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There are many uncertainties and knowledge gaps regarding the development of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS)—e.g., when it comes to costs, life-cycle effects, storage capacity and permanence. In spite of these uncertainties and barriers, the CCS research community is generally very optimistic regarding CCS’ development. The discrepancy between the uncertainties and the optimism is the point of departure in this study, which is based on interviews with 24 CCS experts. The aim is to analyse experts’ framings of CCS with focus on two key aspects: (i) the function and potential of CCS and (ii) uncertainties. The optimism among the CCS experts is tentatively explained. The interpretative flexibility of CCS is claimed to be an essential explanation for the optimism. CCS is promoted from a wide variety of perspectives, e.g., solidarity and peace, bridge to a sustainable energy system, sustaining the modern lifestyle and compatibility with the fossil fuel lock-in. Awareness of the uncertainties and potential over-optimism is warranted within policy and decision making as they often rely on scientific forecasts and experts’ judgements.

Semidefinite programs derived from the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (KYP) lemma are quite common in control and signal processing applications. The programs are often of high dimension which makes them hard or impossible to solve with general-purpose solvers. Here we present a customized preprocessor, KYPD, that utilizes the inherent structure of this particular optimization problem. The key to an efficient implementation is to transform the optimization problem into an equivalent semidefinite program. This equivalent problem has much fewer variables and the matrices in the linear matrix inequality constraints are of low rank. KYPD can use any primal-dual solver for semidefinite programs as an underlying solver.

This paper reports the within-year and between-year variations in the number of waterbirds at Lake Krankesjön, southern Sweden based on counts carried out during 1985 to 2007. The background to these counts was a dramatic decrease in the number of Great Crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus, Mute Swan Cygnus olor and Common Coot Fulica atra from 1974 to 1976, concurrent with a deterioration of water transparency and a nearly total disappearance of submerged vegetation. In 1985, when the regular counts of waterbirds started, the lake had just begun to recover. Numbers of moulting and staging waterbirds increased rapidly as the conditions improved. Numbers of grebes, swans and coots over the two decades correlated with limnological variables, and it is concluded that their numbers depend on the amount of submerged vegetation, in turn determined by water transparency.

Scenarios play an important role for the societal acceptance of CCS. This paper looks into influential reports containing CCS scenarios and analyses results, key assumptions and drivers for CCS' deployment. Significant uncertainties regarding CCS' development were in several cases excluded or marginalized. Despite these shortcomings, scenarios support a massive deployment of CCS and reflect an undivided optimism. If CCS would fail to meet the high expectations a backlash could follow. Indications were found that new scenarios including uncertainties are needed to balance this over-optimism. So-called unpleasant scenarios are often valuable in helping decision makers develop flexible strategies and policies. Clipore

This paper presents the formulation of a flight clearance criterion as a convex optimization problem. The criterion is the stability margins criterion which is specified as an allowable phase and gain margin of a certain loop transfer function. The satisfaction of the criterion amounts to the Nichols plot of the loop transfer function being outside a specified trapezoidal region. It was shown previously that the exclusion condition from an ellipsoidal region is implied by using the generalized stability margin bPC and its calculation was performed frequency-wise by solving a sequence of convex optimization problems. In this paper we formulate the calculation of a lower bound on bPC as a convex optimization problem using Integral Quadratic Constraints (IQCs) and avoid the gridding procedure in the frequency domain. Furthermore, we formulate the problem of obtaining a lower bound on the perturbed stability margin, which is defined as the worst-case bPC over variations in real uncertain parameters.

Let k and μk be the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet and Neumann problems, respectively, in a domain of finite measure in Rd, d1. Filonov has proved in a simple way that the inequality μk+1

Production of biogas from energy crops of agricultural origin is regarded as a promising alternative to decrease dependence on non-renewable energy sources. A model was built to evaluate the handling system comprising harvest, transport and ensiling of forage intended for production of CH4-enriched biogas for vehicle fuel. The model was applied to a full-scale plant in Sweden producing biogas from organic household waste and forage. Timeliness, capacity and harvesting costs were studied by varying transport system design, transport distance, field size and dry matter (DM) yield. Matching harvest and transport capacity is essential in minimising the time required for harvesting and the resultant costs. However, this study showed that keeping the harvest and transport capacity sufficiently high to avoid idle time did not necessarily result in the lowest costs. By adapting the transport system, it was possible to reduce costs by 30% when the average transport distance was decreased from 17 to 8.5 km. The study showed that with forage for biogas production, it was optimal to harvest later than the normal dates for harvesting forage for milk production, since the lower biogas production per kg DM was compensated for by higher DM yield. As long as the harvest started on the days calculated as being optimal with respect to the value of the harvest, timeliness costs made up less than 4% of total costs depending on the transport system chosen. When the start of harvest deviated from the optimal, timeliness costs increased substantially. Delayed harvest had even larger impact on the total harvest costs.

Ammonium nitrate and calcium ammonium nitrate are the most commonly used straight nitrogen fertilisers in Europe, accounting for 43% of the total nitrogen used for fertilisers. They are both produced in a similar way; carbonate can be added as a last step to produce calcium ammonium nitrate. The environmental impact, fossil energy input and land use from using gasified biomass (cereal straw and short rotation willow (Salix) coppice) as feedstock in ammonium nitrate production were studied in a cradle-to-gate evaluation using life cycle assessment methodology. The global warming potential in the biomass systems was only 22-30% of the impact from conventional production using natural gas. The eutrophication potential was higher for the biomass systems due to nutrient leaching during cultivation, while the acidification was about the same in all systems. The primary fossil energy use was calculated to be 1.45 and 1.37MJ/kg nitrogen for Salix and straw, respectively, compared to 35.14MJ for natural gas. The biomass production was assumed to be self-supporting with nutrients by returning part of the ammonium nitrate produced together with the ash from the gasification. For the production of nitrogen from Salix, it was calculated that 3914kg of nitrogen can be produced every year from 1ha, after that 1.6% of the produced nitrogen has been returned to the Salix production. From wheat straw, 1615kg of nitrogen can be produced annually from 1ha, after that 0.6% of the nitrogen has been returned.

Several writers have improved our understanding of the concept of tolerance, but still there are problems that must be solved. This article, therefore, sets out to explicate the concept of tolerance by exploring some formal aspects and some of its basic parts. The article defines the ‘conditions’ of the concept, emphasizes an important distinction between ‘tolerance’ and ‘toleration’, discuss the nature of the reasons to object to items (the ‘scope’ of tolerance), and the reasoning and rationality of tolerant agents. The aim is to sketch a consistent view of the concept of tolerance, from which a ‘theory of tolerance’ - or a defence of tolerance - could be developed.

The optimum multiuser detection problem can be formulated as a maximum likelihood problem, which yields a binary quadratic programming problem to be solved. Generally this problem is NP-hard and is therefore hard to solve in real time. In this paper, a preprocessing algorithm is presented which makes it possible to detect some or all users optimally for a low computational cost if signature sequences with low cross correlation, e.g., Gold sequences, are used. The algorithm can be interpreted as, e.g., an adaptive tradeoff between parallel interference cancellation and successive interference cancellation. Simulations show that the preprocessing algorithm is able to optimally compute more than 94,% of the bits in the problem when the users are time-synchronous, even though the system is heavily loaded and affected by noise. Any remaining bits, not computed by the preprocessing algorithm, can either be computed by a suboptimal detector or an optimal detector. Simulations of the time-synchronous case show that if a suboptimal detector is chosen, the bit error rate (BER) rate is significantly reduced compared with using the suboptimal detector alone.

This study used passive telemetry (passive integrated transponders) to evaluate winter migration in three species of cyprinids (roach (Rutilus rutilus (L.)), white bream (Blicca bjoerkna (L.)) and rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus (L.))) and their potential predators (pike (Esox lucius (L.)) and perch (Perca fluviatilis (L.))) between a shallow lake and its streams. Migration patterns were investigated from October to June, and a substantial part of the roach (40%) and white bream (55%) populations tagged in the lake during autumn migrated during winter into the streams, whereas only very few piscivores (

One of the more fascinating phenomena in nature is animal mass migrations and in oceans and freshwaters, diel variations in depth distribution of zooplankton are a phenomenon that has intrigued scientists for more than a century. In our study, we show that zooplankton are able to assess the threat level of ultraviolet radiation and adjust their depth distribution to this level at a very fine tuned scale. Moreover, predation risk induces a size-structured depth separation, such that small individuals, which we show are less vulnerable to predation than larger, make a risk assessment and continue feeding in surface waters during day, offering a competitive release from down-migrating larger animals. Hence, we mechanistically show that such simple organisms as invertebrate zooplankton are able to make individual, size-specific decisions regarding how to compromise between threats from both predators and UV radiation, and adjust their diel migratory patterns accordingly.

We analysed circumpolar samples from 68 lakes within the 10°C-July isotherm from Arctic Canada, Nunavut, Greenland, Svalbard, Eastern Siberia, the Beringia region, and Alaska. In total, we found 3 species of Anostraca, 17 of Diplostraca, 1 species of cyclopoid and 14 species of calanoid copepods. Our study identifies a wider distribution for some copepods—e.g. Eurytemora pacifica, Leptodiaptomus sicilis, Arctodiaptomus novosibiricus, Cyclops abyssorum—than previously known. Moreover, one anostracan species, Artemiopsis bungei, was recorded in North America for the first time; and one chydoriid, Chydorus gibbus, is a new species for Greenland. We observed that species richness of crustaceans is lower in lakes that were glaciated during the Quaternary period, compared to those not glaciated (e.g. Chukotski Peninsula, Siberia; Point Barrow, Alaska; and Disko Island, Greenland). This confirms the findings of classic studies: glaciation has strongly affected the biogeography of freshwater crustaceans in circumpolar areas.

Semidefinite programs originating from the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov lemma are convex optimization problems and there exist polynomial time algorithms that solve them. However, the number of variables is often very large making the computational time extremely long. Algorithms more efficient than general purpose solvers are thus needed. To this end structure exploiting algorithms have been proposed, based on the dual formulation. In this paper a cutting plane algorithm is proposed. In a comparison with a general purpose solver and a structure exploiting solver it is shown that the cutting plane based solver can handle optimization problems of much higher dimension.

Replicated, factorial mesocosm experiments were conducted across Europe to study the effects of nutrient enrichment and fish density on macrophytes and on periphyton chlorophyll a (chl-a) with regard to latitude. Periphyton chl-a densities and plant decline were significantly related to nutrient loading in all countries. Fish effects were significant in a few sites only, mostly because of their contribution to the nutrient pool. A saturation-response type curve in periphyton chl-a with nutrients was found, and northern lakes achieved higher densities than southern lakes. Nutrient concentration and phytoplankton chl-a necessary for a 50% plant reduction followed a latitudinal gradient. Total phosphorus values for 50% plant disappearance were similar from Sweden (0.27 mg L−1) to northern Spain (0.35 mg L−1), but with a sharp increase in southern Spain (0.9 mg L−1). Planktonic chl-a values for 50% plant reduction increased monotonically from Sweden (30 μg L−1) to Valencia (150 μg L−1). Longer plant growing-season, higher light intensities and temperature, and strong water-level fluctuations characteristic of southern latitudes can lead to greater persistence of macrophyte biomass at higher turbidities and nutrient concentration than in northern lakes. Results support the evidence that latitudinal differences in the functioning of shallow lakes should be considered in lake management and conservation policies.

A wide variety of problems involving analysis of systems can be rewritten as a semidefinite program. When solving these problems optimization algorithms are used. Large size makes the problems unsolvable in practice and computationally more effective solvers are needed. This paper investigates how to exploit structure and problem knowledge in some control applications. It is shown that inexact search directions are useful to reduce the computational burden and that operator formalism can be utilized to derive tailored calculations.

Scientific application kernels mapped to reconfigurable hardware have been reported to have 10times to 100times speedup over equivalent software. These promising results suggest that reconfigurable logic might offer significant speedup on applications in science and engineering. To accurately assess the benefit of hardware acceleration on scientific applications, however, it is necessary to consider the entire application including software components as well as the accelerated kernels. Aspects to be considered include alternative methods of hardware/software partitioning, communications costs, and opportunities for concurrent computation between software and hardware. Analysis of these factors is beyond the scope of current automatic parallelizing compilers. In this paper, a case study is presented in which a simulation of metropolitan road traffic networks is mapped onto a reconfigurable supercomputer, the Cray XD1. Five different methods are presented for mapping the application onto the combined hardware/software system. An approach for approximating the performance of each method is derived through analytic equations. Our results, both analytically and empirically, show that key predictors of performance (which are often not considered in reported speedup of kernel operations) are not necessarily maximum parallelism, but must account for the fraction of the problem that runs on the reconfigurable logic and the amount data flow between software and hardware.

Emulation environments are an effective approach to experimenting with and evaluating network protocols, algorithms, and components. This paper describes a joint effort by the NATO Science & Technology Organization's IST-124 task group to develop and distribute an emulation environment and scenario. The most significant contribution is a vetted and militarily-realistic scenario that provides a rich combination of elements for experimentation. The scenario includes detailed mobility patterns for a battalion-sized operation over the course of two hours, which has been developed by military experts in planning and performing real exercises. The mobility patterns are used to drive the network emulation.

The identification of multivariable state space models in innovation form is solved in a subspace identification framework using convex nuclear norm optimization. The convex optimization approach allows to include constraints on the unknown matrices in the data-equation characterizing subspace identification methods, such as the lower triangular block-Toeplitz of weighting matrices constructed from the Markov parameters of the unknown observer. The classical use of instrumental variables to remove the influence of the innovation term on the data equation in subspace identification is avoided. The avoidance of the instrumental variable projection step has the potential to improve the accuracy of the estimated model predictions, especially for short data length sequences.

Paul Crutzen’s 2006 call for geoengineering research triggered public debate in the mass media of several countries. Since then, a common belief among numerous involved scientists has been that more geoengineering experimentation or research is needed and that geoengineering should be carefully considered in a precautionary way as an emergency option or ‘Plan B’. Despite the controversial potential of geoengineering in terms of mega-risks, ethical dilemmas and governance challenges, public geoengineering debate in the daily press from 2006 to 2013 was heavily dominated by accounts of scientists’ arguments for more geoengineering research or even deployment, only about 8% of mass media articles expressing criticism of geoengineering. However, based on a reading of 700 articles published worldwide in 2014 and 2015, we demonstrate a gradual shift in the coverage, and the daily press now primarily reports critical views of geoengineering technologies. The patterns outlined here point in the same direction: It seems as though the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B is fading.

Lake restoration practices based on reducing fish predation and promoting the dominance of large-bodied Daphnia grazers (i.e., biomanipulation) have been the focus of much debate due to inconsistent success in suppressing harmful cyanobacterial blooms. While most studies have explored effects of large-bodied Daphnia on cyanobacterial growth at the community level and/or on few dominant species, predictions of such restoration practices demand further understanding on taxa-specific responses in diverse cyanobacterial communities. In order to address these questions, we conducted three grazing experiments during summer in a eutrophic lake where the natural phytoplankton community was exposed to an increasing gradient in biomass of the large-bodied Daphnia magna. This allowed evaluating taxa-specific responses of cyanobacteria to Daphnia grazing throughout the growing season in a desired biomanipulation scenario with limited fish predation. Total cyanobacterial and phytoplankton biomasses responded negatively to Daphnia grazing both in early and late summer, regardless of different cyanobacterial densities. Large-bodied Daphnia were capable of suppressing the abundance of Aphanizomenon, Dolichospermum, Microcystis and Planktothrix bloom-forming cyanobacteria. However, the growth of the filamentous Dolichospermum crassum was positively affected by grazing during a period when this cyanobacterium dominated the community. The eutrophic lake was subjected to biomanipulation since 2005 and nineteen years of lake monitoring data (1996-2014) revealed that reducing fish predation increased the mean abundance (50%) and body-size (20%) of Daphnia, as well as suppressed the total amount of nutrients and the growth of the dominant cyanobacterial taxa, Microcystis and Planktothrix. Altogether our results suggest that lake restoration practices solely based on grazer control by large-bodied Daphnia can be effective, but may not be sufficient to control the overgrowth of all cyanobacterial diversity. Although controlling harmful cyanobacterial blooms should preferably include other measures, such as nutrient reductions, our experimental assessment of taxa-specific cyanobacterial responses to large-bodied Daphnia and long-term monitoring data highlights the potential of such biomanipulations to enhance the ecological and societal value of eutrophic water bodies.

Cooperative broadcasting is a promising technique for robust broadcast with low overhead and delay in mobile ad hoc networks. The technique is attractive for mission-oriented mobile communication, where a majority of the traffic is of broadcast nature. In cooperative broadcasting, all nodes simultaneously retransmit packets. The receiver utilizes cooperative diversity in the simultaneously received signals. The retransmissions continue until all nodes are reached. After the packet has traveled a specific number of hops out from the source, denoted as reuse distance, the source node transmits a new broadcast packet in the time slot used for the previous broadcast packet. If the reuse distance is too small, interference causes packet loss in intermediate nodes. In the literature, a reuse distance of three is common. With an analysis based on a realistic interference model and real terrain data, we show that a reuse distance of at least four is necessary to avoid packet loss in sparsely connected networks, especially for high spectral efficiencies. For frequency hopping, widely used in military systems, we propose a novel method. This method almost eliminates interference for a reuse distance of three, increasing the throughput by 33% compared to systems with a reuse distance of four.

Additional file 1: Table S1. Energy demand for unit processes.

Nanowires (NWs) have unique electrical and optical properties of value for many applications including lighting, sensing, and energy harnessing. Consumer products containing NWs increase the risk of NWs being released in the environment, especially into aquatic ecosystems through sewage systems. Daphnia magna is a common, cosmopolitan freshwater organism sensitive to toxicity tests and represents a likely entry point for nanoparticles into food webs of aquatic ecosystems. Here we have evaluated the effect of NW diameter on the gut penetrance of NWs in Daphnia magna. The animals were exposed to NWs of two diameters (40 and 80 nm) and similar length (3.6 and 3.8 μm, respectively) suspended in water. In order to locate the NWs in Daphnia, the NWs were designed to comprise one inherently fluorescent segment of gallium indium phosphide (GaInP) flanked by a gallium phosphide (GaP) segment. Daphnia mortality was assessed directly after 24 h of exposure and 7 days after exposure. Translocation of NWs across the intestinal epithelium was investigated using confocal fluorescence microscopy directly after 24 h of exposure and was observed in 89% of Daphnia exposed to 40 nm NWs and in 11% of Daphnia exposed to 80 nm NWs. A high degree of fragmentation was observed for NWs of both diameters after ingestion by the Daphnia, although 40 nm NWs were fragmented to a greater extent, which could possibly facilitate translocation across the intestinal epithelium. Our results show that the feeding behavior of animals may enhance the ability of NWs to penetrate biological barriers and that penetrance is governed by the NW diameter.

Migration is a widespread phenomenon in many ecosystems. Most often, studies on migration have focused on how migration strategies are dependent on ecological parameters, but little attention has been paid to the top-down effect of migration on ecosystem processes. Cyprinid fish in many European lakes undergo partial migration, where a part of the population leaves the lake and enters streams for the winter. In this study, we model the effect of partial migration by fish on lower trophic levels in a lake ecosystem. Our results suggest that spring phyto- and zooplankton dynamics, including occurrences of clear-water phases, can be related to the timing and magnitude of partial migration of planktivorous fish. From our results we conclude that partial migration can influence the dynamics of lower trophic levels in the ecosystem. Furthermore, we hypothesize that partial migration may affect the stability of alternative stable states and transitions between them.

In this paper we study a new class of generic, parametrized, locally load-sensing (LLS) network-routing protocols over simple graphs, Y. These protocols are Y-"local" in the sense that they transmit packets only between Y-adjacent vertices and LLS since they base their "routing decisions" dynamically on queue-sizes of their neighbors and their relative distance to the destination. In the system each vertex has specific data-queues indexed by its respective Y-neighbors. The state of a vertex then consists of the collection of queue-sizes. The data-transmission protocols are formally specified in the framework of sequential dynamical systems, which allows us to categorize and classify our experiments. We will investigate the following scenario: for fixed Y we assume a single source/destination pair to be given and a system-update then consists of the collection of local protocol updates according to some fixed permutation of the Y-vertices. We then iterate the system-updates and thereby obtain the time evolution of the queue-sizes of the vertices. We will present and discuss results on the evolution of the load, i.e. the total number of packets in the network, the throughput, i.e. the rate at which packets arrive at the destination, and study the dependence of the queue-size dynamics on various other system parameters. In particular, we will analyze update schedule dependency and the impact of queue-capacity on system stability. We will show that our protocols can adapt and dynamically utilize new routes in a fixed network.

In order to avoid environmental threats, organisms may respond by altering behavior or phenotype. Using experiments performed in high-latitude Siberia and in temperate Sweden, we show for the first time that, among freshwater crustacean zooplankton, the defense against threats from ultraviolet radiation (UV) is a system where phenotypic plasticity and behavioral escape mechanisms function as complementary traits. Freshwater copepods relied mainly on accumulating protective pigments when exposed to UV radiation, but Daphnia showed strong behavioral responses. Pigment levels for both Daphnia and copepods were generally higher at higher latitudes, mirroring different UV threat levels. When released from the UV threat, Daphnia rapidly reduced (within 10 days) their UV protecting pigmentation-by as much as 40%--suggesting a cost in maintaining UV protective pigmentation. The evolutionary advantage of protective pigments is, likely, the ability to utilize the whole water column during daytime; conversely, since the amount of algal food is generally higher in surface waters, unpigmented individuals are restricted to a less preferred feeding habitat in deeper waters. Our main conclusion is that different zooplankton taxa, and similar taxa at different latitudes, use different mixes of behavior and pigments to respond to UV radiation.

The aim of the present work was to evaluate systems for making organic farms self-sufficient in bio-based fuels. The energy efficiency and environmental load for systems based on rape methyl ester (RME), ethanol and biogas produced by processing raw material from the farm in industrial-scale plants were evaluated using a life cycle perspective. Eventual constraints when implementing the systems in practice were also identified and the farmer’s costs for the systems estimated. The RME scenario showed some good characteristics; the energy efficiency and potential effects on global warming were favourable, the technology well known and no engine modifications were necessary. However, the high price of the organically produced rapeseed made the fuel expensive. The ethanol scenario provided fuel at a comparatively low cost, but the energy efficiency was low and existing engines would have to be modified. The biogas scenario was not as economically advantageous, due to high costs for storage and transport of the biogas and the extensive tractor modifications needed. The calculations further showed that systems based on so-called exchange of fuels, i.e. when the farm produces raw material for one type of biofuel, but instead uses another type of biofuel more suitable for its own tractors, were an economically favourable way of supplying the organic farms with ‘self-produced’ bio-based fuels. The exchange scenario based on delivery of organic wheat to a large-scale plant and use of RME at the farm was somewhat more expensive than scenarios based on production of biogas raw material at the farm. However, the wheat/RME system has the advantage of being possible to put into practice immediately, since industrial-scale wheat ethanol plants are in operation and RME fuel is available on the market.

Objective. There is a call to make the duties and working conditions of the GP more transparent. The aim of this study was to explore practising GPs’ personal experiences of their professional role and what they regard to be its salient characteristics. Design. An exploratory and descriptive study was undertaken by interviewing GPs and by performing a focus-group study of experienced GPs. The interviews were transcribed and analysed, and the text was categorized according to content analysis. Setting. The practice of the interviewed GPs. Subjects. Seven GPs in individual interviews and a focus group of experienced GPs. Results. A major theme, Balancing, was identified. It was derived from a number of opposing concepts to which different features were related. ‘‘The good shepherd’’ versus ‘‘The medical expert’’; ‘‘Curing’’ versus ‘‘Caring’’; ‘‘Short visits’’ versus ‘‘Long consultations’’; ‘‘The personal doctor’’ versus ‘‘The society’s doctor’’. In many consultations the GP has to contemplate how to stay in focus between these diverse roles. Conclusion. General practice requires a balance to be achieved between a number of opposing conditions. In their clinical work GPs have to adjust to and integrate alternative perspectives. Problems of recruiting new GPs might be associated with dilemmas in this balancing act.

In this work, different relaxations applicable to an MPC problem with binary control signals are compared. The relaxations considered are the QP relaxation, the standard SDP relaxation and an alter ...

The effects of intersystem interference on an ad-hoc network were investigated by simulating the behaviour and communications of a mechanized battalion. The investigation focused on the risk for fratricide and the battalion commander's ability to control the companies' area of coverage and advice company commanders about the positioning of individual vehicles. The results show that even moderate levels of intersystem interference may hamper the battalion commander's ability to control the companies' area of coverage and provide direct support to company commanders. The investigation did not reveal any risk for fratricide due to intersystem interference.

The amount of plastics released to the environment in modern days has increased substantially since the development of modern plastics in the early 1900s. As a result, concerns have been raised by the public about the impact of plastics on nature and on, specifically, aquatic wildlife. Lately, much attention has been paid to macro- and micro-sized plastics and their impact on aquatic organisms. However, micro-sized plastics degrade subsequently into nano-sizes whereas nano-sized particles may be released directly into nature. Such particles have a different impact on aquatic organisms than larger pieces of plastic due to their small size, high surface curvature, and large surface area. This review describes the possible sources of nano-sized plastic, its distribution and behavior in nature, the impact of nano-sized plastic on the well-being of aquatic organisms, and the difference of impact between nano- and micro-sized particles. We also identify research areas which urgently need more attention and suggest experimental methods to obtain useful data.

Although migratory plasticity is increasingly documented, the ecological drivers of plasticity are not well understood. Predation risk can influence migratory dynamics, but whether seasonal migrants can adjust their migratory behaviour according to perceived risk is unknown. We used electronic tags to record the migration of individual roach ( Rutilus rutilus ), a partially migratory fish, in the wild following exposure to manipulation of direct (predator presence/absence) and indirect (high/low roach density) perceived predation risk in experimental mesocosms. Following exposure, we released fish in their lake summer habitat and monitored individual migration to connected streams over an entire season. Individuals exposed to increased perceived direct predation risk (i.e. a live predator) showed a higher migratory propensity but no change in migratory timing, while indirect risk (i.e. roach density) affected timing but not propensity showing that elevated risk carried over to alter migratory behaviour in the wild. Our key finding demonstrates predator-driven migratory plasticity, highlighting the powerful role of predation risk for migratory decision-making and dynamics.

Clinical context—Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are often asymptomatic until they rupture, when the death rate is greater than 80%. If diagnosed before rupture, AAA can be treated with surgery, ...

The aim of this work was to evaluate systems making organic farms self-sufficient in farm-produced bio-based fuels. The energy balance and environmental load for systems based on rape methyl ester (RME), ethanol and biogas were evaluated using a life cycle perspective. Complete LCAs were not performed. Important constraints when implementing the systems in practice were also identified. The RME scenario showed favourable energy balance and produced valuable by-products but was less positive in some other aspects. The use of land was high and thereby also the emissions associated with cultivation. Emissions, with the exception of CO 2 , during utilisation of the fuel were high compared to those of the other fuels in the study. The technology for production and use of RME is well known and easy to implement at farm scale. The production of ethanol was energy consuming and the by-products were relatively low value. However, the area needed for cultivation of raw material was low compared to the RME scenario. The production and utilisation of ignition improver and denaturants were associated with considerable emissions. Suitable ethanol production technology is available but is more optimal for large scale systems. The biogas scenario had a low relative need for arable land, which also resulted in smaller soil emissions to air and water. Another advantage was the potential to recycle plant nutrients. On the other hand, the potential emissions of methane from storage of digestate, upgrading of biogas and methane losses during utilisation of fuel produced a negative impact, mainly on global warming. Small scale technology for biogas cleaning and storage is not fully developed and extensive tractor modifications are necessary. The global warming effects of all three systems studied were reduced by 58–72% in comparison to a similar farming system based on diesel fuel. However, the fuel costs were higher for all scenarios studied compared to current diesel prices. In particular, the large costs for seasonal storage of gas meant that the biogas scenario described is currently not financially viable.

We study a combinatorial problem motivated by a receiver-oriented model of TCP traffic from Istrate et al. (2006), that incorporates information on both arrival times, and the dynamics of packet IDs. An important component of this model is a many-to-one mapping FB from sequences of IDs into a sequence of buffer sizes. We show that: i) Given a buffer sequence B, constructing a sequence A of IDs that belongs to the preimage of B is no harder than finding matchings in bipartite graph. ii) Counting the number of sequences A of packet IDs that belong to the preimage of B can be done in linear time in the special case when there exists a constant upper bound on the maximum entry in B. iii) This problem also has a fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme when we have a constant upper bound on the number of repeats in the packet sequences in the preimage. We also provide experimental evidence that the two previous results suffice to efficiently count the number of preimages for buffer sequences observed in real TCP data.

Ethanol is a renewable fuel that can be produced in small farm-scale plants as well as in medium- and large-scale industrial plants for use in e.g. heavy diesel engines. The purpose of this study was to analyse whether the use of a small-scale production system reduced the environmental load in comparison to a medium- and a large-scale system. Therefore, a limited life cycle assessment (LCA), including air emissions and energy requirements, was carried out for the three plant sizes. For the small plant and with physical allocation, the global-warming potential was 31.5 g CO2-eq/MJfuel, the acidification potential was 198 mg SO2-eq/MJfuel, the eutrophication potential was 30.9 mg PO43−-eq/MJfuel, the photochemical ozone creation potential was 13.8 mg C2H4-eq/MJfuel and the energy requirement 359 kJ/MJfuel. It was shown that the differences in environmental impact and energy requirement between small-, medium- and large-scale systems were small. The longer transport distances to a certain degree outweighed the higher energy efficiency and the more efficient use of machinery and buildings in the large-scale system. The dominating production step was the cultivation, in which production of fertilisers, followed by soil emissions and tractive power, made major contributions to the environmental load. The choice of allocation method had a certain influence on the difference between the scales, whereas the influence of uncertainty in input data and of some alternative production strategies was small.

We study asynchronous cellular automata (ACA) induced by symmetric Boolean functions [1]. These systems can be considered as sequential dynamical systems (SDS) over words, a class of dynamical systems that consists of (a) a finite, labeled graph Y with vertex set {v1,…,vn} and where each vertex vi has a state xvi in a finite field K, (b) a sequence of functions (Fvi,Y)i, and (c) a word w = (w1,…,wk), where each wi is a vertex in Y. The function Fvi,Y updates the state of vertex vi as a function of the state of vi and its Y-neighbors and maps all other vertex states identically. The SDS is the composed map [Formula: see text]. In the particular case of ACA, the graph is the circle graph on n vertices (Y = Circ n), and all the maps Fvi are induced by a common Boolean function. Our main result is the identification of all w-independent ACA, that is, all ACA with periodic points that are independent of the word (update schedule) w. In general, for each w-independent SDS, there is a finite group whose structure contains information about for example SDS with specific phase space properties. We classify and enumerate the set of periodic points for all w-independent ACA, and we also compute their associated groups in the case of Y = Circ 4. Finally, we analyze invertible ACA and offer an interpretation of S35 as the group of an SDS over the three-dimensional cube with local functions induced by nor3 + nand3.

Timeliness costs, a time-related penalty decreasing the total revenue in crop production, are associated with risk and arise when an operation is performed at an non-optimal time or with non-optimal capacity of the equipment, affecting the quality or quantity of a crop or both. Timeliness costs are needed to determine the optimal machinery system. The aim of this study was to estimate timeliness factors for silage production for the feeding of dairy cows. By calculating timeliness and machinery costs, the use of the timeliness factors was demonstrated on silage production on a dairy farm. Timeliness factors were calculated by estimating the economic value of forage harvested at different times by considering consequences in ration formulation, fodder costs and milk yield. This study showed that first harvest causes higher timeliness factors and thus higher timeliness costs, mainly due to higher yields and faster crop development. Moreover, total timeliness costs were substantially higher for organic silage production, compared with conventional, and similar to labour costs. Timeliness costs were particularly affected by changes in number of workers and transport distance.

Laboratory and field experiments were used to investigate how different marking procedures, with 23 mm PIT (passive integrated transponders) – tags, affected mortality, body condition and tag expulsion in small roach Rutilus rutilus and rudd Scardinus erythrophthalmus (117 to 163 mm total length). In a laboratory experiment mortality was low (≤ 6%) and only occurred among fishes that had their incision closed with sutures. The latter also had a specific growth rate that tended to be lower than the fish tagged without sutures. The different marking procedures did not adversely affect the body condition of fishes either in the laboratory experiment (after 37 days) or in the field experiment (up to 369 days). No tag expulsions were observed among laboratory fishes PITtagged without sutures. Marking without the use of sutures to close the incision, appears to be the most appropriate PIT tagging procedure for small cyprinids.

Techniques for computing soft information in the presence of unknown intersymbol interference are presented, with a particular focus on iterative detection of serially concatenated continuous phase modulation. The techniques are centered around the recursive least-squares algorithm, thus enabling unsupervised detection. In particular, we employ bidirectional estimation.

Adaptations and, counteradaptations are common in coevolving predatorprey systems, but little is known of the role of maternal transfer of adaptive traits in mediating species interactions. Here, we focused on tolerance against cyanobacterial toxins and asked whether this tolerance was an induced defense developed during Daphnia's lifetime, whether it was a trait that is constantly expressed, and whether such tolerance to the toxin can be transferred to the next generation through maternal effects. These questions were addressed by feeding a single clone of Daphnia magna a diet with and without algal toxin and recording changes in fitness (as intrinsic rate of population increase). Analysis of F1, F2, and F3 generations revealed that the increased tolerance to toxic Microcystis was an inducible defense developed during an individual's lifetime, and that this trait could be transferred from mother to offspring. This maternal effect was expressed in several fitness parameters, including shorter time to maturity and first reproduction, and higher numbers of offspring compared to inexperienced individuals. In some circumstances, such maternal effects may increase population production by up to 40% and may help to stabilize material and energy transfer to higher trophic levels.

1. Wetland ecosystems may, besides having considerable economical value, increase landscape biodiversity and function as traps for nutrients from land to freshwater- and marine systems. As a result of these features, wetlands are nowadays often protected and restored, and many countries have even initiated wetland construction programmes. 2. In the present study, we aim at increasing the knowledge on how to improve the design of a wetland with respect to both biodiversity and nutrient retention, by analysing physical, chemical and biological features of a large set of constructed wetlands. 3. Our results show that a combination of the wetland features, namely shallow depth, large surface area and high shoreline complexity are likely to provide a high biodiversity of birds, benthic invertebrates and macrophytes and to have high nitrogen retention, whereas a small, deep wetland is likely to be more efficient in phosphorus retention, but less valuable in terms of biodiversity. 4. Hence, among the features used to design new wetlands, area, depth and shoreline complexity have fundamental, and sometimes conflicting, effects on nutrient retention and biodiversity. This means that there are, within limits, possibilities to direct the ecosystem function of a specific wetland in desired directions.

The anthelmintic remedy oje, prepared latex of Ficus insipida, is still used by indigenous and local people in the Amazonian regions. However, overdosage leading to toxic reactions occurs despite the broadcasting of a clinically accepted dosage that is effective and safe. The intoxication of a 10-year-old girl in Pucallpa, who had received oje in a dose close to the recommended one, led us to study retrospectively the records of all hospitalized patients with toxic reactions to oje over a 12-year-period. The use of oje in and around Pucallpa was estimated. Most cases with toxic reactions, out of a total of 39 for the 12-year-period, were probably due to an overdose, defined as more than 1.5 cm3/kg; the recommended dose being 1 cm3/kg. In only five cases did toxic reactions occur at doses up to 1.5 cm3/kg, which were interpreted as idiosyncratic reactions; all of them occurred in children, and in two cases it was a severe reaction. One fatal outcome was noted among the 37 hospitalized patients. Two other fatal outcomes were observed in the 12-year-period but they occurred outside the hospital. The mortality rate is estimated to have been 0.01–0.015% among patients supposedly treated with oje in the area. Severe intoxication led to symptoms of cerebral edema. The main treatment was osmotic diuresis with mannitol which started in 1996. Although hypersensitivity reactions have been observed with other Ficus spp., there was apparently no such reaction in our cases. Recommendations are given so as to avoid toxic reactions from an expected continued use of oje.