Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Portuguese Implementation. VRU-TOO Deliverable 12.

The work of VRU-TOO is targeted specifically at the application of AlT for the reduction of risk and the improvement of comfort for vulnerable road users, namely pedestrians. To achieve this, the project has combined pilot implementations in three countries (UK, Greece and portugal) with behavioural studies and the development of computer simulation techniques. At the same time the pilot implementations have been co-ordinated with local and national policy priorities. This deliverable presents the results from a trial that was carried out on a major arterial road just outside the central area of Porto, Portugal The objective of the trial was to show that it was possible to improve the safety and mobility of pedestrians at a junction and crossing facility which was situated adjacent to a large school by intelligent manipulation of the signal settings. Pedestrian detectors were attached to the traffic signals in order to detect pedestrians as they approached the crossing point. As a result of this detection, in certain circumstances, the signal cycle would be advanced so as to reduce the time until the signals would change to present the pedestrian with an opportunity to cross the road. The detectors would also allow the green time for pedestrians to be extended if there was sufficient demand, allowing safer and more comfortable crossing periods. Finally the pedestrian green time could also be reduced in order to avoid wasted time, if there was no pedestrian demand, thus allowing a more optimised functioning of the junction. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this treatment an extensive "before and after" analysis was carried out to determine the changes in safety and mobility, especially for child pedestrians. The evaluation of the trial was carried out by using the data collected to assess whether the pre- specified objectives have been achieved. The implications of the results are then discussed as well as their implication to the more general installation of such measures in the Portuguese contex

The missing piece of the South Atlantic jigsaw: when continental break-up ignores crustal heterogeneity

Crustal heterogeneity is considered to play a critical role in the position of continental break-up, yet this can only be demonstrated when a fully constrained pre-break-up configuration of both conjugate margins is achievable. Limitations in our understanding of the pre-break-up crustal structure in the offshore region of many margins preclude this. In the southern South Atlantic, which is an archetypal conjugate margin, this can be achieved because of the high confidence in plate reconstruction. Prior to addressing the role of crustal heterogeneity, two questions have to be addressed: first, what is the location of the regionally extensive Gondwanan Orogeny that remains enigmatic in the Orange Basin, offshore South Africa; and, second, although it has been established that the Argentinian Colorado rift basin has an east–west trend perpendicular to the Orange Basin and Atlantic spreading, where is the western continuation of this east–west trend? We present here a revised structural model for the southern South Atlantic by identifying the South African fold belt offshore. The fold belt trend changes from north–south to east–west offshore and correlates directly with the restored Colorado Basin. The Colorado–Orange rifts form a tripartite system with the Namibian Gariep Belt, which we call the Garies Triple Junction. All three rift branches were active during the break-up of Gondwana, but during the Atlantic rift phase the Colorado Basin failed while the other two branches continued to rift, defining the present day location of the South Atlantic. In addressing these two outstanding questions, this study challenges the premise that crustal heterogeneity controls the position of continental break-up because seafloor spreading demonstrably cross-cuts the pre-existing crustal heterogeneity. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of differentiating between early rift evolution and subsequent rifting that occurs immediately prior to seafloor spreading

Salt-Enrichment Impact on Biomass Production in a Natural Population of Peatland Dwelling Arcellinida and Euglyphida (Testate Amoebae)

This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this recordUnicellular free-living microbial eukaryotes of the order Arcellinida (Tubulinea; Amoebozoa) and Euglyphida (Cercozoa; SAR), commonly termed testate amoebae, colonise almost every freshwater ecosystem on Earth. Patterns in the distribution and productivity of these organisms are strongly linked to abiotic conditions—particularly moisture availability and temperature—however, the ecological impacts of changes in salinity remain poorly documented. Here, we examine how variable salt concentrations affect a natural community of Arcellinida and Euglyphida on a freshwater sub-Antarctic peatland. We principally report that deposition of wind-blown oceanic salt-spray aerosols onto the peatland surface corresponds to a strong reduction in biomass and to an alteration in the taxonomic composition of communities in favour of generalist taxa. Our results suggest novel applications of this response as a sensitive tool to monitor salinisation of coastal soils and to detect salinity changes within peatland palaeoclimate archives. Specifically, we suggest that these relationships could be used to reconstruct millennial scale variability in salt-spray deposition—a proxy for changes in wind-conditions—from sub-fossil communities of Arcellinida and Euglyphida preserved in exposed coastal peatlands.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC