Coastal greening of grey infrastructure: an update on the state-of-the-art

\ua9 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited: All rights reserved.In the marine environment, greening of grey infrastructure (GGI) is a rapidly growing field that attempts to encourage native marine life to colonize marine artificial structures to enhance biodiversity, thereby promoting ecosystem functioning and hence service provision. By designing multifunctional sea defences, breakwaters, port complexes and off-shore renewable energy installations, these structures can yield myriad environmental benefits, in particular, addressing UN SDG 14: Life below water. Whilst GGI has shown great promise and there is a growing evidence base, there remain many criticisms and knowledge gaps, and some feel that there is scope for GGI to be abused by developers to facilitate harmful development. Given the surge of research in this field in recent years, it is timely to review the literature to provide an update update on the state-of-the-art of the field in relation to the many criticisms and identify remaining knowledge gaps. Despite the rapid and significant advances made in this field, there is currently a lack of science and practice outside of academic sectors in the developed world, and there is a collective need for schemes that encourage intersectoral and transsectoral research, knowledge exchange, and capacity building to optimize GGI in the pursuit of contributing to sustainable development

High resolution sonars set to revolutionise bridge scour inspections.

As rainfall intensities increase so does the risk of scour damage to river crossings. Scour inspections are traditionally carried out by divers, but the water around bridge piers is often turbulent and murky such that little can be seen. This paper reports on a trial inspection of the underwater foundations of the 1889 River Hamble railway viaduct in Hampshire, UK using state-of-the-art high-resolution sonar and marine laser technologies. The trial was so successful it could transform the way such inspections are carried out in future. Three different sonar systems and a laser scanner produced a holistic assessment of the viaduct structure above and below the waterline. A three-dimensional record of all scour erosion features was digitally mapped along with the condition of the substructure. Significant scour was identified,contradictory to previous diver-based assessments. As discussed in the paper, sonar technologies can be rapidly deployed for emergency inspections as well as be immersed longer term for routine or periodic assessments

Silver(I)-Catalyzed Dearomatization of Alkyne-Tethered Indoles:Divergent Synthesis of Spirocyclic Indolenines and Carbazoles

A high-yielding, divergent approach to generate either spirocyclic indolenines or carbazoles from a common indole-tethered propargyl alcohol precursor is described, with mechanistic insight provided. Either product can be obtained upon treatment with different Ag­(I) catalysts at rt. An unexpected hydration reaction to afford (±)-actinopolymorphol B is also reported