More rapid climate change promotes evolutionary rescue through selection for increased dispersal distance

Acknowledgements This research was funded by FWO projects G.0057.09 to DB and JB, and G.0610.11 to DB, JB and RS. JMJT, DB and RS are supported by the FWO Research Network EVENET.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Simplified Pavement Design Tool for LPA Projects

While MEPDG is an effective pavement design tool for INDOT, low volume LPA projects may not require that level of complexity. Many agencies have long been comfortable with the 1993 AASHTO Guide for the Design of Pavement Structures and the associated software known as DARWinTM. However, DARWinTM is no longer available, and local agencies and consultants are faced with a lack of well-supported pavement design tools in the marketplace. PaveXpress is a free online tool to help you create simplified pavement designs using key engineering inputs, based on the AASHTO 1993 and 1998 supplement pavement design process. It is user friendly and works on your phone or tablet. Come learn how simple it is to use this tool

Search for the Tunguska event in the Antarctic snow

The Tunguska explosion in 1908 is supposed to have been produced by the impact of a small celestial body. The absence of any identifiable crater together with the huge energy released by the event suggest that the impactor exploded in midair and that its material was widely spread over the Earth. The short term contribution of such exceptional events to the total accretion rate of extraterrestrial material by the Earth could be significant. Samples were chosen in a core electromechanically drilled in 1984 near South Pole Station. There, the low temperatures, preventing melting all year long, and the nearly regular snow fall rate provide good conditions for a reliable continuous record of any infalling material. In many samples Ir was below the detection limit of the instrumentation. The iridium infall averaged over 45 samples is given. In a few samples the iridium content is significantly higher than the average: the frequency and amplitude of such fluctuations can be explained by the presence on some filters of finite size cosmic particles. No significant systematic increase above the average level is observed in the part of the core corresponding to the Tunguska event. The two major results of this study are: (1) The presence of Tunguska explosion debris in the Antarctic snow is not confirmed; and (2) The estimate of the average iridium infall, is an order of magnitude lower than the Ganapathy's background but is close to the values measured in Antarctic snow and atmospheric samples by Takahashi et al. The results are also consistent with the flux of micrometeoroids deduced from optical and radar observations or derived from the study of Greenland cosmic dust collection but are lower than the flux at mid-latitude measured in paleocene-oligocene sediments from the central part of the Pacific Ocean

Water for utilities: climate change impacts on water quality and water availability for utilities in Europe

This report provides an assessment of the consequences of changing water availability for production of drinking water, the manufacturing industry and power production in Europe, due to climate change and socio-economic developments. The report is based up on projections of demographic and socio-economic trends and climate change impacts, according to the SRES A2 and B1 scenario’s also used by IPC

Impacts of Shallow Geothermal Energy on Groundwater Quality: A Hydrochemical and geomicrobial study of the effects of ground source heat pumps and aquifer thermal energy storage

Stuijfzand, P.J. [Promotor]Breukelen, B.M. van [Copromotor

Developmental refinement of cortical systems for speech and voice processing

Development typically leads to optimized and adaptive neural mechanisms for the processing of voice and speech. In this fMRI study we investigated how this adaptive processing reaches its mature efficiency by examining the effects of task, age and phonological skills on cortical responses to voice and speech in children (8-9years), adolescents (14-15years) and adults. Participants listened to vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/) spoken by different speakers (boy, girl, man) and performed delayed-match-to-sample tasks on vowel and speaker identity. Across age groups, similar behavioral accuracy and comparable sound evoked auditory cortical fMRI responses were observed. Analysis of task-related modulations indicated a developmental enhancement of responses in the (right) superior temporal cortex during the processing of speaker information. This effect was most evident through an analysis based on individually determined voice sensitive regions. Analysis of age effects indicated that the recruitment of regions in the temporal-parietal cortex and posterior cingulate/cingulate gyrus decreased with development. Beyond age-related changes, the strength of speech-evoked activity in left posterior and right middle superior temporal regions significantly scaled with individual differences in phonological skills. Together, these findings suggest a prolonged development of the cortical functional network for speech and voice processing. This development includes a progressive refinement of the neural mechanisms for the selection and analysis of auditory information relevant to the ongoing behavioral task

Assessment of the ecological characteristics of the Belgian beaches prior to the implementation of the Belgian Master Plan for Coastal Safety

Sandy shores or beaches line 70 % of the world’s oceans, including the entire Belgian coastline (67 km). They have a multitude of ecosystem functions, constitute an important habitat for a variety of fauna and flora and hold important economic, social and cultural value as prime recreational assets. In order to protect the Belgian coastline against erosion and coastal flooding on a short and long term basis (up to 2050), the Belgian sandy beaches face a multitude of beach nourishment activities over the next years, as stipulated in the Belgian Master Plan for Coastal Safety. Monitoring the ecological characteristics of the Belgian beaches will aid in the detection of possible impact effects of past, current and future beach nourishment activities.To this end, 686 intertidal and 582 shallow subtidal samples from the period 1997 – 2011 were analysed to describe the macrobenthic communities and corresponding abiotic patterns on 16 Belgian beaches. The 15 intertidal and 9 shallow subtidal locations were treated separately. The partitioning of macrobenthic community structure within the Belgian beach ecosystem showed a large within beach variability, linked to elevation on the beach (intertidal: 44 % and shallow subtidal: 50 %) and median grain size of the sediment (intertidal: 35 % and shallow subtidal: 23 %), in both the intertidal and shallow subtidal zone. Large scale along-shore spatial (intertidal: 14 % and shallow subtidal: 13 %) and long-term temporal (intertidal: 5% and shallow subtidal: 12 %) variability clearly explained less variation. Several spatial and temporal trends in abiotic factors (overall median grain size between 150 and 300 µm) and in macrobenthic species richness (intertidal: 0 – 19 species; shallow subtidal: 0 – 28 species), abundance (intertidal: 0 – 3988.75 individuals.m-²; shallow subtidal: 0 – 1949.32 individuals.m-²) and biomass (intertidal: 0 – 6.95 g AFDW.m-²; shallow subtidal: 0 – 246.14 g AFDW.m-²) were measured. The mean macrobenthic abundance in the intertidal and shallow subtidal zone fluctuates between 0 and 350 individuals.m-² over the years. Furthermore, the realized niches of the dominant macrobenthic species of the Belgian beaches were defined as the area where these species really live during low tide, characterized by elevation on the beach and median grain size of the sediment.Since all sampling locations were considered to be outside the influence of major impacting activities, these findings improve our knowledge of the natural abiotic and macrobenthic variability of the Belgian beaches. As such, this study can be used as a preconceived basis (t0 situation) of ‘natural’ macrobenthic variability on the Belgian beaches