The Limits of Anthropocene Narratives

The rapidly growing transdisciplinary enthusiasm about developing new kinds of Anthropocene stories is based on the shared assumption that the Anthropocene predicament is best made sense of by narrative means. Against this assumption, this article argues that the challenge we are facing today does not merely lie in telling either scientific, socio-political, or entangled Anthropocene narratives to come to terms with our current condition. Instead, the challenge lies in coming to grips with how the stories we can tell in the Anthropocene relate to the radical novelty of the Anthropocene condition about which no stories can be told. What we need to find are meaningful ways to reconcile an inherited commitment to narrativization and the collapse of storytelling as a vehicle of understanding the Anthropocene as our current predicament

Following basal stem rot in young oil palm plantings

The PCR primer GanET has previously been shown to be suitable for the specific amplification of DNA from Ganoderma boninense. A DNA extraction and PCR method has been developed that allows for the amplification of the G. boninense DNA from environmental samples of oil palm tissue. The GanET primer reaction was used in conjunction with a palm-sampling programme to investigate the possible infection of young palms through cut frond base surfaces. Ganoderma DNA was detected in frond base material at a greater frequency than would be expected by comparison with current infection levels. Comparisons are made between the height of the frond base infected, the number of frond bases infected, and subsequent development of basal stem rot. The preliminary results suggest that the development of basal stem rot may be more likely to occur when young lower frond bases are infected

Numerical Investigation of Boundary Layers in Wet Steam Nozzles

Condensing nozzle flows have been used extensively to validate wet steam models. Many test cases are available in the literature, and in the past, a range of numerical studies have dealt with this challenging task. It is usually assumed that the nozzles provide a one- or two-dimensional flow with a fully turbulent boundary layer (BL). The present paper reviews these assumptions and investigates numerically the influence of boundary layers on dry and wet steam nozzle expansions. For the narrow nozzle of Moses and Stein, it is shown that the pressure distribution is significantly affected by the additional blockage due to the side wall boundary layer. Comparison of laminar and turbulent flow predictions for this nozzles suggests that laminar–turbulent transition only occurs after the throat. Other examples are the Binnie and Green nozzle and the Moore et al. nozzles for which it is known that sudden changes in wall curvature produce expansion and compression waves that interact with the boundary layers. The differences between two- and three-dimensional calculations for these cases and the influence of laminar and turbulent boundary layers are discussed. The present results reveal that boundary layer effects can have a considerable impact on the mean nozzle flow and thus on the validation process of condensation models. In order to verify the accuracy of turbulence modeling, a test case that is not widely known internationally is included within the present study. This experimental work is remarkable because it includes boundary layer data as well as the usual pressure measurements along the nozzle centerline. Predicted and measured boundary layer profiles are compared, and the effect of different turbulence models is discussed. Most of the numerical results are obtained with the in-house wet steam Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) solver, Steamblock, but for the purpose of comparison, the commercial program ansys cfx is also used, providing a wider range of standard RANS-based turbulence models.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilThis is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

Nucleation and wake-chopping in low pressure steam turbines

While wetness formation in steady flows such as nozzles and cascades is well understood, predicting the polydispersed droplet spectra observed in turbines remains challenging. The characteristics of wetness formation are affected by the expansion rate at the Wilson point. Because the expansion rate varies substantially both axially and circumferentially within steam turbines, the location of the Wilson point within a blade row is a primary factor determining the droplet spectrum and phase change losses. This effect is first investigated using a single streamline with a varying expansion rate, and it is shown that the phase change losses during spontaneous condensation are highest when a large region of high subcooling precedes the Wilson point. The conditions resulting in the highest wetness loss in the nucleation zone do not correspond to those that produce the largest downstream droplets. The effect of nucleation location is then assessed using a non-equilibrium RANS calculation of a realistic low pressure (LP) steam turbine geometry. A quasi-three dimensional (Q3D) flow domain is used to simplify the analysis, which is performed both steadily and unsteadily to isolate the effects of wake-chopping. The inlet temperature is varied to investigate the impact of the Wilson point location on the steady and unsteady wetness loss and droplet spectra. The trends observed in the 1D analysis are repeated in the steady RANS results. The unsteady results show that the Wilson zone is most sensitive to wake-chopping when located near a blade trailing edge and the following inter-row gap. The predicted wetness losses are compared to those predicted by the Baumann rule. The first author, FRH, is grateful for the support of a Cambridge International Scholarship provided by the Cambridge Commonwealth, European, and International Trust in collaboration with ALSTOM. All authors wish to acknowledge generous support from ALSTOM Power (Steam Turbines Division)

Newly-claimed seascapes: Options for repurposing inundated areas

Sea-level rise is unstoppable. Communities worldwide are facing difficult choices in responding to changing coastlines and estuaries. Understandably, there is little attention on the potential for repurposing inundated areas because retreat and adaptation take precedence. Repurposing may be infeasible for newly-claimed seascapes in exposed and high energy coasts. Nevertheless, for sheltered coastal areas, shallow estuaries and harbours, there may be potential for repurposing some areas for aquaculture, fisheries, wetlands, and/or blue carbon. For example, abandoned and decontaminated structures may provide fish nursery habitat as artificial reefs. Here, we present the results of a systematic literature review of potential options, along with identified benefits and implementation barriers. Our purpose is not to examine the feasibility of such options because these will be place- and context-specific; rather, we explore whether the solution space can be extended beyond the point of impact. We suggest that repurposing could be added to the PARA management framework

Characterising the regulatory seascape in Aotearoa New Zealand: Bridging local, regional and national scales for marine ecosystem-based management

In the face of declining ocean health and marine biodiversity, marine management arrangements may need to change in many jurisdictions. This can occur in a planned process of legislative and institutional reform undertaken by central government, or by an incremental and ad hoc ‘unplanned’ process through court decisions or local actions. In either case, targeted characterisations of the contemporary regulatory seascape are necessary to accurately diagnose what system elements may need major change to address ecological degradation. In this study, we examine the regulatory and institutional interplay between central government, sub-national regional authorities, and Indigenous Māori in the protection and management of marine biogenic habitats in New Zealand. Based on an analysis of government documents, institutional responses to a set of questions, and recent case law, we found generic institutional failings to implement core legislation, at both sub-national ‘regional’ and national scales. In particular, less than half of the regional authorities had given effect to a mandatory national instrument that set environmental bottom-lines, and central government failure to identify and protect significant fisheries habitats. Concurrently, we identified an upsurge in requests for temporary fishing closures through rāhui (traditional customary prohibitions), and the potential for tools enabled in customary marine tenure legislation to play a significant future role in managing marine ecosystem health. Our study highlights that the regulatory seascape is devolving towards a greater polycentricity of management with an increased involvement of Māori at sub-national and local levels, which may hold lessons for Indigenous peoples in other jurisdictions. These ‘unplanned reforms’ are likely to be a key driver of improvements in the management and governance of biodiverse marine biogenic habitats at national and sub-national level, both prior to, and as a consequence of, the New Zealand Government's planned ocean reform programme

Fucking failures: The future of fat sex

In the context of the obesity ‘epidemic’ fat people’s sex lives are cast as sterile, sexually dysfunctional or just plain non-existent. This article analyzes medical discourses of obesity and sex in order to argue that fat sex is constructed as a type of failure. Using insights from antisocial queer theory, fat sex is further shown to be queer in its failure to adhere to the specifically heteronormative dictates of what Edelman (2004) calls ‘reproductive futurism’. The analysis finally engages with Halberstam’s (2011) notion of queer failure to demonstrate how deconstructing notions of success and failure might offer fat political projects new ways to imagine the future of fat sex

Temperatures in Pigs During 3 T MRI Temperatures, Heart Rates, and Breathing Rates of Pigs During RF Power Deposition in a 3 T (128 MHz) Body Coil

Exposure to radiofrequency (RF) power deposition during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) induces elevated body-tissue temperatures and may cause changes in heart and breathing rates, disturbing thermoregulation. Eleven temperature sensors were placed in muscle tissue and one sensor in the rectum (measured in 10 cm depth) of 20 free-breathing anesthetized pigs to verify temperature curves during RF exposure. Tissue temperatures and heart and breathing rates were measured before, during, and after RF exposure. Pigs were placed into a 60-cm diameter whole-body resonator of a 3 T MRI system. Nineteen anesthetized pigs were divided into four RF exposure groups: sham (0 W/kg), low-exposure (2.7 W/kg, mean exposure time 56 min), moderate-exposure (4.8 W/kg, mean exposure time 31 min), and high-exposure (4.4 W/kg, mean exposure time 61 min). One pig was exposed to a whole-body specific absorption rate (wbSAR) of 11.4 W/kg (extreme-exposure). Hotspot temperatures, measured by sensor 2, increased by mean 5.0 ± 0.9°C, min 3.9; max 6.3 (low), 7.0 ± 2.3°C, min 4.6; max 9.9 (moderate), and 9.2 ± 4.4°C, min 6.1, max 17.9 (high) compared with 0.3 ± 0.3°C in the sham-exposure group (min 0.1, max 0.6). Four time-temperature curves were identified: sinusoidal, parabolic, plateau, and linear. These curve shapes did not correlate with RF intensity, rectal temperature, breathing rate, or heart rate. In all pigs, rectal temperatures increased (2.1 ± 0.9°C) during and even after RF exposure, while hotspot temperatures decreased after exposure. When rectal temperature increased by 1°C, hotspot temperature increased up to 42.8°C within 37 min (low-exposure) or up to 43.8°C within 24 min (high-exposure). Global wbSAR did not correlate with maximum hotspot. Bioelectromagnetics. 2021;42:37–50

Science Models as Value-Added Services for Scholarly Information Systems

The paper introduces scholarly Information Retrieval (IR) as a further dimension that should be considered in the science modeling debate. The IR use case is seen as a validation model of the adequacy of science models in representing and predicting structure and dynamics in science. Particular conceptualizations of scholarly activity and structures in science are used as value-added search services to improve retrieval quality: a co-word model depicting the cognitive structure of a field (used for query expansion), the Bradford law of information concentration, and a model of co-authorship networks (both used for re-ranking search results). An evaluation of the retrieval quality when science model driven services are used turned out that the models proposed actually provide beneficial effects to retrieval quality. From an IR perspective, the models studied are therefore verified as expressive conceptualizations of central phenomena in science. Thus, it could be shown that the IR perspective can significantly contribute to a better understanding of scholarly structures and activities.Comment: 26 pages, to appear in Scientometric

Q methodology and a Delphi poll: a useful approach to researching a narrative approach to therapy

Q methodology and a Delphi poll combined qualitative and quantitative methods to explore definitions of White and Epston's (1990) narrative approach to therapy among a group of UK practitioners. A Delphi poll was used to generate statements about narrative therapy. The piloting of statements by the Delphi panel identified agreement about theoretical ideas underpinning narrative therapy and certain key practices. A wider group of practitioners ranked the statements in a Q sort and made qualitative comments about their sorting. Quantitative methods (principal components analysis) were used to extract eight accounts of narrative therapy, five of which are qualitatively analysed in this paper. Agreement and differences were identified across a range of issues, including the social construction of narratives, privileging a political stance or narrative techniques and the relationship with other therapies, specifically systemic psychotherapy. Q methodology, combined with the Delphi poll, was a unique and innovative feature of this study