Opening up the societal debate on climate engineering: How newspaper frames are changing

The use of climate engineering or geoengineering technologies to combat climate change has been a controversial topic, even in the scientific debate. In recent studies, it has been claimed that the debate on climate engineering technologies may be closing down prematurely, with detrimental effects on the possibility of social and ethical reflection in appraising these controversial technologies. We examined the extent to which the debate on climate engineering is opening up or closing down, analyzing the diversity of English-speaking newspaper frames in the period 2006–2011. The results provide strong support for an opening of the debate, especially since 2009, given the decline of overly deterministic frames, the emergence of frames related to sociopolitical issues and an overall more balanced distribution of the various frames. This provides evidence that different perspectives are voiced in the public debate, which may enable societies to critically reflect on these emerging technologies

Evolution of System, Modelling and Control Concepts in Ancient Greece

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the historical origins of system, modelling, and automatic control concepts as well as to follow their development. An attempt is made to place the early formation and evolution of these concepts within the framework of their current understanding. Our research focuses on ancient Greece and involves searching through the primary sources and the literature on archaeological findings related to system, modelling and control ideas. Nowadays, the application fields of system, modelling, and control concepts are mostly associated with complex, industrial or business processes and problems. However, the emergence of the system and modelling concepts is to be found in the early scientific and technological human thought, when the under consideration issues are the creation and the structure of the world, the natural processes and phenomena, or the functions of human body. On the other hand, the mythical intention of constructing automatic machines that imitate the living beings at the beginning, and the realisation of them in the Hellenistic times, give birth to the concept of feedback and control. The study of the primitive appearance of system, modelling, and control concepts and their evolution from the Mythical period to the Hellenistic era serves the purposes of: a) the in depth understanding of these concepts, b) placing them in a proper historical setup, c) highlighting aspects of the current advanced system theories, modelling methodologies and control methods from a historical perspective, and d) expanding their application in more and more complicated problems

Genetic vs community diversity patterns of macrobenthic species: preliminary results from the lagoonal ecosystem

1 - The use of molecular data derived from multispecies assemblages in order to test ecological theory has only recently been introduced in the scientific literature.2 - As a first step, we compared patterns of abiotic environment, polychaeta distribution and their genetic diversity in five lagoon ecosystems in Greece. Our results confirm the hypothesis that higher genetic diversity is expected in the populations of the species occurring in the transitional waters rather than of those occurring in the marine environment.3 - Patterns derived from the polychaete community level and from the mitochondrial DNA (16S rRNA) obtained from Nephtys hombergii and Hediste diversicolor showed convergence, indicating the potential use of molecular matrices as surrogates in community analysis.4 - Finally, the high correlation between the genetic diversity pattern of H. diversicolor and the phosphorus concentration in the sediments may imply the broadening of the hierarchic-response-tostress hypothesis towards lower than species level

ENVIRONMENTS and EOL : identification of Environment Ontology terms in text and the annotation of the Encyclopedia of Life

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bioinformatics 31 (2015): 1872-1874, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btv045.The association of organisms to their environments is a key issue in exploring biodiversity patterns. This knowledge has traditionally been scattered, but textual descriptions of taxa and their habitats are now being consolidated in centralized resources. However, structured annotations are needed to facilitate large-scale analyses. Therefore, we developed ENVIRONMENTS, a fast dictionary-based tagger capable of identifying Environment Ontology (ENVO) terms in text. We evaluate the accuracy of the tagger on a new manually curated corpus of 600 Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) species pages. We use the tagger to associate taxa with environments by tagging EOL text content monthly, and integrate the results into the EOL to disseminate them to a broad audience of users.The Encyclopedia Of Life Rubenstein Fellows Program [CRDF EOL-33066-13/E33066], the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure [384676-94/GSRT/ NSRF(C&E)] and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research [NNF14CC0001]

Design Rules for Obtaining Narrow Luminescence from Semiconductors Made in Solution

Solution-processed semiconductors are in demand for presentandnext-generation optoelectronic technologies ranging from displaysto quantum light sources because of their scalability and ease ofintegration into devices with diverse form factors. One of the centralrequirements for semiconductors used in these applications is a narrowphotoluminescence (PL) line width. Narrow emission line widths areneeded to ensure both color and single-photon purity, raising thequestion of what design rules are needed to obtain narrow emissionfrom semiconductors made in solution. In this review, we first examinethe requirements for colloidal emitters for a variety of applicationsincluding light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, lasers, and quantuminformation science. Next, we will delve into the sources of spectralbroadening, including "homogeneous" broadening fromdynamical broadening mechanisms in single-particle spectra, heterogeneousbroadening from static structural differences in ensemble spectra,and spectral diffusion. Then, we compare the current state of theart in terms of emission line width for a variety of colloidal materialsincluding II-VI quantum dots (QDs) and nanoplatelets, III-VQDs, alloyed QDs, metal-halide perovskites including nanocrystalsand 2D structures, doped nanocrystals, and, finally, as a point ofcomparison, organic molecules. We end with some conclusions and connections,including an outline of promising paths forward

Tales of future weather

Society is vulnerable to extreme weather events and, by extension, to human impacts on future events. As climate changes weather patterns will change. The search is on for more effective methodologies to aid decision-makers both in mitigation to avoid climate change and in adaptation to changes. The traditional approach uses ensembles of climate model simulations, statistical bias correction, downscaling to the spatial and temporal scales relevant to decision-makers, and then translation into quantities of interest. The veracity of this approach cannot be tested, and it faces in-principle challenges. Alternatively, numerical weather prediction models in a hypothetical climate setting can provide tailored narratives for high-resolution simulations of high-impact weather in a future climate. This 'tales of future weather' approach will aid in the interpretation of lower-resolution simulations. Arguably, it potentially provides complementary, more realistic and more physically consistent pictures of what future weather might look like

A bottom-up view of food surplus: using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to investigate agricultural strategies and diet at Bronze Age Archontiko and Thessaloniki Toumba, northern Greece

We use stable isotope analysis of crop, faunal and human remains to investigate agricultural strategies and diet at EBA-LBA Archontiko and MBA-LBA Thessaloniki Toumba. Crop production strategies varied between settlements, phases and species; flexibility is also apparent within the crop stores of individual houses. Escalating manuring intensity at LBA Thessaloniki Toumba coincides with large co-residential ‘blocks’ geared towards hoarding of agricultural surpluses, spectacularly preserved by fire at nearby LBA Assiros Toumba. Faunal isotope values reflect a range of feeding strategies, including probable herding of cattle on C4-rich coastal salt marshes, evident at Archontiko through to the LBA alongside bulk cockle harvesting. Palaeodietary analysis of LBA humans at Thessaloniki Toumba indicates that C3 crops represent the only plausible staples. Millet was a minor food but may have played a particular role in the sub-adult diet. Meat probably featured in supra-household food sharing and hospitality, associated with Mycenaean-style tableware in the LBA

Co-infection and ICU-acquired infection in COIVD-19 ICU patients: a secondary analysis of the UNITE-COVID data set

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic presented major challenges for critical care facilities worldwide. Infections which develop alongside or subsequent to viral pneumonitis are a challenge under sporadic and pandemic conditions; however, data have suggested that patterns of these differ between COVID-19 and other viral pneumonitides. This secondary analysis aimed to explore patterns of co-infection and intensive care unit-acquired infections (ICU-AI) and the relationship to use of corticosteroids in a large, international cohort of critically ill COVID-19 patients.Methods: This is a multicenter, international, observational study, including adult patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis admitted to ICUs at the peak of wave one of COVID-19 (February 15th to May 15th, 2020). Data collected included investigator-assessed co-infection at ICU admission, infection acquired in ICU, infection with multi-drug resistant organisms (MDRO) and antibiotic use. Frequencies were compared by Pearson's Chi-squared and continuous variables by Mann-Whitney U test. Propensity score matching for variables associated with ICU-acquired infection was undertaken using R library MatchIT using the "full" matching method.Results: Data were available from 4994 patients. Bacterial co-infection at admission was detected in 716 patients (14%), whilst 85% of patients received antibiotics at that stage. ICU-AI developed in 2715 (54%). The most common ICU-AI was bacterial pneumonia (44% of infections), whilst 9% of patients developed fungal pneumonia; 25% of infections involved MDRO. Patients developing infections in ICU had greater antimicrobial exposure than those without such infections. Incident density (ICU-AI per 1000 ICU days) was in considerable excess of reports from pre-pandemic surveillance. Corticosteroid use was heterogenous between ICUs. In univariate analysis, 58% of patients receiving corticosteroids and 43% of those not receiving steroids developed ICU-AI. Adjusting for potential confounders in the propensity-matched cohort, 71% of patients receiving corticosteroids developed ICU-AI vs 52% of those not receiving corticosteroids. Duration of corticosteroid therapy was also associated with development of ICU-AI and infection with an MDRO.Conclusions: In patients with severe COVID-19 in the first wave, co-infection at admission to ICU was relatively rare but antibiotic use was in substantial excess to that indication. ICU-AI were common and were significantly associated with use of corticosteroids

Clinical and organizational factors associated with mortality during the peak of first COVID-19 wave: the global UNITE-COVID study

Purpose: To accommodate the unprecedented number of critically ill patients with pneumonia caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) expansion of the capacity of intensive care unit (ICU) to clinical areas not previously used for critical care was necessary. We describe the global burden of COVID-19 admissions and the clinical and organizational characteristics associated with outcomes in critically ill COVID-19 patients. Methods: Multicenter, international, point prevalence study, including adult patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and a diagnosis of COVID-19 admitted to ICU between February 15th and May 15th, 2020. Results: 4994 patients from 280 ICUs in 46 countries were included. Included ICUs increased their total capacity from 4931 to 7630 beds, deploying personnel from other areas. Overall, 1986 (39.8%) patients were admitted to surge capacity beds. Invasive ventilation at admission was present in 2325 (46.5%) patients and was required during ICU stay in 85.8% of patients. 60-day mortality was 33.9% (IQR across units: 20%–50%) and ICU mortality 32.7%. Older age, invasive mechanical ventilation, and acute kidney injury (AKI) were associated with increased mortality. These associations were also confirmed specifically in mechanically ventilated patients. Admission to surge capacity beds was not associated with mortality, even after controlling for other factors. Conclusions: ICUs responded to the increase in COVID-19 patients by increasing bed availability and staff, admitting up to 40% of patients in surge capacity beds. Although mortality in this population was high, admission to a surge capacity bed was not associated with increased mortality. Older age, invasive mechanical ventilation, and AKI were identified as the strongest predictors of mortality