Macrofaunal community inside and outside of the Darwin Mounds Special Area of Conservation, NE Atlantic

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Application of system identification methods to implement Comsol models into external simulation environments

Full coupling of distributed parameter models, like Comsol, with the lumped models often lead to very time-consuming simulation duration times. In order to improve the speed of the simulations, the idea of using system identification methods to implement the distributed parameters models of Comsol into external simulation environments (SimuLink), is explored. It is concluded that the system identification methods are a valuable tool for such applications, and result in models that not only are easy and fast to derive using the appropriate tools (SI Toolbox of Matlab), but also in models with a very satisfactory performance that offer great reduction of the simulation times

The variable influence of dispersant on degradation of oil hydrocarbons in subarctic deep-sea sediments at low temperatures (0-5 °C)

The microbial degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons at low temperatures was investigated in subarctic deep-sea sediments in th e Faroe Shetland Channel (FSC). The effect of the marine oil dispersant, Superdispersant 25 on hydrocarbon degradation was also examined. Sediments collected at 500 and 1000 m depth were spiked with a model oil containing 20 hydrocarbons and incubated at ambient temperature (5 and 0 °C, respectively) with and without marine dispersant. Treatment of sediments with hydrocarbons resulted in the enrichment of Gammaproteobacteria, and specifically the genera Pseudoalteromonas, Pseudomonas, Halomonas, and Cobetia. Hydrocarbon degradation was faster at 5 °C (500 m) with 65-89% of each component degraded after 50 days compared to 0-47% degradation at 0 °C (1000 m), where the aromatic hydrocarbons fluoranthene, anthracene, and Dibenzothiophene showed no degradation. Dispersant significantly increased the rate of degradation at 1000 m, but had no effect at 500 m. There was no statistically significant effect of Superdispersant 25 on the bacterial community structure at either station. These results show that the indigenous bacterial community in the FSC has the capacity to mitigate some of the effects of a potential oil spill, however, the effect of dispersant is ambiguous and further research is needed to understand the implications of its use

Occurrence of Priming in the Degradation of Lignocellulose in Marine Sediments

Funding: E.G. was funded by the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland, grant reference HR09011). B.T. received funding from the Scottish Government's Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services (RESAS) Division. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript Data Availability: All dataset files are available from the figshare database. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1554752. Correction 21 Apr 2016: The PLOS ONE Staff (2016) Correction: Occurrence of Priming in the Degradation of Lignocellulose in Marine Sediments. PLoS ONE 11(4): e0154365. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0154365 View correction at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0154365Peer reviewedPublisher PD

No strong evidence of priming effects on the degradation of terrestrial plant detritus in estuarine sediments

EG was funded by the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland). MASTS was funded by the Scottish Funding Council (Grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. EG is currently funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) (grant number 1874) and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT). This study was funded by the MASTS Marine Biogeochemistry Forum small grants scheme and their support is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effect of spatial origin and hydrocarbon composition on bacterial consortia community structure and hydrocarbon biodegradation rates

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council [NE/L00982X/1 to UW, JA and EG]. CGR was supported by a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society [UF150571].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Optimization of a Solar Chimney Design to Enhance Natural Ventilation in a Multi-Storey Office Building

Natural ventilation of buildings can be achieved with solar-driven , buoyancy-induced airflow through a solar chimney channel. Research on solar chimneys has covered a wide range of topics, yet study of the integration in multi-storey buildings has been performed in few numerical studies , where steady-state conditions were assumed. In practice, if the solar chimney is to be used in an actual building, dynamic performance simulations would be required for the specific building design and climate. This study explores the applicability of a solar chimney in a prototype multi-storey office building in the Netherlands. Sensitivity analysis and optimization of the design will be performed via dynamic performance simulations in ESP-r. The robustness of the optimized design will be tested at the final stage , against e.g. windows' opening by users. This is an ongoing project; calibration of the solar chimney model and preliminary sensitivity analysis results are presented here.

Bacterial Community Response in Deep Faroe-Shetland Channel Sediments Following Hydrocarbon Entrainment With and Without Dispersant Addition

The authors acknowledge Dr. Alan McCue for assistance with GC-FID, the MRV Scotia scientists and crew for assistance with sample collection and Cruikshank Analytical Lab for Carbon content analysis. Amy Bode and Val Johnston are thanked for their assistance with experimental setup and sampling. Dr. Sophie Shaw (CGEBM) is acknowledged for her advice and guidance with molecular analysis. Funding LJP and hydrocarbon analytics were funded through MarCRF funds for a Ph.D. project designed by UW, JA, and AG and awarded to LJP. LDP and microbiological investigations were funded through NERC award no NE/L00982X/1 to UW, JA, and EG. CG-R is funded by a University Research Fellowship.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Pressure and temperature effects on deep‐sea hydrocarbon‐degrading microbial communities in subarctic sediments

Funding information: Natural Environment Research Council, Grant/Award Number: NE/I023465/1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS LJP was funded through MarCRF funds for a PhD project designed by UW, JA, and AG and awarded to LJP. The crew and scientific staff of the RRS Discovery are thanked for assistance in sample collection. Kathrin Vossen and Val Johnston are thanked for assistance with hydrocarbon extractions and DNA sampling. Michael Mcgibbon and Annette Raffan are thanked for assistance with sediment characterization. DY051 and pressure chambers were funded through NERC grant no. NE/I023465/1 to UW. Evina Gontikaki was funded by the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland), and their support is gratefully acknowledged. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. DATA ACCESSIBILITY The raw sequencing data are available in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) under the accession number PRJEB25365.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Resource Quantity Affects Benthic Microbial Community Structure and Growth Efficiency in a Temperate Intertidal Mudflat

Estuaries cover <1% of marine habitats, but the carbon dioxide (CO2) effluxes from these net heterotrophic systems contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle. Anthropogenic eutrophication of estuarine waterways increases the supply of labile substrates to the underlying sediments. How such changes affect the form and functioning of the resident microbial communities remains unclear. We employed a carbon-13 pulse-chase experiment to investigate how a temperate estuarine benthic microbial community at 6.5°C responded to additions of marine diatom-derived organic carbon equivalent to 4.16, 41.60 and 416.00 mmol C m−2. The quantities of carbon mineralized and incorporated into bacterial biomass both increased significantly, albeit differentially, with resource supply. This resulted in bacterial growth efficiency increasing from 0.40±0.02 to 0.55±0.04 as substrates became more available. The proportions of diatom-derived carbon incorporated into individual microbial membrane fatty acids also varied with resource supply. Future increases in labile organic substrate supply have the potential to increase both the proportion of organic carbon being retained within the benthic compartment of estuaries and also the absolute quantity of CO2 outgassing from these environments