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Wood biomass is turned into industrial fuel through chipping. The efficiency of chipping depends on many factors, including chipper knife wear. Chipper knife wear was determined through a long-term follow-up study, conducted at a waste wood recycling yard. Knife wear determined a sharp drop of productivity (>20%) and a severe decay in product quality. Dry sharpening with a grinder mitigated this effect, but it could not replace proper wet sharpening. Increasing the frequency of wet sharpening sessions determined a moderate increase of knife depreciation cost, but it could drastically enhance machine performance and reduce biomass processing cost. Since benefits largely exceed costs, increasing the frequency of wet sharpening sessions may be an effective measure for reducing overall chipping cost. If the main goal of a chipper operator is to increase productivity and/or decrease fuel consumption, then managing knife wear should be a primary target. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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.

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.

This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue on new developments in urban transportation planning. The papers in this issue highlight how physical mobility is still an essential priority for urban life, but that there are associated costs in the terms of environmental impacts, quality of life and economic performance of cities. Four features of the emerging urban transportation field are identified. The first defining feature is that it is a discipline in the midst of a paradigmatic transition. Second is its overarching aim of achieving sustainable urban mobility as part of a broader effort towards enhancing quality of life in cities. The third feature is the emphasis on collaboration, integration and exchange with other professions and policy sectors. The last distinctive feature is the recognition that urban transportation planning is a communication-oriented activity.

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.

Earth’s biodiversity and human societies face pollution, overconsumption of natural resources, urbanization, demographic shifts, social and economic inequalities, and habitat loss, many of which are exacerbated by climate change. Here, we review links among climate, biodiversity, and society and develop a roadmap toward sustainability. These include limiting warming to 1.5°C and effectively conserving and restoring functional ecosystems on 30 to 50% of land, freshwater, and ocean “scapes.” We envision a mosaic of interconnected protected and shared spaces, including intensively used spaces, to strengthen self-sustaining biodiversity, the capacity of people and nature to adapt to and mitigate climate change, and nature’s contributions to people. Fostering interlinked human, ecosystem, and planetary health for a livable future urgently requires bold implementation of transformative policy interventions through interconnected institutions, governance, and social systems from local to global levels.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This version has been superseded. The latest version is at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5517550 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eddy covariance flux tower datasets of all Urban-PLUMBER sites, associated with the manuscript: "Harmonized, gap-filled dataset from 20 urban flux tower sites" Use of any data must give credit through citation of the above manuscript and other sources as appropriate. We recommend data users consult with site contributing authors and/or the coordination team in the project planning stage. Relevant contacts are included in timeseries metadata. For site information and timeseries plots see https://urban-plumber.github.io/sites. For processing code see https://github.com/matlipson/urban-plumber_pipeline. Within each site folder: - `index.html`: A summary page with site characteristics and timeseries plots. - `SITENAME_sitedata_vX.csv`: comma seperated file for numerical site characteristics e.g. location, surface cover fraction etc. - `timeseries/` (following files available as netCDF and txt) - `SITENAME_raw_observations_vX`: site observed timeseries before project-wide quality control. - `SITENAME_clean_observations_vX`: site observed timeseries after project-wide quality control. - `SITENAME_metforcing_vX`: site observed timeseries after project-wide quality control and gap filling. - `SITENAME_era5_corrected_vX`: site ERA5 surface data (1990-2020) with bias corrections as applied in the final dataset. - `log_processing_SITENAME_vX.txt`: a log of the print statements through running the create_dataset_SITENAME scripts. Authors Mathew Lipson, Sue Grimmond, Martin Best, Andreas Christen, Andrew Coutts, Ben Crawford, Bert Heusinkveld, Erik Velasco, Helen Claire Ward, Hirofumi Sugawara, Je-Woo Hong, Jinkyu Hong, Jonathan Evans, Joseph McFadden, Keunmin Lee, Krzysztof Fortuniak, Leena Järvi, Matthias Roth, Nektarios Chrysoulakis, Nigel Tapper, Oliver Michels, Simone Kotthaus, Stevan Earl, Sungsoo Jo, Valéry Masson, Winston Chow, Wlodzimierz Pawlak, Yeon-Hee Kim. Corresponding author: Mathew Lipson <m.lipson@unsw.edu.au>