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Abstract This Special Section provides introduction to the 15th Conference Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (PRES 2012). In this editorial introduction, the editors are highlighting the individual articles included in this issue and discussing the main points. The main areas of this issue can be summarised as: Process Integration for Energy Saving, Integrating Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Optimisation issues.

Enhanced or reduced pCO(2) (partial pressure of CO2) may affect the photosynthetic performance of marine microalgae since changes in pCO(2) can influence the activity of carbon concentrating mechanisms, modulate cellular RuBisCO levels or alter carbon uptake efficiency. In the present study we compared the photophysiology of the Antarctic diatom Chaetoceros brevis at two pCO(2) extremes: 750 ppmv (2x ambient) and 190 ppmv (0.5x ambient) CO2. Cultures were acclimated to four irradiance regimes: two regimes simulating deep or shallow vertical mixing, and two regimes mimicking limiting and saturating stable water column conditions. Then, growth rate, pigmentation, RuBisCO large subunit expression. RuBisCO activity, photosynthesis vs irradiance curves, effective quantum yield of PSII (F-v/F-m), and POC were measured. The four irradiance regimes induced a suite of photophysiological responses, ranging from low light acclimation to efficient photoprotection. Growth was reduced under the low constant and the deep mixing regime, compared to the shallow mixing and the stable saturating regime. Low stable irradiance resulted in higher light harvesting pigment concentrations, lower RuBisCO activity and a lower light saturation point (E-k) compared to the other irradiance regimes. Highest RuBisCO activity as well as P-max levels was measured in the shallow mixing regime, which received the highest total daily light dose. Photoprotection by xanthophyll cycling was observed under all irradiance regimes except the low stable irradiance regime, and xanthophyll cycle pool sizes were higher under the dynamic irradiance regimes. For the fluctuating irradiance regimes. E-v/E-m was hardly affected by previous excess irradiance exposure, suggesting minimal PSII damage. No significant differences between the two pCO(2) levels were found, with respect to growth, pigment content and composition, photosynthesis, photoprotection and RuBisCO activity, for all four irradiance regimes. Thus, within the range tested, pCO(2) does not significantly affect the photophysiological performance of C. brevis. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract Electrolyte-separator-free fuel cell (EFFC) is a new emerging energy conversion technology. The EFFC consists of a single-component of nanocomposite material which works as a one-layer fuel cell device contrary to the traditional three-layer anode–electrolyte–cathode structure, in which an electrolyte layer plays a critical role. The nanocomposite of a single homogenous layer consists of a mixture of semiconducting and ionic materials that provides the necessary electrochemical reaction sites and charge transport paths for a fuel cell. These can be accomplished through tailoring ionic and electronic (n, p) conductivities and catalyst activities, which enable redox reactions to occur on nano-particles and finally accomplish a fuel cell function.

The repercussions of climate change will be felt in various ways throughout both natural and human systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change projections for this region point to a warming trend, particularly in the inland subtropics; frequent occurrence of extreme heat events; increasing aridity; and changes in rainfall—with a particularly pronounced decline in southern Africa and an increase in East Africa. The region could also experience as much as one meter of sea-level rise by the end of this century under a 4 °C warming scenario. Sub-Saharan Africa’s already high rates of undernutrition and infectious disease can be expected to increase compared to a scenario without climate change. Particularly vulnerable to these climatic changes are the rainfed agricultural systems on which the livelihoods of a large proportion of the region’s population currently depend. As agricultural livelihoods become more precarious, the rate of rural–urban migration may be expected to grow, adding to the already significant urbanization trend in the region. The movement of people into informal settlements may expose them to a variety of risks different but no less serious than those faced in their place of origin, including outbreaks of infectious disease, flash flooding and food price increases. Impacts across sectors are likely to amplify the overall effect but remain little understood.

Feedbacks between land carbon pools and climate provide one of the largest sources of uncertainty in our predictions of global climate. Estimates of the sensitivity of the terrestrial carbon budget to climate anomalies in the tropics and the identification of the mechanisms responsible for feedback effects remain uncertain. The Amazon basin stores a vast amount of carbon, and has experienced increasingly higher temperatures and more frequent floods and droughts over the past two decades. Here we report seasonal and annual carbon balances across the Amazon basin, based on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide measurements for the anomalously dry and wet years 2010 and 2011, respectively. We find that the Amazon basin lost 0.48 ± 0.18 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C yr(-1)) during the dry year but was carbon neutral (0.06 ± 0.1 Pg C yr(-1)) during the wet year. Taking into account carbon losses from fire by using carbon monoxide measurements, we derived the basin net biome exchange (that is, the carbon flux between the non-burned forest and the atmosphere) revealing that during the dry year, vegetation was carbon neutral. During the wet year, vegetation was a net carbon sink of 0.25 ± 0.14 Pg C yr(-1), which is roughly consistent with the mean long-term intact-forest biomass sink of 0.39 ± 0.10 Pg C yr(-1) previously estimated from forest censuses. Observations from Amazonian forest plots suggest the suppression of photosynthesis during drought as the primary cause for the 2010 sink neutralization. Overall, our results suggest that moisture has an important role in determining the Amazonian carbon balance. If the recent trend of increasing precipitation extremes persists, the Amazon may become an increasing carbon source as a result of both emissions from fires and the suppression of net biome exchange by drought.

AbstractWhile an understanding of evolutionary processes in shifting environments is vital in the context of rapid ecological change, one of the most potent selective forces, sexual selection, remains curiously unexplored. Variation in sexual selection across a species range, especially across a gradient of temperature regimes, has the potential to provide a window into the possible impacts of climate change on the evolution of mating patterns. Here, we investigated some of the links between temperature and indicators of sexual selection, using a cold‐water pipefish as model. We found that populations differed with respect to body size, length of the breeding season, fecundity, and sexual dimorphism across a wide latitudinal gradient. We encountered two types of latitudinal patterns, either linear, when related to body size, or parabolic in shape when considering variables related to sexual selection intensity, such as sexual dimorphism and reproductive investment. Our results suggest that sexual selection intensity increases toward both edges of the distribution and that the large differences in temperature likely play a significant role. Shorter breeding seasons in the north and reduced periods for gamete production in the south certainly have the potential to alter mating systems, breeding synchrony, and mate monopolization rates. As latitude and water temperature are tightly coupled across the European coasts, the observed patterns in traits related to sexual selection can lead to predictions regarding how sexual selection should change in response to climate change. Based on data from extant populations, we can predict that as the worm pipefish moves northward, a wave of decreasing selection intensity will likely replace the strong sexual selection at the northern range margin. In contrast, the southern populations will be followed by heightened sexual selection, which may exacerbate the problem of local extinction at this retreating boundary.

AbstractAimBats are promising candidates for studying morphometric responses to anthropogenic climate or land‐use changes. We assessed whether the cranial size of a common bat (Pipistrellus kuhlii) had changed between 1875 and 2007. We formulated the following hypotheses: (1) if heat loss is an important reaction to climate change, body size will have decreased in response to the increased temperatures, because small bats have a larger surface‐to‐volume ratio and dissipate heat more effectively; (2) if water loss is the main driver, body size will have increased in response to the temperature increase, because larger bats will lose water more slowly through a reduced surface‐to‐volume ratio; (3) the energetic benefits provided by urbanization (food concentration at street lamps, warmer maternity roosts in buildings) will lead to a general body size increase in P. kuhlii; and (4) because street lamps impair moth antipredatory manoeuvres, cranial size may have selectively increased as an adaptive response to handle larger prey (moths) in artificially illuminated sites. Ours is the first study to assess temporal trends in bat body size over more than a century and to relate them to urbanization.LocationMainland Italy.MethodsWe used traditional morphometrics to compare seven variables of skull size in 117 museum specimens (75 female, 42 male).ResultsCranial size increased after 1950, but this change was not paralleled by an increase in body size, measured as forearm length. This selective increase matched a rapid increase in electric public illumination in Italy.Main conclusionsStreet lights are crucial foraging sites for P. kuhlii. The directional change that we found in cranial size might represent microevolutionary adaptive tracking of a sudden shift in food size, making more profitable prey available.

The sulfation of KCl during biomass combustion has implications for operation and emissions: it reduces the rates of deposition and corrosion, it increases the formation of aerosols, and it leads to higher concentrations of HCl and lower concentrations of SO2 in the gas phase. Rigorously homogeneous systems are required to characterize the gas-phase formation of alkali sulfates. We have measured the temperature and gas-phase concentrations of KCl and HCl, and detected the presence of aerosols in the post-flame region of a range of hydrocarbon flames seeded with KCl, with and without the addition of SO2. Dilution of the flame products with different amounts of N-2 ensured post-flame temperatures in the range 950-1400 K. In the absence of SO2, KCl levels were constant in the post-flame zone and no aerosols were formed, even at the lowest temperatures. In the presence of SO2, KCl was consumed and HCl and aerosols formed, most pronounced in flames with the lowest post-flame temperatures. This shows that KCl is sulfated in the gas phase to K2SO4, and this is followed by homogeneous nucleation of K2SO4 to form aerosols. Predictions from a kinetic model of the S/Cl/K chemistry agreed well with the experimental results. The model showed that the rate-limiting steps in the sulfation process are the oxidation of SO2 to SO3 and the homogeneous nucleation of K2SO4. (C) 2013 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Fuel moisture limits the availability of fuel to wildfires in many forest areas worldwide, but the effects of climate change on moisture constraints remain largely unknown. Here we addressed how climate affects fuel moisture in pine stands from Catalonia, NE Spain, and the potential effects of increasing climate aridity on burned area in the Pyrenees, a mesic mountainous area where fire is currently rare. We first quantified variation in fuel moisture in six sites distributed across an altitudinal gradient where the long-term mean annual temperature and precipitation vary by 6-15 °C and 395-933 mm, respectively. We observed significant spatial variation in live (78-162%) and dead (10-15%) fuel moisture across sites. The pattern of variation was negatively linked (r = |0.6|-|0.9|) to increases in vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and in the Aridity Index. Using seasonal fire records over 2006-2020, we observed that summer burned area in the Mediterranean forests of Northeast Spain and Southern France was strongly dependent on VPD (r = 0.93), the major driver (and predictor) of dead fuel moisture content (DFMC) at our sites. Based on the difference between VPD thresholds associated with large wildfire seasons in the Mediterranean (3.6 kPa) and the maximum VPD observed in surrounding Pyrenean mountains (3.1 kPa), we quantified the "safety margin" for Pyrenean forests (difference between actual VPD and that associated with large wildfires) at 0.5 kPa. The effects of live fuel moisture content (LFMC) on burned area were not significant under current conditions, a situation that may change with projected increases in climate aridity. Overall, our results indicate that DFMC in currently fire-free areas in Europe, like the Pyrenees, with vast amounts of fuel in many forest stands, may reach critical dryness thresholds beyond the safety margin and experience large wildfires after only mild increases in VPD, although LFMC can modulate the response.

M.S.S. Santos is grateful to Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for her PhD fellow (reference: SFRH/BD/104087/ 2014). Kashif Mushtaq is grateful to MIT Portugal Program for his doctoral grant (PD/BD/128041/2016) under the scope of the FCT. The authors would like to acknowledge to the FCT under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI 01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. The authors also acknowledge the Projects: i) POCI-01-0145- FEDER-006939 (LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy – UID/EQU/00511/2013), funded by the ERDF, through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) and by nationals funds through FCT, ii) by the Project SunStorage - Harvesting and storage of solar energy”, with reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016387, funded by ERDF, through COMPETE 2020 –POCI), and by national funds, through FCT; (iii) Project PTDC/EQU-EQU/30510/2017 - POCI-01-0145- FEDER-030510 – Sunflow “Solar energy storage into redox flow batteries” funded by FEDER funds through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) and by national funds (PIDDAC) through FCT/MCTES and iV) NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000005 – LEPABE-2-ECO-INNOVATION, supported by North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Norte 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the ERDF. The authors are indebted with all the colleagues who assisted in the laboratory work.