for GTA San Andreas with automatic installation using the links below.
|Model to replace||Desert Eagle|


text:
UFC 193: Ronda Rousey vs. Holly Holm
It isn’t often that a star to the stature of Ronda Rousey fights away from home, but after a win in Brazil, Rousey once again packed her bags and took a trip to Australia, where she would meet Holly Holm, for her UFC woman’s bantamweight championship. Rousey was coming off of another dominant win over Bethe Correia, and coming into to UFC 193, she was slated as one of the biggest favorites in UFC championship history. That didn’t bother Holm though, as the “Preachers Daughter” just went about her business and believed in her skill set.
Holm showed nothing but respect to Rousey in the lead up to the fight. Some thought the bout might be too much too soon for Holm, but as one of the most decorated strikers in female combat sports history, Holm was always going to be at an advantage so long as the fight stood standing. She and her coaches believed in a clear path to victory, but Rousey and most fans thought that was delusional, and at the time you can’t blame them for that. Rousey had made easy work of opponent after opponent, but treating Holm like any other opponent and not showing her proper respect might have been costly for Rousey.
All fight week Holm stayed confident, and she seemingly got under Rousey’s skin by doing so. The two had a few intense staredowns in front of the media and over the course of fight week, it was clear Rousey was getting more and more intense. As the two took the stage for the UFC 193 weigh-in, fans knew they were seeing something special. The atmosphere for the weigh-in, in Australia was unbelievable. It spoke to the true star power of Rousey around the world. Rousey did her usual attitude strut towards her opponent when she hopped off of the scale, and as she tried to get her hand in the face of Holm, Holm basically beat her to the punch, getting her hand inside and tying the two of them up a bit. It was an extremely intense moment and one that showed the world exactly who Holm was. She was the heavy challenger who wasn’t about to back down from the greatest of all time, and her performance perfectly exemplifies that exact attitude.

domain: news


text:
From New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick comes an emotionally rich, inspiring new novel about family, second chances and the connections that bring women together in hope and healing.Years of long workdays and little sleep as a political campaigner are about to pay off now that
Marie Bostwick is my go to author always powerful, inspiring, and uplifting Robyn Carr, 1 New York Times bestselling author New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick welcomes readers to the quirky, unforgettable town of Too Much, Texas, in a heartwarming, richly satisfying story of
For the embroiderer who appreciates the value of beautiful stitches but also likes to break a few rules along the way, Rebecca Ringquist s Embroidery Workshops is a refreshing new resource for both standard and out of the box techniques Based on the popular classes Ringquist leads across the
Fit sewing into your busy lifestyle with practical tips that will help you put hours back on the clock Author Heidi Staples, a creative mom of three, will help you organize your sewing space and works in progress so they are ready to roll at a moment s notice Revive your creative life and make the
Fat quarters aren t just for quilters All sewers love these inexpensive pieces of fabric and this book shows you how to create 50 fabulous projects from your stash This unique collection of 50 quick and easy sewing projects includes contemporary ideas for DIY home decor, accessories, gifts and
Here is your go to book when you want to make a fast but stylish quilt All the projects in this book can easily be made in a weekend, and some in a day 10 projects have size options making a total of 20 possible projects Imagine your fabric choices in one of these beautiful patterns.
All Points Patchwork: A Complete Guide to English Paper Piecing Quilting Techniques for Making Perfect Hexagons, Diamonds, Octagons, and Other Shapes26 January 2020 | By Diane Gilleland | Filed in: quilting.
The key to perfect patchwork is getting all of the points to match up which is no easy feat Thanks to the rediscovery of a traditional technique known as English paper piecing, success is now possible for quilters of all levels By cutting the desired shapes from paper, basting the paper to the
Get ready for new adventures in conventional piecing with celebrated quilter Victoria Findlay Wolfe Create stunning Double Wedding Ring quilts with breathtaking innovations on the classic pattern With full size patterns for 10 quilts, the book will teach you the Double Wedding Ring basics After
Forget step by step instructions and copycat designs In The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters, Sherri Lynn Wood presents a flexible approach to quilting that breaks free of old paradigms Instead of traditional instructions, she presents 10 frameworks or scores that create a guiding, but not
From first step to last stitch, learn to quilt the Alex Anderson way With than one million books sold, the author who taught the world to quilt is back again Internet and television personality Alex Anderson s big book of quilting includes indispensible, straightforward advice essential

domain: library


[#image: /photos/585390c0c7188f9b26c92f70]||||||\n\n[#image: /photos/585390c1c7188f9b26c92f72]||||||After a hard day of sightseeing, our intrepid band of journalists trouped off to the opening party of the Transformer. Miuccia ran the show in her black Gladiator outift, while Rem was understated in a gray Prada suit and black turtleneck. Seoul's finest came mainly dressed "in the brand," my favorite being a woman wearing the white dress from the spring/summer collection that gathers in layers and then splits in the middle to reveal not cleavage, but a small line of flesh running down the middle of the torso. (I was off-message in a Miyake suit.) Afterwards, we repaired to the basement lounge of the Park Hyatt to celebrate with sushi.\n\n[#image: /photos/585390c16666b2eb4762dcb3]||||||*See if you can spot Rem at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.*\n\nThis morning almost everyone wends their weary way back to Europe.\n\nSee Betsky's previous post from the unveiling of Rem Koolhaas's Prada project in Seoul [HERE](http://www.wmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/w/blogs/editorsblog/2009/04/23/prada-koolhaas-in-korea.htm). See our 2008 story about Betsky [HERE](http://www.wmagazine.com/artdesign/2008/09/aaron_betsky?currentPage=1).


text:
Date Joined: January 16, 2018
Last Online: September 28, 2019
Birthday: April 15
I'm a wanderer, forever in search of new books to read, new crafts to make, new languages to learn! I speak Telugu, English, Hindi fluently, and a little bit of French and German. I like to watch the sunlight filtering through the window, casting a golden glow on my tea mug and book, and the feel of paper against my skin. I admire beauty in ordinary things, travel and art journalling.
I honestly don't know where to begin. I devour books, anything that looks interesting in some way, and I see something nice in almost every book I read. I enjoy reading the 'underdogs' as they somehow seem to speak to me on a deeper level. Books are my best buddies!
'Few' of my favourites : All the light we cannot see, the Giver series, Hyperbole and a half, The storied life of A J Fikry, Through the woods, The little Prince, Nimona, the Book thief, Captain Underpants!, Throne of Glass, The Glass Castle, Matilda, Bridge toTerabithia, The Silver Star, A tree grows in Brooklyn, Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma, Love among Bookshelves, Swallowing Mercury, Sputnik Sweetheart
I love to experiment with any medium / material I can get my hands on. In the past, I have worked with acrylic paints, watercolours, charcoal, oil pastels, pencil, yarn, handbuilding pottery, modern calligraphy, linocut stamps, woodcut stamping, glass jar decoration, repurposing, illustration, bookbinding, origami, and ZINES!
P.S. : I am a hopeless Zine Enthusiast.
I am a total foodie. I love to cook, and eat almost all the time, I'm always on the lookout for for new simple recipes that I can try. In fact, I love experimenting so much, I never make the same recipe twice because I keep tweaking the recipe to see what it would taste like if I swapped an ingredient for another, or introduced a new ingredient. Love tea AND coffee( never really understood the concept of an exclusively Tea/ Coffee person!) South Indian Cuisine is Comfort Food.
I have a collection of glass jars, washi tape, penpal letters, watercolours, art books, travel souvenirs, illustrations, and small trinkets.
A few things I like : ZINES!!,Typewriters, Maps, Illustrations, neutral, muted and pastel colours, handmade goods, Fabric samples, postcards, bookmarks, packaged/ empty tea bags!, Botanical / Cactii, Inchies, pretty brochures, space or constellation themed stuff, Book themed stuff, nice paper clips( I have a thing for rose gold paper clips!), and scrapbook paper!
You've got mail, Roman Holiday, anything by Benedict Cumberbatch or Eddie Redmayne, The sound of Music, Mary Poppins, The sixth sense, Home alone, Ratatouille!!
Friends, The Office(US), Gilmore Girls!!, Game of Thrones, Parenthood, Naruto, Playful Kiss( K-drama), City Hunter( K-drama), Master Chef Junior
Indie is my favourite genre of music, and my favourite singers are Prateek Kuhad and Ankur Tewari. I dig the Beatles, Amr Diab, Tarkan, and Ed Sheeran too! Always ready to explore new music(well all except heavy metal), because you never know which corner a treasure of a song might come floating in. New surprise favourite: "Udd gaye" by Ritviz, an EDM track that I am totally addicted to.

domain: hobby


text:
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals published its opinion in Morris v. Noe on Monday, February 27, 2012.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision. Respondent brought a § 1983 action for unlawful arrest and excessive force on behalf of her deceased husband against Petitioner police officer. She alleges Petitioner violated her husband’s clearly established rights when the officer forceably arrested decedent and caused him injury. Petitioner moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and the district court denied his motion. Petitioner now appeals.
The Court found that the officer “had reason to believe that [decedent] was, at most, a misdemeanant. But [the decedent] posed no threat to [the officer] or others, nor did he resist or flee. Thus, based on the facts assumed by the district court, [the decedent]’s right to be free from a forceful takedown was clearly established,” and Petitioner is not entitled to qualified immunity.

domain: law


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text:
With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had bagged a mere two of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in General Election 2014, increasing its haul to 18 in the recently concluded general election and the ruling Trinamool Congress Party’s dropping from 34 to 23, the star of the state’s feisty chief minister Mamata Banerjee is in the descendant. In the state legislative elections scheduled for 2021, BJP, which increased its vote share in the Lok Sabha election to 40.1 percent from a mere 17.02 percent five years ago, may well displace TMC. Meanwhile, the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front which ruled West Bengal (pop. 91 million) uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011) and ruined the state’s industry and education system, has been reduced to a mere cipher. In General Election 2019 it bagged a mere two seats.
Education reform was a major plank of TMC’s election campaign for the state legislative election of 2011 and again in 2016. In both the assembly campaigns, TMC promised to rejuvenate West Bengal’s once highly respected education system — especially the state’s once great universities which were respected nationwide. During the long rule of the Left Front governments they were heavily infiltrated by under-qualified CPM members and cadres and hollowed out from within.
After experiencing strong resistance from well-entrenched CPM-led students and faculty unions in her first term, after the TMC was re-elected in 2016, Banerjee initiated several overdue reforms in the education sector. During the past 12 months in particular, the TMC government has taken several initiatives to improve attendance of teachers and faculty in the state’s 92,000 government schools, 372 colleges and 32 universities. Moreover, she inaugurated 65 English-medium government primaries in the districts of Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Jalpaiguri, and more controversially repealed s.16 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibits schools from detaining non-performing class-I-VIII students. During the past seven years the state government has also sanctioned ten greenfield private and 12 public universities, raising the number of varsities in the state from a mere 12 to 34, and started 50 new colleges while another ten private universities are in the pipeline.
However, the malpractices which infested in the academy during the prolonged rule of the CPM-led Left Front government over the state, have struck deep roots difficult to eradicate. Worse in a populous state where youth unemployment is rife following continuous flight of capital and de-industrialisation during 34 years of Communist rule, the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad — the youth wing of TMC — cadres have adopted CPM tactics to run amok on the campuses of the state’s higher education institutions.
Last year, an extortion racket for facilitating admissions into colleges across West Bengal, allegedly run by students’ union members of the ruling TMC, made media headlines in the state. Moreover, the teacher recruitment process for government schools has been stymied since 2012 because of a series of scams in recruitment tests and pending court cases, marring the employment prospects of thousands of youth aspiring to become government school teachers.
Last February, 450 aspiring teachers staged a hunger strike in the heart of Kolkata demanding immediate filling of vacancies in the 92,000 government and aided schools of the state. Furthermore, during the past few months the top-ranked Jadavpur and Calcutta universities and Calcutta Medical College have experienced campus protests and strikes over issues varying from anomalies in college admission entrance tests to hostel accommodation.
Monitors of West Bengal’s chaotic education scene also recall TMC government’s May 2017 fiat mandating Bengali a compulsory subject in classes I-X of all 92,000 government and over 8,000 private schools — regardless of exam board affiliation — statewide. This out-of-the-blue proclamation of chief minister Banerjee prompted a general strike called by Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) in the Darjeeling district resulting in the shutdown of K-12 schools in the district for 104 days. Unsurprisingly, TMC lost its Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat in the recently concluded general election.
Eight years after the CPM-led Left Front government tyrannised the state for 34 long years, little has changed in Bengal except that now Trinamool Chhatra Parishad activists instead of CPM cadres are running amok on college and university campuses making desperate attempts to oust well-entrenched CPM-led faculty and student unions.
Although TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee still remains popular, with rising lawlessness in the state and her education rejuvenation plan running awry, in Kolkata’s clandestine betting shops the prediction is that TMC is set to follow the CPM into terminal decline.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)


text:
Just had to mark this important day, when the Supreme Court ruled that Vancouver’s supervised-injection site will stay open and the federal government should be prepared to issue permits in other cities. (Stories here, here and here, from across the land.)
What a long road it’s been for those fighting for this. (And those fighting against it.)
This was the biggest story I covered for years in the early 2000s. It started when Mayor Philip Owen’s office started planning a new kind of policy to deal with drug addiction in the Downtown Eastside, in the late 1990s. It continued when I travelled to Frankfurt with a group of Canadian researchers and medical types to look at the supervised-injection sites there, spent hours visiting with people at the illegal injection site that operated temporarily, and was the first reporter into the legal one when it opened in September 2003.
It’s a testament to what it takes to accomplish something like this: Unswerving advocates who made it their priority for over a decade. Political administrations that backed in through subsequent electoral upheavals, starting with Mayor Philip Owen, who didn’t start out advocating for injection sites but ended up being a diehard supporter.
People with the political savvy to get police, the province, medical health officers, and more onside. Hours of meetings. Rallies and demonstrations and political actions to mobilize people along the way as the Conservative government emitted negative noises about it. And a public that, locally at least, continued to support it in opinion poll after opinion poll.
It’s actually exhausting to think of the effort that went into this. Some would say much of that was a tragic waste, that people shouldn’t have had to fight so hard to preserve InSite. Their energy could have gone into more useful projects. So could the money that went to federal-government lawyers.
In the end, though, it’s resulted in a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that makes the project invincible and paves the way for those who feel they need a site in their cities. And, I’d argue, it did the job that good debates do — drew people into the public discussion and ensured that a new piece of public policy had been soundly tested and withstood everything that was thrown at it.
It’s an emotional day for me to watch this conclusion. I am in awe of the people who were so dedicated to their causes.


CAMPAIGN 2000: Medicare hot topic at Dems' debate
Sun | Nation & World
* Al Gore and Bill Bradley mix it up over health care.
NASHUA, N.H. - Al Gore accused Democratic presidential rival Bill Bradley of shortchanging Medicare on Friday night, and Bradley shot back in campaign debate that the vice president's own health insurance plan would let some Americans go without coverage. "Who would you leave out?'' he asked.
"The answer is simple. I won't leave anybody out," Gore shot back instantly, seated a few feet away from his rival on a college stage in the nation's first presidential primary state.
The vice president and former New Jersey senator argued, as well, over education, but found common ground on other subjects in a 90-minute encounter that was contentious and cordial by turns. They agreed, for example, that homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the military, and that now is not the time to set a timetable for a manned space mission to Mars.
Gore remains the front-runner nationally in the race for the party's nomination, as judged in the polls. But statewide surveys show Bradley even or slightly ahead in New Hampshire, where the first primary ballots will be cast on Feb. 1, and he is hoping to ambush the vice president and use that as a springboard to later triumphs.
The exchange over health care came midway through the 90-minute debate, staged by ABC Nightline on the campus of Daniel Webster College in southern New Hampshire, and the first of two encounters this weekend. Moderator Ted Koppel set only one ground rule as the rivals settled onto their swivel stools: remain seated.
There was little to bring them out of their seats in the first few exchanges, as Gore said he and Bradley both had been blessed with wonderful wives.


text:
Taj Mahal is bearing the brunt of coronavirus outbreak after six people tested positive for COVID-19 in Agra. The tourist footfall at Taj Mahal has dropped significantly in the last few days due to COVID-19 scare. Several domestic and foreign tourists have cancelled their bookings. Guards and security personnel wearing masks and a much lesser crowd was visible at Taj Mahal on Thursday morning. Also thermal guns were used to screen tourists.
Besides, hotels and tourist sites in Agra have been instructed to inform Chief Medical Officer as soon any visitor from Italy, Iran and China arrive so that they can be screened.
"We have issued instructions to all hotels in the city that if any person is coming from Italy, Iran or China, they should inform us. As soon as the hotel informs us, a team of doctors goes to the hotel and examines them for symptoms of coronavirus. All the tourists' sites have been told to inform the 24-hour control about visitors from countries where coronavirus outbreak has been reported," Chief Medical Officer of Agra Dr Mukesh Vats told PTI.
On March 4, six cases with 'high viral load' were detected during sample testing in Agra. These six people came in contact with the COVID-19 patient from Delhi.

domain: travel