Deep Emissions Reductions and Mainstreaming of Mitigation and Adaptation: Key Findings

Climate policy "mainstreaming", "proofing" and "integration" are concepts that are increasingly appearing in a range of EU policy discussions, including those concerning the 2014-2020 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF). They reflect the view that all policy sectors need to play a part in both reducing emissions and increasing resilience to unavoidable climate impacts. Broadly defined, mainstreaming involves including climate considerations in policy processes, improving the consistency among policy objectives, and where necessary, giving priority to climate-related goals above others. Although often couched in technical language, profound political challenges, at multiple levels of governance, lie at the heart of the mainstreaming agenda. The RESPONSES project analysed how far adaptation and mitigation was being mainstreamed in EU policies, and assessed the potential opportunities and limits for the future

Time-reversal violating rotation of polarization plane of light in gas placed in electric field

Rotation of polarization plane of light in gas placed in electric field is considered. Different factors causing this phenomenon are investigated. Angle of polarization plane rotation for transition 6S_{1/2} - 7S_{1/2} in cesium (lambda=539 nm) is estimated. The possibility to observe this effect experimentally is discussed.Comment: 10 pages, Late

Direct detection of blood nitric oxide reveals a burn-dependent decrease of nitric oxide in response to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection

Burn injury is associated with severe immune dysfunction, including an anti-inflammatory state that occurs late after burn injury. While increased nitric oxide (NO) production is associated with severe infection and sepsis, the effect of burn trauma on these levels during a non-lethal infection remains unknown. We hypothesized that in a mouse model, 1) NO levels would be increased after infection without trauma and 2) burn injury would lead to decreased NO production even during infection

Enhancement of Magneto-Optic Effects via Large Atomic Coherence

We utilize the generation of large atomic coherence to enhance the resonant nonlinear magneto-optic effect by several orders of magnitude, thereby eliminating power broadening and improving the fundamental signal-to-noise ratio. A proof-of-principle experiment is carried out in a dense vapor of Rb atoms. Detailed numerical calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results. Applications such as optical magnetometry or the search for violations of parity and time reversal symmetry are feasible

Socioeconomic disparities in physical health among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Western Australia

Objective. Few empirical studies have specifically examined the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and health in Indigenous populations of Australia. We sought to provide insights into the nature of this relationship by examining socio-economic disparities in physical health outcomes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Western Australia. Design. We used a diverse set of health and SES indicators from a representative survey conducted in 20002002 on the health and development of 5289 Indigenous children aged 017 years in Western Australia. Analysis was conducted using multivariate logistic regression within a multilevel framework. Results. After controlling for age and sex, we found statistically significant socio- economic disparities in health in almost half of the associations that were investigated, although the direction, shape and magnitude of associations differed. For ear infections, recurring chest infections and sensory function problems, the patterns were generally consistent with a positive socio-economic gradient where better health was associated with higher SES. The reverse pattern was found for asthma, accidents and injuries, and oral health problems, although this was primarily observed for area-level SES indicators. Conclusion. Conventional notions of social position and class have some influence on the physical health of Indigenous children, although the diversity of results implies that there are other ways of conceptualising and measuring SES that are important for Indigenous populations. We need to consider factors that relate specifically to Indigenous circumstances and culture in the past and present day, and give more thought to how we measure social position in the Indigenous community, to gain a better understanding of the pathways from SES to Indigenous child health

Diffuse inverse Compton and synchrotron emission from dark matter annihilations in galactic satellites

Annihilating dark matter particles produce roughly as much power in electrons and positrons as in gamma ray photons. The charged particles lose essentially all of their energy to inverse Compton and synchrotron processes in the galactic environment. We discuss the diffuse signature of dark matter annihilations in satellites of the Milky Way (which may be optically dark with few or no stars), providing a tail of emission trailing the satellite in its orbit. Inverse Compton processes provide X-rays and gamma rays, and synchrotron emission at radio wavelengths might be seen. We discuss the possibility of detecting these signals with current and future observations, in particular EGRET and GLAST for the gamma rays.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Indirect Dark Matter Detection from Dwarf Satellites: Joint Expectations from Astrophysics and Supersymmetry

We present a general methodology for determining the gamma-ray flux from annihilation of dark matter particles in Milky Way satellite galaxies, focusing on two promising satellites as examples: Segue 1 and Draco. We use the SuperBayeS code to explore the best-fitting regions of the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (CMSSM) parameter space, and an independent MCMC analysis of the dark matter halo properties of the satellites using published radial velocities. We present a formalism for determining the boost from halo substructure in these galaxies and show that its value depends strongly on the extrapolation of the concentration-mass (c(M)) relation for CDM subhalos down to the minimum possible mass. We show that the preferred region for this minimum halo mass within the CMSSM with neutralino dark matter is ~10^-9-10^-6 solar masses. For the boost model where the observed power-law c(M) relation is extrapolated down to the minimum halo mass we find average boosts of about 20, while the Bullock et al (2001) c(M) model results in boosts of order unity. We estimate that for the power-law c(M) boost model and photon energies greater than a GeV, the Fermi space-telescope has about 20% chance of detecting a dark matter annihilation signal from Draco with signal-to-noise greater than 3 after about 5 years of observation

The interstellar medium towards the Ara OB1 region

We present high resolution (R ~ 4 km/s) absorption measurements of the interstellar NaI and CaII lines measured towards 14 early-type stars of distance 123 pc - 1650 pc, located in the direction of the Ara OB1 stellar cluster. The line profiles can broadly be split into four distinct groupings of absorption component velocity, and we have attempted to identify an origin and distance to each of these interstellar features. For gas with absorption covering the velocity range -10 km/s < V_helio < +10 km/s, we can identify the absorbing medium with local gas belonging to the Lupus-Norma interstellar cavity located between 100 and 485 pc in this galactic direction. Gas with velocities spanning the range -20 km/s < V_helio < +20 km/s is detected towards stars with distances of 570-800 pc. We identify a wide-spread interstellar feature at V_helio ~ -15 km/s with the expanding HI shell called GSH 337+00-05, which is now placed at a distance of ~530 pc.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Mutation of a single residue, β-glutamate-20, alters protein–lipid interactions of light harvesting complex II

It is well established that assembly of the peripheral antenna complex, LH2, is required for proper photosynthetic membrane biogenesis in the purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides. The underlying interactions are, as yet, not understood. Here we examined the relationship between the morphology of the photosynthetic membrane and the lipid–protein interactions at the LH2–lipid interface. The non-bilayer lipid, phosphatidylethanolamine, is shown to be highly enriched in the boundary lipid phase of LH2. Sequence alignments indicate a putative lipid binding site, which includes β-glutamate-20 and the adjacent carotenoid end group. Replacement of β-glutamate-20 with alanine results in significant reduction of phosphatidylethanolamine and concomitant raise in phosphatidylcholine in the boundary lipid phase of LH2 without altering the lipid composition of the bulk phase. The morphology of the LH2 housing membrane is, however, unaffected by the amino acid replacement. In contrast, simultaneous modification of glutamate-20 and exchange of the carotenoid sphaeroidenone with neurosporene results in significant enlargement of the vesicular membrane invaginations. These findings suggest that the LH2 complex, specifically β-glutamate-20 and the carotenoids' polar head group, contribute to the shaping of the photosynthetic membrane by specific interactions with surrounding lipid molecules