Rethinking False Spring Risk

Temperate plants are at risk of being exposed to late spring freezes. These freeze events - often called false springs - are one of the strongest factors determining temperate plants species range limits and can impose high ecological and economic damage. As climate change may alter the prevalence and severity of false springs, our ability to forecast such events has become more critical, and it has led to a growing body of research. Many false spring studies largely simplify the myriad complexities involved in assessing false spring risks and damage. While these studies have helped advance the field and may provide useful estimates at large scales, studies at the individual to community levels must integrate more complexity for accurate predictions of plant damage from late spring freezes. Here we review current metrics of false spring, and how, when and where plants are most at risk of freeze damage. We highlight how life stage, functional group, species differences in morphology and phenology, and regional climatic differences contribute to the damage potential of false springs. More studies aimed at understanding relationships among species tolerance and avoidance strategies, climatic regimes, and the environmental cues that underlie spring phenology would improve predictions at all biological levels. An integrated approach to assessing past and future spring freeze damage would provide novel insights into fundamental plant biology, and offer more robust predictions as climate change progresses, which is essential for mitigating the adverse ecological and economic effects of false springs

Investigating Women's Experiences of Asthma Care in Pregnancy: A Qualitative Study.

Background : Most asthmatic women have normal pregnancies and complications are infrequent when their asthma is well-controlled. Symptom control and medical treatment are concerning to pregnant asthma suffers, as is the impact that their illness and treatment might have on their unborn baby. The aim was to investigate in a qualitative study the thoughts and feelings of women's experiences of asthma in pregnancy. Twenty-two women with asthma who had a pregnancy within two years were asked to participate. Seven women were interviewed when data saturation was achieved. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using the 'Framework' Method, independently analysed by two researchers and consensus reached concerning the construction of themes. The key themes that emerged were Asthma and pregnancy; Pregnancy and post-natal experiences; and Health professionals. These findings are globally interesting because of the prevalence of maternal asthma and they illustrate participants' experiences concerning their asthma care and their views on its improvement. Pregnant asthmatic women have concerns about their care and treatment which might be alleviated by outreach, joint working between respiratory doctors and nurse specialists, midwives and General Practice nurses. Targeted educational activities could form a part of this care delivery

Understanding Terrorist Organizations with a Dynamic Model

Terrorist organizations change over time because of processes such as recruitment and training as well as counter-terrorism (CT) measures, but the effects of these processes are typically studied qualitatively and in separation from each other. Seeking a more quantitative and integrated understanding, we constructed a simple dynamic model where equations describe how these processes change an organization's membership. Analysis of the model yields a number of intuitive as well as novel findings. Most importantly it becomes possible to predict whether counter-terrorism measures would be sufficient to defeat the organization. Furthermore, we can prove in general that an organization would collapse if its strength and its pool of foot soldiers decline simultaneously. In contrast, a simultaneous decline in its strength and its pool of leaders is often insufficient and short-termed. These results and other like them demonstrate the great potential of dynamic models for informing terrorism scholarship and counter-terrorism policy making.Comment: To appear as Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science v2: vectorized 4 figures, fixed two typos, more detailed bibliograph

Benthic enrichment in the Georgia Bight related to Gulf Stream intrusions and estuarine outwelling

The distribution patterns of benthic biomass (microbiota, meiofauna, and macrofauna) over the expansive continental shelf of the Georgia Bight suggest nutrient inputs from intrusions of deep Gulf Stream waters at the shelf break…

A Three Dimensional Finite Element Analysis of Temperature Distribution in Hot mix Asphalt Pothole Repair

The reported research focuses on the problematic lack of durability in executed pothole repairs, much of which arises from inadequate heating of the host pavement during the repair process. A threedimensional finite-element analysis is used to model the temperature distribution in hot mix asphalt (HMA) pothole repairs. Nine pothole repair models are developed including both shallow and deep potholes. Low and high temperatures are applied to a 3D pavement structure and HMA pothole repair mix. Observations are made on (a) the effect of combinations of the existing host pavement temperature regime and that of the HMA placed to fill the pothole, (b) the rate of temperature change during process (a), and (c) the effect of pothole repair depth on temperature change following repair filling. Outcomes demonstrate that boundaries of the formed repair cool substantially faster than the central region and that repair thickness has a substantial influence on this

An innovative asphalt patch repair pre-heating method using dynamic heating

In hot mix asphalt patch repair, inadequate temperature at the interfaces is one of the influencing factors for inferior compaction and poor interface bonding. To enhance repair performance, a precisely controlled infrared pre-heating method for patch repair has been investigated. Asphalt slabs with 45 mm, 75 mm and 100 mm deep pothole excavations were subjected to dynamic heating with infrared heater operating power from 6.6 kW to 7.7 kW. The heater was kept either stationary or moving slowly across the excavations at 130 mm and 230 mm offsets. The tests included evaluating temperature increase throughout the excavations and inside the slab, recording heat power of infrared heater and heating time to avoid burning the asphalt. Irrespective of excavation depth, heating power and offset, the temperature distribution was found non-uniform in the pothole excavations and into the asphalt slab. The temperatures were higher at the faces of the excavation than inside the slab. Dynamic heating for approximately 10 min yielded better heat distribution while minimising the possibility of asphalt overheating and long pre-heating time. It has been concluded that 45 mm and 100 mm deep pothole excavations can be pre-heated with 6.6 kW and stationary heater or 7.5 kW and moving heater at 230 mm and 130 mm offset respectively. 75 mm deep excavation can be pre-heated with 7.1 kW and stationary heater at 230 mm offset