Using Statistical Techniques to Predict Non-Pecuniary Damage Awards in Personal Injury Cases

The real issue in personal injury cases is often damages. Our concepts and law relating to negligence and other aspects of personal injury are sufficiently developed that parties can often agree upon who is at fault. Yet damages law, for all the cases and principles which have been decided, remains the least intelligible and thus the least predictable for parties and their counsel. When parties have to go to trial in a personal injury case, it is often primarily to decide who should pay what

Structural Geology and the Seismotectonics of the 2004 Great Sumatran Earthquake

The paper sets out a method for structural analysis of seismotectonic data using centroid moment tensors and associated hypocenters from the Global Centroid Moment Tensor project, here illustrated for aftershocks from the 2004 great Sumatran earthquake. We show that the Sumatran segments of the megathrust were subject to compression in a direction near to orthogonal with the margin trend, consistent with the effect of relative movement of the adjacent tectonic plates. In contrast, the crust above the Andaman Sea segments was subject to margin-orthogonal extension, consistent with motion toward the gravitational potential well accumulated due to prior lateral (westward) rollback of the subducting edge of the northward moving Indian plate. Since this potential well is largely defined by topography, this episode of margin-orthogonal extension is at least in part “gravity driven.” It did not last long. Within 15 months, an earthquake cluster across an Andaman Sea spreading segment showed a return to kinematics driven by relative plate motion. The transition can be explained if fluid activity temporarily reduced basal friction (or effective stress) but then led to healing so that the megathrust once again began to develop friction-locked segments. The influence of slab rollback is in developing a gravitational potential well facing the megathrust, hence drawing the overriding crust toward it in the immediate postrupture phase while the megathrust is in a weakened state. Plate tectonics dominates during interseismic gaps, once the megathrust heals, and regains frictional resistance.y. The authors acknowledge funding support from the Australian Research Council: Discovery Project DP120103554 “A unified model for the closure dynamics of ancient Tethys constrained by geodesy, structural geology, argon geochronology and tectonic reconstruction” and Linkage Project LP130100134 “Where to find giant porphyry and epithermal gold and copper deposits.” The research was also supported by the “Satellites, Seismometers and Mass Spectrometers” initiative within the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU. Bob Engdahl is thanked for his support during earlier versions and for providing data

Direct dating of overprinting fluid systems in the Martabe epithermal gold deposit using highly retentive alunite

The Martabe gold deposits in Sumatra formed in a shallow crustal epithermal environment associated with intermediate mafic intrusions adjacent to an active right-lateral wrench system. Gas/fluid temperatures reached 200–350 ∘C. The structural geology suggests episodic switches in stress orientations during a Plio-Pleistocene seismotectonic evolution. Different mineralisation events may have been associated with oscillations in this earthquake cycle, so samples containing alunite were collected for 40Ar / 39Ar geochronology to constrain the timing. 39Ar diffusion experiments were performed to constrain variation in argon retentivity. The age spectra were produced by incremental step-heating with heating times chosen so similar percentages of 39Ar gas release occurred during as many steps as possible. This ensured the detail necessary for analysis of the complex morphology of these spectra by applying the method of asymptotes and limits, which enabled recognition of different growth events of alunite in overprinting fluid systems. It was possible to provide estimates as to the frequency of individual events and their duration. The heating schedule also ensured that Arrhenius data populated the inverse temperature axis with sufficient detail to allow modelling. Activation energies were between 370–660 kJ mol−1. Application of Dodson's recursion determined closure temperatures that range from 400–560 ∘C for a cooling rate of 100 ∘C Ma−1. Such estimates are higher than any temperature to be expected in the natural system, giving confidence that the ages represent the timing of growth during periods of active fluid movement and alteration: a hypothesis confirmed by modelling age spectra using the MacArgon program. We conclude that gold in the Purnama pit resulted from overprinting fluid rock interactions during very short mineralisation episodes at ∼2.25 and ∼2.00 Ma.</p

The devil is in the detail: Metabarcoding of arthropods provides a sensitive measure of biodiversity response to forest stand composition compared with surrogate measures of biodiversity

Gauging trends in forest biodiversity and relating these to forest management practice and environmental change requires effective monitoring and assessment of spatio-temporal trends in forest biodiversity. Taxa- and habitat-based surrogate measures of biodiversity, or ‘biodiversity indicators’, are commonly used to convey information about the state of the biological community since they can be assessed relatively quickly and cheaply by non-experts. Direct measures of a component of biodiversity are also increasingly feasible using DNA metabarcoding; ‘Next Generation Sequencing’ has facilitated the rapid characterisation of combined multiple species samples by sequencing their DNA barcodes in parallel, simultaneously reducing the need for taxonomic expertise and the time and cost required to obtain biodiversity data across a wide range of taxonomic groups. We investigated whether biodiversity information obtained from DNA metabarcoding of mass-trapped arthropods and from a range of taxa-based surrogate measures of biodiversity (e.g. carabid beetles, vascular plants) provide: 1) similar estimates of alpha and beta diversity and 2) provide similar forest management related conclusions. We also explored how well habitat-based surrogate measures of biodiversity (e.g. stand structure, volume of deadwood) predict observed biodiversity patterns. The study was conducted in Thetford Forest, UK within 15 forest plantation stands (5 Scots pine-oak mixtures, 4 Scots pine and 6 oak monocultures). Our results demonstrated a high level of congruence between the metabarcoding and taxa-based surrogate measures of biodiversity. The wider range of taxonomic groups identified using a metabarcoding approach offered the potential to identify taxa sensitive to the environmental variable that was being manipulated experimentally (i.e. the composition of forest stands). Most habitat-based measures of biodiversity failed to predict species assemblage differences between stands

Quantifying the unseen benefits:an innovative economic valuation of the social and cultural values of trees, woods, and forests at risk

Trees, woods, and forests in England are associated with a wide range of social and cultural values (S&CV). However, these treescapes (i.e. trees in any location) face increasing risks from pests, diseases, climate change, and biosecurity threats. This study addresses the urgent need for comprehensive estimates of S&CV related to England’s treescapes. Current UK policies and resource allocations are based on limited “value at risk” estimates. The study proposes a novel anchor value method for holistic S&CV valuation, resulting in an annual benefits flow ranging from £7 to £10 billion. This estimate surpasses the current natural capital accounts for England’s woodlands and underscores the importance of including S&CV in total ecosystem benefits assessments. The study also applies traditional methods, namely Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Travel Cost Method (TCM), to economically value S&CV of trees at risk from pests and diseases. These methods, focusing on local use values, yield similar estimates of just under £1 billion per year. This preliminary valuation invites further debate and scrutiny

Diversity of woody-host infecting Phytophthora species in public parks and botanic gardens as revealed by metabarcoding, and opportunities for mitigation through best practice

The diversity of Phytophthora species in soils collected from 14 highly disturbed sites in northern Britain, including botanic gardens, arboreta, public parks and other amenity woodland sites, was analysed using a molecular technique known as DNA metabarcoding. This technique enables the identification of multiple species present in a single environmental sample based on a DNA ‘barcode’ unique to each species. The genus Phytophthora was targeted in this study due to its increasing impact on Britain’s forests and woodlands over thelast 20 years. The introduction and spread of new Phytophthora species into Britain has been strongly associated with the movement of traded containerised plants, with a number of Phytophthora outbreaks reported on host trees located in public gardens and parks that had recently undergone planting or landscape regeneration schemes. This study was undertaken to assess the extent to which these highly disturbed sites with extensive planting regimes act as harbours for woody-host infecting Phytophthora species. A total of 23 Phytophthora species, the majority of which are known to be pathogens of woody hosts, were detected across the 14 sites sampled. These included four quarantine-regulated pathogens and four species notpreviously recorded in Britain. Also detected were three as-yet undescribed Phytophthora species and nine oomycete sequences with no clear match to any known genus. There was no effect of geographical location, elevation, underlying soil type, host family or host health status on the Phytophthora assemblages at each site, suggesting that the Phytophthora communities detected are likely to comprise introduced species associated with planting programmes. P. austrocedri and P. pseudosyringae were two of the most abundant Phytophthoraspecies detected, both of which cause serious damage to trees and are regarded as fairly recent introductions to Britain. The practical implications of the findings in terms of mitigating Phytophthora introduction, spread and impact at botanic gardens, arboreta and urban parks are discussed

Relationships between nitrogen cycling microbial community abundance and composition reveal the indirect effect of soil pH on oak decline

Tree decline is a global concern and the primary cause is often unknown. Complex interactions between fluctuations in nitrogen (N) and acidifying compounds have been proposed as factors causing nutrient imbalances and decreasing stress tolerance of oak trees. Microorganisms are crucial in regulating soil N available to plants, yet little is known about the relationships between soil N-cycling and tree health. Here, we combined high-throughput sequencing and qPCR analysis of key nitrification and denitrification genes with soil chemical analyses to characterise ammonia-oxidising bacteria (AOB), archaea (AOA) and denitrifying communities in soils associated with symptomatic (declining) and asymptomatic (apparently healthy) oak trees (Quercus robur and Q. petraea) in the United Kingdom. Asymptomatic trees were associated with a higher abundance of AOB that is driven positively by soil pH. No relationship was found between AOA abundance and tree health. However, AOA abundance was driven by lower concentrations of NH4+, further supporting the idea of AOA favouring lower soil NH4+ concentrations. Denitrifier abundance was influenced primarily by soil C:N ratio, and correlations with AOB regardless of tree health. These findings indicate that amelioration of soil acidification by balancing C:N may affect AOB abundance driving N transformations, reducing stress on declining oak trees

Non-destructive optical measurement of relative phase between two Bose condensates

We study the interaction of light with two Bose condensates as an open quantum system. The two overlapping condensates occupy two different Zeeman sublevels and two driving light beams induce a coherent quantum tunneling between the condensates. We derive the master equation for the system. It is shown that stochastic simulations of the measurements of spontaneously scattered photons establish the relative phase between two Bose condensates, even though the condensates are initially in pure number states. These measurements are non-destructive for the condensates, because only light is scattered, but no atoms are removed from the system. Due to the macroscopic quantum interference the detection rate of photons depends substantially on the relative phase between the condensates. This may provide a way to distinguish, whether the condensates are initially in number states or in coherent states.Comment: 26 pages, RevTex, 8 postscript figures, 1 MacBinary eps-figur

Achieving temperature-size changes in a unicellular organism.

The temperature-size rule (TSR) is an intraspecific phenomenon describing the phenotypic plastic response of an organism size to the temperature: individuals reared at cooler temperatures mature to be larger adults than those reared at warmer temperatures. The TSR is ubiquitous, affecting >80% species including uni- and multicellular groups. How the TSR is established has received attention in multicellular organisms, but not in unicells. Further, conceptual models suggest the mechanism of size change to be different in these two groups. Here, we test these theories using the protist Cyclidium glaucoma. We measure cell sizes, along with population growth during temperature acclimation, to determine how and when the temperature-size changes are achieved. We show that mother and daughter sizes become temporarily decoupled from the ratio 2:1 during acclimation, but these return to their coupled state (where daughter cells are half the size of the mother cell) once acclimated. Thermal acclimation is rapid, being completed within approximately a single generation. Further, we examine the impact of increased temperatures on carrying capacity and total biomass, to investigate potential adaptive strategies of size change. We demonstrate no temperature effect on carrying capacity, but maximum supported biomass to decrease with increasing temperature