Enabling more dying people to remain at home.

When it comes to dying there is no place like home. Since earliest times most cultures have accepted that dying people should remain at home. But this was never possible for all. Some were destined to die in accidents, on battlefields, by execution, and from catastrophic illness, maybe many miles away. Nevertheless, with few exceptions people could expect to die in their own beds and in the bosom of their families. In Europe from the Middle Ages until a century ago there was a simplicity about dying. Aware that the end was approaching, people would take to their sickbeds and preside over the ritual. The family, including children, friends, and neighbours would congregate. The ceremony was public and doctors often complained about overcrowding. Death was not regarded as a frightening event and was accepted as an inevitable and integral part of life. Dramatic changes in attitudes to death have taken place since the mid-nineteenth century. The natural acceptance of a biological reality has been lost and people are now unable to come to terms with their own mortality. One consequence is that death has become institutionalised. This paper seeks to answer five questions. These refer to where people die, where they would choose to die, where they spend their last year of life, the reasons for admission for terminal care, and whether more dying people could remain at home. Discussion is restricted to adults in the United Kingdom. References are mostly from the past decade.     

Increasing aridity causes larger and more severe forest fires across Europe

Area burned has decreased across Europe in recent decades. This trend may, however, reverse under ongoing climate change, particularly in areas not limited by fuel availability (i.e. temperate and boreal forests). Investigating a novel remote sensing dataset of 64,448 fire events that occurred across Europe between 1986 and 2020, we find a power-law relationship between maximum fire size and area burned, indicating that large fires contribute disproportionally to fire activity in Europe. We further show a robust positive correlation between summer vapor pressure deficit and both maximum fire size (R² = .19) and maximum burn severity (R² = .12). Europe's fire regimes are thus highly sensitive to changes in future climate, with the probability for extreme fires more than doubling by the end of the century. Our results suggest that climate change will challenge current fire management approaches and could undermine the ability of Europe's forests to provide ecosystem services to society.     

Human genomes as email attachments

SUMMARY: The amount of genomic sequence data being generated and made available through public databases continues to increase at an ever-expanding rate. Downloading, copying, sharing and manipulating these large datasets are becoming difficult and time consuming for researchers. We need to consider using advanced compression techniques as part of a standard data format for genomic data. The inherent structure of genome data allows for more efficient lossless compression than can be obtained through the use of generic compression programs. We apply a series of techniques to James Watson's genome that in combination reduce it to a mere 4MB, small enough to be sent as an email attachment.     

Chloroquine paradox may cause more damage than help fight COVID-19

Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the most recent health care crisis without specific prophylactic or therapeutic drugs. Antimalarial drug chloroquine (CHL) and its safer derivative hydroxychloroquine (HCHL) have been proposed to be repurposed to treat SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19. CHL/HCHL have anti-inflammatory activity and are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and lupus. Although, CHL/HCHL have an anti-viral activity against several viruses in cell-cultures, the anti-viral activity in-vivo is questionable. Repurposing of CHL/HCHL to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection is appealing. However, there is empirical evidence from animal studies with other viruses suggesting that CHL/HCHL may have an untoward paradoxical effect. One thus cannot exclude the possibility that CHL may increase the severity of the disease and prove deleterious both for the patients and public health efforts to contain the highly contagious and explosive spread of SARS-CoV-2.