Search results for "RW"
showing 10 items of 3858 documents
The key role played by the Augusta basin (southern Italy) in the mercury contamination of the Mediterranean Sea.
2011
The Augusta basin, located in SE Sicily (southern Italy), is a semi-enclosed marine area, labelled as a highly contaminated site. The release of mercury into the harbour seawater and its dispersion to the blue water, make the Augusta basin a potential source of anthropogenic pollution for the Mediterranean Sea. A mass balance was implemented to calculate the HgT budget in the Augusta basin. Results suggest that an average of ∼0.073 kmol of HgT is released, by diffusion, on a yearly basis, from sediments to the seawater, with a consequent output of 0.162 kmol y(-1) to coastal and offshore waters; this makes the Augusta area an important contributor of mercury to the Mediterranean Sea. Owing …
Holocene climate variability in north-eastern Italy: potential influence of the NAO and solar activity recorded by speleothem data
2012
Abstract. Here we present high-resolution stable isotope and lamina thickness profiles as well as radiocarbon data for the Holocene stalagmite ER 76 from Grotta di Ernesto (north-eastern Italy), which was dated by combined U-series dating and lamina counting. ER 76 grew between 8 ka (thousands of years before 2000 AD) and today, with a hiatus from 2.6 to 0.4 ka. Data from nine meteorological stations in Trentino show a significant influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on winter temperature and precipitation in the cave region. Spectral analysis of the stable isotope signals of ER 76 reveals significant peaks at periods of 110, 60–70, 40–50, 32–37 and around 25 a. Except for the …
A New Network for the Advancement of Marine Biotechnology in Europe and Beyond
2020
Marine organisms produce a vast diversity of metabolites with biological activities useful for humans, e.g., cytotoxic, antioxidant, anti-microbial, insecticidal, herbicidal, anticancer, pro-osteogenic and pro-regenerative, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, cholesterol-lowering, nutritional, photoprotective, horticultural or other beneficial properties. These metabolites could help satisfy the increasing demand for alternative sources of nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, cosmeceuticals, food, feed, and novel bio-based products. in addition, marine biomass itself can serve as the source material for the production of various bulk commodities (e.g., biofuels, bioplastics, biomateria…
Driving through floodwater: Exploring driver decisions through the lived experience
2019
Abstract More than half of unintentional flood-related drowning deaths in Australia are due to driving through floodwater, despite on-going public campaigns. Currently, there is a knowledge gap in understanding why individuals choose to drive through floodwater and the decisions that may lead to such actions. We propose that a more complete understanding of individuals’ decisions to drive through floodwater needs to be considered in the context of the lived experience. Australian drivers (N = 20) who had intentionally driven through floodwater participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis based in an interpretivist approach. Past experience, indivi…
Modelling soil moisture at SMOS scale by use of a SVAT model over the Valencia Anchor Station
2010
16 páginas, 9 figuras, 5 tablas.
Global-Scale Evaluation of Roughness Effects on C-Band AMSR-E Observations
2015
Quantifying roughness effects on ground surface emissivity is an important step in obtaining high-quality soil moisture products from large-scale passive microwave sensors. In this study, we used a semi-empirical method to evaluate roughness effects (parameterized here by the parameter) on a global scale from AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS) observations. AMSR-E brightness temperatures at 6.9 GHz obtained from January 2009 to September 2011, together with estimations of soil moisture from the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) L3 products and of soil temperature from ECMWF’s (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting) were used as inputs in a retrieval…
Insolation cycles as a major control equatorial Indian Ocean primary production
1997
Analysis of a continuous sedimentary record taken in the Maldives indicates that strong primary production fluctuations (70 to 390 grams of carbon per square meter per year) have occurred in the equatorial Indian Ocean during the past 910,000 years. The record of primary production is coherent and in phase with the February equatorial insolation, whereas it shows diverse phase behavior with δ 18 O, depending on the orbital frequency (eccentricity, obliquity, or precession) examined. These observations imply a direct control of productivity in the equatorial oceanic system by insolation. In the equatorial Indian Ocean, productivity is driven by the wind intensity of westerlies, which is rel…
A Geometry-Based Underwater Acoustic Channel Model Allowing for Sloped Ocean Bottom Conditions
2017
This paper proposes a new geometry-based channel model for shallow-water ocean environments, in which the ocean bottom can slope gently down/up. The need for developing such an underwater acoustic (UWA) channel model is driven by the fact that the standard assumption of a flat ocean bottom does not hold in many realistic scenarios. Starting from a geometrical model, we develop a stochastic channel model for wideband single-input single-output vehicle-to-vehicle UWA channels using the ray theory assuming smooth ocean surface and bottom. We investigate the effect of the ocean-bottom slope angle on the distribution of the channel envelope, instantaneous channel capacity, temporal autocorrelati…
A Nonisovelocity Geometry-Based Underwater Acoustic Channel Model
2018
This paper proposes a new geometry-based shallow underwater acoustic (UWA) channel model allowing for nonisovelocity ocean conditions. The fact that the isovelocity assumption does not hold in many real-world scenarios motivates the need for developing channel models for nonisovelocity UWA propagation environments. Starting from a geometrical model, we develop a stochastic channel model for a single-input single-output (SISO) vehicle-to-vehicle UWA channel assuming that the ocean surface and bottom are rough and that the speed of sound varies with depth. The effect of the nonisovelocity condition has been assessed regarding its influence on the temporal autocorrelation function, the frequen…
Performance analysis of Alamouti-coded OFDM systems over spatio-temporally correlated underwater acoustic channels
2017
In this paper, we analyze the performance of Alamouti-coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems over time-varying underwater acoustic (UWA) channels. A realistic UWA channel model has been considered, which can be correlated in either time or space or simultaneously in both domains. An exact analytical expression for the bit error probability (BEP) is necessary to analyze accurately the performance of Alamouti-coded OFDM systems over the spatio-temporally correlated UWA channel model. Hence, by using this UWA channel model, an expression has been derived for the BEP of Alamouti-coded OFDM systems assuming that the receiver knows perfectly the channel state information.…