Understanding historical coastal spit evolution : a case study from Spurn, East Yorkshire, UK

Globally sandy coastlines are threatened by erosion driven by climatic changes and increased storminess. Understanding how they have responded to past storms is key to help manage future coastal changes. Coastal spits around the world are particularly dynamic and therefore potentially vulnerable coastal features. Therefore, how they have evolved over the last few centuries is of great importance. To illustrate this, this study focuses on the historical evolution of a spit at Spurn on the east coast of the UK, which currently provides critical protection to settlements within the Humber estuary. Through the combination of digitized historical mapping and luminescence dating, this study shows that Spurn has been a consistent coastal feature over at least the past 440 years. No significant westward migration was observed for the last 200 years. Results show a long‐term extension of the spit and a decrease in its overall area, particularly in the last 50 years. Breaches of the neck cause temporary sediment pathway changes enabling westward extension of the head. Use of digitized historical maps in GIS combined with OSL dating has allowed a more complete understanding of long‐term spit evolution and sediment transport modes at Spurn. In doing so it helps inform future possible changes linked to pressures, such as increases in storm events and sea‐level rise

Reconstruction of Lamb weather type series back to the eighteenth century

The Lamb weather type series is a subjective catalogue of daily atmospheric patterns and flow directions over the British Isles, covering the period 1861–1996. Based on synoptic maps, meteorologists have empirically classified surface pressure patterns over this area, which is a key area for the progression of Atlantic storm tracks towards Europe. We apply this classification to a set of daily pressure series from a few stations from western Europe, in order to reconstruct and to extend this daily weather type series back to 1781. We describe a statistical framework which provides, for each day, the weather types consistent enough with the observed pressure pattern, and their respective probability. Overall, this technique can correctly reconstruct almost 75% of the Lamb daily types, when simplified to the seven main weather types. The weather type series are described and compared to the original series for the winter season only. Since the low frequency variability of synoptic conditions is directly related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), we derive from the weather type series an NAO index for winter. An interesting feature is a larger multidecadal variability during the nineteenth century than during the twentieth century

Revealing variations in perception of mental states from dynamic facial expressions : a cautionary note

Although a great deal of research has been conducted on the recognition of basic facial emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, sadness), much less research has been carried out on the more subtle facial expressions of an individual's mental state (e.g., anxiety, disinterest, relief). Of particular concern is that these mental state expressions provide a crucial source of communication in everyday life but little is known about the accuracy with which natural dynamic facial expressions of mental states are identified and, in particular, the variability in mental state perception that is produced. Here we report the findings of two studies that investigated the accuracy and variability with which dynamic facial expressions of mental states were identified by participants. Both studies used stimuli carefully constructed using procedures adopted in previous research, and free-report (Study 1) and forced-choice (Study 2) measures of response accuracy and variability. The findings of both studies showed levels of response accuracy that were accompanied by substantial variation in the labels assigned by observers to each mental state. Thus, when mental states are identified from facial expressions in experiments, the identities attached to these expressions appear to vary considerably across individuals. This variability raises important issues for understanding the identification of mental states in everyday situations and for the use of responses in facial expression research

Socioeconomic and early-life factors and risk of being overweight or obese in children of Swedish- and foreign-born parents.

BACKGROUND: Ethnic minorities/immigrants have differential health as compared with natives. The epidemic in child overweight/obesity (OW/OB) in Sweden is leveling off, but lower socioeconomic groups and immigrants/ethnic minorities may not have benefited equally from this trend. We investigated whether nonethnic Swedish children are at increased risk for being OW/OB and whether these associations are mediated by parental socioeconomic position (SEP) and/or early-life factors such as birth weight, maternal smoking, BMI, and breastfeeding. METHODS: Data on 10,628 singleton children (51% boys, mean age: 4.8 y, born during the period 2000-2004) residing in Uppsala were analyzed. OW/OB was computed using the International Obesity Task Force's sex- and age-specific cutoffs. The mother's nativity was used as proxy for ethnicity. Logistic regression was used to analyze ethnicity-OW/OB associations. RESULTS: Children of North African, Iranian, South American, and Turkish ethnicity had increased odds for being overweight/obese as compared with children of Swedish ethnicity (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 2.60 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.57-4.27), 1.67 (1.03-2.72), 3.00 (1.86-4.80), and 2.90 (1.73-4.88), respectively). Finnish children had decreased odds for being overweight/obese (adjusted OR: 0.53 (0.32-0.90)). CONCLUSION: Ethnic differences in a child's risk for OW/OB exist in Sweden that cannot be explained by SEP or maternal or birth factors. As OW/OB often tracks into adulthood, more effective public health policies that intervene at an early age are needed