De-risking the energy transition by quantifying the uncertainties in fault stability

Acknowledgements DH first presented the core ideas in this paper at the Tectonic Studies Group AGM in Cardiff in 2014, and enjoyed discussions there with Dr Jonathan Turner (RWM Ltd). Thanks to former PhD student Dr Sarah Weihmann (now at BGR) and cosupervisor Dr Frauke Schaeffer (Wintershall DEA) for discussions about using oil industry wireline log data for quantifying geomechanical models. Thanks to Tom Blenkinsop (Cardiff) for the idea of using fault dips to estimate friction coefficients. GMT (Wessel et al., 2013) was used for the maps. SciPy (Virtanen et al., 2021), Numpy (Harris et al., 2020), and matplotlib 605 (Hunter, 2007) were used for the Python pfs code and Allmendinger et al. (2012) for various geomechanical and geometrical algorithms. We thank the reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript. DH acknowledges NERC funding from grant NE/T007826/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Lantern Vol. 59, No. 2, Summer 1992

• Mr. Foley\u27s Toboggan • I Close the Door to the Bathroom • Insomniac Scribbles • And Then There Were Four • Goodbye, Ace • Silicone\u27s a Manmade Matter • The Nineteenth Hole • Upon Visiting Manor Care • Little Boys • Obsessed • Life • Shakespearean Shakedown • Violets and Morning Glories • Mr. Cope Takes His Secretary to Lunch • Winter Eyes • Triptych • These Hot, Humid Nights • The Car\u27s Place in His Heart • Saturday Night • The Windows of a Clean House • An Harmonious Thunk • Nomads • My Watch at Mass • Dave\u27s Fine Print • K.P. Duty • Serendipityhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1141/thumbnail.jp

Short-term CO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e exposure and temperature rise effects on metazoan meiofauna and free-living nematodes in sandy and muddy sediments: Results from a flume experiment

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Global concern over increasing CO2 emissions, and the resultant CO2 driven temperature rises and changes in seawater chemistry, necessitates the advancement of understanding into how these changes will affect marine life now and in the future. Here we report on an experimental investigation into the effects of increased CO2 concentration and elevated temperature on sedimentary meiofaunal communities. Cohesive (muddy) and non-cohesive (sandy) sediments were collected from the Eden Estuary in St. Andrews, Scotland, UK, placed within a flume setup and exposed to 2 levels of CO2 concentration (380 and 750 ppmv, current at the time of the experiment, and predicted CO2 concentration by 2100, respectively) and 2 temperature levels (12 °C and 16 °C, current in-situ and predicted temperature by 2100, respectively). We investigated the metazoan meiofauna and nematode communities before and after 28 days of exposure under these experimental conditions. The most determinative factor for abundance, diversity and community structure of meiofauna and nematodes was sediment type: on all levels, communities were significantly different between sand and mud sediments which agrees with what is generally known about the influence of sediment structure on meiofaunal organisms. Few CO2 and temperature effects were observed, suggesting that meiofauna and nematodes are generally much less responsive than, for instance, microbial communities and macrofauna to these environmental changes in estuarine environments, where organisms are naturally exposed to a fluctuating environment. This was corroborated by the observed effects related to the different seasons in which the samples were taken from the field to run the experiment. After 28 days, meiofauna and nematode communities in muddy sediments showed a greater response to increased CO2 concentration and temperature rise than in sandy sediments. However, further study is needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms and meiofauna species-specific resilience and responses to ocean acidification and warming, and their interactions with other biota, to understand what such changes may mean for meiofauna communities and the ecosystem processes and functions they contribute to

Building shape and texture models of diatoms for analysis and synthesis of drawings and identification

We describe tools for automatic identification of diatoms by comparing their photographs with other photographs and drawings, via a model. Identification of diatoms, i.e. assigning a new specimen to one of the known species, has applications in many disciplines, including ecology, paleoecology and forensic science. The model we build represents life cycle and natural variation of both external shape and internal texture over multiple species and is based on principal curves. The model is also suitable for automatically producing drawings of diatoms at any stage of their life cycle development. Similar drawings are traditionally used for diatom identification, and encapsulate visually salient diatom features. In this article we describe the methods used to analyse photographs and drawings, present our model of diatom shape and texture variation, and illustrate our approach with a collection of drawings synthesised from our model and derived from example photographs. Finally, we present the results of identification experiments using photographs and drawings

Rapid collaborative knowledge building via Twitter after significant geohazard events

International audienc

Short-term CO₂ exposure and temperature rise effects on metazoan meiofauna and free-living nematodes in sandy and muddy sediments: Results from a flume experiment

Global concern over increasing CO2 emissions, and the resultant CO2 driven temperature rises and changes in seawater chemistry, necessitates the advancement of understanding into how these changes will affect marine life now and in the future. Here we report on an experimental investigation into the effects of increased CO2 concentration and elevated temperature on sedimentary meiofaunal communities. Cohesive (muddy) and non-cohesive (sandy) sediments were collected from the Eden Estuary in St. Andrews, Scotland, UK, placed within a flume setup and exposed to 2 levels of CO2 concentration (380 and 750 ppmv, current at the time of the experiment, and predicted CO2 concentration by 2100, respectively) and 2 temperature levels (12 °C and 16 °C, current in-situ and predicted temperature by 2100, respectively). We investigated the metazoan meiofauna and nematode communities before and after 28 days of exposure under these experimental conditions. The most determinative factor for abundance, diversity and community structure of meiofauna and nematodes was sediment type: on all levels, communities were significantly different between sand and mud sediments which agrees with what is generally known about the influence of sediment structure on meiofaunal organisms. Few CO2 and temperature effects were observed, suggesting that meiofauna and nematodes are generally much less responsive than, for instance, microbial communities and macrofauna to these environmental changes in estuarine environments, where organisms are naturally exposed to a fluctuating environment. This was corroborated by the observed effects related to the different seasons in which the samples were taken from the field to run the experiment. After 28 days, meiofauna and nematode communities in muddy sediments showed a greater response to increased CO2 concentration and temperature rise than in sandy sediments. However, further study is needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms and meiofauna species-specific resilience and responses to ocean acidification and warming, and their interactions with other biota, to understand what such changes may mean for meiofauna communities and the ecosystem processes and functions they contribute to

To what extent can decommissioning options for marine artificial structures move us toward environmental targets?

Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy is key to international energy transition efforts and the move toward net zero. For many nations, this requires decommissioning of hundreds of oil and gas infrastructure in the marine environment. Current international, regional and national legislation largely dictates that structures must be completely removed at end-of-life although, increasingly, alternative decommissioning options are being promoted and implemented. Yet, a paucity of real-world case studies describing the impacts of decommissioning on the environment make decision-making with respect to which option(s) might be optimal for meeting international and regional strategic environmental targets challenging. To address this gap, we draw together international expertise and judgment from marine environmental scientists on marine artificial structures as an alternative source of evidence that explores how different decommissioning options might ameliorate pressures that drive environmental status toward (or away) from environmental objectives. Synthesis reveals that for 37 United Nations and Oslo-Paris Commissions (OSPAR) global and regional environmental targets, experts consider repurposing or abandoning individual structures, or abandoning multiple structures across a region, as the options that would most strongly contribute toward targets. This collective view suggests complete removal may not be best for the environment or society. However, different decommissioning options act in different ways and make variable contributions toward environmental targets, such that policy makers and managers would likely need to prioritise some targets over others considering political, social, economic, and ecological contexts. Current policy may not result in optimal outcomes for the environment or society

Metabolite profiles of medulloblastoma for rapid and non-invasive detection of molecular disease groups

BackgroundThe malignant childhood brain tumour, medulloblastoma, is classified clinically into molecular groups which guide therapy. DNA-methylation profiling is the current classification ‘gold-standard’, typically delivered 3–4 weeks post-surgery. Pre-surgery non-invasive diagnostics thus offer significant potential to improve early diagnosis and clinical management. Here, we determine tumour metabolite profiles of the four medulloblastoma groups, assess their diagnostic utility using tumour tissue and potential for non-invasive diagnosis using in vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).MethodsMetabolite profiles were acquired by high-resolution magic-angle spinning NMR spectroscopy (MAS) from 86 medulloblastomas (from 59 male and 27 female patients), previously classified by DNA-methylation array (WNT (n = 9), SHH (n = 22), Group3 (n = 21), Group4 (n = 34)); RNA-seq data was available for sixty. Unsupervised class-discovery was performed and a support vector machine (SVM) constructed to assess diagnostic performance. The SVM classifier was adapted to use only metabolites (n = 10) routinely quantified from in vivo MRS data, and re-tested. Glutamate was assessed as a predictor of overall survival.FindingsGroup-specific metabolite profiles were identified; tumours clustered with good concordance to their reference molecular group (93%). GABA was only detected in WNT, taurine was low in SHH and lipids were high in Group3. The tissue-based metabolite SVM classifier had a cross-validated accuracy of 89% (100% for WNT) and, adapted to use metabolites routinely quantified in vivo, gave a combined classification accuracy of 90% for SHH, Group3 and Group4. Glutamate predicted survival after incorporating known risk-factors (HR = 3.39, 95% CI 1.4–8.1, p = 0.025).InterpretationTissue metabolite profiles characterise medulloblastoma molecular groups. Their combination with machine learning can aid rapid diagnosis from tissue and potentially in vivo. Specific metabolites provide important information; GABA identifying WNT and glutamate conferring poor prognosis

Developing expert scientific consensus on the environmental and societal effects of marine artificial structures prior to decommissioning

This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the INSITE programme [INSITE SYNTHESIS project, grant number NE/W009889/1].Thousands of artificial (‘human-made’) structures are present in the marine environment, many at or approaching end-of-life and requiring urgent decisions regarding their decommissioning. No consensus has been reached on which decommissioning option(s) result in optimal environmental and societal outcomes, in part, owing to a paucity of evidence from real-world decommissioning case studies. To address this significant challenge, we asked a worldwide panel of scientists to provide their expert opinion. They were asked to identify and characterise the ecosystem effects of artificial structures in the sea, their causes and consequences, and to identify which, if any, should be retained following decommissioning. Experts considered that most of the pressures driving ecological and societal effects from marine artificial structures (MAS) were of medium severity, occur frequently, and are dependent on spatial scale with local-scale effects of greater magnitude than regional effects. The duration of many effects following decommissioning were considered to be relatively short, in the order of days. Overall, environmental effects of structures were considered marginally undesirable, while societal effects marginally desirable. Experts therefore indicated that any decision to leave MAS in place at end-of-life to be more beneficial to society than the natural environment. However, some individual environmental effects were considered desirable and worthy of retention, especially in certain geographic locations, where structures can support improved trophic linkages, increases in tourism, habitat provision, and population size, and provide stability in population dynamics. The expert analysis consensus that the effects of MAS are both negative and positive for the environment and society, gives no strong support for policy change whether removal or retention is favoured until further empirical evidence is available to justify change to the status quo. The combination of desirable and undesirable effects associated with MAS present a significant challenge for policy- and decision-makers in their justification to implement decommissioning options. Decisions may need to be decided on a case-by-case basis accounting for the trade-off in costs and benefits at a local level.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe