Interaction of climate change with effects of conspecific and heterospecific density on reproduction

We studied the relationship between temperature and the coexistence of great titParus majorand blue titCyanistes caeruleus, breeding in 75 study plots across Europe and North Africa. We expected an advance in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer springs as a general response to climate warming and a delay in laying date and a reduction in clutch size during warmer winters due to density-dependent effects. As expected, as spring temperature increases laying date advances and as winter temperature increases clutch size is reduced in both species. Density of great tit affected the relationship between winter temperature and laying date in great and blue tit. Specifically, as density of great tit increased and temperature in winter increased both species started to reproduce later. Density of blue tit affected the relationship between spring temperature and blue and great tit laying date. Thus, both species start to reproduce earlier with increasing spring temperature as density of blue tit increases, which was not an expected outcome, since we expected that increasing spring temperature should advance laying date, while increasing density should delay it cancelling each other out. Climate warming and its interaction with density affects clutch size of great tits but not of blue tits. As predicted, great tit clutch size is reduced more with density of blue tits as temperature in winter increases. The relationship between spring temperature and density on clutch size of great tits depends on whether the increase is in density of great tit or blue tit. Therefore, an increase in temperature negatively affected the coexistence of blue and great tits differently in both species. Thus, blue tit clutch size was unaffected by the interaction effect of density with temperature, while great tit clutch size was affected in multiple ways by these interactions terms.Peer reviewe

NaTech risk analysis in the context of land use planning. Case study: Petroleum products storage tank farm next to a residential area

Natural disasters affect communities in a negative way throughout the world and their effects are expected to become more severe, as it is extremely difficult to keep up with resilience measures and disaster risk reduction actions in the rapid changing societal context. Major accidents within industrial sites can be caused by internal factors, such as equipment malfunction, human error, failure of safety measures etc., as well as by external factors, such as natural events - called NaTech events. The present paper focuses on the case study of a tank farm for the storage of petroleum products, located in a high seismic risk area in the South-Central part of Romania. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the difference between the individual and societal risk results in case of internal technological accidents and in case of adding a NaTech event triggered by a high magnitude earthquake in the area, for the same tank farm. Results highlight the fact that quantitative risk assessments which take into account NaTech scenarios should be included in the risk analysis process for industrial sites and for land-use planning purposes as well. \ua9 Copyright 2014, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l

Dense matter with eXTP

eXTP offers unprecedented discovery space for the EOS of cold supranuclear density matter. eXTP\u2019s large area will enable the most sensitive searches for accretion-powered pulsations and burst oscillations ever undertaken. Both yield the spin frequency of the NS; a single measurement of sub millisecond period spin would provide a clean and extremely robust constraint on the EOS. However, eXTP will also deliver high precision measurements of M and R. The combination of large effective area and polarimeter will enable us to deploy multiple independent techniques: pulse profile modelling of accretionpowered pulsations, burst oscillations, and rotation-powered pulsations; spectral modelling of bursts, and using phenomena related to the accretion disc such as kHz QPOs and the relativistic Fe line. Many sources show several of these phenomena, allowing us to make completely independent measurements for a single source, to reduce systematic errors. Examples of targets in this class include the accretionpowered millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4\u20133658, which goes into regular outburst, and the persistently accreting burster 4U 1636\u2013536. We anticipate that eXTP could delivery precision constraints on M and R, at the few percent level, for of order 10 sources for a reasonable observing plan and given the anticipated mission lifetime. This would be unprecedented in terms of mapping the EOS and expanding the frontiers of dense matter physics

Nutrition and dietary intake and their association with mortality and hospitalisation in adults with chronic kidney disease treated with haemodialysis: protocol for DIET-HD, a prospective multinational cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: Adults with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) treated with haemodialysis experience mortality of between 15% and 20% each year. Effective interventions that improve health outcomes for long-term dialysis patients remain unproven. Novel and testable determinants of health in dialysis are needed. Nutrition and dietary patterns are potential factors influencing health in other health settings that warrant exploration in multinational studies in men and women treated with dialysis. We report the protocol of the "DIETary intake, death and hospitalisation in adults with end-stage kidney disease treated with HaemoDialysis (DIET-HD) study," a multinational prospective cohort study. DIET-HD will describe associations of nutrition and dietary patterns with major health outcomes for adults treated with dialysis in several countries.METHODS AND ANALYSIS: DIET-HD will recruit approximately 10,000 adults who have ESKD treated by clinics administered by a single dialysis provider in Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. Recruitment will take place between March 2014 and June 2015. The study has currently recruited 8000 participants who have completed baseline data. Nutritional intake and dietary patterns will be measured using the Global Allergy and Asthma European Network (GA(2)LEN) food frequency questionnaire. The primary dietary exposures will be n-3 and n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid consumption. The primary outcome will be cardiovascular mortality and secondary outcomes will be all-cause mortality, infection-related mortality and hospitalisation.ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study is approved by the relevant Ethics Committees in participating countries. All participants will provide written informed consent and be free to withdraw their data at any time. The findings of the study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and to participants via regular newsletters. We expect that the DIET-HD study will inform large pragmatic trials of nutrition or dietary interventions in the setting of advanced kidney disease