Less meat initiatives at Ghent University : assessing the support among students and how to increase it

In this study, we conducted a survey among Business Administration students at Ghent University to assess their support for six less meat initiatives (LMIs) to be implemented in student restaurants. We examined associations between the support and variables related to meat curtailment and additionally examined the effect of providing information about the climate impact of meat on the support for the LMIs. We find that the support is rather limited among the students we surveyed. Students have different appraisals of the different LMIs, which may be due to differences in intervention strength and types of meat curtailment. We found that higher environmental concern is associated with a higher support for all LMIs. Female students and students with lower meat consumption levels indicate a higher support for four of six LMIs. Simply providing information about the climate impact of meat had no remarkable effect on the support. More integrated approaches are recommended to inform students

Arabidopsis leaf mutants reveal conserved and unique proteins involved in light and auxin signaling

Growth and development in plants is steered by the meristems which are established on both poles of the embryo and become active after germination. The activity of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) leads to the formation of lateral organs such as leaves which are responsible for photosynthesis. At flowering time the SAM is transformed to the inflorescence meristem which produces flowers as lateral organs. The root apical meristem is responsible for the growth of the primary root and is important in water- and mineral-uptake. Within the research group “Chromatin and Growth Control” several genes are being cloned of which the mutant phenotype shows a defect in leaf growth. This way the genes coding for components of the Elongator complex were identified. In yeast Elongator was defined as a histone acetyltransferase (HAT) complex associated with RNA polymerase II to facilitate transcription elongation. In this thesis the loci of two other leaf mutants ang3 and ron3 belonging to the angusta and rotunda class respectively were cloned. By transcript profiling of the leaf mutants using micro-array data we try to pinpoint in which biological process the gene is involved. Localization studies and tandem affinity purification of the respective protein helps to identify which molecular pathways are likely to be affected. With detailed phenotypical analysis of the mutants we are often able to link the affected processes to observed phenotypes. Depending on the obtained results we perform specific experiments (ChIP, hormone measurements,…) to verify the true function of the protein. This work aimed at investigating the role of the Elongator complex in plants and several objectives were put forward 1. To prove the role of Elongator in transcription 2. To identify target genes of Elongator using chromatin-immuno-precipitation Besides the functional characterization of the Elongator complex, two other leaf mutants ang3 and ron3 belonging to the angusta and rotunda class respectively were cloned and functionally characterized. The genes were cloned by fine-mapping combined with sequence analysis of candidate genes in the genetic interval around the locus of interest. Molecular analysis of the genes was combined with morphological and cellular analyses of the corresponding mutants to determine the cellular basis of the observed growth defects and to gain deeper insight into the function of the genes

RESPONSE OF THE GDACS SYSTEM TO THE TOHOKU EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI OF 11 MARCH 2011

The Tohoku Tsunami of 11 March 2011 was successfully identified and classified as Red alert by the GDACS system only when reliable and more correct estimations of the originating event have been provided to the system by the international seismological networks. Nevertheless the early analysis of the event by the comparison of the scenario calculations with the sea level could give important information on the real extent and impact of the Tsunami. The paper describe the response of the GDACS system and identify the lessons learned that determined changes in the logic and the procedures of the Tsunami calculations strategy.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Geoprocessing Web Services

Since 2003, Critech has performed research on web based geoprocessing. This was before OGC started work on the Web Processing Service standards. While continuously evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of existing (open-source and commercial) GIS software packages, the operational benefits of an ESRI site license drove the development in this area. Early work focused on scripting technologies. In 2007, Critech exploited the Application Program Interfaces (APIs) of ESRI software, in particular ESRI SDE. With the (stable) release of ESRI ArcGIS Server, web geoprocessing becomes an integral part of the software. This new technology will be used by Critech in 2008. This document reports on the status of the work.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

Index for Risk Management - InfoRM: Concept and Methodology

The Index for Risk Management (InfoRM) initiative began in October 2012 as a convergence of interests of United Nations agencies, humanitarian donors and the European Commission to establish a common evidence-base for global humanitarian risk analysis. A concept was developed by a core group of agencies and presented publicly at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in May 2013. The JRC is the technical partner and has developed the methodology for the composite indicator. The current document describes the final methodology that will be used for the publication of the first InfoRM Index in early 2014.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Humanitarian Impact of Tropical Cyclones

JRC¿s research on tropical cyclones of 2007 builds the foundations for an innovative cyclone alert model. In contrast with the work of 2006 (focusing on wind speed modelling), 2007 focused on integrating data provided by other organisations into a single consequence analysis model. A collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center allowed JRC to access structured data on tropical cyclone track information. This new source of information, available since August 2007, enables us to implement more advanced impact models which provide improved information for humanitarian emergency managers. As a result, since October 2007 GDACS maps feature tropical cyclone wind buffers overlaid on global real-time cloud images. While a lot of modelling work has been completed and geoprocessing systems were put in place to exploit this new source of data, the resulting products have not been integrated fully in GDACS.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

29 September 2009 Samoa Tsunami

On 29 September 2009 at 17:48:11 UTC a large earthquake of magnitude 8 struck off-shore of the Samoa Islands and generated a large tsunami that destroyed several villages and caused more than 160 fatalities. This report first presents the characteristics of the earthquake and discusses the best estimations for the fault parameters. These are necessary input data for the hydrodynamic tsunami calculations. Then, a comparison between the near-real time systems and the post-event calculations is performed, with an analysis of the observed differences compared with observed tidal measurements. Coarse, detailed and very detailed calculations are presented in order to identify areas of maximum damage. Conclusions are drawn for improvements in the near-real time system.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen