A Global Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Transport and other Linear Infrastructure

The current Global Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Transport and other Linear Infrastructure primarily sets up the objectives and principles for governments and organizations for mainstreaming biodiversity and ecological connectivity on transport infrastructure development. Additionally, it addresses the overall framework of stakeholders who must be engaged as key players in: • launching proactive policies, • establishing appropriate legal frameworks, • supporting better planning, • promoting multi-sector cooperation, and • encouraging innovative science-based solutions. We consider this as a living document as future versions may integrate additional elements with regards to governance, policy, and financing, in the attempt to develop a common comprehensive language and grounds for cooperation. This “Global Strategy” has been developed by an international working group coordinated by IENE and supported by an international coalition formed from the international conferences on transport and ecology and conservation organisations as IENE, ICOET, ANET, ACLIE, WWF and IUCN. The working group is drawn from global experts in transport and ecology and aims to work towards finding a ‘win-win’ solution for securing mainstreaming biodiversity and ecological connectivity and avoiding, mitigating, or compensating ecosystems’ fragmentation during transport infrastructure development or adaptation. This Strategy builds upon five years of development of the guidelines “International Guidance for Ecologically - Friendly Linear Infrastructure (IGELI)” initiated at the ICOET 2015 conference in North Carolina, USA. IGELI was an international debate with experts from all over the world continued during workshops held at the international conferences of IENE (Lyon, France, 2016 and Eindhoven, Holland, 2018), ICOET (Salt Lake City, USA, 2017 and Sacramento, USA, 2019), IUCN (Hawaii, USA, 2016) and ACLIE (Kruger National Park, South Africa, 2019). Summarising the Decision 14/3 on mainstreaming of biodiversity in the energy and mining, infrastructure, manufacturing, and processing sectors (CBD/ COP/DEC/14/3/30 November 2018) of 14th COP CBD (Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, Nov 2018) (Convention on Biological Diversity 2018), the international coalition of the working group, initiated to promote the Strategy at the CBD COP 15 in China. We hope, this Strategy provides a useful tool and roadmap for promoting the urgent need of supporting biodiversity conservation and securing ecological connectivity at all scales of governance, policies, planning and implementation of transport projects internationally. The creation of an International Observatory for monitoring the fragmentation status globally as an important threat for biodiversity loss is proposed as a common ambition of the working group members and their organizations.IENE, ICOET, ANET, ACLIE, WWF, IUCN, WWF, WCPA, Connectivity Conservation Specialist Grou

Adelante / Endavant

Séptimo desafío por la erradicación de la violencia contra las mujeres del Institut Universitari d’Estudis Feministes i de Gènere "Purificación Escribano" de la Universitat Jaume

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Meteorological conditions, ozone concentration and leaf age affect gas exchange in Psidium guajava ‛Palumaʼ

ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the importance of leaf age, meteorological conditions and ozone concentration (O3) on gas exchange of Psidium guajava ‛Paluma'. Saplings were grown and exposed in standard conditions in the city of São Paulo, in six periods of three months with weekly measurements in young and mature leaves. Gas exchanges were higher in young leaves for almost the entire experiment. Mature leaves showed greater reduction in gas exchange. The multivariate analysis of biotic and abiotic variables indicated that vapor pressure deficit (VPD), O3 concentration and radiation were the main variables associated with gas exchange decrease in young leaves. In mature leaves the influence of VPD is lower, but the temperature importance is higher. Moreover, the opposition between assimilation and O3 is more evident in mature leaves, indicating their greater sensitivity to O3