Impacts of climate change on coastal habitats, relevant to the coastal and marine environment around the UK

Coastal habitats are at risk from both direct (temperature, rainfall), and indirect (sea-level rise, coastal erosion) impacts due to a changing climate. Beyond the environmental impacts and ensuing habitat loss, the changing climate will have a significant societal impact to coastal communities ranging from health to livelihoods, as well as the loss of important ecosystem services such as coastal defence – particularly relevant with predicted increase in storminess. Vegetated coastal ecosystems sequester carbon – another ‘ecosystem service’ that could be disrupted due to climate change. There has been considerable recent attention to the potential role these habitats could play in climate mitigation, and also in transferring carbon across the land–sea interface. To understand the relative importance of these habitats within the global carbon cycle, coastal habitats need to be accounted for in national greenhouse gas inventories, and a true multidisciplinary catchment-to-coast approach to research is required. Management options exist that can reduce the immediate impacts of climate change, such as managed realignment and sediment recharge. Fixed landward coastal defences are becoming unsustainable and creating ‘coastal squeeze’, highlighting the need to work with natural processes to recreate more-natural shorelines where possible

The Mathematical Universe

I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters, randomness and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and Godel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Godel's sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems.Comment: Replaced to match accepted Found. Phys. version, 31 pages, 5 figs; more details at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe.htm

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

HOT ELECTRON DEVICES FOR MILLIMETRE AND SUBMILLIMETRE APPLICATIONS

L'importance des effets transitoires des électrons chauds dans les dispositifs semi-conducteurs augmentent avec la fréquence et, pour les ondes millimétriques, les effets ont une grande influence sur leurs modes et leurs caractéristiques. Une étude de ces effets aide le développement des dispositifs. Les effets transitoires sont très importants pour les diodes à transfert d'électrons. Leurs modes se déforment à hautes fréquences et les meilleurs pour les sources millimétriques sont reconnus. Pour les autres sources et les mélangeurs, les effets transitoires ont moins d'importance, mais au-delà de 100 GHz, ils ont une influence significative sur le comportement des dispositifs.The importance of hot electron relaxation effects in semiconductor devices increases with frequency and, for the millimetre band, the transient processes have a major effect on their modes and terminal characteristics. A study of these effects provides a useful guide for practical device development. Relaxation effects are particularly strong in transferred-electron sources. The modes distort at high frequency and those most suitable for millimetre band generators are identified. In other sources and mixers relaxation effects are less dominant, but they have a significant influence on device philosophy above 100 GHz

Research data supporting "Ellipsoid localisation microscopy infers the size and order of protein layers in Bacillus spore coats."

This dataset contains image analysis software and sample image data in support of our work on fluorescent shell localisation. The paper is archived by the Cambridge Open Access repository at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251107This work was supported by the EPSRC [grant number EP/L015889/1]