The Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries: Issues, Terminology, Principles, Institutional Foundations, Implementation and Outlook

Ecosystems are complex and dynamic natural units that produce goods and services beyond those of benefit to fisheries. Because fisheries have a direct impact on the ecosystem, which is also impacted by other human activities, they need to be managed in an ecosystem context. The meaning of the terms 'ecosystem management', 'ecosystem based management', 'ecosystem approach to fisheries'(EAF), etc., are still not universally defined and progressively evolving. The justification of EAF is evident in the characteristics of an exploited ecosystem and the impacts resulting from fisheries and other activities. The rich set of international agreements of relevance to EAF contains a large number of principles and conceptual objectives. Both provide a fundamental guidance and a significant challenge for the implementation of EAF. The available international instruments also provide the institutional foundations for EAF. The FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries is particularly important in this respect and contains provisions for practically all aspects of the approach. One major difficulty in defining EAF lies precisely in turning the available concepts and principles into operational objectives from which an EAF management plan would more easily be developed. The paper discusses these together with the types of action needed to achieve them. Experience in EAF implementation is still limited but some issues are already apparent, e.g. in added complexity, insufficient capacity, slow implementation, need for a pragmatic approach, etc. It is argued, in conclusion, that the future of EAF and fisheries depends on the way in which the two fundamental concepts of fisheries management and ecosystem management, and their respective stakeholders, will join efforts or collide

Dust and dark Gamma-Ray Bursts: mutual implications

In a cosmological context dust has been always poorly understood. That is true also for the statistic of GRBs so that we started a program to understand its role both in relation to GRBs and in function of z. This paper presents a composite model in this direction. The model considers a rather generic distribution of dust in a spiral galaxy and considers the effect of changing some of the parameters characterizing the dust grains, size in particular. We first simulated 500 GRBs distributed as the host galaxy mass distribution, using as model the Milky Way. If we consider dust with the same properties as that we observe in the Milky Way, we find that due to absorption we miss about 10% of the afterglows assuming we observe the event within about 1 hour or even within 100s. In our second set of simulations we placed GRBs randomly inside giants molecular clouds, considering different kinds of dust inside and outside the host cloud and the effect of dust sublimation caused by the GRB inside the clouds. In this case absorption is mainly due to the host cloud and the physical properties of dust play a strong role. Computations from this model agree with the hypothesis of host galaxies with extinction curve similar to that of the Small Magellanic Cloud, whereas the host cloud could be also characterized by dust with larger grains. To confirm our findings we need a set of homogeneous infrared observations. The use of coming dedicated infrared telescopes, like REM, will provide a wealth of cases of new afterglow observations.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted by A&

Gas-exchange response of grapevine leaves under fluctuating light

Gas exchange responses to lightflecks of different frequency and duration were studied in mature grapevine leaves. Light-response curves under intermittent light showed lower carbon exchange rate (CER) than continuous light at non-saturating PFD levels (10-500 µ molm-2 s-1). White-dark and white-green alternating light of equal bright and shade periods at 0.33-5.33 Hz systematically resulted in improved light utilization as compared to high continuous light. Transpiration (T) was slightly more limited than the CER under intermittent light, resulting in higher water use efficiency. No differences in carboxylation efficiency were found by comparing the high continuous light treatment to white-dark lightflecks at 0.33 and 2.67 Hz. Our results show that, under short-term alternating light, CER of the grapevine leaf fully responds to the mean PFD level resulting from light oscillations

Theoretical investigation and computational evaluation of overtone and combination features in resonance Raman spectra of polyenes and carotenoids

We review the theory for overtones and combinations in resonant Raman spectroscopy introduced by Nafie, Stein and Peticolas in 1971 on the basis of time-ordered diagrams, and we apply it to β-carotene with the support of density functional theory calculations. Comparison with experimental results obtained by Tasumi’s group in 1994 is provided. The theory here presented allows a prompt evaluation of resonant Raman intensities with presently available quantum chemistry tools

Corrected Mulliken Charges for Small Molecules

A quantum mechanical correction is applied to the Mulliken atomic charges in order to fit them to the calculated dipole moment. This correction is obtained from the Charge - Charge flux - Overlap model (CCFO) for the interpretation of infrared intensities. Values of corrected Mulliken charges are calculated using different basis sets for the HF, H20, NH3, CH4, LiF, LiCI and NaCI molecules. The corrected charges are compared with atomic charges obtained from other partitioning schemes. Our results reveal that the corrected Mulliken charge shows an excellent numerical stability when the basis set becomes more extended. It also gives a better description of the charge separation in predominantly ionic molecules. Finally, the Mulliken charge seems to reflect more adequately intramolecular interactions when corrected as above

Optimization of mid-dilution haemodiafiltration: technique and performance

n/