PubMed · 15819902
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Aimee T Classen, J Adam Langley. 2005. Data-model integration is not magic.. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2005.01414.x
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BACKGROUND: While influenza vaccination has been widely used in developed countries to reduce mortality and morbidity in high-risk populations, the lack of regional data on the health burden of influenza and the uncertainty of the applicability of data from temperate areas have been major impediments to establishing an evidence-based policy on the wider use of influenza vaccine in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to estimate the annual excess deaths and hospitalizations related to influenza in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) for the years 1999 and 2000. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Correlation and regression models were used to estimate the excess deaths and hospitalizations related to influenza in the general population of HKSAR for the years 1999 and 2000, using routinely collected mortality and hospitalization data, and virological laboratory data collected by the HKSAR Influenza Surveillance System. RESULTS: The annual mean excess numbers of deaths related to influenza in Hong Kong were estimated to be 613 for pneumonia and influenza, and 2302 for respiratory and circulatory diseases. The mean excess numbers of hospitalizations attributable to influenza were 4051 for pneumonia and influenza, and 15,873 for respiratory and circulatory diseases. The crude influenza-related mortality and hospitalization rates in Hong Kong, a subtropical area, exceeded those documented in temperate regions. CONCLUSIONS: The finding of significant mortality and morbidity related to influenza in a subtropical area is in accordance with the results of previous studies in tropical and subtropical regions. This simple methodology can be used for the development of influenza immunization policy in many developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions. The enormous potential of influenza vaccination in saving lives and reducing suffering warrants serious consideration of the expanded use of influenza vaccine in tropical and subtropical regions.
Computer climate models are some of the most complex scientific structures ever conceived. Consisting of hundreds of thousands of equations and running on supercomputers capable of trillions of operations per second, they chart the evolution of past and future climates across thousands of years. These simulations are breathtaking in their qualitative detail and vastly ambitious in their quantitative exactitude. However, their progress has recently been challenged by the very size and complexity of the models, factors that are also paralleled in the communities of scientists that build them. This complex co-evolution of computers and scientific communities gives us insight into the promise and limits of sciences driven by exponential increases in computing power.
The MAGIC model was used to evaluate the relative sensitivity of several possible climate-induced effects on the recovery of soil and surface water from acidification. A common protocol was used at 14 intensively studied sites in Europe and eastern North America. The results show that several of the factors are of only minor importance (increase in pCO(2) in soil air and runoff, for example), several are important at only a few sites (seasalts at near-coastal sites, for example) and several are important at nearly all sites (increased concentrations of organic acids in soil solution and runoff, for example). In addition changes in forest growth and decomposition of soil organic matter are important at forested sites and sites at risk of nitrogen saturation. The trials suggest that in future modelling of recovery from acidification should take into account possible concurrent climate changes and focus specially on the climate-induced changes in organic acids and nitrogen retention.