Measuring the Economic Value of Two Habitat Defragmentation Policy Scenarios for the Veluwe, The Netherlands

This paper offers an economic value assessment of a nature protection programme in the Veluwe. This programme involves two defragmentation scenarios: the first scenario connects the central part of the Veluwe with the IJssel river forelands in a north-eastern direction, while the second scenario is focused on defragmentation in a south-western direction, where the Rhine river forelands are located. The valuation is based on a questionnaire that was administered during face-to-face interviews in the Veluwe area and through the Internet. We employ a contingent valuation approach to assess the respondents’ willingness to pay for the realisation of the defragmentation scenarios. It appears that the mean willingness to pay for the two defragmentation scenarios are € 59.7 and € 162.2 per respondent. These two willingness-to-pay estimates, which refer to a lump sum payment (or ‘once-and-for-all payment’), are based on a lognormal and Weibull distribution respectively. In addition to the willingness to pay, we also estimate recreation benefits of the Veluwe. To that end, we use the travel cost technique, the purpose of which is to arrive at an estimate of the site’s consumer surplus. According to this technique, the yearly recreational benefits are estimated between € 0.06 and € 0.45 per visitor. Whereas the former estimate is based on the fuel costs only, the latter covers also insurance and maintenance costs, and capital depreciation. Finally, we performed an aggregation of individual WTP estimates over Dutch households. With the resulting aggregate estimates we are able to compare the total costs and benefits of the two scenarios for habitat fragmentation in the Veluwe. The result of such a simple comparison turns out to critically depend on whether the mean or median estimate is used for aggregation. If aggregation of individual WTP estimates is based on mean values, then the benefits far exceed the estimated costs of defragmentation. In other words, based on an integrated economic-ecological analysis it makes sense to execute the defragmentation measures described in the scenarios. However, aggregate estimates obtained by using median values result in higher costs than aggregate estimates that are based on mean values. Even stronger, median-based estimates show that the costs of implementing scenario 2 are higher than the total benefits of this scenario.Economic value, Nature protection, Defragmentation policy, Veluwe

Marine ecosystem services: Linking indicators to their classification

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. There is a multitude of ecosystem service classifications available within the literature, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Elements of them have been used to tailor a generic ecosystem service classification for the marine environment and then for a case study site within the North Sea: the Dogger Bank. Indicators for each of the ecosystem services, deemed relevant to the case study site, were identified. Each indicator was then assessed against a set of agreed criteria to ensure its relevance and applicability to environmental management. This paper identifies the need to distinguish between indicators of ecosystem services that are entirely ecological in nature (and largely reveal the potential of an ecosystem to provide ecosystem services), indicators for the ecological processes contributing to the delivery of these services, and indicators of benefits that reveal the realized human use or enjoyment of an ecosystem service. It highlights some of the difficulties faced in selecting meaningful indicators, such as problems of specificity, spatial disconnect and the considerable uncertainty about marine species, habitats and the processes, functions and services they contribute to

Evolução das características sensoriais de vinhos brancos da casta encruzado conservados em diferentes tipos de barricas de madeira de carvalho

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Bioinformatic Analysis of Chlamydia trachomatis Polymorphic Membrane Proteins PmpE, PmpF, PmpG and PmpH as Potential Vaccine Antigens

Chlamydia trachomatis is the most important infectious cause of infertility in women with important implications in public health and for which a vaccine is urgently needed. Recent immunoproteomic vaccine studies found that four polymorphic membrane proteins (PmpE, PmpF, PmpG and PmpH) are immunodominant, recognized by various MHC class II haplotypes and protective in mouse models. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate genetic and protein features of Pmps (focusing on the N-terminal 600 amino acids where MHC class II epitopes were mapped) in order to understand antigen variation that may emerge following vaccine induced immune selection. We used several bioinformatics platforms to study: i) Pmps' phylogeny and genetic polymorphism; ii) the location and distribution of protein features (GGA(I, L)/FxxN motifs and cysteine residues) that may impact pathogen-host interactions and protein conformation; and iii) the existence of phase variation mechanisms that may impact Pmps' expression. We used a well-characterized collection of 53 fully-sequenced strains that represent the C. trachomatis serovars associated with the three disease groups: ocular (N=8), epithelial-genital (N=25) and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) (N=20). We observed that PmpF and PmpE are highly polymorphic between LGV and epithelial-genital strains, and also within populations of the latter. We also found heterogeneous representation among strains for GGA(I, L)/FxxN motifs and cysteine residues, suggesting possible alterations in adhesion properties, tissue specificity and immunogenicity. PmpG and, to a lesser extent, PmpH revealed low polymorphism and high conservation of protein features among the genital strains (including the LGV group). Uniquely among the four Pmps, pmpG has regulatory sequences suggestive of phase variation. In aggregate, the results suggest that PmpG may be the lead vaccine candidate because of sequence conservation but may need to be paired with another protective antigen (like PmpH) in order to prevent immune selection of phase variants.AN is a recipient of a post-doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BPD/75295/2010) from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Hospital-acquired pneumonia is more frequent and lethal in stroke patients: A nationwide 4-year study

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Diet of non-breeding leach’s storm-petrels ( Hydrobates leucorhous ) in the sub-polar frontal zone of the North Atlantic

In order to understand the drivers of the distribution and abundance of pelagic seabirds it is necessary to know what they eat, yet there remains little detailed, geo-referenced information on the diets of pelagic seabird. In particular, due to sampling difficulties, information is lacking for non-breeding stages, smaller species, such as storm-petrels, and remote oceanic areas, which may include important diversity hotspots. In this study, we aimed to characterize the trophic ecology of Leach’s storm-petrels foraging in the vicinity of the North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Seamount Marine Protected Area using a combination of survey methods. On a cruise undertaken in June 2017 to characterize the distribution and ecology of seabirds in the region, nineteen Leach’s storm-petrels were caught, sampled and released unharmed. Regurgitations and faecal samples were collected, as well as blood and feather tissues for stable isotope analyses. Of the 12 males, 6 females and 1 unsexed bird, 84% were in active flight feather moult, suggesting they were non-breeders. Prey species, assayed via molecular metabarcoding, were dominated by mesopelagic fish, principally lanternfishes (Myctophidae) and hatchetfishes (Sternoptychidae), but also included cephalopods and crustaceans. Additionally, almost half of the birds had microplastics in their regurgitates. Stable isotopic ratios did not differ significantly between sexes. Our results, combined with those of previous studies, suggest that within the oceanic North Atlantic, Leach’s storm-petrels feed at a similar trophic level to much larger seabirds, targeting mesopelagic fishes that are a key component of the North Atlantic pelagic food web

Influence of Activation Parameters on the Mechanical and Microstructure Properties of an Alkali-Activated BOF Steel Slag

ABSTRACT: Steel slag (SS) is a secondary material from steelmaking production with little commercial value. Its volumetric expansion and low reactivity limit the use of SS in Portland cement (PC)- based materials. This study investigated the potential use of basic oxygen furnace (BOF) slag as a single precursor in alkali-activated matrices (AAMs). Six AAM pastes were assessed by changing the silica modulus (0.75, 1.50 and 2.22) and the sodium concentration (4% or 6% Na2O?wt. SS). The early hydration was assessed using isothermal calorimetry (IC), followed by the assessment of the mechanical performance (compressive strength), apparent porosity, and structure and microstructure characterization (X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy). The results indicated that although the BOF slag may be considered a low-reactivity material, the alkaline environment effectively dissolved important crystalline phases to produce hydrates (reaction products). An optimized combination of activator sources was achieved with 4% Na2O and a silica modulus of 1.50?2.22, with a compressive strength up to 20 MPa, a significant amount of reaction products (C-S-H/C-A-S-H gels), and low initial and cumulative heat release. Those properties will help to promote SS recycling use in future engineering projects that do not require high-strength materials.This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—finance code 001, grant PPM-00709-18 (FAPEMIG) and grant 316882/2021-6 (CNPq

From chickpea and lupin as dairy alternatives

Funding text This work was supported by the FCT Project PTDC/BAA-AGR/28370/2017: “Bebida de proteína vegetal a partir de leguminosas europeias com potencial bioativo”; and also through the research unit UID/AGR/04129/2020 – LEAF.Consumption of plant based products as dairy alternatives is increasing steeply. This diet transition can only be achieved if these products keep the nutritional value and meet consumer's sensory acceptance. This work aimed to evaluate the decrease of the “beany” flavour and of raffinose, stachyose and verbascose contents in EU pulse beveragés production, and also the best lactic fermentation conditions of the beverages, towards chickpea- and lupin-based yoghurts, with rheology properties similar to the commercial soy yoghurts. The reduction of “beany” volatile compounds of chickpea and lupin beverages during processing was confirmed through GC–MS analysis. Soaking and cooking processes were effective in removing flatulence sugars with almost 48% loss from the initial content in lupin beverage. The fermentation conditions at 40 °C, 12 h and 2% (w/v) of starter concentration evidenced the best viscoelastic structure and flow properties. The lupin yoghurt-type showed a similar gel structure to commercial soy yoghurt. © 2022publishersversionpublishe

Deep dense and convolutional autoencoders for machine acoustic anomaly detection

Recently, there have been advances in using unsupervised learning methods for Acoustic Anomaly Detection (AAD). In this paper, we propose an improved version of two deep AutoEncoders (AE) for unsupervised AAD for six types of working machines, namely Dense and Convolutional AEs. A large set of computational experiments was held, showing that the two proposed deep autoencoders, when combined with a mel-spectrogram sound preprocessing, are quite competitive and outperform a recently proposed AE baseline. Overall, a high-quality class discrimination level was achieved, ranging from 72% to 92%.European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) - Project n ∘ 039334; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-039334