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Impacts of the Three-dimensional Radiative Effects on Cloud Droplet Number Concentration Retrieval and Aerosol Cloud Interaction Analysis
No full textCloud droplet number concentration () in warm liquid clouds play a crucial role in understanding cloud microphysical processes and the influence of aerosol–cloud interactions (ACI) on Earth’s climate. from satellite-retrieved cloud properties such as the cloud optical thickness (τ) and cloud droplet effective radius (ₑ) can be biased due to the three-dimensional (3D) radiative transfer (RT) effects. Using Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) cloud fields and RT simulations, this study investigates how biases in cloud property retrievals caused by 3D-RT effects impact the derived and subsequent ACI analyses. Our sensitivity studies confirm that the bi-spectral retrievals using the 3.7 channel—whose ₑ retrieval is closest to cloud top— shows better agreement with from our LES models, compared to results based on the 1.6 and 2.1 retrievals. At native LES resolution, across all absorbing channels is strongly impacted by the 3D-effects, with the magnitude depending on the solar zenith angles (SZAs); on average, for high/low sun conditions under 3D-RT underestimates/overestimates its 1D-RT counterpart, which indicates dominant darkening/brightening effects. At coarser satellite-like resolutions, average statistics between 1D and 3D retrievals agree better, indicating compensation between 3D and plane-parallel effects. Furthermore, the impact of 3D-effects on ACI analyses produced similar results across all spectral band pairings, with minimal disagreement between 1D and 3D at coarse spatial resolution. Together, these results indicate that 3D retrieval artifacts in bi-spectral retrievals do not seem to drive uncertainties associated with radiative impact applications, resulting in reliable ACI and flux-related analyses.
: subscripthttps://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-4169
HazardNet: A Small-Scale Vision Language Model for Real-Time Traffic Safety Detection at Edge Devices
No full textTraffic safety remains a vital concern in contemporary urban settings, intensified by the increase of vehicles and the complicated nature of road networks. Traditional safety-critical event detection systems predominantly rely on sensor-based approaches and conventional machine learning algorithms, necessitating extensive data collection and complex training processes to adhere to traffic safety regulations. This paper introduces HazardNet, a small-scale Vision Language Model designed to enhance traffic safety by leveraging the reasoning capabilities of advanced language and vision models. We built HazardNet by fine-tuning the pre-trained Qwen2-VL-2B model, chosen for its superior performance among open-source alternatives and its compact size of two billion parameters. This helps to facilitate deployment on edge devices with efficient inference throughput. In addition, we present HazardQA, a novel Vision Question Answering (VQA) dataset constructed specifically for training HazardNet on real-world scenarios involving safety-critical events. Our experimental results show that the fine-tuned HazardNet outperformed the base model up to an 89% improvement in F1-Score and has comparable results with improvement in some cases reach up to 6% when compared to larger models, such as GPT-4o. These advancements underscore the potential of HazardNet in providing real-time, reliable traffic safety event detection, thereby contributing to reduced accidents and improved traffic management in urban environments. Both HazardNet model and the HazardQA dataset are available at https://huggingface.co/Tami3/HazardNet and https://huggingface.co/datasets/Tami3/HazardQA, respectively.http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.2057
Global, regional, and national trends in routine childhood vaccination coverage from 1980 to 2023 with forecasts to 2030: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023
No full textBackgroundSince its inception in 1974, the Essential Programme on Immunization (EPI) has achieved remarkable success, averting the deaths of an estimated 154 million children worldwide through routine childhood vaccination. However, more recent decades have seen persistent coverage inequities and stagnating progress, which have been further amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, WHO set ambitious goals for improving vaccine coverage globally through the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030). Now halfway through the decade, understanding past and recent coverage trends can help inform and reorient strategies for approaching these aims in the next 5 years.MethodsBased on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2023, this study provides updated global, regional, and national estimates of routine childhood vaccine coverage from 1980 to 2023 for 204 countries and territories for 11 vaccine-dose combinations recommended by WHO for all children globally. Employing advanced modelling techniques, this analysis accounts for data biases and heterogeneity and integrates new methodologies to model vaccine scale-up and COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions. To contextualise historic coverage trends and gains still needed to achieve the IA2030 coverage targets, we supplement these results with several secondary analyses: (1) we assess the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on vaccine coverage; (2) we forecast coverage of select life-course vaccines up to 2030; and (3) we analyse progress needed to reduce the number of zero-dose children by half between 2023 and 2030.FindingsOverall, global coverage for the original EPI vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (first dose [DTP1] and third dose [DTP3]), measles (MCV1), polio (Pol3), and tuberculosis (BCG) nearly doubled from 1980 to 2023. However, this long-term trend masks recent challenges. Coverage gains slowed between 2010 and 2019 in many countries and territories, including declines in 21 of 36 high-income countries and territories for at least one of these vaccine doses (excluding BCG, which has been removed from routine immunisation schedules in some countries and territories). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these challenges, with global rates for these vaccines declining sharply since 2020, and still not returning to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels as of 2023. Coverage for newer vaccines developed and introduced in more recent years, such as immunisations against pneumococcal disease (PCV3) and rotavirus (complete series; RotaC) and a second dose of the measles vaccine (MCV2), saw continued increases globally during the COVID-19 pandemic due to ongoing introductions and scale-ups, but at slower rates than expected in the absence of the pandemic. Forecasts to 2030 for DTP3, PCV3, and MCV2 suggest that only DTP3 would reach the IA2030 target of 90% global coverage, and only under an optimistic scenario. The number of zero-dose children, proxied as children younger than 1 year who do not receive DTP1, decreased by 74·9% (95% uncertainty interval 72·1–77·3) globally between 1980 and 2019, with most of those declines reached during the 1980s and the 2000s. After 2019, counts of zero-dose children rose to a COVID 19-era peak of 18·6 million (17·6–20·0) in 2021. Most zero-dose children remain concentrated in conflict-affected regions and those with various constraints on resources available to put towards vaccination services, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2023, more than 50% of the 15·7 million (14·6–17·0) global zero-dose children resided in just eight countries (Nigeria, India, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, and Brazil), emphasising persistent inequities.InterpretationOur estimates of current vaccine coverage and forecasts to 2030 suggest that achieving IA2030 targets, such as halving zero-dose children compared with 2019 levels and reaching 90% global coverage for life-course vaccines DTP3, PCV3, and MCV2, will require accelerated progress. Substantial increases in coverage are necessary in many countries and territories, with those in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia facing the greatest challenges. Recent declines will need to be reversed to restore previous coverage levels in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially for DTP1, DTP3, and Pol3. These findings underscore the crucial need for targeted, equitable immunisation strategies. Strengthening primary health-care systems, addressing vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, and adapting to local contexts are essential to advancing coverage. COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts, such as WHO's Big Catch-Up, as well as efforts to bolster routine services must prioritise reaching marginalised populations and target subnational geographies to regain lost ground and achieve global immunisation goals.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067362501037
The Relation Between Aggression and Psychotic-Like Experiences in Help-Seeking Adolescents: The Role of Threat/Control-Override Symptoms
No full textPsychosis is a heterogeneous phenomenon that emerges across a severity spectrum. Attenuated psychotic symptoms, or psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), reflect potential risk factors for formal psychosis and other clinical outcomes. There has historically been a widespread misconception that individuals who experience symptoms of psychosis are dangerous and prone to aggressive behavior. However, empirical evidence reveals only a modest link between psychosis and aggression. The existing associations are sometimes linked to a set of psychotic symptoms known as threat/control-override (TCO) symptoms that are often amenable to treatment. Despite research linking TCO symptoms and aggressive behavior in formal psychosis samples, studies in populations with PLEs are lacking. In line with the TCO model, we hypothesized that a subset of PLEs representing threat perception and control would have unique positive associations on aggression in the sample. The present study examined the relation between PLEs and aggression in help-seeking adolescents (n = 129). Psychotic-like experiences were assessed by parent/caregiver report (Prime Screen-Revised-Parent/Caregiver Version), and aggression was measured using a parent-rated assessment of adolescent behavior (Behavioral Assessment System for Children, Second Edition).Results supported study hypotheses, revealing small, independent effects of threat perception and control, in addition to a significant combined effect of these variables (TCO) on aggression. Findings support the use of symptom-specific measures of PLEs, including those aligning with the TCO model, to investigate the relation between attenuated psychotic symptomatology and aggression.https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/advance-article/doi/10.1093/schbul/sbaf113/823656
Having Your Trees and Living There Too: Approaches to Permanently Affordable Housing and Urban Greening in Baltimore City
No full textMany people in cities lack access to quality green space and permanently affordable housing. These socio-spatial inequalities result from people using predatory and hyper-extractive investments in housing to accumulate wealth at the expense of others. The mainstream environmental movement touts greening urban spaces as a fix for environmental and social injustices alike. However, greening’s potential benefits fall short—or are turned into drawbacks—unless people have control over what both greening and housing development looks like in their own neighborhoods. I explore the work of two land trusts in Baltimore City, one environmental land trust focused on green space and one community land trust working towards having equally robust programs for both green space and housing. My goal is to highlight the importance of working towards both green space and affordable housing access as interconnected issues, and to contribute to scholarship encouraging environmental organizations to engage with affordable housing groups
A software for predicting Pavement Condition Index (PCI) using machine learning for practical decision-making with an exclusion approach
No full textIn Palestine and other resource-constrained settings, determining the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) requires exhaustive visual surveys of up to 19 distress types, which is a process that is both time-consuming and costly to obtain. Despite advances in PCI prediction (2023–2025), existing methods still depend on full-distress assessments, failing to reduce fieldwork burden. We present an open?source machine learning software that classifies pavement into PCI categories (Good, Satisfactory, Fair, Poor, Impassable) by systematically excluding low-utility distresses, reducing inspection effort by up to 40% while achieving an overall accuracy of 82%. The framework integrates features such as pavement age, layer thickness, right-of-way (ROW), average daily traffic (ADT), and heavy-duty vehicle percentage.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235271102500270
INVESTIGATING THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL WATER QUALITY PATTERNS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY’S WATERSHED
No full textThe University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) implemented stormwater control measures (SCMs) to mitigate stormwater quantity and quality impacts. While policies focus on controlling pollution, water quality measurements are not required to confirm downstream impacts. This work addressed the question of how UMBC influences the surrounding water quality of its local streams. Spatial and temporal patterns of nitrate-N, ammonium-N, and specific conductance were observed at 14 measurement locations, including inflows to campus, outflows from campus, and intermediate locations on campus. Although nitrate-N was not spatially variable, seasonal changes in plant uptake did influence nitrate-N. Ammonium-N was also influenced by seasonal changes in uptake and leaf litter in streams, and one site showed a potential indication of a sewage leak on campus. Specific conductance was influenced by impervious cover in the watershed and winter salt application. The patterns observed in this study can help UMBC with future stormwater management plans
Sharp Periodic Flares and Long-term Variability in the High-mass X-Ray Binary XTE J1829−098 from RXTE PCA, Swift BAT, and MAXI Observations
No full textXTE J1829−098 is a transient X-ray pulsar with a period of ∼7.8 s. It is a candidate Be star system, although the evidence for this is not yet definitive. We investigated the twenty-year-long X-ray light curve using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer Proportional Counter Array (PCA), Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Burst Alert Telescope, and the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image. We find that all three light curves are clearly modulated on the ∼244 days orbital period previously reported from PCA monitoring observations, with outbursts confined to a narrow phase range. The light curves also show that XTE J1829−098 was in an inactive state between approximately 2008 December and 2018 April, and no strong outbursts occurred. Such behavior is typical of Be X-ray binary systems, with the absence of outbursts likely related to the dissipation of the Be star's decretion disk. The mean outburst shapes can be approximated with a triangular profile and, from a joint fit of this to all three light curves, we refine the orbital period to 243.95 ± 0.04 days. The mean outburst profile does not show any asymmetry and has a total phase duration of 0.140 ± 0.007. However, the PCA light curve shows that there is considerable cycle-to-cycle variability of the individual outbursts. We compare the properties of XTE J1829−098 with other sources that show short phase-duration outbursts, in particular GS 1843−02 (2S 1845−024), which has a very similar orbital period, but longer pulse period, and whose orbit is known to be highly eccentric.We thank the referee for useful comments. C.M. acknowledges funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), PRIN 2020 (prot. 2020BRP57Z) “Gravitational and Electromagnetic-wave Sources in the Universe with current and next generation detectors (GEMS),” and the INAF Research Grant “Uncovering the optical beat of the fastest magnetised neutron stars (FANS).” This research made use of PCA scan light curves provided by C. Markwardt, Swift/BAT transient monitor results provided by the Swift/BAT team, and MAXI data provided by RIKEN, JAXA, and the MAXI team. The work was supported in part by NASA under award Nos. 80GSFC24M0006 and 80NSSC25K7121. Astrophysics research at the Naval Research Laboratory is supported by the NASA Astrophysics Explorer Program.https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad83b
The Contribution of Ephemeral Lakes to Global Dust Cycle and Direct Radiative Effect
No full textDespite their tiny size, ephemeral lakes with their dry smooth surface may play a major role in the dust life cycle at global scale. However, their impacts on Earth's climate systems, and in particular direct radiative effects have been unexplored. Our results show that ephemeral lakes contribute as much as 52% of dust emission in the Southern Hemisphere (SH), but only 10% in the Northern Hemisphere and 13% globally. Due to the action of physical processes, dust mineralogy of the lakes differs from their surroundings. With no reliable data sets, we performed a sensitivity analysis of dust absorption. With increasing absorption from lakes, lake dust's radiative cooling decreases from −0.1 to −0.03 Wm⁻², globally. These findings highlight the dominant role of ephemeral lakes in the SH dust budget and underscore the need to include them in climate models to better represent dust-radiation interactions and ocean biogeochemical feedback.This report was prepared by QianqianSong under award NA23OAR4320198from the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration, U.S.Department of Commerce. The statements,findings, conclusions, andrecommendations are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the views ofthe National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration or the U.S. Department ofCommerce. A portion of this work wassupported by the NASA GrantNNH12ZDA0060?EVI4 (Earth VentureInstrument?4) and NASA Grant 23?EMIT23?0043https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2025GL11668
Disentangling Multiple Gas Kinematic Drivers in the Perseus Galaxy Cluster
No full textGalaxy clusters, the Universe's largest halo structures, are filled with 10-100 million degree X-ray-emitting gas. Their evolution is shaped by energetic processes such as feedback from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and mergers with other cosmic structures. The imprints of these processes on gas kinematic properties remain largely unknown, restricting our understanding of gas thermodynamics and energy conversion within clusters. High-resolution spectral mapping across a broad spatial-scale range provides a promising solution to this challenge, enabled by the recent launch of the XRISM X-ray Observatory. Here, we present the kinematic measurements of the X-ray-brightest Perseus cluster with XRISM, radially covering the extent of its cool core. We find direct evidence for the presence of at least two dominant drivers of gas motions operating on distinct physical scales: a small-scale driver in the inner ~60 kpc, likely associated with the SMBH feedback; and a large-scale driver in the outer core, powered by mergers. The inner driver sustains a heating rate at least an order of magnitude higher than the outer one. This finding suggests that, during the active phase, the SMBH feedback generates turbulence, which, if fully dissipated into heat, could play a significant role in offsetting radiative cooling losses in the Perseus core. Our study underscores the necessity of kinematic mapping observations of extended sources for robust conclusions on the properties of the velocity field and their role in the assembly and evolution of massive halos. It further offers a kinematic diagnostic for theoretical models of SMBH feedback.This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP22H00158, JP22H01268, JP22K03624, JP23H04899, JP21K13963, JP24K00638, JP24K17105, JP21K13958, JP21H01095, JP23K20850, JP24H00253, JP21K03615, JP24K00677, JP20K14491, JP23H00151, JP19K21884, JP20H01947, JP20KK0071, JP23K20239, JP24K00672, JP24K17104, JP24K17093, JP20K04009, JP21H04493, JP20H01946, JP23K13154, JP19K14762, JP20H05857, and JP23K03459. Additional support came from NASA grant numbers 80NSSC23K0650, 80NSSC20K0733, 80NSSC18K0978, 80NSSC20K0883, 80NSSC20K0737, 80NSSC24K0678, 80NSSC18K1684, 80NNSC22K1922. RB, RB-M, KH, TH, ML, FM, KM, AO, and KP acknowledge support from NASA under award number 80GSFC21M0002.AB was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23H01211. EB acknowledges support from NASA grants 80NSSC24K1148 and 80NSSC24K1774. LC acknowledges support from NASA grant 80NSSC25K7064. CD acknowledges support from STFC through grant ST/T000244/1. RF was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP23K03454. LG acknowledges financial support from the Canadian Space Agency (grant 18XARMSTMA). TR thanks the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics and generous funding to B.R.M. from the Canadian Space Agency and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. YM was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP23K22548. MM acknowledges support from Yamada Science Foundation. PP acknowledges support from NASA grants 80NSSC18K0988 and 80NSSC23K1656 and NASA contract NAS8-0360. MS acknowledges the support by the RIKEN Pioneering Project Evolution of Matter in the Universe (r-EMU) and Rikkyo University Special Fund for Research (Rikkyo SFR). AT and the present research are in part supported by the Kagoshima University postdoctoral research program (KU-DREAM). YT was supported by the Strategic Research Center of Saitama University. SY acknowledges support by the RIKEN SPDR Program. IZ, AH, and CZ acknowledge partial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the Sloan Research Fellowship. IZ performed part of the work at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) supported by grant NSF PHY-2309135. JHL acknowledges the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) grant 22EXPXRISM. SU acknowledges the support from the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan (111-2112-M-001-026-MY3). CZ was supported by the GACR grant 21-13491X. TY and AT acknowledge support by NASA under award number 80GSFC24M0006. Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DEAC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the JSPS Core-to-Core Program, JPJSCCA20220002.http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.0442