• Aurora Universities Network

VK: T20702 Traditionally, people have inhabited places with ready access to fresh water. Today, over 50% of the global population lives in urban areas, and water can be directed via tens of kilometres of pipelines. Still, however, a large part of the world's population is directly dependent on access to natural freshwater sources. So how are inhabited places related to the location of freshwater bodies today? We present a high-resolution global analysis of how close present-day populations live to surface freshwater. We aim to increase the understanding of the relationship between inhabited places, distance to surface freshwater bodies, and climatic characteristics in different climate zones and administrative regions. Our results show that over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 3 km to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 10 km away. There are, however, remarkable differences between administrative regions and climatic zones. Populations in Australia, Asia, and Europe live closest to water. Although populations in arid zones live furthest away from freshwater bodies in absolute terms, relatively speaking they live closest to water considering the limited number of freshwater bodies in those areas. Population distributions in arid zones show statistically significant relationships with a combination of climatic factors and distance to water, whilst in other zones there is no statistically significant relationship with distance to water. Global studies on development and climate adaptation can benefit from an improved understanding of these relationships between human populations and the distance to fresh water. Peer reviewed

The orthorhombically distorted perovskite NaMnF$_{3}$ has been predicted to become ferroelectric if an $a=c$ distortion of the bulk $Pnma$ structure is imposed. In order to test this prediction, NaMnF$_{3}$ thin films were grown on SrTiO$_{3}$ (001) single crystal substrates via molecular beam epitaxy. The best films were smooth and single phase with four different twin domains. In-plane magnetization measurements revealed the presence of antiferromagnetic ordering with weak ferromagnetism below the N\'eel temperature $T_N=66$ K. For the dielectric studies, NaMnF$_{3}$ films were grown on a 30 nm SrRuO$_{3}$ (001) layer used as a bottom electrode grown via pulsed laser deposition. The complex permittivity as a function of frequency indicated a strong Debye-like relaxation contribution characterized by a distribution of relaxation times. A power-law divergence of the characteristic relaxation time revealed an order-disorder phase transition at 8 K. The slow relaxation dynamics indicated the formation of super-dipoles (superparaelectric moments) that extend over several unit cells, similar to polar nanoregions of relaxor ferroelectrics. Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

AbstractBOLD fMRI is widely applied in human neuroscience but is limited in its spatial specificity due to a cortical‐depth‐dependent venous bias. This reduces its localization specificity with respect to neuronal responses, a disadvantage for neuroscientific research. Here, we modified a submillimeter BOLD protocol to selectively reduce venous and tissue signal and increase cerebral blood volume weighting through a pulsed saturation scheme (dubbed Arterial Blood Contrast) at 7 T. Adding Arterial Blood Contrast on top of the existing BOLD contrast modulated the intracortical contrast. Isolating the Arterial Blood Contrast showed a response free of pial‐surface bias. The results suggest that Arterial Blood Contrast can modulate the typical fMRI spatial specificity, with important applications in in‐vivo neuroscience.

Frontiers in immunology 12, 701275 (2021). doi:10.3389/fimmu.2021.701275 Published by Frontiers Media, Lausanne