Pathways to permanence in England and Norway: A critical analysis of documents and data

The English language term ‘permanence’ is increasingly used in high income countries as a ‘short-hand’ translation for a complex set of aims around providing stability and family membership for children who need child welfare services and out-of-home care. From a scrutiny of legislative provisions, court judgments, government documents and a public opinion survey on child placement options, the paper draws out similarities and differences in understandings of the place of ‘permanence’ within the child welfare discourse in Norway and England. The main differences are that in England the components of permanence are explicitly set out in legislation, statutory guidance and advisory documents whilst in Norway the terms ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ are used in a more limited number of policy documents in the context of a wide array of services available for children and families. The paper then draws on these sources, and on administrative data on children in care, to tease out possible explanations for the similarities and differences identified. We hypothesise that both long-standing policies and recent changes can be explained by differences in public and political understandings of child welfare and the balance between universal services and those targeted on parents and children identified as vulnerable and in need of specialist services

Greenhouse gas emissions of Norwegian seafoods: From comprehensive to simplified assessment

The seafood sector is facing difficulties to meet the increasing demand for product greenhouse gas emission (GHG) assessments. We quantified GHGs of important seafood products of Norway, the world's second largest seafood exporter. We present results and improvement options for products of farmed salmon and wild‐caught shrimp, king crab, cod, and herring, followed to their dominating markets, based on detailed data for 2017. To enable more frequent monitoring, without engaging in a full assessment, we then suggest a simplified approach, focusing on the main drivers of production‐related emissions. The simplified approach is used to analyze temporal trends from 2007–2017 for fisheries and 1990–2017 for salmon aquaculture. Finally, the simplified approach was compared to the comprehensive assessment for 2017 to define species‐specific upscaling factors. Results show that salmon and crustacean products in 2017 caused higher emissions than cod and herring products, with feed and fuel use being the main emission drivers, whereas airfreighted products had the highest emissions of all products. Large improvement potential from average to best performers within each production system exists. The simplified approach shows that the fuel‐use intensity of Norwegian fisheries has increased by almost 50% for shrimp over the past decade whereas it has decreased for fish by 20% for demersal species such as cod and 5–10% for pelagic species such as herring. Feed‐related emissions for salmon, on the other hand, have increased by almost 30% during the same period, because of an increasing feed conversion ratio and increased inclusion of emission‐intensive feed inputs.publishedVersio

Numerical Analysis of a Vessel-Shaped Offshore Fish Farm

The aquaculture industry is aiming to move fish farms from nearshore areas to open seas because of many attractive advantages in the open water. However, one major challenge is to design the structure to withstand the environmental loads due to wind, waves, and currents. The purpose of this paper is to study a vessel-shaped fish farm concept for open sea applications. The structure includes a vessel-shaped hull, a mooring system, and fish cages. The shape of the hull minimizes the wave loads coming from the bow, and the single-point mooring system is connected to the turret at the vessel bow. Such a system allows the whole fish farm to rotate freely about the turret, reduces the environmental loads on the structure and increases the spread area of fish wastes. A basic geometry of the vessel hull was considered and the hydrodynamic properties were obtained from the frequency-domain (FD) analysis. A mooring system with six mooring lines was designed to avoid possible interactions with the fish cages. Time-domain (TD) simulations were performed by coupling the hull with the mooring system. A simplified rigid model of the fish cages was considered. The global responses of the system and the mooring line loads were compared under various wave and current conditions. The effects due to misalignment of wave and current directions on the responses were discussed. Finally, the responses using flexible and rigid net models were compared under steady current conditions.acceptedVersio

Background exposure rates of terrestrial wildlife in England and Wales

It has been suggested that, when assessing radiation impacts on non-human biota, estimated dose rates due to anthropogenically released radionuclides should be put in context by comparison to dose rates from natural background radiation. In order to make these comparisons, we need data on the activity concentrations of naturally occurring radionuclides in environmental media and organisms of interest. This paper presents the results of a study to determine the exposure of terrestrial organisms in England and Wales to naturally occurring radionuclides, specifically 40K, 238U series and 232Th series radionuclides. Whole-body activity concentrations for the reference animals and plants (RAPs) as proposed by the ICRP have been collated from literature review, data archives and a targeted sampling campaign. Data specifically for the proposed RAP are sparse. Soil activity concentrations have been derived from an extensive geochemical survey of the UK. Unweighted and weighted absorbed dose rates were estimated using the ERICA Tool. Mean total weighted whole-body absorbed dose rates estimated for the selected terrestrial organisms was in the range 6.9x 10-2 to 6.1 x 10-1 mGy h-1