Key Note: Living with droughts?

The Netherlands Center for River Research (NCR) in its first 10 years of existence has focused its activities on flooding. Climate change might cause that droughts will become as important as or even more important than floods. The dry year 2003 in Europe has shown the huge socio-economic impacts of droughts. New concepts are emerging on how to deal with droughts. This key-note addresses the issues of droughts and scarcity and makes a plea to include more drought research in NCR

Numerical modelling of erosion and sedimentation around offshore pipelines

In this paper a numerical model is presented for the description of the erosion and sedimentation near pipelines on the sea bottom. The model is based on the Navier-Stokes equations and the equation of motion and continuity of sediment.\ud \ud The results of the simulations have been compared with the results of tests in a large-scale facility. The agreement between the results of the simulations and the experimental results is good.\ud \ud The applicability of the method is twofold: firstly, the processes of erosion and sedimentation around bodies on the sea bottom can be simulated; secondly, the method can be used for the design of pipelines, including erosion stimulating elements, such as spoilers

Kennisbasis WOT Fisheries 2011 - what is in the Programme?

The KBWOT Fisheries programme is core to the maintenance and development of the expertise that underpins the statutory obligations of fisheries monitoring and advice for the Netherlands. The structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme for 2011 changed to reflect the recent discussions on the research direction between IMARES, CVO and EL&I. One of the strengths of the structure of the KBWOT Fisheries programme was the bottom up approach to calls for projects to fulfil the research priorities. This however was seen as giving the programme the potential to miss strategic needs of both the science development within IMARES and the research questions of EL&I, thus the programme now also contains a specific project request on an research subject relevant to IMARES and EL&I needs. The KBWOT Fisheries programme will fund 12 projects in 2011. The projects will investigate competition in exploited fish communities, long term changes in eel populations, the spawning habitat of mackerel, sub-stock structure in fish, trawling impact on benthic communities, quality assurance in fish aging, surveys of shellfish, maturity staging of fish and acoustic methods. Plus a targeted project specifically designed to research needs of IMARES and EL&I will be carried out into the trade-offs in FMSY targets for North Sea flatfish fisheries

Report of the KB-WOT fisheries programme carried out in 2009

This report documents the activities of the KB WOT fisheries programme carried out in 2009. It gives the results, products and documents the experience gained by staff through the programme

Functional Valuation of Ecosystem Services on Bonaire: an ecological analysis of ecosystem functions provided by coral reefs

This research is a semi-quantitative analysis of the functional value of coral reef habitats on Bonaire to support ecosystem services. It is part of an economic valuation study of marine and terrestrial ecosystem services on Bonaire

Overview geotechnical model tests on dike safety at Deltares

Three on-going dike safety studies (on: macro stability, piping and flow slides) in the Netherlands make use of geotechnical physical models. A short outline of these projects is presented; the physical models chosen are described and discussed. The three studies use different physical models, depending on the research questions at the beginning of the model test series, the heterogeneity that is anticipated in the field, the scaling laws and the knowledge level. The paper describes why a certain model was chosen

Thin-layer chromatography of pigments from reaction center particles of Rhodopseudomonas spheroides

1. Pigments extracted from reaction center particles of Rhodopseudomonas spheroides were separated and identified by means of thin-layer chromatography.\ud \ud 2. The results strongly suggest that bacteriochlorophyll a is the only bacteriochlorophyll pigment present in reaction centers.\ud \ud 3. Other compounds identified are bacteriopheophytin a, ubiquinone-10 and spheroidene

Energy dump of the ATLAS superconducting system: simulations of electrical and thermal behaviour of magnet system at slow- and fast dump

During the slow dump (discharge) of the Barrel Toroidal (superconducting) magnet of the ATLAS detector, the control system gave an alarm that the differences between the voltages over the conductors were too high. The alarm was not due to any danger, because of some sort of phenomenon observed in the first few seconds after start of the discharge. A possible explanation of the differences of the coil voltages is that the changing current through the conductors may cause induced currents in the coil casing around. The goal was to make a simulation of the electrical behaviour of the magnet system during a slow dump. In this way, an explanation can be found for the start phenomenon of the slow dump of the Barrel Toroid. Some extra analyses on the measurements were performed to describe the energy dissipation during a fast dump. This is done by calculating the resistance of the coils during the dump. With the maximum resistance, the maximum temperature can be estimated, which says something about the enthalpy of the material. There is also found something about the RRR of the conductor and its relation to the properties of the quench. The results of the simulation of the Barrel Toroid as one coil were as expected. The simulation is correct and precise enough to reproduce the measurements. This simulation was extended to a simulation of the eight coils separately. The result was that a change up to 4% in the resistance of the coil c asing can be the cause of the difference in the coil voltages in the beginning of the slow dump. The calculations of the energy dissipation during a fast dump of the BT showed that 73% of the energy was stored in the conductor. The aluminium in the conductor stored 64% of this energy and 17% was stored in the isolation, the casing and the dump unit. Not for all the parts of the magnet the change in enthalpy is calculated. An undefined 10% of the energy is also due to the inaccuracy of the calculations. By analysing a fast dump measurement of the Barrel Toroid, it appeared that a double pancake with a relative low RRR has a relatively higher maximum temperature after the dump, as expected. For both ECTs, the RRR is measured and calculated for all the double pancakes. The ECTs showed that a double pancake quenched later, when it has a higher value for the RRR with respect to other double pancakes