Climate resilience in the United Kingdom wine production sector: CREWS-UK

As cool climate viticulture rapidly expands, the England and Wales wine sector is winning international acclaim, particularly for its sparkling wines, and is attracting significant investment. Supported by warming climate trends during the growing season, wine producers are establishing new vineyards planted predominantly with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Grape-friendly weather conditions in 2018 led to a record harvest and may be a sign of good things to come. Long term (100-years) Growing Season Average Temperatures (GSTs) in south-east and south-central England have noticeably increased with 6 of the top 10 warmest growing seasons (April–October), over the last 100 years, occurring since 2005. However, weather and growing season conditions fluctuate markedly from year to year, meaning that yields and grape quality continue to vary significantly. Weather extremes are anticipated to become more frequent under future climate change, further threatening the stability of production. Current uncertainty over future climatic conditions during the growing season and their potential effects on viticulture in the UK exposes both existing producers and potential investors to unquantified risks and opportunities. The CREWS-UK climate resilience research project is generating actionable information on how climate change may affect the wine production sector, to support better decision-making and investment

The impact of the graduated driver licence scheme on road traffic accident youth mortality in New Zealand

This paper examines the impact of the introduction of New Zealand’s Graduated Driving Licence System (GDLS) on patterns of road traffic accident mortality amongst the young driving population from 1980 to 2001. Results show that the mortality rate has declined, but that rates in New Zealand are three times greater than in England and Wales and twice those of Scotland. When the data is adjusted to take account of differences in the minimum driving age, rates remain consistently higher in New Zealand and the proportional reduction in road traffic accident youth mortality is not significantly better than that experienced in Great Britain

The water cycle in a changing climate

Millions of people across the globe are already affected by natural variability in the water cycle. A multidisciplinary team of experts from the University of East Anglia and the University of Nottingham, led by Timothy Osborn, Professor of Climate Science at the world-renowned Climatic Research Unit, set out the empirical evidence - and argue the need for implementation of measured adaptation mechanisms that take into account uncertainties in the projection of future precipitation patterns

A suitability model for viticulture in England and Wales: opportunities for investment, sector growth and increased climate resilience

Despite continued investment and evidence of high quality wine production, English and Welsh wine grape yields remain low. To increase sector resilience to weather and climate risks we present the first combined terrestrial and climatic English and Welsh Viticulture Suitability (EWVS) model. Results show many existing vineyards (≥ 1 ha) are sub-optimally located. Limiting the model to the top 20% of suitable land in England and Wales resulted in 33,700 ha of prime viticulture land being identified, a scale just larger than the Champagne region of France. Beyond Kent and Sussex, large areas in Essex, with the warmest 30-year (1981–2010) Growing Season Average Temperature (13.9°C) on mainland Britain, and Suffolk, where few vineyards presently exist, appear especially suitable for viticulture. The EWVS model developed through this work allows, for the first time, a rapid assessment of land at local, regional and national scales to inform investment and policy related decisions

Elevating crop disease resistance with cloned genes

Essentially all plant species exhibit heritable genetic variation for resistance to a variety of plant diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, oomycetes or viruses. Disease losses in crop monocultures are already significant, and would be greater but for applications of disease-controlling agrichemicals. For sustainable intensification of crop production, we argue that disease control should as far as possible be achieved using genetics rather than using costly recurrent chemical sprays. The latter imply CO2 emissions from diesel fuel and potential soil compaction from tractor journeys. Great progress has been made in the past 25 years in our understanding of the molecular basis of plant disease resistance mechanisms, and of how pathogens circumvent them. These insights can inform more sophisticated approaches to elevating disease resistance in crops that help us tip the evolutionary balance in favour of the crop and away from the pathogen. We illustrate this theme with an account of a genetically modified (GM) blight-resistant potato trial in Norwich, using the Rpi-vnt1.1 gene isolated from a wild relative of potato, Solanum venturii, and introduced by GM methods into the potato variety Desiree

Rectangular Hierarchical Cartograms for Socio-Economic Data

We present rectangular hierarchical cartograms for mapping socio-economic data. These density-normalising cartograms size spatial units by population, increasing the ease with which data for densely populated areas can be visually resolved compared to more conventional cartographic projections. Their hierarchical nature enables the study of spatial granularity in spatial hierarchies, hierarchical categorical data and multivariate data through false hierarchies. They are space-filling representations that make efficient use of space and their rectangular nature (which aims to be as square as possible) improves the ability to compare the sizes (therefore population) of geographical units. We demonstrate these cartograms by mapping the Office for National Statistics Output Area Classification (OAC) by unit postcode (1.52 million in Great Britain) through the postcode hierarchy, using these to explore spatial variation. We provide rich and detailed spatial summaries of socio-economic characteristics of population as types of treemap, exploring the effects of reconfiguring them to study spatial and non-spatial aspects of the OAC classification

A geometric proof of the Kochen-Specker no-go theorem

We give a short geometric proof of the Kochen-Specker no-go theorem for non-contextual hidden variables models. Note added to this version: I understand from Jan-Aake Larsson that the construction we give here actually contains the original Kochen-Specker construction as well as many others (Bell, Conway and Kochen, Schuette, perhaps also Peres).Comment: This paper appeared some years ago, before the author was aware of quant-ph. It is relevant to recent developments concerning Kochen-Specker theorem

Implementation of a wind-farm specific operational wave forecasting tool in the North-Sea: methods and forcing sensitivity

Water Qualit

Artificial Neural Network to predict mean monthly total ozone in Arosa, Switzerland

Present study deals with the mean monthly total ozone time series over Arosa, Switzerland. The study period is 1932-1971. First of all, the total ozone time series has been identified as a complex system and then Artificial Neural Networks models in the form of Multilayer Perceptron with back propagation learning have been developed. The models are Single-hidden-layer and Two-hidden-layer Perceptrons with sigmoid activation function. After sequential learning with learning rate 0.9 the peak total ozone period (February-May) concentrations of mean monthly total ozone have been predicted by the two neural net models. After training and validation, both of the models are found skillful. But, Two-hidden-layer Perceptron is found to be more adroit in predicting the mean monthly total ozone concentrations over the aforesaid period.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figure