Nonlinear temperature response of lake ice breakup

A uniquely comprehensive set of four decades of ice breakup data from 196 Swedish lakes covering 13degrees of latitude (55.7degrees N to 68.4degrees N) shows the relationship between the timing of lake ice breakup and air temperature to be an arc cosine function. The nonlinearity inherent in this relationship results in marked differences in the response of the timing of lake ice breakup to changes in air temperature between colder and warmer geographical regions, and between colder and warmer time periods. The spatial and temporal patterns are mutually consistent, suggesting that climate change impacts on the timing of lake ice breakup will vary along a temperature gradient. This has potentially important ramifications for the employment of lake ice phenologies as climate indicators and for the future behavior of lacustrine ecosystem

Predatory Organisms with Untapped Biosynthetic Potential:Descriptions of Novel Corallococcus Species C. aberystwythensis sp. nov., C. carmarthensis sp. nov., C. exercitus sp. nov., C. interemptor sp. nov., C. llansteffanensis sp. nov., C. praedator sp. nov., C. sicarius sp. nov., and C. terminator sp. nov

Corallococcus spp. are common soil-dwelling organisms which kill and consume prey microbes through the secretion of antimicrobial substances. Two species of Corallococcus have been described previously (Corallococcus coralloides and Corallococcus exiguus). A polyphasic approach was taken to characterise antimicrobial, biochemical and phenotypic properties of eight Corallococcus spp. strains and the two type strains. We also report here the genome sequence of the C. exiguus type strain (DSM 14696T). The genomes of the eight candidate strains, C. exiguus DSM 14696T and C. coralloides DSM 2259T, had an average nucleotide identity below 95% and digital DNA-DNA hybridisation scores less than the 70% lower bound for species identity, indicating they belong to distinct species. All ten strains, including the two type strains, were thoroughly characterised, including biochemical analysis of their fatty acid methyl esters, substrate utilisation and sugar assimilation. Each strain gave a distinct profile of properties, which together with their genomic differences supports the proposal of the eight candidate strains as novel species: Corallococcus exercitus sp. nov. (AB043AT = DSM 108849T = NBRC 113887T), Corallococcus interemptor sp. nov. (AB047AT = DSM 108843T = NBRC 113888T), Corallococcus aberystwythensis sp. nov. (AB050AT = DSM 108846T = NBRC 114019T), Corallococcus praedator sp. nov. (CA031BT = DSM 108841T = NBRC 113889T), Corallococcus sicarius sp. nov. (CA040BT = DSM 108850T = NBRC 113890T), Corallococcus carmarthenensis sp. nov. (CA043DT = DSM 108842T = NBRC 113891T), Corallococcus llansteffanensis sp. nov. (CA051BT = DSM 108844T = NBRC 114100T) and Corallococcus terminator sp. nov. (CA054AT = DSM 108848T = NBRC 113892T)

Environmental impacts — Lake ecosystems

The North Sea region contains a vast number of lakes; from shallow, highly eutrophic water bodies in agricultural areas to deep, oligotrophic systems in pristine high-latitude or high-altitude areas. These freshwaters and the biota they contain are highly vulnerable to climate change. As largely closed systems, lakes are ideally suited to studying climate-induced effects via changes in ice cover, hydrology and temperature, as well as via biological communities (phenology, species and size distribution, food-web dynamics, life-history traits, growth and respiration, nutrient dynamics and ecosystem metabolism). This chapter focuses on change in natural lakes and on parameters for which their climate-driven responses have major impacts on ecosystem properties such as productivity, community composition, metabolism and biodiversity. It also points to the importance of addressing different temporal scales and variability in driving and response variables along with threshold-driven responses to environmental forces. Exceedance of critical thresholds may result in abrupt changes in particular elements of an ecosystem. Modelling climate-driven physical responses like ice-cover duration, stratification periods and thermal profiles in lakes have shown major advances, and the chapter provide recent achievements in this field for northern lakes. Finally, there is a tentative summary of the level of certainty for key climatic impacts on freshwater ecosystems. Wherever possible, data and examples are drawn from the North Sea region

Pleasure and meaningful discourse: an overview of research issues

The concept of pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural phenomenon in studies of media audiences since the 1980s. In these studies different forms of pleasure have been identified as explaining audience activity and commitment. In the diverse studies pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural concept that needs to be contextualized carefully. Genre and genre variations, class, gender, (sub-)cultural identity and generation all seem to be instrumental in determining the kind and variety of pleasures experienced in the act of viewing. This body of research has undoubtedly contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of audience activities, but it is exactly the diversity of the concept that is puzzling and poses a challenge to its further use. If pleasure is maintained as a key concept in audience analysis that holds much explanatory power, it needs a stronger theoretical foundation. The article maps the ways in which the concept of pleasure has been used by cultural theorists, who have paved the way for its application in reception analysis, and it goes on to explore the ways in which the concept has been used in empirical studies. Central to our discussion is the division between the ‘public knowledge’ and the ‘popular culture’ projects in reception analysis which, we argue, have major implications for the way in which pleasure has come to be understood as divorced from politics, power and ideology. Finally, we suggest ways of bridging the gap between these two projects in an effort to link pleasure to the concepts of hegemony and ideology

Issues raised developing AQuRate (an authoring tool that uses the question and test interoperability version 2 specification)

The IMS Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) specification has existed for many years, and there are a few tools for authoring questions in early versions of the specification. However, the new QTIv2 specification was unsupported in any existing authoring environment. The AQuRate project was funded by JISC’s capital project program to fill this gap. AQuRate is one of three JISC projects, which together aimed to support the whole e-assessment process, from authoring (AQuRate at Kingston University) to storage (Minibix at Cambridge) and finally to a delivery/assessment development (ASDEL at Southampton). This paper considers issues raised during the creation of the tool: data modelling, graphical user interface design, and use cases. It ends raising issues currently effecting on-going development

Factors associated with long‐term antiretroviral therapy attrition among adolescents in rural Uganda: a retrospective study

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138247/1/jia20841.pd

Life cycle assessment of a short-rotation coppice willow riparian buffer strip for farm nutrient mitigation and renewable energy production

Publication history: Accepted - 13 January 2022; Published online - 2 February 2022.As agricultural activity intensifies across Europe there is growing concern over water quality. Agricultural run-off is a leading cause of freshwater degradation. Simultaneously there is a continually increasing drive to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Willow coppice planted as a riparian buffer has been suggested as a solution to help mitigate these problems. However, there is limited research into the use of such a system and several key knowledge gaps remain, such as, the energy ratio of the system is not known, and a fully harvested site has yet to be analysed in the literature. The aim of this research is to fill these knowledge gaps to help inform agri-environmental policy. To do this a life cycle assessment was carried out on an established willow buffer system, considering the global warming potential, eutrophication potential, acidification potential and cumulative energy demand impact categories, alongside the calculation of the energy ratio. To our knowledge it is the first site to be fully harvested and for which a full life cycle assessment has been carried out. The willow was combusted to fuel a district heating system. Key results showed emissions of 4.66 kg CO2eq GJheatout -1 and 0.01 kg SO2eq GJheatout -1, both of which are significant reductions compared to an oil heating system (95% reductions for both impact categories). The system also resulted in the permanent nutrient removal of 55.36 kg PO43-eq ha-1 yr-1 and had an energy ratio of 17.4, which could rise to 64 depending on the harvest method.This Bryden Centre project is supported by the European Union’s INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The views and opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission or the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The work was also supported by Queen’s University Belfast and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Northern Ireland

Incidence of Hospitalization for Heart Failure and Case-Fatality Among 3.25 Million People With and Without Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Recent clinical trials of new glucose-lowering treatments have drawn attention to the importance of hospitalisation for heart failure as a complication of diabetes. However, the epidemiology is not well described, particularly for type 1 diabetes. We examined the incidence and case-fatality of heart failure hospitalisations in the entire population aged 30 and older resident in Scotland during 2004 to 2013. Methods: Date and type of diabetes diagnosis were linked to heart failure hospitalisations and deaths using the national Scottish registers. Incidence rates and case-fatality were estimated in regression models (quasi-Poisson and logistic regression respectively). All estimates are adjusted for age, sex, socio-economic status and calendar-year. Results: Over the 10-year period of the study, among 3.25 million people there were 91,429, 22,959 and 1,313 incident heart failure events among those without diabetes, with type 2, and type 1 diabetes respectively. The crude incidence rates of heart failure hospitalisation were therefore 2.4, 12.4 and 5.6 per 1000 person-years for these three groups. Heart failure hospitalisation incidence was higher in people with diabetes, regardless of type, than in people without. Relative differences were smallest for older men, in whom the difference was nonetheless large (men aged 80, rate ratio 1.78; 95% CI 1.45 to 2.19). Rates declined similarly, by 0.2% per calendar-year, in people with type 2 diabetes and without diabetes. Rates fell faster, however, in those with type 1 diabetes (2.2% per calendar-year, RR for type 1/calendar-year interaction 0.978; 95% CI 0.959 to 0.998). 30-day case-fatality was similar among people with type 2 diabetes and without diabetes, but was higher in type 1 diabetes for men (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.95 to 0.96) and women (OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.97 to 0.98). Case-fatality declined over time for all groups (3.3% per calendar-year, OR per calendar-year 0.967; 95% CI 0.961 to 0.973). Conclusions: Despite falling incidence, particularly in type 1 diabetes, heart failure remains around 2-fold higher than in people without diabetes, with higher case-fatality in those with type 1 diabetes. These findings support the view that heart failure is an under-recognised and important complication in diabetes, particularly for type 1 disease

Landscape science: a Russian geographical tradition

The Russian geographical tradition of landscape science (landshaftovedenie) is analyzed with particular reference to its initiator, Lev Semenovich Berg (1876-1950). The differences between prevailing Russian and Western concepts of landscape in geography are discussed, and their common origins in German geographical thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are delineated. It is argued that the principal differences are accounted for by a number of factors, of which Russia's own distinctive tradition in environmental science deriving from the work of V. V. Dokuchaev (1846-1903), the activities of certain key individuals (such as Berg and C. O. Sauer), and the very different social and political circumstances in different parts of the world appear to be the most significant. At the same time it is noted that neither in Russia nor in the West have geographers succeeded in specifying an agreed and unproblematic understanding of landscape, or more broadly in promoting a common geographical conception of human-environment relationships. In light of such uncertainties, the latter part of the article argues for closer international links between the variant landscape traditions in geography as an important contribution to the quest for sustainability

Production pathways for profitability and valuing ecosystem services for willow coppice in intensive agricultural applications

Publication history: Accepted - 14 January 2023; Published online - 20 January 2023Increasing agricultural sustainability is a key challenge facing the globe today. Energy crops, planted as riparian buffers are one way to support this, simultaneously mitigating water quality degradation and climate change. However, the economics of implementing such riparian buffer systems is under researched. Hence this work conducted a bottom-up economic analysis of willow coppice riparian buffers on a Northern Irish dairy farm, which is indicative of agricultural intensification across Europe. This work includes an economic assessment of a willow coppice riparian buffer strip, using harvested yield data from an established willow buffer site for the first time. It also considered the impact of harvesting technology on the economic performance of a willow coppice riparian buffer strip for the first time. The analysis considered three willow production pathways: 1) direct chip harvesting, 2) full-stem harvesting, and 3) a scenario with a guaranteed purchasing contract for fresh chip. Economic performance was considered using net present value over a 25-year plantation lifetime. The full-stem scenario provided the highest economic return over its lifetime with an average yearly net present value of £497 ha−1 (in £ sterling). This system was then considered for integration into a typical dairy farm, assuming 5 % land usage and including government grants for establishing riparian zones. The result was a drop in value of £28 ha−1 yr−1 compared to a dairy-only scenario; however, per litre of milk the farm employing willow coppice riparian buffer strips outperformed a typical dairy farm both environmentally and economically. Further analysis considered a novel approach that included payments for ecosystem services in the economic analysis. This analysis found that the implementation of government payments for ecosystem services (nutrient removal) increased the economic return of the willow coppice riparian buffer system by £400 ha−1 yr−1, resulting in minimal impact on the return from dairy land.This Bryden Centre project is supported by the European Union's INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The views and opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission or the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The work was also supported by Queen's University Belfast and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Northern Ireland. The authors would like to thank David Gilliland of Organic Resources and Alan Hegan of Hegan Biomass for the expert insight readily provided for this research