ALBERT

Beschreibung: Under the potential to reconstruct the past climatic and atmospheric conditions from a deep ice core in the coastal Antarctic site (Styx Glacier), an 8.84 m long firn core (73°50.975′ S, 163°41.640′ E; 1623 m a.s.l.) was initially studied to propose a reliable age scale for the local estimation of snow accumulation rate. The seasonal variations of δ18O, methanesulfonic acid (MSA) and non-sea-salt sulfate (nssSO42–) were used for the firn core dating and revealed 25 annual peaks (from 1990 to 2014) with volcanic sulfate signal. The observed declining trend in annual accumulation rate with a mean value of 146 ± 60 kg m–2 a–1 is likely to be linked to the changes of sea-ice extent in the Ross Sea region. Moreover, the temporal variation of the annual mean δ18O, an annual flux of MSA and nssSO42– also likely to be under the influence of ice-covered and open water area. This study suggests a potential to recover past changes in an oceanic environment and will be useful for the interpretation of the long ice core drilled at the same site.

Beschreibung: The various crises that have emerged since 2000 are driven by an increasing maladaptation of our societies’ information processing capabilities to the dynamics in which our societies find themselves. These capabilities have been built up path dependently over centuries, and to understand them we need to look closely at their history. Changes in technology, demography and resource use and environmental change are all part of a co-evolution in which societies’ information processing capacities play a central role. The information and communications technology revolution has accelerated developments in all of these domains and has weakened some fundamental institutions. This paper discusses how these processes might affect the long-term future of our societies.

Beschreibung: Clouds play an important role in the Arctic surface radiative budget, impacting the seasonal evolution of Arctic sea-ice cover. We explore the large-scale impacts of springtime and early summer (March through July) cloud and radiative fluxes on sea ice by comparing these fluxes to seasonal ice volume losses over the central Arctic basin, calculated for available observational years 2004–2007 (ICESat) and 2011–2017 (CryoSat-2). We also supplement observation data with sea-ice volume computed from the Pan-Arctic Ice–Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) during summer months. We find that the volume of sea ice lost over the melt season is most closely related to observed downwelling longwave radiation in March and early summer (June and July) longwave cloud radiative forcing, which together explain a large fraction of interannual variability in seasonal sea-ice volume loss (R2 = 0.71, p = 0.007). We show that downwelling longwave fluxes likely impact the timing of melt onset near the sea-ice edge, and can limit the magnitude of ice thickening from March to April. Radiative fluxes in June and July are likely critical to seasonal volume loss because modeled data show the greatest ice volume reductions occur during these months.

Beschreibung: Aerobic granular sludge technology has great potential for the treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater. However, strategies to shorten the granulation time and improvement the stability still need to be developed. In this work, biochar was prepared from waste petroleum activated sludge (biochar-WPS) and used in a sequencing batch reactor for the treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater. Biochar-WPS presented the surface area of 229.77 m2/g, pore volume of 0.28 cm3/g, H/C and O/C atomic ratios of 0.42 and 0.21, respectively. The porous structure and a high degree of hydrophilicity were found to facilitate microbial colonization and adhesion as well as particle aggregation. Application of biochar-WPS resulted in the formation of more substantial and stable aerobic granules (~ 66% of granules 〉 0.46 mm diameter) 15 days earlier compared with the control. The addition of biochar-WPS enhanced the average removal efficiency of chemical organic demand (~ 3%), oil (~ 4%) and total nitrogen (~ 10%) over the control. Increased microbial richness and diversity were observed within the formed granules and had an increased (~ 4%) proportion of denitrifying bacteria. These results indicate that an aerobic granulation mechanism using biochar-WPS is a feasible option for the treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater.

Beschreibung: The gauged sigma model with target $${mathbb {P}}^1$$ P 1 , defined on a Riemann surface $$Sigma $$ Σ , supports static solutions in which $$k_{+}$$ k + vortices coexist in stable equilibrium with $$k_{-}$$ k - antivortices. Their moduli space is a noncompact complex manifold $${extsf {M}}_{(k_{+},k_{-})}(Sigma )$$ M ( k + , k - ) ( Σ ) of dimension $$k_{+}+k_{-}$$ k + + k - which inherits a natural Kähler metric $$g_{L^2}$$ g L 2 governing the model’s low energy dynamics. This paper presents the first detailed study of $$g_{L^2}$$ g L 2 , focussing on the geometry close to the boundary divisor $$D=partial , {extsf {M}}_{(k_{+},k_{-})}(Sigma )$$ D = ∂ M ( k + , k - ) ( Σ ) . On $$Sigma =S^2$$ Σ = S 2 , rigorous estimates of $$g_{L^2}$$ g L 2 close to D are obtained which imply that $${extsf {M}}_{(1,1)}(S^2)$$ M ( 1 , 1 ) ( S 2 ) has finite volume and is geodesically incomplete. On $$Sigma ={mathbb {R}}^2$$ Σ = R 2 , careful numerical analysis and a point-vortex formalism are used to conjecture asymptotic formulae for $$g_{L^2}$$ g L 2 in the limits of small and large separation. All these results make use of a localization formula, expressing $$g_{L^2}$$ g L 2 in terms of data at the (anti)vortex positions, which is established for general $${extsf {M}}_{(k_{+},k_{-})}(Sigma )$$ M ( k + , k - ) ( Σ ) . For arbitrary compact $$Sigma $$ Σ , a natural compactification of the space $${{extsf {M}}}_{(k_{+},k_{-})}(Sigma )$$ M ( k + , k - ) ( Σ ) is proposed in terms of a certain limit of gauged linear sigma models, leading to formulae for its volume and total scalar curvature. The volume formula agrees with the result established for $$mathrm{Vol}(mathsf{M}_{(1,1)}(S^2))$$ Vol ( M ( 1 , 1 ) ( S 2 ) ) , and allows for a detailed study of the thermodynamics of vortex-antivortex gas mixtures. It is found that the equation of state is independent of the genus of $$Sigma $$ Σ , and that the entropy of mixing is always positive.

Beschreibung: Three global sensitivity analysis (GSA) methods (Morris, Sobol and extended Sobol) are applied to a minimal physiologically based PK (mPBPK) model using three model drugs given orally, namely quinidine, alprazolam, and midazolam. We investigated how correlations among input parameters affect the determination of the key parameters influencing pharmacokinetic (PK) properties of general interest, i.e., the maximal plasma concentration (Cmax) time at which Cmax is reached (Tmax), and area under plasma concentration (AUC). The influential parameters determined by the Morris and Sobol methods (suitable for independent model parameters) were compared to those determined by the extended Sobol method (which considers model parameter correlations). For the three drugs investigated, the Morris method was as informative as the Sobol method. The extended Sobol method identified different sets of influential parameters to Morris and Sobol. These methods overestimated the influence of volume of distribution at steady state (Vss) on AUC24h for quinidine and alprazolam. They also underestimated the effect of volume of liver (Vliver) for all three drugs, the impact of enzyme intrinsic clearance of CYP2C9 and CYP2E1 for quinidine, and that of UGT1A4 abundance for midazolam. Our investigation showed that the interpretation of GSA results is not straightforward. Dismissing existing model parameter correlations, GSA methods such as Morris and Sobol can lead to biased determination of the key parameters for the selected outputs of interest. Decisions regarding parameters’ influence (or otherwise) should be made in light of available knowledge including the model assumptions, GSA method limitations, and inter-correlations between model parameters, particularly in complex models.

Beschreibung: Encouraged by the wide spectrum of novel applications of gas hydrates, e.g., energy recovery, gas separation, gas storage, gas transportation, water desalination, and hydrogen hydrate as a green energy resource, as well as CO2 capturing, many scientists have focused their attention on investigating this important phenomenon. Of course, from an engineering viewpoint, the mathematical modeling of gas hydrates is of paramount importance, as anticipation of gas hydrate stability conditions is effective in the design and control of industrial processes. Overall, the thermodynamic modeling of gas hydrate can be tackled as an equilibration of three phases, i.e., liquid, gas, and solid hydrate. The inseparable component in all hydrate systems, water, is highly polar and non-ideal, necessitating the use of more advanced equation of states (EoSs) that take into account more intermolecular forces for thermodynamic modeling of these systems. Motivated by the ever-increasing number of publications on this topic, this study aims to review the application of associating EoSs for the thermodynamic modeling of gas hydrates. Three most important hydrate-based models available in the literature including the van der Waals–Platteeuw (vdW–P) model, Chen–Guo model, and Klauda–Sandler model coupled with CPA and SAFT EoSs were investigated and compared with cubic EoSs. It was concluded that the CPA and SAFT EoSs gave very accurate results for hydrate systems as they take into account the association interactions, which are very crucial in gas hydrate systems in which water, methanol, glycols, and other types of associating compounds are available. Moreover, it was concluded that the CPA EoS is easier to use than the SAFT-type EoSs and our suggestion for the gas hydrate systems is the CPA EoS.

Beschreibung: In Finland, crop choices are limited, and cultivation is only possible in the regions where production risks and uncertainties are manageable. Climate change progresses rapidly at high latitudes and the thermal growing season is projected to become substantially longer in the future. This study aimed to monitor the regional shifts in major, secondary, minor and novel crops during 1996–2016 in Finland. We used long-term data from the Finnish Food Agency and evaluated changes in time to reach maturity of cultivars of model crops by using official variety trial data. Substantial changes were recorded in cultivation areas of crops, including expansion into new regions. Some of the traditional major crops such as oats (− 20%, i.e. − 75,700 ha from 1996 to 2016), barley (− 19%, − 105,700 ha) and potatoes (− 28%, − 4000 ha) have paved the way for emergent crops like faba beans (increase in area from 58 to 14,800 ha), peas (from 5700 to 13,400 ha), caraway (from 1900 to 18,400 ha) and spring oilseed rape (from 700 to 27,800 ha). Expansion per se was primarily enabled by climate warming, but success requires well-adapted cultivars, existing or emerging markets and industries or exports as well as motivating prices, policy support and valued ecosystem services.

Beschreibung: Samples of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) were used for this study. Logs of these samples covered a scatter of mild-to-strong curvatures and the boards of these samples covered strong fiber deviations. This study consists of two separate parts: (1) log reconstruction and optimization of the cutting pattern, and (2) board reconstruction and strength prediction. Information about the internal quality of the logs is missing in this study, as laser scanning has been used for surface reconstruction of logs. Therefore, two separate steps were implemented here. (1) Influence of cutting pattern and board-dimensions on yield were analyzed. For this step, 50 logs were checked. (2) A more advanced numerical method based on the finite element (FE) analysis was developed to improve the accuracy of tensile strength predictions. This step was performed, because visual grading parameters were relatively weak predictors for tensile strength of these samples. In total, 200 beech boards were analyzed in this step. However, due to the geometrical configuration of some knots, the reconstruction and numerical strength prediction of 194 boards out of 200 boards were possible. By performing tensile tests numerically, stress concentration factors (SCFs) were derived, considering the average and maximum stresses around the imperfections. SCFs in combination with the longitudinal stress wave velocity were the numerical identifying parameters (IPs), used in the nonlinear regression model for tensile strength prediction. The influence of the combination of different numerical parameters in the developed non-linear model on improving the quality of the strength prediction was analyzed. For this reason, improvement of coefficient of determination (R2) after adding each parameter to the multiple regression analysis was checked. Performance of the developed numerical method was compared to the typical grading approaches [using knottiness and the dynamic MoE (MoEdyn)], and it was shown that the coefficient of determination is higher, when using the virtual methods for tensile strength predictions.

Beschreibung: We prove that the simple random walk on the uniform infinite planar triangulation (UIPT) typically travels graph distance at most $$n^{1/4 + o_n(1)}$$ n 1 / 4 + o n ( 1 ) in n units of time. Together with the complementary lower bound proven by Gwynne and Miller (2017) this shows that the typical graph distance displacement of the walk after n steps is $$n^{1/4 + o_n(1)}$$ n 1 / 4 + o n ( 1 ) , as conjectured by Benjamini and Curien (Geom Funct Anal 2(2):501–531, 2013. arXiv:1202.5454). More generally, we show that the simple random walks on a certain family of random planar maps in the $$gamma $$ γ -Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) universality class for $$gamma in (0,2)$$ γ ∈ ( 0 , 2 ) —including spanning tree-weighted maps, bipolar-oriented maps, and mated-CRT maps—typically travels graph distance $$n^{1/d_gamma + o_n(1)}$$ n 1 / d γ + o n ( 1 ) in n units of time, where $$d_gamma $$ d γ is the growth exponent for the volume of a metric ball on the map, which was shown to exist and depend only on $$gamma $$ γ by Ding and Gwynne (Commun Math Phys 374:1877–1934, 2018. arXiv:1807.01072). Since $$d_gamma 〉 2$$ d γ 〉 2 , this shows that the simple random walk on each of these maps is subdiffusive. Our proofs are based on an embedding of the random planar maps under consideration into $${mathbb {C}}$$ C wherein graph distance balls can be compared to Euclidean balls modulo subpolynomial errors. This embedding arises from a coupling of the given random planar map with a mated-CRT map together with the relationship of the latter map to SLE-decorated LQG.