A practitioners guide to managing geoscience information

In the UK the Natural Environment Research Council manages its scientific data holdings through a series of Environmental Data Centres1 Within the Earth Science sector the National Geoscience Data Centre covering Atmosphere, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Earth Observation, Hydrology, Marine Science and Polar Science. 2 - Risk Reduction; (NGDC), a component of the British Geological Survey (BGS), is responsible for managing the geosciences data resource. The purpose of the NGDC is to maintain the national geoscience database and to ensure efficient and effective delivery by providing geoscientists with ready to access data and information that is timely, fit for purpose, and in which the user has confidence. The key benefits that NERC derives from this approach are: - Increased Productivity; and - Higher Quality Science. The paper briefly describes the key benefits of managing geoscientific information effectively and describes how these benefits are realised within the NGDC and BGS

A world of information

The National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) functions, on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), as the national collection of geoscientific environmental data and information. It contains the most comprehensive collection of information on the surface and subsurface of Great Britain and the surrounding continental shelf. The collection has been gathered by our staff and their predecessors, over more than 175 years, along with information deposited by industry and academics

Human rights and development in Africa: moral intrusion or empowering opportunity?

Throughout the 1990s the debates about human rights and development have increasingly converged. The article asks whether the emerging human rights-based approach to development, honed in the period of revisionist neo liberalism, can deliver meaningful improvements to the African crisis? It begins by outlining the evolution of the rights-based development agenda in order to understand how the present agenda is defined. The next section examines the theoretical underpinnings of the current rights-based development agenda and summarises two recent reports which place such concerns at their centre. From there we examine the implementation of rights-based procedures in Africa. The next section assesses the moral and practical implications of the rights agenda for Africa and we conclude by arguing that the emphasis on economic and developmental rights should be welcomed, because it raises the possibility of cementing the right to a decent standard of living. However, the potential exists for the rights-based agenda to be used as a new form of conditionality which usurps national sovereignty and by handing the responsibility for defending rights to authoritarian states the process does little to challenge the power structures which may have precipitated rights' abuses in the first place. Finally, the emphasis on universal rights, as defined through largely Western experiences, limits the relevance of rights to local circumstances and thereby effects another form of Eurocentric violence which seeks to normalise a self-serving social vision. Hence, only by embedding discussions of rights in the locally meaningful struggles that confront impoverished Africans and by promoting broader and direct participation which, crucially, promotes self-determination can a rights agenda more thoroughly promote African development

Stabilizing Estimates of Shapley Values with Control Variates

Shapley values are among the most popular tools for explaining predictions of blackbox machine learning models. However, their high computational cost motivates the use of sampling approximations, inducing a considerable degree of uncertainty. To stabilize these model explanations, we propose ControlSHAP, an approach based on the Monte Carlo technique of control variates. Our methodology is applicable to any machine learning model and requires virtually no extra computation or modeling effort. On several high-dimensional datasets, we find it can produce dramatic reductions in the Monte Carlo variability of Shapley estimates

Introduction to integrated environmental modelling to solve real world problems: methods, vision and challenges

Across the world, stakeholders are asking questions of their governments and decision makers to quantify the risks of environmental threats to their well-being. These questions manifest themselves as ‘deceptively simple questions’, which are easy to articulate but difficult to solve. An example of which is: ‘how much will the eruption of an Icelandic volcano cost the UK economy’. Answering these questions requires predictions of the interaction of multiple environmental processes, this requires the development and maintenance of systems that allow these processes to be simulated, and that is the nascent science of integrated environmental modelling (IEM). Such processes may be long-term (e.g. those that are impacted by climate change) or short-term threats, such as the impact of drought on UK agriculture or the impact of space weather on energy supply systems

Looking forward to making predictions

As described in the preceding pages, since the BGS was established in 1835, the British population has coped with many challenges. These have ranged from finding resources to fuel the Industrial Revolution, understanding and combating water-borne diseases such as typhoid, the threat of invasion and aerial bombardment, through to modern-day environmental problems and climate change. To help deal with these problems, decisionmakers from governments and other organisations have required our help and advice

A study of the reactions of C-nitroso compounds with base by means of electron spin resonance spectroscopy

The radical-anions of various nitrosoarenes were generated using bases or by electrochemical reduction. The radical-anions of 2,6 or 2,4,6 chloro- or bromo-nitrosoarenes lost halide from the 2-position and the radical-anion of the resulting nitrosoarene was detected. The chloro- or bromo-nitrosoarenes also formed dimeric radical-anions possibly of a semi-diazoxide structure [ArN(O&middot;)N(O-)Ar]. The radical-anions of fluoro-substituted nitrosoarenes were not detected either through alternative reaction on the ring or because the azoxy-derivative and further reduction products were favoured in the equilibrium with the nitroso-radical-anion. [diagram] The spectra of the radical-anions detected exhibited line-broadening due to slow molecular tumbling and one example was examined in detail. The reaction between a nitrosoarene and iodoalkane in reducing conditions (basic media or electrochemical reduction) was investigated. The corresponding nitroxide and/or N-alkoxyanilino radical were detected. With the chloro- and bromo- nitrosoarenes attack by base on the ring probably occurs prior to formation of the anilino radical. The radicals are thought to be generated by nucleophilic substitution at the halide by the nitroso-radical-anion. [diagram] When the reaction is performed in the presence of molecular oxygen the nitro-arene radical-anion generated may also react with iodoalkanes to form a nitroxide. The reaction was extended to the polyhalogenomethanes, tri-iodomethane, di-iodomethane and tribromomethane. Reaction with nitrosobenzene generated N,N'-diphenyl-formamidinyl-N, N'-dioxide: [diagram].<p

The headgroup orientation of dimyristoylphosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate in mixed lipid bilayers: a neutron diffraction study

AbstractThe trisodium salt of dimyristoylphosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate (DMPI-4P) has been synthesised specifically deuterated at particular sites in the headgroup. These materials have been used in neutron diffraction experiments, which successfully located the position (depth) of each of these deuterated sites to within ±0.5 Å in a mixed model membrane (a 1:1 molar mixture of DMPI-4P with dimyristoyl-phosphatidylcholine, DMPC, in the Lα phase, hydrated to the level of 28 water molecules per lipid molecule). The diffracted intensities were measured at four different D2O/H2O ratios and six orders of diffraction were obtained. These data sets, in conjunction with computer modelling, have been used to determine the orientation of the inositol ring of DMPI-4P, localising each vertical H–H distance to within approximately ±0.03 Å. The orientation of the inositol ring is found to be one in which the C5 hydroxyl is extended out into the aqueous medium. This is, therefore, the most accessible site for water-borne reagents. This may be significant for the important pathway leading from PI-4P to PI-4,5P2. On the assumption that the P/ODAG bond is orientated parallel to the bilayer normal, these results are consistent with two possible conformations for the portion of the headgroup connecting the diacylglycerol to the inositol ring. Distinction between these two is difficult, but one may be favoured since the other involves close atom–atom contacts

Future of technology in NERC data models and informatics: outputs from InformaTEC

The ‘Big Data’ paradigm will revolutionize understanding of the natural environment. New technologies are revolutionizing our ability to measure, model, understand and make robust, evidence-based predictions at increasingly spatial and temporal resolutions. Realising this potential will require reengineering of environmental sciences in the observation infrastructure, in data management and processing, and in the culture of environmental sciences. Collectively these will deliver vibrant, integrated research communities. Manipulating such enormous data streams requires a new data infrastructure underpinned by four technologies. Pervasive environmental sensor networks will continuously measure suites of environmental parameters and transmit these wirelessly to scientists, regulators and modellers in real time. Integrated environmental modelling will process data, streamed from sensor networks, using components synthesizing natural systems developed by domain experts, each of which will be linked at runtime to other expert developed components. Semantic interoperability will facilitate cross-disciplinary working, as has already happened within the biosciences so that data items can be exchanged with unambiguous, shared meaning. Cloud computing will revolutionize data processing allowing scalable computing close to observations on an as-needed basis. Leveraging the full potential of these technologies requires a major culture change in the environmental sciences where national and continental scale observatories of sensors networks become basic scientific tools