Introduction: Governing Emergencies: Beyond Exceptionality

What characterizes emergency today is the proliferation of the term. Any event or situation supposedly has the potential to become an emergency. Emergencies may happen anywhere and at any time. They are not contained within one functional sector or one domain of life. The substantive focus of the articles collected in this special issue reflects this proliferation: they explore ways of governing in, by and through emergencies across different types of emergencies and different domains of life. In response to this proliferation, the issue opens up critical work on the politics of emergency beyond the ‘state of exception’ as dominant paradigm. Emergency is treated as a problem for government that calls for the invention of new techniques or the redeployment of existing techniques. Through this shift in emphasis, the articles in this issue disclose relations between modalities of power and emergency life that differ from the ‘lightening flash’ of a sovereign decision on the exception taken from outside of life, or the capacity to ‘mould’ an always-already emergent life from within life

RISK-BASED REPLACEMENT STRATEGIES FOR REDUNDANT DETERIORATING REINFORCED CONCRETE PIPE NETWORKS

This paper gives an example of how predictive models of the deterioration of reinforced concrete pipes and the consequences of failure can be used to develop risk-based replacement strategies for redundant reinforced concrete pipe networks. It also shows how an accurate deterioration prediction can lead to a reduction of agency costs, and illustrates the limitation of the incremental intervention step algorithm. The main conclusion is that the use of predictive models, such as those developed by Oxand S.A., in the determination of replacement strategies for redundant reinforced concrete pipe networks can lead to a significant reduction in overall costs for the owner of the structure

RISK-BASED REPLACEMENT STRATEGIES FOR DETERIORATING REINFORCED CONCRETE PIPES

Water distribution networks comprised of underground reinforced concrete pipes deteriorate with time due to environmental conditions, such as chloride-induced corrosion and differential soil movements [1]. If the pipes in these networks are not periodically replaced, they will eventually fail. Strategies for replacement for these pipes depend on 1) the risks associated with failure of a water distribution network, and 2) the costs associated with replacing the pipes, including the cost of removing existing pipes, the cost of the new pipes and the cost of service interruption if there is any temporary closure [2]. This paper gives an example of how predictive models of the deterioration of reinforced concrete pipes and the consequences of failure can be used to develop risk-based replacement strategies for underground reinforced concrete pipe networks. Replacement strategies are determined for a series network consisting of 1500 underground reinforced concrete pipes. The variation in cumulative overall costs of choosing the replacement times for each pipe group is shown, with and without discount rate. This paper also shows the importance of correctly modelling the deterioration speed by analysing the example series network for three different deterioration speeds. The possible cost savings by accurately estimating the deterioration speed are shown. The main conclusion is that the use of accurate predictive models in the determination of replacement strategies for underground reinforced concrete pipe networks, the approach used by Oxand S.A, can result in significant savings in cumulative overall costs

An Integrated Decision-Support Information System on the Impact of Extreme Natural Hazards on Critical Infrastructure

In this paper, we introduce an Integrated Decision-Support Tool (IDST v2.0) which was developed as part of the INFRARISK project (https://www.infrarisk-fp7.eu/). The IDST is an online tool which demonstrates the implementation of a risk-based stress testing methodology for analyzing the potential impact of natural hazards on transport infrastructure networks. The IDST is enabled with a set of software workflow processes that allow the definition of multiple cascading natural hazards, geospatial coverage and impact on important large infrastructure, including those which are critical to transport networks in Europe. Stress tests on these infrastructure are consequently performed together with the automated generation of useful case study reports for practitioners. An exemplar stress test study using the IDST is provided in this paper. In this study, risks and consequences of an earthquake-triggered landslide scenario in Northern Italy is described. Further, it provides a step-by-step account of the developed stress testing overarching methodology which is applied to the impact on a road network of the region of interest

Isolation of peptides from phage-displayed random peptide libraries that interact with the talin-binding domain of vinculin

Peptides isolated from combinatorial libraries typically interact with, and thus help to characterize, biologically relevant binding domains of target proteins. To characterize the binding domains of the focal adhesion protein vinculin, vinculin-binding peptides were isolated from two phage-displayed random peptide libraries. Altogether, five non-similar vinculin-binding peptides were identified. Despite the lack of obvious sequence similarity between the peptides, binding and competition studies indicated that all five interact with the talin-binding domain of vinculin and do not disrupt the binding of alpha-actinin or paxillin to vinculin. The identified peptides and talin bind to vinculin in a comparable manner; both bind to immobilized vinculin, but neither binds to soluble vinculin unless the C-terminus of vinculin has been deleted. An analysis of amino acid variants of one of the peptides has revealed three non-contiguous motifs that also occur in the region of talin previously demonstrated to bind vinculin. Amino acid substitutions within a 127-residue segment of talin capable of binding vinculin confirmed the importance of two of the motifs and suggest that residues critical for binding are within a 16-residue region. This study demonstrates that the vinculin-binding peptides interact with vinculin in a biologically relevant manner and represent an excellent tool for further study of the biochemistry of vinculin

Bringing CASE in from the cold: the teaching and learning of thinking

Thinking Science is a two-year program of professional development for teachers and thinking lessons for students in junior high school science classes. This paper presents research on the effects of Thinking Science on students’ levels of cognition in Australia. The research is timely with a general capability focused on critical thinking in the newly implemented F-10 curriculum in Australia. The design of the research was a quasi-experiment with pre and post-intervention cognitive tests conducted with participating students (n = 655) from nine cohorts in seven high schools. Findings showed significant cognitive gains compared with an age matched control group over the length of the program. Noteworthy, is a correlation between baseline cognitive score and school Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA). We argue that the teaching of thinking be brought into the mainstream arena of educational discourse and the principles from evidence-based programs such as Thinking Science be universally adopted

Twentieth century delta13C variability in surface water dissolved inorganic carbon recorded by coralline algae in the northern North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea

The oxygen isotopic composition and Mg/Ca ratios in the skeletons of long-lived coralline algae record ambient seawater temperature over time. Similarly, the carbon isotopic composition in the skeletons record δ13C values of ambient seawater dissolved inorganic carbon. Here, we measured δ13C in the coralline alga Clathromorphum nereostratum to test the feasibility of reconstructing the intrusion of anthropogenic CO2 into the northern North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. The δ13C was measured in the high Mg-calcite skeleton of three C. nereostratum specimens from two islands 500 km apart in the Aleutian archipelago. In the records spanning 1887 to 2003, the average decadal rate of decline in δ13C values increased from 0.03‰ yr−1 in the 1960s to 0.095‰ yr−1 in the 1990s, which was higher than expected due to solely the δ13C-Suess effect. Deeper water in this region exhibits higher concentrations of CO2 and low δ13C values. Transport of deeper water into surface water (i.e., upwelling) increases when the Aleutian Low is intensified. We hypothesized that the acceleration of the δ13C decline may result from increased upwelling from the 1960s to 1990s, which in turn was driven by increased intensity of the Aleutian Low. Detrended δ13C records also varied on 4–7 year and bidecadal timescales supporting an atmospheric teleconnection of tropical climate patterns to the northern North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea manifested as changes in upwelling

Coralline algal Barium as indicator for 20th century northwestern North Atlantic surface ocean freshwater variability

During the past decades climate and freshwater dynamics in the northwestern North Atlantic have undergone major changes. Large-scale freshening episodes, related to polar freshwater pulses, have had a strong influence on ocean variability in this climatically important region. However, little is known about variability before 1950, mainly due to the lack of long-term high-resolution marine proxy archives. Here we present the first multidecadal-length records of annually resolved Ba/Ca variations from Northwest Atlantic coralline algae. We observe positive relationships between algal Ba/Ca ratios from two Newfoundland sites and salinity observations back to 1950. Both records capture episodical multi-year freshening events during the 20th century. Variability in algal Ba/Ca is sensitive to freshwater-induced changes in upper ocean stratification, which affect the transport of cold, Ba-enriched deep waters onto the shelf (highly stratified equals less Ba/Ca). Algal Ba/Ca ratios therefore may serve as a new resource for reconstructing past surface ocean freshwater changes