PARTICIPATORY MODELLING TO SUPPORT DECISION MAKING IN WATER MANAGEMENT. A CASE STUDY IN THE MIDDLE GUADIANA BASIN, SPAIN.

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Increased fluid flow activity in shallow sediments at the 3 km Long Hugin Fracture in the central North Sea

The North Sea hosts a wide variety of seafloor seeps that may be important for transfer of chemical species, such as methane, from the Earth's interior to its exterior. Here we provide geochemical and geophysical evidence for fluid flow within shallow sediments at the recently discovered, 3-km long Hugin Fracture in the Central North Sea. Although venting of gas bubbles was not observed, concentrations of dissolved methane were significantly elevated (up to six-times background values) in the water column at various locations above the fracture, and microbial mats that form in the presence of methane were observed at the seafloor. Seismic amplitude anomalies revealed a bright spot at a fault bend that may be the source of the water column methane. Sediment porewaters recovered in close proximity to the Hugin Fracture indicate the presence of fluids from two different shallow (<500m) sources: (i) a reduced fluid characterized by elevated methane concentrations and/or high levels of dissolved sulfide (up to 6 mmol L−1), and (ii) a low-chlorinity fluid (Cl ∼305 mmol L−1) that has low levels of dissolved methane and/or sulfide. The area of the seafloor affected by the presence of methane-enriched fluids is similar to the footprint of seepage from other morphological features in the North Sea

Competition Policy in Switzerland

This paper provides a critical review of competition policy in Switzerland. We analyse the legal statute, the institutional arrangements for its implementation and the case law since 1985.competition policy, Switzerland; political economy

HUGIn: Hi-C Unifying Genomic Interrogator

Motivation: High throughput chromatin conformation capture (3C) technologies, such as Hi-C and ChIA-PET, have the potential to elucidate the functional roles of non-coding variants. However, most of published genome-wide unbiased chromatin organization studies have used cultured cell lines, limiting their generalizability. Results: We developed a web browser, HUGIn, to visualize Hi-C data generated from 21 human primary tissues and cell lines. HUGIn enables assessment of chromatin contacts both constitutive across and specific to tissue(s) and/or cell line(s) at any genomic loci, including GWAS SNPs, eQTLs and cis-regulatory elements, facilitating the understanding of both GWAS and eQTL results and functional genomics data. Availability and implementation: HUGIn is available at http://yunliweb.its.unc.edu/HUGIn. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Participatory modelling to support decision making in water management. A case study in the middle Guadiana basin, Spain.

The objective of this research was the implementation of a participatory process for the development of a tool to support decision making in water management. The process carried out aims at attaining an improved understanding of the water system and an encouragement of the exchange of knowledge and views between stakeholders to build a shared vision of the system. In addition, the process intends to identify impacts of possible solutions to given problems, which will help to take decisions

Ravens ( Corvus corax) are indifferent to the gains of conspecific recipients or human partners in experimental tasks

Although cooperative behaviours are common in animals, the cognitive processes underpinning such behaviours are very likely to differ between species. In humans, other-regarding preferences have been proposed to sustain long-term cooperation between individuals. The extent to which such psychological capacities exist in other animals is still under investigation. Five hand-reared ravens were first tested in an experiment where they could provide food to a conspecific at no cost to themselves. We offered them two behavioural options that provided identical amounts of food to the actor and where one of the two options additionally delivered a reward to a recipient. Subsequently, we made the ravens play a no-cost cooperation game with an experimenter. The experimenter had the same options as the animals and matched the ravens' choices, making the prosocial choice the more profitable option. In both conditions, ravens were indifferent to the effects of their choices and hence failed to help conspecifics and to cooperate with the experimenter. While our negative results should be interpreted with care, overall, our findings suggest that the ravens had no understanding of the consequences of their actions for a potential recipient. This study adds to several others that have used a similar set-up and have reported negative results on other-regarding preferences in animal

A methodology for developing local smart diagnostic models using expert knowledge

© 2015 IEEE. This paper describes an innovative modular component-based modelling approach for diagnostics and condition-monitoring of manufacturing equipment. The approach is based on the use of object-oriented Bayesian networks, which supports a natural decomposition of a large and complex system into a set of less complex components. The methodology consists of six steps supporting the development process: Begin, Design, Implement, Test, Analyse, and Deploy. The process is iterative and the steps should be repeated until a satisfactory model has been achieved. The paper describes the details of the methodology as well as illustrates the use of the component-based modelling approach on a linear axis used in manufacturing. This application demonstrates the power and flexibility of the approach for diagnostics and condition-monitoring and shows a significant potential of the approach for modular component-based modelling in manufacturing and other domains