University of Basel

About: University of Basel is a education organization based out in Basel, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Gene. The organization has 25084 authors who have published 52975 publications receiving 2388002 citations. The organization is also known as: Universität Basel & Basel University.

Transient neurologic symptoms after spinal anesthesia.

Abstract: We recently reported several cases consistent with transient radicular irritation after spinal anesthesia with hyperbaric 5% lidocaine. The present prospective, blind, nonrandomized study was performed to determine the incidence of these transient neurologic symptoms and to identify factors that might be associated with their occurrence. We studied 270 patients scheduled for gynecologic or obstetric procedures under spinal anesthesia. For spinal anesthesia, either 5% lidocaine in 7.5% glucose or 0.5% bupivacaine in 8.5% glucose was used. Patients were evaluated on postoperative day 3 by a quality assurance nurse who was unaware of the drug given or details of the anesthetic technique. Transient neurologic symptoms were observed in 37% of patients receiving 5% lidocaine, whereas only one patient receiving 0.5% bupivacaine had transient hypesthesia of the lateral aspect of the right foot. These results suggest that symptoms were the result of a specific drug effect. However, because of the limitations of the study one cannot conclude that lidocaine per se was the cause.

PATUS: A Code Generation and Autotuning Framework for Parallel Iterative Stencil Computations on Modern Microarchitectures

Abstract: Stencil calculations comprise an important class of kernels in many scientific computing applications ranging from simple PDE solvers to constituent kernels in multigrid methods as well as image processing applications. In such types of solvers, stencil kernels are often the dominant part of the computation, and an efficient parallel implementation of the kernel is therefore crucial in order to reduce the time to solution. However, in the current complex hardware micro architectures, meticulous architecture-specific tuning is required to elicit the machine's full compute power. We present a code generation and auto-tuning framework \textsc{Patus} for stencil computations targeted at multi- and many core processors, such as multicore CPUs and graphics processing units, which makes it possible to generate compute kernels from a specification of the stencil operation and a parallelization and optimization strategy, and leverages the auto tuning methodology to optimize strategy-dependent parameters for the given hardware architecture.

Global rainfall erosivity assessment based on high-temporal resolution rainfall records

Abstract: The exposure of the Earth’s surface to the energetic input of rainfall is one of the key factors controlling water erosion. While water erosion is identified as the most serious cause of soil degradation globally, global patterns of rainfall erosivity remain poorly quantified and estimates have large uncertainties. This hampers the implementation of effective soil degradation mitigation and restoration strategies. Quantifying rainfall erosivity is challenging as it requires high temporal resolution(<30 min) and high fidelity rainfall recordings. We present the results of an extensive global data collection effort whereby we estimated rainfall erosivity for 3,625 stations covering 63 countries. This first ever Global Rainfall Erosivity Database was used to develop a global erosivity map at 30 arc-seconds(~1 km) based on a Gaussian Process Regression(GPR). Globally, the mean rainfall erosivity was estimated to be 2,190 MJ mm ha−1 h−1 yr−1, with the highest values in South America and the Caribbean countries, Central east Africa and South east Asia. The lowest values are mainly found in Canada, the Russian Federation, Northern Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. The tropical climate zone has the highest mean rainfall erosivity followed by the temperate whereas the lowest mean was estimated in the cold climate zone.