Defining boat wake impacts on shoreline stability toward management and policy solutions

Coastal economies are often supported by activities that rely on commercial or recreational vessels to move people or goods, such as shipping, transportation, cruising, and fishing. Unintentionally, frequent or intense vessel traffic can contribute to erosion of coastlines; this can be particularly evident in sheltered systems where shoreline erosion should be minimal in the absence of boat waves. We reviewed the state of the science of known effects of boat waves on shoreline stability, examined data on erosion, turbidity, and shoreline armoring patterns for evidence of a response to boat waves in Chesapeake Bay, and reviewed existing management and policy actions in Chesapeake Bay and nearby states to make recommendations for actions to minimize boat wake impacts. In the literature, as well as in our analyses, boat wake energy may be linked to elevated turbidity and shoreline erosion, particularly in narrow waterways. In Chesapeake Bay, three lines of evidence suggest boat waves are contributing to shoreline erosion and poor water clarity in some Bay creeks and tributaries: 1) nearshore turbidity was elevated in many waterways during periods of expected high boating activity, 2) armoring was placed along about a quarter of the low energy shorelines of three examined tidal creeks that are exposed to relatively high boating pressure, and 3) 15% of the shorelines we examined throughout the Bay (9000 km) are low energy shorelines that are experiencing high erosion (≥0.3 m/yr) that cannot be attributed to wind wave energy. Still, there remain significant data gaps that preclude the determination of the overall contribution of boat waves to shoreline erosion throughout the Bay, notably, shoreline erosion data in low energy waterways, recreational boating traffic patterns, and nearshore bathymetry. Interim protective measures can be (and have been) applied in high risk waterways, such as small, low energy waterways that have high recreational boating activity, to help reduce shoreline erosion. Policy options used in Bay states and elsewhere include setbacks from the shore, wake restrictions, and speed restrictions; other more restrictive policies may include prohibition on boats of a certain size or limiting the number of passages. Finally, a systems-approach to boat wake impact management using uniform boat wake policies is likely to be the most effective for consistent shoreline protection

Assessing architectural evolution: A case study

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerThis paper proposes to use a historical perspective on generic laws, principles, and guidelines, like Lehman’s software evolution laws and Martin’s design principles, in order to achieve a multi-faceted process and structural assessment of a system’s architectural evolution. We present a simple structural model with associated historical metrics and visualizations that could form part of an architect’s dashboard. We perform such an assessment for the Eclipse SDK, as a case study of a large, complex, and long-lived system for which sustained effective architectural evolution is paramount. The twofold aim of checking generic principles on a well-know system is, on the one hand, to see whether there are certain lessons that could be learned for best practice of architectural evolution, and on the other hand to get more insights about the applicability of such principles. We find that while the Eclipse SDK does follow several of the laws and principles, there are some deviations, and we discuss areas of architectural improvement and limitations of the assessment approach

A biologically plausible model of time-scale invariant interval timing

The temporal durations between events often exert a strong influence over behavior. The details of this influence have been extensively characterized in behavioral experiments in different animal species. A remarkable feature of the data collected in these experiments is that they are often time-scale invariant. This means that response measurements obtained under intervals of different durations coincide when plotted as functions of relative time. Here we describe a biologically plausible model of an interval timing device and show that it is consistent with time-scale invariant behavior over a substantial range of interval durations. The model consists of a set of bistable units that switch from one state to the other at random times. We first use an abstract formulation of the model to derive exact expressions for some key quantities and to demonstrate time-scale invariance for any range of interval durations. We then show how the model could be implemented in the nervous system through a generic and biologically plausible mechanism. In particular, we show that any system that can display noise-driven transitions from one stable state to another can be used to implement the timing device. Our work demonstrates that a biologically plausible model can qualitatively account for a large body of data and thus provides a link between the biology and behavior of interval timing

Global, regional, and national incidence of six major immune-mediated inflammatory diseases: findings from the global burden of disease study 2019

Background The causes for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) are diverse and the incidence trends of IMIDs from specific causes are rarely studied. The study aims to investigate the pattern and trend of IMIDs from 1990 to 2019. Methods We collected detailed information on six major causes of IMIDs, including asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis, between 1990 and 2019, derived from the Global Burden of Disease study in 2019. The average annual percent change (AAPC) in number of incidents and age standardized incidence rate (ASR) on IMIDs, by sex, age, region, and causes, were calculated to quantify the temporal trends. Findings In 2019, rheumatoid arthritis, atopic dermatitis, asthma, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease accounted 1.59%, 36.17%, 54.71%, 0.09%, 6.84%, 0.60% of overall new IMIDs cases, respectively. The ASR of IMIDs showed substantial regional and global variation with the highest in High SDI region, High-income North America, and United States of America. Throughout human lifespan, the age distribution of incident cases from six IMIDs was quite different. Globally, incident cases of IMIDs increased with an AAPC of 0.68 and the ASR decreased with an AAPC of −0.34 from 1990 to 2019. The incident cases increased across six IMIDs, the ASR of rheumatoid arthritis increased (0.21, 95% CI 0.18, 0.25), while the ASR of asthma (AAPC = −0.41), inflammatory bowel disease (AAPC = −0.72), multiple sclerosis (AAPC = −0.26), psoriasis (AAPC = −0.77), and atopic dermatitis (AAPC = −0.15) decreased. The ASR of overall and six individual IMID increased with SDI at regional and global level. Countries with higher ASR in 1990 experienced a more rapid decrease in ASR. Interpretation The incidence patterns of IMIDs varied considerably across the world. Innovative prevention and integrative management strategy are urgently needed to mitigate the increasing ASR of rheumatoid arthritis and upsurging new cases of other five IMIDs, respectively. Funding The Global Burden of Disease Study is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project funded by Scientific Research Fund of Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences & Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital (2022QN38)

Quantification of Compound Flooding Over Roadway Network During Extreme Events for Planning Emergency Operations

Hurricanes cause substantial inundation of transportation networks, rendering them inaccessible to emergency response vehicles. Because storm tides and heavy rainfall often co-occur during hurricanes, a reliable assessment of roadway inundation in coastal areas requires adequate representation of both flood sources. This study serially coupled a hydrodynamic storm surge model with a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model for rainfall-driven flow to quantify compound flooding in a coastal region. The output of this flood modeling approach is used as an input in an optimization algorithm to identify the required location of ambulances prior to the flood event and determine areas that should be served aerially so that patients can be transported to a critical trauma center within the golden hour or treated by other means. Application of this integrative framework was illustrated for flooding under Hurricane Irene (2011) in southeast Virginia. The compound flood modeling framework had excellent agreement with data from an overland flood gauge. The application of the ambulance positioning algorithm showed that that present ambulance stations are not adequate to completely cover the study area within the golden hour even in the absence of flooding, and three traffic analysis zones need to be served aerially or treated by other means. It also was determined that no traffic analysis zones had access to the trauma center within the golden hour if 10- or 25-cm flood depths were considered as the thresholds for ambulance access. However, after introducing additional ambulance stations, or staging stations where patients could be treated in place or transferred aerially to the trauma center, 52% and 75% of the traffic analysis zones were able to maintain access to the trauma center by ambulance under 10- and 25-cm flood thresholds, respectively. Under the 45-cm flood depth threshold, 73% of the traffic analysis zones maintained access after introducing five additional ambulance stations, but no additional staging stations were required in this case. The framework developed in this multidisciplinary study can provide a useful predictive tool for emergency managers in flood-prone coastal regions