Emerging themes to support ambitious UK marine biodiversity conservation

Healthy marine ecosystems provide a wide range of resources and services that support life on Earth and contribute to human wellbeing. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are accepted as an important tool for the restoration and maintenance of marine ecosystem structure, function, health and ecosystem integrity through the conservation of significant species, habitats, or entire ecosystems. In recent years there has been a rapid expansion in the area of ocean designated as an MPA. Despite this progress in spatial protection targets and the progressive knowledge of the essential interdependence between the human and the ocean system, marine biodiversity continues to decline, placing in jeopardy the range of ecosystem services benefits humans rely on. There is a need to address this shortcoming. Ambitious marine conservation:• Requires a shift from managing individual marine features within MPAs to whole-sites to enable repair and renewal of marine systems;• Reflects an ambition for sustainable livelihoods by fully integrating fisheries management with conservation (Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management) as the two are critically interdependent;• Establishes a world class and cost effective ecological and socio-economic monitoring and evaluation framework that includes the use of controls and sentinel sites to improve sustainability in marine management; and• Challenges policy makers and practitioners to be progressive by integrating MPAs into the wider seascape as critical functional components rather than a competing interest and move beyond MPAs as the only tool to underpin the benefits derived from marine ecosystems by identifying other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) to establish synergies with wider governance frameworks

Electrophoretic deposition of materials

The electrophoretic deposition of materials is reviewed. Numerous applications of electrophoretic deposition are described, including production of coatings, free-standing objects, and laminated or graded materials, infiltration of porous materials, and fabrication of woven fiber preforms. The preparation of electrophoretic suspensions is discussed as are a number of mechanisms of deposition that have been proposed elsewhere. In discussing the kinetics of the process, primary attention is given to the relation between the evolution of the current and the electric field strength.status: publishe

Challenges and opportunities with ultra-high temperature ceramics

Ultra high temperature ceramics (UHTC’s) are a class of ceramics with a melting point in excess of 3000 °C and researchers expect that these materials will be used in structural applications at temperatures in excess of 2000 °C. UHTC ‘s are therefore an exclusive group of materials with extreme thermal endurance and hence candidate materials for thermal protection systems for fast space re-entry or leading edges for hypersonic flight. High temperature materials come with their own challenges as both mechanical properties such as strength, stiffness, toughness and creep resistance needs to be measured to very high temperatures but also the thermo-physical properties such as thermal expansion and thermal conductivity. It will be shown that a combination of self-equilibrating hardness measurements and three point bend tests can give a fairly good initial assessment of the deformation mechanisms operating in this material. Near application testing such as arc heater testing is even more difficult and tends to be very expensive. However, alternative tests such as laser heating can offer insight in the materials performance. This will be illustrated by discussing a range of laser heating tests and a model developed to predict the behaviour during these laser tests at substantial heat fluxes (up to 100 MW m-2). It is found that for short exposure times to high heat fluxes, the material has a remarkable ability to retain its shape. However, as the exposure time is increased, the material oxidises and this reduces the melting point and the thermal conductivity leading to loss of shape stability at very high heat fluxes