Resolving issues with environmental impact assessment of marine renewable energy installations

ArticleThis Document is Protected by copyright and was first published by Frontiers. All rights reserved. it is reproduced with permission.Growing concerns about climate change and energy security have fueled a rapid increase in the development of marine renewable energy installations (MREIs). The potential ecological consequences of increased use of these devices emphasizes the need for high quality environmental impact assessment (EIA). We demonstrate that these processes are hampered severely, primarily because ambiguities in the legislation and lack of clear implementation guidance are such that they do not ensure robust assessment of the significance of impacts and cumulative effects. We highlight why the regulatory framework leads to conceptual ambiguities and propose changes which, for the most part, do not require major adjustments to standard practice. We emphasize the importance of determining the degree of confidence in impacts to permit the likelihood as well as magnitude of impacts to be quantified and propose ways in which assessment of population-level impacts could be incorporated into the EIA process. Overall, however, we argue that, instead of trying to ascertain which particular developments are responsible for tipping an already heavily degraded marine environment into an undesirable state, emphasis should be placed on better strategic assessment.Technology Strategy Boar

Small-Scale Fisheries Bycatch Jeopardizes Endangered Pacific Loggerhead Turtles

Background. Although bycatch of industrial-scale fisheries can cause declines in migratory megafauna including seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles, the impacts of small-scale fisheries have been largely overlooked. Small-scale fisheries occur in coastal waters worldwide, employing over 99 % of the world’s 51 million fishers. New telemetry data reveal that migratory megafauna frequent coastal habitats well within the range of small-scale fisheries, potentially producing high bycatch. These fisheries occur primarily in developing nations, and their documentation and management are limited or non-existent, precluding evaluation of their impacts on non-target megafauna. Principal Findings/Methodology. 30 North Pacific loggerhead turtles that we satellite-tracked from 1996–2005 ranged oceanwide, but juveniles spent 70 % of their time at a high use area coincident with small-scale fisheries in Baja California Sur, Mexico (BCS). We assessed loggerhead bycatch mortality in this area by partnering with local fishers to 1) observe two small-scale fleets that operated closest to the high use area and 2) through shoreline surveys for discarded carcasses. Minimum annual bycatch mortality in just these two fleets at the high use area exceeded 1000 loggerheads year 21, rivaling that of oceanwide industrial-scale fisheries, and threatening the persistence of this critically endangered population. As a result of fisher participation in this study and a bycatch awareness campaign, a consortium of local fishers and other citizens are working to eliminate their bycatch and to establish a national loggerhea

Violent video games and morality: a meta-ethical approach

This paper considers what it is about violent video games that leads one reasonably minded person to declare "That is immoral" while another denies it. Three interpretations of video game content a re discussed: reductionist, narrow, and broad. It is argued that a broad interpretation is required for a moral objection to be justified. It is further argued that understanding the meaning of moral utterances – like "x is immoral" – is important to an understanding of why there is a lack of moral consensus when it comes to the content of violent video games. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is presented as a means of explaining what it is that we are doing when we make moral pronouncements and why, when it comes to video game content, differing moral attitudes abound. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is also presented as a means of illuminating what would be required for moral consensus to be achieved

Purifying Selection in Deeply Conserved Human Enhancers Is More Consistent than in Coding Sequences

(c) 2014 De Silva et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The role of clathrin in post-golgi trafficking in toxoplasma gondii

Apicomplexan parasites are single eukaryotic cells with a highly polarised secretory system that contains unique secretory organelles (micronemes and rhoptries) that are required for host cell invasion. In contrast, the role of the endosomal system is poorly understood in these parasites. With many typical endocytic factors missing, we speculated that endocytosis depends exclusively on a clathrin-mediated mechanism. Intriguingly, in Toxoplasma gondii we were only able to observe the endogenous clathrin heavy chain 1 (CHC1) at the Golgi, but not at the parasite surface. For the functional characterisation of Toxoplasma gondii CHC1 we generated parasite mutants conditionally expressing the dominant negative clathrin Hub fragment and demonstrate that CHC1 is essential for vesicle formation at the trans-Golgi network. Consequently, the functional ablation of CHC1 results in Golgi aberrations, a block in the biogenesis of the unique secretory microneme and rhoptry organelles, and of the pellicle. However, we found no morphological evidence for clathrin mediating endocytosis in these parasites and speculate that they remodelled their vesicular trafficking system to adapt to an intracellular lifestyle

Ventricular dyssynchrony assessed by gated myocardial perfusion SPECT using a geometrical approach: a feasibility study

Cardiovascular Aspects of Radiolog

The role of cognitive emotion regulation on the vicarious emotional response

Perceiving another in need may provoke two possible emotional responses: empathic concern and personal distress. This research aims to test whether different emotion regulation strategies (i.e., reappraisal and rumination) may lead to different vicarious emotional responses (i.e., empathic concern and personal distress). In this sense, we hypothesized that reappraisal may lead to a greater feeling of empathic concern, whereas rumination may lead to a higher feeling of personal distress. To test the hypotheses we used experimental instructions (Study 1) and a priming procedure (Study 2) to manipulate the emotion regulation strategies. The results supported our hypotheses. Furthermore in the rumination condition the emotional experience was described as being more negative and more highly arousing than in the reappraisal condition. We discuss the effect of these two forms of cognitive emotion regulation on empathic concern and personal distress

Gravito-electromagnetic analogies

We reexamine and further develop different gravito-electromagnetic (GEM) analogies found in the literature, and clarify the connection between them. Special emphasis is placed in two exact physical analogies: the analogy based on inertial fields from the so-called "1+3 formalism", and the analogy based on tidal tensors. Both are reformulated, extended and generalized. We write in both formalisms the Maxwell and the full exact Einstein field equations with sources, plus the algebraic Bianchi identities, which are cast as the source-free equations for the gravitational field. New results within each approach are unveiled. The well known analogy between linearized gravity and electromagnetism in Lorentz frames is obtained as a limiting case of the exact ones. The formal analogies between the Maxwell and Weyl tensors are also discussed, and, together with insight from the other approaches, used to physically interpret gravitational radiation. The precise conditions under which a similarity between gravity and electromagnetism occurs are discussed, and we conclude by summarizing the main outcome of each approach.Comment: 60 pages, 2 figures. Improved version (compared to v2) with some re-write, notation improvements and a new figure that match the published version; expanded compared to the published version to include Secs. 2.3 and

Influence of the central-to-peripheral arterial stiffness gradient on the timing and amplitude of wave reflections

In individuals with compliant aortas, peripheral muscular artery stiffness exceeds central elastic artery stiffness. With ageing, central stiffness increases, with little change in peripheral stiffness, resulting in a reversal of the normal stiffness gradient. This reversal may reduce wave reflection amplitude, due to movement of the major “effective” reflection site further from the heart. To test this, we investigated the relationship among arterial stiffness gradients (normal and reversed), wave reflection amplitude and reflection site distance. Subjects aged ≥50years were recruited from the Anglo-Cardiff Collaborative Trial. Central stiffness was assessed by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV). In study 1, peripheral PWV was also measured in the arm (carotid-radial, crPWV), and in study 2 in the leg (femoral- dorsalis pedis, fpPWV). Reflection site distance was calculated from cfPWV and reflected wave travel time. Subjects were dichotomized into those with a normal stiffness gradient (peripheral>central PWV), or a reversed gradient (peripheral<central PWV). In study 1, reflection site distance was greater in subjects with a reversed gradient (P<0.01), whereas time to reflection was lower (P<0.001). Both augmentation pressure (P<0.001) and augmentation index (P<0.05) were greater in subjects with a reversed gradient. In study 2, augmentation pressure, augmentation index and reflection site distance were greater in subjects with a reversed stiffness gradient (P<0.01, P<0.05 and P<0.01, respectively), and time to reflection was not different between groups. A reversed arterial stiffness gradient is associated with increased reflection site distance and a paradoxical increase in reflected wave amplitude, and augmentation index