Brain. Europe, always slower to move on such matters, has just belatedly started its own such Decade. And we are even further into the massive international $3 billion-odd exercise known as the Human Genome Programme, the attempt to map, and subsequently to sequence, the entire DNA alphabet of the human chromosomes. (Identifying just what these DNA strands might do, what the genes might mean, i...

Tidal wetlands experiencing increased rates of sea-level rise (SLR) must increase rates of soil elevation gain to avoid permanent conversion to open water. The maximal rate of SLR that these ecosystems can tolerate depends partly on mineral sediment deposition, but the accumulation of organic matter is equally important for many wetlands. Plant productivity drives organic matter dynamics and is...

Urban drainage systems are frequently analysed using hydraulic modelling software packages such as InfoWorks CS or MIKE-Urban. The use of such modelling tools allows the evaluation of sewer capacity and the likelihood and impact of pluvial flood events. Models can also be used to plan major investments such as increasing storage capacity or the implementation of sustainable urban drainage syste...

Introduction Many infectious diseases are sensitive to climatic changes; specifically, flooding. This systematic literature review aimed to strengthen the quality and completeness of evidence on infectious diseases following flooding, relevant to Europe. Methods A systematic literature review from 2004-2012 was performed. Focused searches of the following databases were conducted: Medline, Scop...

This paper discusses some methodological issues characterizing the development of a short-cut methodology for Na-Tech risk assessment, with particular reference to the integration between flood – and technological – related hazards. Actually, flood events can involve industrial areas increasing the level of risk for people, especially in densely populated areas where major hazard factories and ...

Survey data from a representative sample of 1005 households in the UK coastal city of Portsmouth are examined to discern commonalities and contrasts in their assessment of actions to address the related environmental threats of climate change and flooding. The city of Portsmouth is at risk of inundation from rising sea levels and the city has recent experience of flooding. A simple local and gl...

We found that the most suitable flooding disturbance model for regenerating Populus euphratica forest was two to three times per year with a duration of 15-20 days and an intensity of 25-30 m(3)/s. The flooding should take place during the seed emergence to young tree growth stages, and should be based on flooding experiments and data from vegetation quadrats and ecological water conveyance. Fu...

In this paper we approach the segmentation problem by attempting to incorporate cues such as intensity contrast, region size and texture in the segmentation procedure and derive improved results compared to using individual cues separately. We propose efficient simplification operators and feature extraction schemes, capable of quantifying important characteristics like geometrical complexity, ...

Short peak rainfall intensities cause sewer systems to overflow leading to flooding of streets and houses. Due to climate change and densification of urban areas, this is expected to occur more often in the future. Hence, next to their minor (i.e. sewer) system, municipalities have to analyse their major (i.e. surface) system in order to anticipate urban flooding during extreme rainfall. Urban ...

Protein fractional synthesis rate (FSR) is a key-factor in the characterisation of ruminant metabolism. Published data from the literature were collected and statistically analysed to isolate the factors influencing FSR. FSR varied largely depending on the tissue considered, over a range from 1 to 20. FSR, with the plasma as the precursor pool for protein synthesis, was halved compared to that ...