Factors influencing householder self-evacuation in two Australian bushfires

The thesis investigated householder self-evacuation decision-making during bushfires in the Perth and Adelaide Hills in 2014 and 2015. It explored the factors that influenced householders’ decisions to evacuate, identified factors that predict self-evacuation and established the characteristics of self-evacuators. The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) provided a conceptual framework for the research. Its theoretical and analytical usefulness in an Australian context, was assessed. A mixed methods research strategy was used involving quantitative telephone surveys of 457 bushfire-affected participants and face-to-face interviews of 109 participants in 59 households. The study concluded that environmental and social cues and warnings and householders’ perceptions of the threat, of hazard adjustments and of other stakeholders, influenced self-evacuation decision-making. Protective action perceptions, particularly the effectiveness of evacuating or not evacuating in protecting personal safety or property, were most important in predicting self-evacuation. Receipt of official warnings and the perception of likely impact of the bushfire on property were also important predictors. Undertaking long-run hazard adjustments, although not predictive of self-evacuation, was pivotal in shaping perceptions of the effectiveness of evacuating and remaining in protecting personal safety and property and indirectly influenced evacuation decisions. Seven archetypes that characterised householders’ self-evacuation attitudes and behaviour were identified. These included Threat, and Responsibility Deniers, Dependent, and Considered Evacuators, Community Guided and Experienced Independents all who took different decisional ‘rules of thumb’ and routes toward evacuating or remaining . The PADM needs to be split into two separate models to incorporate the influence of long-run hazard adjustments on protective action decision-making in an Australian bushfire. The findings suggest that future research on those who wait and see during a bushfire should take account of their decisional rules of thumb and that design and targeting of Australian bushfire safety policy should better account for self-evacuator characteristics

DataSheet1_A seamless approach for evaluating climate models across spatial scales.PDF

In regions of the world where topography varies significantly with distance, most global climate models (GCMs) have spatial resolutions that are too coarse to accurately simulate key meteorological variables that are influenced by topography, such as clouds, precipitation, and surface temperatures. One approach to tackle this challenge is to run climate models of sufficiently high resolution in those topographically complex regions such as the North American Regionally Refined Model (NARRM) subset of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 2 (E3SM v2). Although high-resolution simulations are expected to provide unprecedented details of atmospheric processes, running models at such high resolutions remains computationally expensive compared to lower-resolution models such as the E3SM Low Resolution (LR). Moreover, because regionally refined and high-resolution GCMs are relatively new, there are a limited number of observational datasets and frameworks available for evaluating climate models with regionally varying spatial resolutions. As such, we developed a new framework to quantify the added value of high spatial resolution in simulating precipitation over the contiguous United States (CONUS). To determine its viability, we applied the framework to two model simulations and an observational dataset. We first remapped all the data into Hierarchical Equal-Area Iso-Latitude Pixelization (HEALPix) pixels. HEALPix offers several mathematical properties that enable seamless evaluation of climate models across different spatial resolutions including its equal-area and partitioning properties. The remapped HEALPix-based data are used to show how the spatial variability of both observed and simulated precipitation changes with resolution increases. This study provides valuable insights into the requirements for achieving accurate simulations of precipitation patterns over the CONUS. It highlights the importance of allocating sufficient computational resources to run climate models at higher temporal and spatial resolutions to capture spatial patterns effectively. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the effectiveness of the HEALPix framework in evaluating precipitation simulations across different spatial resolutions. This framework offers a viable approach for comparing observed and simulated data when dealing with datasets of varying spatial resolutions. By employing this framework, researchers can extend its usage to other climate variables, datasets, and disciplines that require comparing datasets with different spatial resolutions.</p

Assessment of the cod stock in NAFO Division 3M

39 páginas, 27 figuras, 21 tablas.-- Scientific council meetingAn assessment of the cod stock in NAFO Division 3M is performed. A Bayesian model, as used in the last assessments, was used to perform the analysis. Results indicat e a fairly substantial increase in SSB, reaching a value well above B lim . The six-years retrospective plot shows that the r ecruitment is overestimated every year. Three year projections indicate that fishing at the F statusquo level should allow SSB to increase slowly, although abundance will remain at levels below those observed at the beginning of the series. If the fishing mortality were return to the levels seen before 1995, stock recovery would become improbablPeer reviewe

Frequency of SSRs.

<p>Frequency of SSRs.</p

The distribution of the number of reads based on the relative position in gene (5′-3′).

<p>The distribution of the number of reads based on the relative position in gene (5′-3′).</p

RT-qPCR validations of 14 genes involved in photosynthesis and lignin synthesis pathways.

<p>Different letters indicate differences at <i>P</i> ≤ 0.05 based on the LSD (least significant difference) test. Data are means of three replicates and each replicate was measured three times. The gene names and the primers used for RT-qPCR analysis are shown in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0157362#pone.0157362.t007" target="_blank">Table 7</a>. <i>AtpC</i>: F-type H⁺-transporting ATPase subunit c; <i>CAD</i>: Cinnamoyl alcohol dehydrogenase; <i>COMT</i>: Caffeic acid-3-O-methyltransferase; <i>HCT</i>: Shikimate O-hydroxycinnamoyltransferase; <i>PsbA</i>: photosystem II P680 reaction center D1 protein; <i>PsaB</i>: photosystem I P700 chlorophyll a apoprotein A2; <i>PetB</i>: cytochrome b6; <i>PetF</i>: ferredoxin; <i>Lhca2</i>: light-harvesting complex I chlorophyll a/b binding protein 2; <i>Lhca3</i>: light-harvesting complex I chlorophyll a/b binding protein 3; <i>Lhca6</i>: light-harvesting complex I chlorophyll a/b binding protein 6; <i>F5H</i>: ferulate-5-hydroxylase; <i>4CL</i>: 4-coumarate-CoA ligase.</p

The distribution of SSR motif length.

<p>The distribution of SSR motif length.</p

Serine protease <i>Bm-SP142</i> was differentially expressed in resistant and susceptible <i>Bombyx mori</i> strains, involving in the defence response to viral infection

<div><p>Bm-SP142 is a 35 kDa protease in the silkworm, but its exact functions remain unknown. In this study, sequence alignment revealed that the His-Asp-Ser catalytic triad is embedded in the TAAHC-DIAL-GDSGGP sequence motif, establishing Bm-SP142 as a serine protease. Soluble recombinant GST-BmSP142 was expressed and purified, and serine protease activity was confirmed <i>in vitro</i>. RT-qPCR results indicated that <i>Bm-SP142</i> was mainly expressed in the middle part of the silkworm midgut, and <i>Bm-SP142</i> transcripts were significantly up-regulated at 24 hours post infection (hpi) in <i>Bm</i>BDV-resistant strains (798) inoculated with <i>Bm</i>BDV and <i>Bm</i>NPV-resistant strains (NB) inoculated with <i>Bm</i>NPV, but not in <i>Bm</i>BDV-susceptible strains (306). Surprisingly, transcripts were significantly down-regulated at 12 hpi in <i>Bm</i>NPV-susceptible strains (HuaBa 35) inoculated with <i>Bm</i>NPV, compared with healthy silkworms. Recombinant <i>Bm</i>NPV treated with purified Bm-SP142 effectively impaired its ability to infect BmN cells, and Bm-SP142 decreases the efficiency of <i>Bm</i>NPV and <i>Bm</i>BDV propagation in silkworms. Furthermore, overexpression of <i>Bm-SP142</i> in BmN cells inhibited viral propagation.</p></div

Length distribution of contigs, scaffolds and unigenes.

<p>Length distribution of contigs, scaffolds and unigenes.</p

Statistics of SNP types.

<p>Statistics of SNP types.</p