Understanding and valuing the economic, social and environmental components of System Harmonisation

The aim of the Products and Markets component of the System Harmonisation project is to value the economic and environmental outcomes from an irrigation scheme that is operated by and in the interests of society. In this conceptual note the thinking underlying this component of the project are outlined. The aim of this note is to provide elements for debated. The nature and requirements of System Harmonisation demands that a 'systems approach' be taken throughout the project. What becomes important within this approach is how the different elements within a system are isolated and yet linked with one another. In many instances the extent and nature of irrigation systems are defined by the relevant Regional Irrigation Business Partnership (RIBP) under investigation. It is recognised that society has multiple uses for the water (agriculture, industry, households, recreation and the environment) as well as non-use (intrinsic) values for which it derives benefits from and incurs costs in distributing the water in any select manner. Further, it is assumed that the irrigation schemes are run for the benefit of society as a whole. Thus, there is a necessity to evaluate both the private and public costs and benefits associated with irrigation schemes. In order to identify what society values from an irrigation scheme, it is argued that a social matrix approach is needed. This analysis allows for a clustering of the issues people feel is important to them regarding the use of an irrigation scheme. Such an analysis will allow identification of the perceived most and least beneficial activities connected to water allocation, economic modelling of the most productive activities, evaluation of externalities and Cost Benefit Analysis. The net economic benefits that arise from irrigation need to be evaluated. The sectors where benefits are derived can be segregated into agriculture, households, the environment, recreation and industrial uses. The largest of these, by pure scale of the use of water, is agriculture. A gross margins approach is used to evaluate the returns for water in the agricultural sector. In the industrial and household sectors, a simple evaluation approach is used where the quantity of water demanded is multiplied by the price paid in each sector. Non-market valuation techniques are used to evaluate the recreational and environmental uses of water. The difficulty that arises in this analysis is how to evaluate the performance of irrigation schemes, where the outcomes are multifaceted. A 'meta' model approach is suggested in which the different elements from the project are brought together and assessed using a technique derived from the theory surrounding production possibility frontiers. This technique can be used to hypothesise a value for the ecosystem services derived from an irrigation scheme. The performance of an irrigation scheme is evaluated in terms of the suggestions raised to change it. Cost Effective Analysis is to be utilised to evaluate this performance. Then two issues need to be addressed. First, it is necessary to converse with those from other components, particularly those involved in the hydrological programs, to determine the nature of the schemes to be investigated. Second, it is necessary to implement the approach in each of the RIBPs. This work needs to commence with the evaluation of the social values in each region

Non-pathogenic Escherichia coli biofilms: effects of growth conditions and surface properties on structure and curli gene expression

Biofilm formation is a harmful phenomenon in many areas, such as in industry and clinically, but offers advantages in the field of biocatalysis for the generation of robust biocatalytic platforms. In this work, we optimised growth conditions for the production of Escherichia coli biofilms by three strains (PHL644, a K-12 derivative with enhanced expression of the adhesin curli; the commercially-used strain BL21; and the probiotic Nissle 1917) on a variety of surfaces (plastics, stainless steel and PTFE). E. coli PHL644 and PTFE were chosen as optimal strain and substratum, respectively, and conditions (including medium, temperature, and glucose concentration) for biofilm growth were determined. Finally, the impact of these growth conditions on expression of the curli genes was determined using flow cytometry for planktonic and sedimented cells. We reveal new insights into the formation of biofilms and expression of curli in E. coli K-12 in response to environmental conditions

Three New Conrad Letters, 1899, 1910 and 1913

First publication of three new letters by Joseph Conra

SONAR: Automatic detection of cyber security events over the twitter stream

© 2017 ACM. Everyday, security- experts face a grim ing number of security events that affecting people well-being, their information systems and sometimes the critical infrastructure. The sooner they can detect and understand these threats, the more they can mitigate and forensically investigate them Therefore, they need to have a situation awareness of the existing security events and their possible effects. However, given the large number of events, it can be difficult for security analysts and researchers to handle this flow of information in an adequate manner and answer the following questions in near- real time: what are the current security events? How long do they last? In this paper, we will try to answer these issues by leveraging social networks that contain a massive amount of valuable information on many topics. I lowever. because of the very- high volume, extracting meaningful information can be challenging. For this reason, we propose SONAR: An automatic, self-learned framework that can detect geolocate and categorize cyber security events in near-real time over the Twitter stream. SONAR is based on a taxonomy- of cyber security events and a set of seed keywords describing type of events that we want to follow in order to start detecting events. Using these seed keywords, it automatically discovers new relevant keywords such as malware names to enhance the range of detection while staying in the same domain. Using a custom taxonomy describing all type of cyber threats, we demonstrate the capabilities of SONAR on a dataset of approximately 47.8 million tweets related to cyber security in the last 9 months. SONAR could efficiently and effectively detect, categorize and monitor cyber security related events before getting on the security news, and it could automatically discover new security terminologies with their event. Additionally. SONAR is highly scalable and customizable by design; therefore we could adapt SONAR framework for virtually any type of events that experts are interested in

Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment

Presented at Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment: SCADA and technology: tools to improve production: a USCID water management conference held on September 28 - October 1, 2010 in Fort Collins, Colorado.Includes bibliographical references.Accurate estimates of spatially distributed evapotranspiration (ET) using remote sensing inputs could help improve crop water management, the assessment of regional drought conditions, irrigation efficiency, ground water depletion, and the verification of the use of water rights over large irrigated areas. In this study, ET was mapped using surface reflectance and radiometric temperature images from the Landsat 5 satellite in a surface energy budget algorithm driven by a surface aerodynamic temperature (SAT_ET) model. The SAT_ET model was developed using surface temperature, horizontal wind speed, air temperature and crop biophysical characteristic measured over an irrigated alfalfa field in Southeastern Colorado. Estimates of the remote sensing-based ET for a 4.0 hectare alfalfa field and a 3.5 hectare oats field, during the 2009 cropping season, were evaluated using two monolithic weighing lysimeters located at the Colorado State University Arkansas Valley Research Center (AVRC) in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Although the overall model performance was encouraging, results indicated that the SAT_ET model performed well under dry atmospheric and soil conditions and less accurately under high air relative humidity and soil water content conditions. These findings are evidence that SAT_ET needs to be further developed to perform better under a range of environmental and atmospheric conditions

Does stakeholder involvement really benefit biodiversity conservation?

The establishment of protected areas, such as Natura 2000, is a common approach to curbing biodiversity loss. But many of these areas are owned or managed by private actors. Policies indicate that their involvement should be encouraged to ensure long term success. However, to date there have been no systematic evaluations of whether local actor involvement in the management of protected areas does in fact contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, which is the expressed policy goal. Research incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data was carried out in three case studies in Scotland where local actor input was required in the development and/or implementation of Natura 2000 management plans. No relationship was found between the characteristics of the process of stakeholder involvement and stakeholders’ perceptions of future biodiversity outcomes. Social outcomes of increased stakeholder involvement, such as increased trust, did however increase the perceived likelihood of positive future biodiversity outcomes. The findings indicate that efforts aimed at increasing stakeholder involvement in the management of protected areas need to consider making processes more independent, and acknowledge and address underlying biodiversity conflicts. The findings also emphasise the need to evaluate multi-level conservation efforts in terms of processes, social outcomes and biodiversity outcomes

The role of trust in the resolution of conservation conflicts

Conflicts between biodiversity conservation and other human activities are intensifying as a result of growing pressure on natural resources and concomitant demands by some for greater conservation. Approaches to reducing conflicts are increasingly focusing on engaging stakeholders in processes that are perceived as fair, i.e. independent and where stakeholders have influence, and which in turn can generate trust between stakeholders. Hitherto, there has been limited empirical research supporting the claim that conservation conflicts can be reduced by building trust through fair participation. Using quantitative and qualitative empirical data from three case studies, we analysed whether fair participation processes were directly related to conflict resolution and if this relationship was mediated by trust. Our research provided empirical quantitative evidence that increased trust through fair processes makes conflict resolution more likely. The qualitative analysis revealed caveats to this finding, including the different understandings of the definition of conflict by stakeholders, the complex nature of trust in conservation conflicts where most stakeholders have high levels of ecological knowledge, and the atypical nature (i.e. presence of a local champion) of one of the case studies. Building and maintaining trust with landowners and managers may be central to conserving biodiversity. Such trust-building requires effort and resources, opportunities for appropriate dialogue between stakeholders and a willingness to share power in terms of knowledge and policy implementation, especially when local stakeholders are dependent on and knowledgeable about natural resources

Trait evolution, resource specialization and vulnerability to plant extinctions among Antillean hummingbirds

Species traits are thought to predict feeding specialization and the vulnerability of a species to extinctions of interaction partners, but the context in which a species evolved and currently inhabits may also matter. Notably, the predictive power of traits may require that traits evolved to fit interaction partners. Furthermore, local abiotic and biotic conditions may be important. On islands, for instance, specialized and vulnerable species are predicted to be found mainly in mountains, whereas species in lowlands should be generalized and less vulnerable. We evaluated these predictions for hummingbirds and their nectar-food plants on Antillean islands. Our results suggest that the rates of hummingbird trait divergence were higher among ancestral mainland forms before the colonization of the Antilles. In correspondence with the limited trait evolution that occurred within the Antilles, local abiotic and biotic conditions—not species traits—correlate with hummingbird resource specialization and the vulnerability of hummingbirds to extinctions of their floral resources. Specifically, hummingbirds were more specialized and vulnerable in conditions with high topographical complexity, high rainfall, low temperatures and high floral resource richness, which characterize the Antillean Mountains. These findings show that resource specialization and species vulnerability to extinctions of interaction partners are highly context-dependent.B.D., J.D.K., A.C.B., A.M.M.G. and C.R. thank the Danish National Research Foundation for its support of the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (grant no. DNRF96). P.K.M. thanks the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for the postdoctoral grant (grant no. 2015/21457-4). B.I.S. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council as part of the Cambridge Earth System Science NERC DTP (NE/L002507/1)

Challenges in quantifying changes in the global water cycle

Human influences have likely already impacted the large-scale water cycle but natural variability and observational uncertainty are substantial. It is essential to maintain and improve observational capabilities to better characterize changes. Understanding observed changes to the global water cycle is key to predicting future climate changes and their impacts. While many datasets document crucial variables such as precipitation, ocean salinity, runoff, and humidity, most are uncertain for determining long-term changes. In situ networks provide long time-series over land but are sparse in many regions, particularly the tropics. Satellite and reanalysis datasets provide global coverage, but their long-term stability is lacking. However, comparisons of changes among related variables can give insights into the robustness of observed changes. For example, ocean salinity, interpreted with an understanding of ocean processes, can help cross-validate precipitation. Observational evidence for human influences on the water cycle is emerging, but uncertainties resulting from internal variability and observational errors are too large to determine whether the observed and simulated changes are consistent. Improvements to the in situ and satellite observing networks that monitor the changing water cycle are required, yet continued data coverage is threatened by funding reductions. Uncertainty both in the role of anthropogenic aerosols, and due to large climate variability presently limits confidence in attribution of observed changes