Rainfall erosivity as a dynamic factor of soil loss by water erosion is modelled intra-annually for the first time at European scale. The development of Rainfall Erosivity Database at European Scale (REDES) and its 2015 update with the extension to monthly component allowed to develop monthly and seasonal R-factor maps and assess rainfall erosivity both spatially and temporally. During winter months, significant rainfall erosivity is present only in part of the Mediterranean countries. A sudden increase of erosivity occurs in major part of European Union (except Mediterranean basin, western part of Britain and Ireland) in May and the highest values are registered during summer months. Starting from September, R-factor has a decreasing trend. The mean rainfall erosivity in summer is almost 4 times higher (315 MJ mm ha− 1 h− 1) compared to winter (87 MJ mm ha− 1 h− 1).
The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) has a history of bringing thought leadership to topics of emerging risk. In September 2014, the SRA Emerging Nanoscale Materials Specialty Group convened an international workshop to examine the use of alternative testing strategies (ATS) for manufactured nanomaterials (NM) from a risk analysis perspective. Experts in NM environmental health and safety, human health, ecotoxicology, regulatory compliance, risk analysis, and ATS evaluated and discussed the state of the science for in vitro and other alternatives to traditional toxicology testing for NM. Based on this review, experts recommended immediate and near‐term actions that would advance ATS use in NM risk assessment. Three focal areas—human health, ecological health, and exposure considerations—shaped deliberations about information needs, priorities, and the next steps required to increase confidence in and use of ATS in NM risk assessment. The deliberations revealed that ATS are now being used for screening, and that, in the near term, ATS could be developed for use in read‐across or categorization decision making within certain regulatory frameworks. Participants recognized that leadership is required from within the scientific community to address basic challenges, including standardizing materials, protocols, techniques and reporting, and designing experiments relevant to real‐world conditions, as well as coordination and sharing of large‐scale collaborations and data. Experts agreed that it will be critical to include experimental parameters that can support the development of adverse outcome pathways. Numerous other insightful ideas for investment in ATS emerged throughout the discussions and are further highlighted in this article.
Water resources globally are affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Plans and shaping future environmental policy. This paper details the nature of these problems for Europe's water resources and the need to find solutions at a range of spatial scales. In terms of the latter, we describe the aims and approaches of the EU-funded project MARS (Managing Aquatic ecosystems and water Resources under multiple Stress) and the conceptual and analytical framework that it is adopting to provide this knowledge, understanding and tools needed to address multiple stressors. MARS is operating at three scales: At the water body scale, the mechanistic understanding of stressor interactions and their impact upon water resources, ecological status and ecosystem services will be examined through multi-factorial experiments and the analysis of long time-series. At the river basin scale, modelling and empirical approaches will be adopted to characterise relationships between multiple stressors and ecological responses, functions, services and water resources. The effects of future land use and mitigation scenarios in 16 European river basins will be assessed. At the European, scale, large-scale spatial analysis will be carried out to identify the relationships amongst stress intensity, ecological status and service provision, with a special focus on large transboundary rivers, lakes and fish. The project will support managers and policy makers in the practical implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), of related legislation and of the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources by advising the 3rd River Basin Management Planning cycle, the revision of the WFD and by developing new tools for diagnosing and predicting multiple stressors. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Military personnel involved in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) commonly experience blast-induced mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI). In this study, we used task-activated functional MRI (fMRI) to determine if blast-related TBI has a differential impact on brain activation in comparison with TBI caused primarily by mechanical forces in civilian settings. Four groups participated: (1) blast-related military TBI (milTBI; n=21); (2) military controls (milCON; n=22); (3) non-blast civilian TBI (civTBI; n=21); and (4) civilian controls (civCON; n=23) with orthopedic injuries. Mild to moderate TBI (MTBI) occurred 1 to 6 years before enrollment. Participants completed the Stop Signal Task (SST), a measure of inhibitory control, while undergoing fMRI. Brain activation was evaluated with 2 (mil, civ)×2 (TBI, CON) analyses of variance, corrected for multiple comparisons. During correct inhibitions, fMRI activation was lower in the TBI than CON subjects in regions commonly associated with inhibitory control and the default mode network. In contrast, inhibitory failures showed significant interaction effects in the bilateral inferior temporal, left superior temporal, caudate, and cerebellar regions. Specifically, the milTBI group demonstrated more activation than the milCON group when failing to inhibit; in contrast, the civTBI group exhibited less activation than the civCON group. Covariance analyses controlling for the effects of education and self-reported psychological symptoms did not alter the brain activation findings. These results indicate that the chronic effects of TBI are associated with abnormal brain activation during successful response inhibition. During failed inhibition, the pattern of activation distinguished military from civilian TBI, suggesting that blast-related TBI has a unique effect on brain function that can be distinguished from TBI resulting from mechanical forces associated with sports or motor vehicle accidents. The implications of these findings for diagnosis ...
Die KBU begrüßt das Ansinnen der Bundesregierung mit dem im März 2022 beschlossenen Aktionsprogramm Natürlicher Klimaschutz (ANK), den Aufbau eines aussagekräftigen und belastbaren bundesweiten bodenbiologischen Monitoring zu finanzieren. Das Positionspapier konzentriert sich auf zwei Fragen 1) Was ist konkret zu tun? und 2) Warum müssen wir jetzt aktiv werden? Es geht um die wichtigsten Aufgaben der kommenden Jahre, um die Bodenbiodiversität in Deutschland zu charakterisieren und den guten ökologischen Zustand zu definieren. Die erhobenen Daten sind die Basis für die Bewertung des ökologischen Zustandes der Böden in Deutschland und die Ableitung von Maßnahmen für den Klima- und Ressourcenschutz.
Confronts the world's key global security issues and challenges in the twenty-first centuryProvides a comprehensive analysis of core global security challenges of the 21st Century with emphasis on the third decadeTraverses a range of analyses across the spectrum between core global security challenges (environment, WMDS, health, gender, great power politics, etc) with ongoing theoretical debates (critical theoretical approaches, traditional orthodox approaches)Encompasses a diverse range of emerging, middle and senior academics from around the world, covering a multitude of topics in the global security domainProvides a much-needed re-assessment amidst one of the most defining global junctures in 21st Century, if not the last 70 plus yearsThis book presents a range of analyses across the security spectrum, bringing a deep understanding of core global security challenges into contention with ongoing theoretical debates between critical and traditional approaches. Chapters analyse the evolving and shifting dynamics of geopolitics, prolonged armed conflicts, large-scale public health emergencies, and economic fractures. Additionally, authors discuss climate shocks, deepening social and economic inequity, trends in nationalism and populism, gendered violence, as well as challenges pertaining to cyber insecurity, emerging technologies, nuclear weapons, and global terrorism. The book illustrates these unparalleled circumstances, taken together with the epochal juncture expressed in the global pandemic, have evolved and coalesced to redefine the many complexities and oscillations of global security
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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acronyms -- Preface -- Timeline of the Global Protests, 2010-13 -- 1. Introduction -- Part One: the Arab Spring Uprisings and their Aftermaths -- 2. Teargas, Flags and the Harlem Shake: Images of and for Revolution in Tunisia and the Dialectics of the Local in the Global -- 3. Singing the Revolt in Tahrir Square: Euphoria, Utopia and Revolution -- 4. 'I Dreamed of Being a People': Egypt's Revolution, the People and Critical Imagination -- 5. The Body of the Colonel: Caricature and Incarnation in the Libyan Revolution -- 6. Poetry of Protest: Tribes in Yemen's 'Change Revolution' -- Part Two: Beyond the Arab Spring - Asia and Africa -- 7. A Fractured Solidarity: Communitas and Structure in the Israeli 2011 Social Protest -- 8. Gandhi, Camera, Action! India's 'August Spring' -- 9. Short Circuits: The Aesthetics of Protest, Media and Martyrdom in Indian Anti-corruption Activism -- 10. 'The Mother of all Strikes': Popular Protest Culture and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in the Botswana Public Service Unions' Strike, 2011 -- Part Three: Beyond the Arab Spring - American and European Protests -- 11. Vernacular Culture and Grassroots Activism: Non-violent Protest and Progressive Ethos at the 2011 Wisconsin Labour Rallies -- 12. Occupy Wall Street: Carnival Against Capital? Carnivalesque as Protest Sensibility -- 13. Subversion through Performance: Performance Activism in London -- 14. Spain's Indignados and the Mediated Aesthetics of Non-violence -- 15 The Poetics of Indignation in Greece: Anti-austerity Protest and Accountability -- About the Contributors -- Web Sources for Figures -- Index
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The technological capacity to transform biology - repairing, reshaping and replacing body parts, chemicals and functions - is now part of our lives. Humanity is confronted with a variety of affordable and non-invasive 'enhancement technologies': anti-ageing medicine, aesthetic surgery, cognitive and sexual enhancers, lifestyle drugs, prosthetics and hormone supplements. This collection focuses on why people find these practices so seductive and provides ethnographic insights into people's motives and aspirations as they embrace or reject enhancement technologies, which are closely entangled with negotiations over gender, class, age, nationality and ethnicity
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