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Social impacts of biodiversity offsetting: A review
2022
Biodiversity offsetting is the widely studied last step of the mitigation hierarchy. Despite numerous studies and the methodological development completed for biodiversity calculations, the human aspect remains unsolved. Biodiversity conservation is typically governed at national or state levels, but the harm caused to biodiversity as well as people occurs locally. In biodiversity offsetting, biodiversity values can be relocated far from the original area, but relocating the values people hold regarding their nearby nature may not be possible. Acknowledging the local people's hopes and values may further complicate biodiversity offsetting, therefore it emphasises even more the need to avoid…
Global-Local model for guided wave scattering problems with application to defect characterization in built-up composite structures
2020
Abstract Predicting scattering of elastic guided waves in multi-layered solid plates with geometrical and/or material discontinuities is of great interest to many fields, including ultrasonic-based Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and health monitoring of critical structural components (SHM). The problem is complicated by the multimode and dispersive behaviour of the guided waves. This paper describes a unified Global-Local (GL) approach that is computationally efficient in cases that can be very complex in terms of geometry and/or material properties. One example of this is a composite built-up structure. The proposed GL procedure discretizes the “local” region with the scattering discontinui…
Peptide Processing Is Critical for T-Cell Memory Inflation and May Be Optimized to Improve Immune Protection by CMV-Based Vaccine Vectors.
2016
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) elicits long-term T-cell immunity of unparalleled strength, which has allowed the development of highly protective CMV-based vaccine vectors. Counterintuitively, experimental vaccines encoding a single MHC-I restricted epitope offered better immune protection than those expressing entire proteins, including the same epitope. To clarify this conundrum, we generated recombinant murine CMVs (MCMVs) encoding well-characterized MHC-I epitopes at different positions within viral genes and observed strong immune responses and protection against viruses and tumor growth when the epitopes were expressed at the protein C-terminus. We used the M45-encoded conventional epitope HGI…
The structure of parasite component communities in brackish water fishes of the northeastern Baltic Sea
2001
We used nestedness analysis to seek non-random patterns in the structure of component communities of metazoan parasites collected from 31 sympatric fish species from the northeastern Bothnian Bay, the most oligohaline area of the Baltic Sea. Only 8 marine parasite species were found among the 63 species recorded, although some marine fish species reproduce in the bay and others occasionally visit the area. Marine parasite species can utilize both freshwater and marine fish species as intermediate or final hosts, and marine fish can harbour freshwater parasite species. This exchange of parasite species between marine and freshwater fish has probably resulted from ecological factors acting ov…
Characterization and thermomechanical assessment of a SiC-sandwich material for Flow Channel Inserts in DCLL blankets
2019
Abstract Flow Channel Inserts (FCIs) are key elements in the high-temperature Dual Coolant Lead Lithium (DCLL) blanket, since they insulate electrically the flowing PbLi to avoid MHD effects and protect the steel structure from the hot liquid metal. SiC-based materials are main candidates for high-temperature FCIs, being a dense-porous SiC-based sandwich material an attractive option. The present work is focused on the development of such a SiC-based material. On the one hand, in order to assess the suitability of the concept for FCIs, the main results of a stress analysis, MHD and heat transfer simulations are summarized. On the other hand, the experimental production of the SiC-based mate…
Accuracy of Saturated Soil Hydraulic Conductivity Estimated from Numerically Simulated Single‐Ring Infiltrations
2019
The single-ring pressure infiltrometer (PI) method is widely used to determine saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, K s , directly in the field. The original and still most common way to analyze the data makes use of the steady-state model developed by the Canadian School in the 90s and two (two-ponding-depth, TPD, approach) or more (multiple-ponding-depth, MPD, approach) depths of ponding. The so-called Wu method based on a generalized infiltration equation allows analysis of the transient infiltration data collected by establishing a single ponding depth of water on the infiltration surface. This investigation, making use of simulated infiltration runs for initially unsaturated sand to …
Probes for studying cholesterol binding and cell biology.
2011
Cholesterol is a multifunctional lipid in eukaryotic cells. It regulates the physical state of the phospholipid bilayer, is crucially involved in the formation of membrane microdomains, affects the activity of many membrane proteins, and is the precursor for steroid hormones and bile acids. Thus, cholesterol plays a profound role in the physiology and pathophysiology of eukaryotic cells. The cholesterol molecule has achieved evolutionary perfection to fulfill its different functions in membrane organization. Here, we review basic approaches to explore the interaction of cholesterol with proteins, with a particular focus on the high diversity of fluorescent and photoreactive cholesterol prob…
Resistance to demineralisation of adjacent enamel and dentine, fluoride release and dentine bond strength of fluoride-containing self-etch adhesive s…
2019
Background The current study aimed to assess the amount of fluoride released from fluoride-containing dental adhesives and its effect on micro-tensile bond strength (µTBS) and on resistance to demineralisation of dentine and enamel. Material and Methods Two fluoride-containing dental adhesives, and a fluoride-free adhesive were used as experimental adhesives. After thermal cycling the µ-TBS of adhesives to dentine and the failure mode were assessed. The fluoride release and cross-sectional microhardness (CSMH) of specimens were measured before and after one day, 7 and 28 days of pH-cycling. The data were analysed using one-way ANOVA, Weibull statistics and repeated measures ANOVA. Results T…
Aqueous enzymatic process assisted by microwave extraction of oil from yellow horn (Xanthoceras sorbifolia Bunge.) seed kernels and its quality evalu…
2013
Abstract In this study, aqueous enzymatic process (AEP) assisted by microwave extraction (ME) of oil from yellow horn ( Xanthoceras sorbifolia Bunge.) seed kernel was investigated. Central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology (RSM) were used to optimise an enzyme cocktail (cellulase, hemicellulase, pectinase) for AEP. The main factors of ME were also studied. A maximal oil extraction yield of 55.8% was achieved under optimal conditions. Moreover, scanning electron microscope (SEM) was applied to characterise the extraction process. Analysing chemical composition of the extracted oil by GC–MS showed that the content of unsaturated fatty acids by this emerging method (91.18…
Numerical study of two-dimensional wet foam over a range of shear rates
2017
The shear rheology of two-dimensional foam is investigated over a range of shear rates with the numerical DySMaL model, which features dynamically deformable bubbles. It is found that at low shear rates, the rheological behavior of the system can be characterized by a yield stress power-law constitutive equation that is consistent with experimental findings and can be understood in terms of soft glassy rheology models. At low shear rates, the system rheology is also found to be subject to a scaling law involving the bubble size, the surface tension, and the viscosity of the carrier fluid. At high shear rates, the model produces a dynamic phase transition with a sudden change in the flow pat…