Ecosystems as Commodity Frontiers - Challenges Faced by Land Set Aside as Protected Areas (PAs) in the Dubai Emirate, United Arab Emirates (UAE)

This chapter examines natural habitats in Dubai, UAE that the state has demarcated as protected areas (PAs) in an attempt to utilize them for recreational/economic purposes while also mitigating habitat fragmentation. The authors employ the concept of the ‘commodity frontier’ to demonstrate how these PAs have contributed to the ongoing commodification of land that began with the rise of modern agriculture in the mid-twentieth century. The rise of the oil economy in the mid-twentieth century stimulated significant development that, over time, has resulted in ecological degradation. In line with state conservation agendas aimed at greening the desert and preserving biodiversity, PAs also serve as a mechanism for promoting tourism. Ironically, these activities have in turn put further pressure on the country’s natural resources and desert ecology. The authors also present an example of a PA that has been effectively managed and could serve as a model of sustainable development

Children's Health in London and Luton (CHILL) cohort:a 12-month natural experimental study of the effects of the Ultra Low Emission Zone on children's travel to school

BACKGROUND: The Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), introduced in Central London in April 2019, aims to enhance air quality and improve public health. The Children's Health in London and Luton (CHILL) study evaluates the impact of the ULEZ on children's health. This analysis focuses on the one-year impacts on the shift towards active travel to school.METHODS: CHILL is a prospective parallel cohort study of ethnically diverse children, aged 6-9 years attending 84 primary schools within or with catchment areas encompassing London's ULEZ (intervention) and Luton (non-intervention area). Baseline (2018/19) and one-year follow-up (2019/20) data were collected at school visits from 1992 (58%) children who reported their mode of travel to school 'today' (day of assessment). Multilevel logistic regressions were performed to analyse associations between the introduction of the ULEZ and the likelihood of switching from inactive to active travel modes, and vice-versa. Interactions between intervention group status and pre-specified effect modifiers were also explored.RESULTS: Among children who took inactive modes at baseline, 42% of children in London and 20% of children in Luton switched to active modes. For children taking active modes at baseline, 5% of children in London and 21% of children in Luton switched to inactive modes. Relative to the children in Luton, children in London were more likely to have switched from inactive to active modes (OR 3.64, 95% CI 1.21-10.92). Children in the intervention group were also less likely to switch from active to inactive modes (OR 0.11, 0.05-0.24). Moderator analyses showed that children living further from school were more likely to switch from inactive to active modes (OR 6.06,1.87-19.68) compared to those living closer (OR 1.43, 0.27-7.54).CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of clean air zones can increase uptake of active travel to school and was particularly associated with more sustainable and active travel in children living further from school.</p

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

GPS tracking reveals rafting behaviour of Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus): implications for foraging ecology and conservation

Capsule Three quarters of tracked Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) at Grassholm gathered in rafts around the colony, concentrated within a recently designated at-sea Special Protection Area (SPA), but rafting was not correlated with foraging effort.Aims To investigate the incidence, distribution and foraging implications of Northern Gannet rafting behaviour in waters adjacent to a large colony.Methods Using bird-borne global positioning system (GPS) loggers we reconstructed at-sea movement and used a speed filter to identify rafting behaviour within 10 km of the colony. We mapped the spatial distribution of rafting events from 160 breeding individuals over 5 years, and investigated the relationship between foraging effort (trip duration and total distance travelled) and the presence/absence of rafting.Results On average, 74% of tracked birds engaged in rafting. Of the 381 foraging trips analysed, rafting was recorded on 237 (62%). Birds were more likely to raft on outbound (224 trips, 59%), than inbound journeys (38 trips, 10%). Presence/absence of rafting did not correlate significantly with foraging trip distance or duration nor with duration of nest attendance. The majority of rafting was concentrated in a 2-km radius around the colony within a recently designated seaward SPA extension. Birds showed low individual repeatability in rafting, although there was lower variation within, than among, individuals.Conclusion Our results show that rafting is important for breeding gannets on Grassholm, and a recently designated at-sea SPA encapsulates the core distribution of rafting. Rafting did not appear to be correlated with foraging behaviour. Given the dearth of literature on rafting and the wealth of GPS tracking data for seabirds, we suggest that similar research be conducted elsewhere to further elucidate the ecological and applied significance of this behaviour

GPS tracking reveals rafting behaviour of Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus): implications for foraging ecology and conservation

Capsule Three quarters of tracked Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) at Grassholm gathered in rafts around the colony, concentrated within a recently designated at-sea Special Protection Area (SPA), but rafting was not correlated with foraging effort. Aims To investigate the incidence, distribution and foraging implications of Northern Gannet rafting behaviour in waters adjacent to a large colony. Methods Using bird-borne global positioning system (GPS) loggers we reconstructed at-sea movement and used a speed filter to identify rafting behaviour within 10 km of the colony. We mapped the spatial distribution of rafting events from 160 breeding individuals over 5 years, and investigated the relationship between foraging effort (trip duration and total distance travelled) and the presence/absence of rafting. Results On average, 74% of tracked birds engaged in rafting. Of the 381 foraging trips analysed, rafting was recorded on 237 (62%). Birds were more likely to raft on outbound (224 trips, 59%), than inbound journeys (38 trips, 10%). Presence/absence of rafting did not correlate significantly with foraging trip distance or duration nor with duration of nest attendance. The majority of rafting was concentrated in a 2-km radius around the colony within a recently designated seaward SPA extension. Birds showed low individual repeatability in rafting, although there was lower variation within, than among, individuals. Conclusion Our results show that rafting is important for breeding gannets on Grassholm, and a recently designated at-sea SPA encapsulates the core distribution of rafting. Rafting did not appear to be correlated with foraging behaviour. Given the dearth of literature on rafting and the wealth of GPS tracking data for seabirds, we suggest that similar research be conducted elsewhere to further elucidate the ecological and applied significance of this behaviour