The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk for all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (henceforth FRM). Based on a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management, are only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM

Rock fragments with dark coatings in slope deposits of the Famenne region, southern Belgium

Quaternary slope deposits near the Lesse river in the Famenne region, south Belgium, contain scattered rounded rock fragments (5-15 cm diameter) that are typically characterized by a dark coating or patina. This dark surface resembles rock varnish occurrences. To establish the nature of the coatings, chemical, mineralogical and petrographical analyses were performed. The coatings are essentially Fe/Mn oxide features, developed as surface deposits on the rock fragments with associated impregnation of the rock substrate. The Fe/Mn compounds are amorphous or at least poorly crystalline. The coating also shows enrichment in clay minerals compared to the matrix of the covered rock fragments. Some of these characteristics are typical for rock varnish, but the coating does not show a layered structure. We hypothesize that the coating was formed by precipitation of Mn and Fe supplied by water, after burial of the rock fragments in the surrounding slope deposits, and was not affected by atmospheric deposition. Despite its strong macroscopic resemblance to rock varnish the patina on the Famenne rocks must most likely be classified as a heavy-metal skin.In quartaire hellingsafzettingen nabij de Lesse komen afgeronde keien (5-15 cm diameter) voor met een donkere patina aan het oppervlak. De patina doet sterk denken aan woestijnlak. Chemisch, mineralogisch en petrografisch onderzoek toont aan dat de patina voornamelijk bestaat uit een toplaag van Fe/Mn-oxide met gedeeltelijke impregnatie van het gesteente. De Fe/Mn-verbindingen zijn amorf of hoogstens zwak kristallijn. De patina vertoont ook een aanrijking met kleimineralen vergeleken met de steenmatrix rond de keien zelf. Woestijnlak vertoont dezelfde kenmerken, maar de patina op de Famennestenen mist een gelaagde structuur. Het lijkt erop dat de patina gevormd werd door neerslag van door water aangevoerd ijzer en mangaan, en niet door atmosferische neerslag. Ondanks de sterke macroscopische gelijkenis met woestijnlak lijkt het erop dat de patina moet beschouwd worden als een zgn. metal skin: een aanrijking, zonder gelaagde structuur, van metalen op gesteente

Hybrid path planning for massive crowd simulation on the GPU

In modern day games, it is often desirable to have many agents navigating intelligently through detailed environments. However, intelligent navigation remains a computationally expensive and complicated problem. In the past, the continuum crowds algorithm demonstrated the value of using a dynamic potential field to guide many agents to a common goal location. However this algorithm is prohibitively resource intensive for real time applications using large and detailed virtual worlds. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid system that first uses a coarse A* path finding step. This helps to eliminate unnecessary work during the potential field generation by excluding areas of the world from the potential field calculation. Additionally, we show how an optimized potential field solver can be implemented on the GPU using the concepts of persistent threads and inter-block communication. Results show that our system achieves considerable speedups compared to existing path planning systems and that up to 100,000 agents can be simulated and rendered in real time on a mainstream GPU

Marine regions: towards a global standard for georeferenced marine names and boundaries

GIS has become an indispensable tool for managing and displaying marine spatial data. However, a unique georeferenced standard of marine place names and boundaries was yet to be established. As such, an online, open-access, standardised, hierarchical list of geographic names – Marine Regions – was developed, linking each of these names to information and maps of the geographic location. The objectives are to capture all geographic marine names worldwide, including ocean basins, seas, seamounts, sandbanks, ridges, bays and other marine geographical place names and attributes, and to display univocally the boundaries of marine biogeographic or other managed marine areas in order to facilitate marine data management, marine (geographic) research and the management of marine areas. Marine Regions is freely available at www.marineregions.org

Mucosa-associated biohydrogenating microbes protect the simulated colon microbiome from stress associated with high concentrations of poly-unsaturated fat

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) may affect colon microbiome homeostasis by exerting (specific) antimicrobial effects and/or interfering with mucosal biofilm formation at the gut mucosal interface. We used standardized batch incubations and the Mucosal-Simulator of the Human Microbial Intestinal Ecosystem (M-SHIME) to show the in vitro luminal and mucosal effects of the main PUFA in the Western diet, linoleic acid (LA). High concentrations of LA were found to decrease butyrate production and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii numbers dependent on LA biohydrogenation to vaccenic acid (VA) and stearic acid (SA). In faecal batch incubations, LA biohydrogenation and butyrate production were positively correlated and SA did not inhibit butyrate production. In the M-SHIME, addition of a mucosal environment stimulated biohydrogenation to SA and protected F. prausnitzii from inhibition by LA. This was probably due to the preference of two biohydrogenating genera Roseburia and Pseudobutyrivibrio for the mucosal niche. Co-culture batch incubations using Roseburia hominis and F. prausnitzii validated these observations. Correlations networks further uncovered the central role of Roseburia and Pseudobutyrivibrio in protecting luminal and mucosal SHIME microbiota from LA-induced stress. Our results confirm how cross-shielding interactions provide resilience to the microbiome and demonstrate the importance of biohydrogenating, mucosal bacteria for recovery from LA stress