Search

International audience; Estimates of the ocean's large-scale transport of anthropogenic CO2 are based on one-time hydrographic sections, but the temporal variability of this transport has not been investigated. The aim of this study is to evaluate how the seasonal and mesoscale variability affect data-based estimates of anthropogenic CO2 transport. To diagnose this variability, we made a global anthropogenic CO2 simulation using an eddy-permitting version of the coupled ocean sea-ice model ORCA-LIM. As for heat transport, the seasonally varying transport of anthropogenic CO2 is largest within 20° of the equator and shows secondary maxima in the subtropics. Ekman transport generally drives most of the seasonal variability, but the contribution of the vertical shear becomes important near the equator and in the Southern Ocean. Mesoscale variabilty contributes to the annual-mean transport of both heat and anthropogenic CO2 with strong poleward transport in the Southern Ocean and equatorward transport in the tropics. This "rectified" eddy transport is largely baroclinic in the tropics and barotropic in the Southern Ocean due to a larger contribution from standing eddies. Our analysis revealed that most previous hydrographic estimates of meridional transport of anthropogenic CO2 are severely biased because they neglect temporal fluctuations due to non-Ekman velocity variations. In each of the three major ocean basins, this bias is largest near the equator and in the high southern latitudes. In the subtropical North Atlantic, where most of the hydrographic-based estimates have been focused, this uncertainty represents up to 20% and 30% of total meridional transport of heat and CO2. Generally though, outside the tropics and Southern Ocean, there are only small variations in meridional transport due to seasonal variations in tracer fields and time variations in eddy transport. For the North Atlantic, eddy variability accounts for up to 10% and 15% of the total transport of heat and CO2. This component is not accounted for in coarse-resolution hydrographic surveys.

Background: Lateral semi-circular canal dehiscence (LSCCD) and facial nerve dehiscence (FND) may increase the risk of dead ear and facial paralysis in cholesteatoma surgery. While CT scanning may show LSCCD, disease extent and ossicular erosion, FND is difficult to assess via this modality. Our study aims to establish the correlation between the factors which can be assessed on CT and FND. We compared social deprivation levels to determine any predictive value on FND. Methods: Consecutive patients undergoing surgery for cholesteatoma by one otologist from 2009 to 2014 were included. Results: Of 132 patients included in the study, FND was noted in 29 (22%). There was positive correlation between FND and ossicular chain erosion, Pearson correlation=0.289(p=0.001), LSCCD 0.087 (p=0.322) and extent of cholesteatoma 0.077 (p=0.382). Deprivation index scores followed normal distributions. Conclusions: There is positive correlation between FND and cholesteatoma extent, LSCCD and ossicular erosion. The correlation with ossicular erosion is statistically significant thus helping to predict FND with pre-operative CT scans. Socioeconomic status does not predict FND.

Emissions reductions targets for the UK set out in the Climate Change Act for the period to 2050 will only be achieved with significant changes to the built environment, which is currently estimated to account for 50% of the UK’s carbon emissions.The socio-technological nature of Civil Engineering means that this field is uniquely placed to lead the UK through such adaptations. This paper discusses the importance of interdisciplinary teaching to produce multi-faceted team approaches to sustainable design solutions.Methods for measuring success in education are often not fit for purpose, producing good students but poor engineers. Real-world failures to apply sustainable design presents a serious, difficult to detect, and ultimately economically negative situation. Techniques to replace summative examinations are presented and discussed, with the aim of enhancing core technical skills alongside those required for sustainable design.Finally, the role of our future engineers in policy-making is discussed. In addition to carbon, the provision of water and food will heavily influence the work of civil engineers in the coming decades. Leadership from civil engineers with the technical knowledge and social awareness to tackle these issues will be required. This provides both opportunities and challenges for engineering education in the UK.

Fruit and vegetable consumption is accepted as the cornerstone of healthy eating practices. In turn, healthy eating is linked to the prevention of a number of chronic diseases. Healthy eating practices should begin in early childhood and continue throughout life. This study aimed to determine fruit and vegetable consumption in children aged 6-12 years in three local government areas in rural Australia, and examines the factors which influence consumption, such as access, cost and parental education and behaviours. Parents of school children in grades one and three from 41 schools completed a survey regarding fruit and vegetable consumption, and associated factors, for their child. Five hundred and forty four surveys were completed and returned. The results showed that while fruit consumption was within the recommended guidelines for 97% of children, only 12% ate the recommended serves of vegetables for this age group. The results did not vary between the age and gender of children nor parental income or education. Parental sources of knowledge for healthy eating was reported as predominantly family and friends as well as newspapers, internet and magazines. Examining fruit and vegetable consumption separately highlighted the need for a focused intervention on increasing vegetable consumption in the three local government areas. The sources of parental knowledge provided important information for health promotion activities

This paper describes the result of a travel scholarship undertaken in 2013 and generously funded by the Institution of Structural Engineers’ Educational Trust Pai Lin Li Travel Award.The principles of form active design can facilitate architecturally interesting, structurally optimised, materially efficient construction. The paper sets out to illustrate 1) how the concrete construction industry may be positively influenced by recent advances in flexible formwork technology, towards an aim of low carbon construction and 2) how the prestressed brickwork and construction techniques of Eladio Dieste might be utilised to influence the future direction of form active construction across the world. Links between these two objectives are made, before conclusions and ideas for future work are presented. Covering European and South American construction the travel award provided a unique perspective on the political, social, economic and technical demands of sustainable and materially efficient construction.Relationships between these complex demands will be considered to demonstrate the important role that Structural Engineers can have in facilitating sustainable construction through their choices of form and material.

This study aims to evaluate the potential for impacts of ocean acidification on North Atlantic deep-sea ecosystems in response to IPCC AR5 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Deep-sea biota is likely highly vulnerable to changes in seawater chemistry and sensitive to moderate excursions in pH. Here we show, from seven fully coupled Earth system models, that for three out of four RCPs over 17% of the seafloor area below 500m depth in the North Atlantic sector will experience pH reductions exceeding -0.2 units by 2100. Increased stratification in response to climate change partially alleviates the impact of ocean acidification on deep benthic environments. We report on major pH reductions over the deep North Atlantic seafloor (depth >500 m) and at important deep-sea features, such as seamounts and canyons. By 2100, and under the high CO2 scenario RCP8.5, pH reductions exceeding -0.2 (-0.3) units are projected in close to 23% (similar to 15 %) of North Atlantic deep-sea canyons and similar to 8% (3 %) of seamounts - including seamounts proposed as sites of marine protected areas. The spatial pattern of impacts reflects the depth of the pH perturbation and does not scale linearly with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Impacts may cause negative changes of the same magnitude or exceeding the current target of 10% of preservation of marine biomes set by the convention on biological diversity, implying that ocean acidification may offset benefits from conservation/management strategies relying on the regulation of resource exploitation.

Ocean acidification is increasingly recognized as a component of global change that could have a wide range of impacts on marine organisms, the ecosystems they live in, and the goods and services they provide humankind. Assessment of these potential socio-economic impacts requires integrated efforts between biologists, chemists, oceanographers, economists and social scientists. But because ocean acidification is a new research area, significant knowledge gaps are preventing economists from estimating its welfare impacts. For instance, economic data on the impact of ocean acidification on significant markets such as fisheries, aquaculture and tourism are very limited (if not non-existent), and non-market valuation studies on this topic are not yet available. Our paper summarizes the current understanding of future OA impacts and sets out what further information is required for economists to assess socio-economic impacts of ocean acidification. Our aim is to provide clear directions for multidisciplinary collaborative research. © 2012 The Author(s).

Using fabric formwork, it is possible to cast architecturally interesting, optimised structures that use up to 40% less concrete than an equivalent strength prismatic section, thereby offering the potential for significant embodied energy savings in new concrete structures. This paper reports on the philosophy of and background to fabric formwork before techniques for the design, optimisation and shape prediction of fabric formed concrete beams are presented. The practicality of construction with non-orthogonal elements is discussed before the results of new structural test data, undertaken at the University of Bath on 4m span 'T' beam elements formed in reusable fabric moulds, are presented. Potential areas of future development for fabric formwork, including the use of woven advanced composite fabrics as permanent participating formwork and the feasibility of uniform strength prestressed beams, are then discussed The practicality of construction with non-orthogonal elements is discussed before the results of new structural test data, undertaken at the University of Bath on 4m span ‘T’ beam elements formed in reusable fabric moulds, are presented. Potential areas of future development for fabric formwork, including the use of woven advanced composite fabrics as permanent participating formwork and the feasibility of uniform strength prestressed beams, are then discussed.

Cold-water stony corals create habitat for a diverse range of deep-water species but are thought to be threatened by ocean acidification due to oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2. Knowledge of the severity of this threat is hampered by our limited understanding of the distribution and habitat requirements of these corals. Here we estimate the global acidification threat to these organisms using a global database of cold-water stony coral records and a species distribution modelling approach. We parameterised the models using present-day environmental data, and then replaced these data with future projections of ocean chemistry from the year 2099. We found suitable coral habitat to be very heterogeneously distributed, being concentrated in the northern North Atlantic and around New Zealand. Projected changes in ocean chemistry induced a pronounced reduction in habitat suitability in the North Atlantic, and a low-to-moderate impact elsewhere under both the IPCC IS92a and S650 scenarios. Seamount summits are impacted by these changes, but consistently provide more suitable habitat than the surrounding seafloor, with around 98% of seamount summits having higher suitability in both future scenarios; this is because they lie in shallower waters with a higher aragonite saturation state. These results suggest that anthropogenic-induced changes in ocean chemistry are likely to severely impact cold-water stony coral habitat in the deep-sea of the North Atlantic, and that impacts will be less severe elsewhere. We predict that coral communities on the summits and upper slopes of seamounts will be less susceptible to ocean acidification during this century than those on the surrounding seafloor, and thus that seamounts may serve as temporary refugia. © 2010 Blackwell Verlag GmbH.

The first symposium on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World” in 2004 proved to be a landmark event in our understanding of the seriousness of ocean acidification, as reported in Oceanography (Cicerone et al., 2004). The scientific community reunited in 2008 for a second symposium on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World.” During the four years between the two symposia, more scientific papers were published on the topic of ocean acidification than during the preceding 55 years. Ocean acidification is now widely cited in the press and is familiar to many nonscientists. Participants at the 2008 symposium identified new research priorities and stressed the importance of improving international coordination to facilitate agreements on protocols, methods, and data reporting in order to optimize limited resources by greater sharing of materials, facilities, expertise, and data. Despite major uncertainties, the research community must find ways to scale up understanding of individual organisms’ responses to provide meaningful predictions of ocean acidification’s effects on food webs, fisheries, marine ecosystems, coastal erosion, and tourism. Easy-to-understand information, such as simple indicators of change and of thresholds beyond which marine ecosystems will not recover, is also needed for management and policymaking.