Doctors for divestment: Climate change and public health

On the Global Divestment Day on the 13–14 February 2015, doctors and health professionals were at the forefront of the campaign for fossil fuel divestment. In Australia, medical professionals have pushed for fossil fuel divestment, climate action, and re-investment in renewable energy. Professor Fiona Stanley has been a key leader in the debate over public health and climate change, delivering a Monster Climate Petition to the Australian Parliament. In the United Kingdom, the British Medical Association has led the way, with its decision to divest itself of investments in coal, oil, and gas. The landmark report Unhealthy Investments has provided further impetus for the United Kingdom health and medical community to engage in fossil fuel divestment. In the United States and Canada, there is a burgeoning fossil fuel divestment movement. At an international level, there has been a growing impetus for climate action in order to address public health risks associated with global warming.

A dynamic navigation model for unmanned aircraft systems and an application to autonomous front-on environmental sensing and photography using low-cost sensor systems

This paper presents an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) that uses a probabilistic model for autonomous front-on environmental sensing or photography of a target. The system is based on low-cost and readily-available sensor systems in dynamic environments and with the general intent of improving the capabilities of dynamic waypoint-based navigation systems for a low-cost UAS. The behavioural dynamics of target movement for the design of a Kalman filter and Markov model-based prediction algorithm are included. Geometrical concepts and the Haversine formula are applied to the maximum likelihood case in order to make a prediction regarding a future state of a target, thus delivering a new waypoint for autonomous navigation. The results of the application to aerial filming with low-cost UAS are presented, achieving the desired goal of maintained front-on perspective without significant constraint to the route or pace of target movement.

Preparation of magnetic porous ceramsite and its application in biological aerated filters

Ceramsite plays a significant role as a biological aerated filter (BAF) in the treatment of wastewater. In this study, a mixture of goethite, sawdust and palygorskite clay was thermally treated to form magnetic porous ceramsite (MPC). An optimization experiment was conducted to measure the compressive strength of the MPC. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and polarizing microscopy (PM) characterized the pore structure of the MPC. The results show that a combination of goethite, sawdust and palygorskite clay with a mass ratio of 10:2:5 is suitable for the formation of MPC. The compressive strength of MPC conforms to the Chinese national industrial standard (CJ/T 299-2008) for wastewater treatment. The SEM and PM results also show that the uniform and interconnected pores in MPC were well suited for microbial growth. The MPC produced in this study can serve as a biomedium for advanced wastewater treatment.

Steel–concrete–steel sandwich system in Arctic offshore structure: Materials, experiments, and design

The gravity based structure (GBS) with external Steel–Concrete–Steel (SCS) sandwich ice-resistant wall has been developed for the Arctic oil and gas drilling. This paper firstly reported the experimental studies on the mechanical properties of steel and concretes under Arctic low temperature. With the test data, design equations were developed to incorporate the influences of the low temperature on these mechanical properties. Two types of Arctic GBS structure with flower-conical SCS sandwich shell type and plate type of ice-resistant wall have been developed for the Arctic offshore structure. Besides the studies on the materials, two SCS sandwich prototype shells and plates were, respectively, prepared and tested under patch loading that simulated the localized ice-contact pressure. The structural behaviors of the SCS sandwich structure under patch loading were reported and discussions were made on the influences of different parameters on the structural behavior of the structure. Analytical models were developed to predict the punching shear resistances of the SCS sandwich structure through modifying the code provisions. The accuracies of the developed analytical models were checked through validations against 27 tests in the literature. Corresponding design procedures on resistances of SCS sandwich structure were recommended based on these discussions and validations.

The PerCues framework and its application for sustainable mobility

This paper presents a framework, design and study of an ambient persuasive interface. We introduce a novel framework of persua sive Cues in Ambient Intelligence (perCues). Based on this framework we designed an application for mobile devices. The application aims to persuade people to abstain from using their cars and to use public mass transportation instead in order to reduce emissions. It contains a bus schedule and information about the pollution status. We evaluated the application in two successive studies regarding user acceptance, oppor tune moments of use and persuasive effects. The perCues received a high acceptance due to its benefit for the users. The results confirm the im portance of opportune moment and user acceptance for persuasion. The findings also indicate the persuasive potential of perCues.

Annual nitrogen dynamics and urea fertilizer recoveries from a dairy pasture using 15N; effect of nitrification inhibitor DMPP and reduced application rates

Direct nitrogen (N) losses from pastures contribute to the poor nitrogen use efficiency of the dairy industry, though the exact fate of applied N and the processes involved are largely unknown. Nitrification inhibitors such as DMPP can potentially increase fertilizer N use efficiency (NUE), though few studies globally have examined the effectiveness of DMPP coated urea in pastures. This study quantified the NUE of DMPP combined with reduced application rates, and the effect on N dynamics and plant–soil interactions over an annual ryegrass/kikuyu rotation in Queensland, Australia. Labeled 15N urea and DMPP was applied over 7 winter applications at standard farmer (45 kg N ha−1) and half (23 kg N ha−1) rates. Fertilizer recoveries and NUE were calculated over 13 harvests, and the contribution of fertilizer and soil N estimated. Up to 85% of the annual N harvested was from soil organic matter. DMPP at the lower rate increased annual yields by 31% compared to the equivalent urea treatment with no difference to the high N rates. Almost 40% of the N added at the conventional fertilizer application rate as urea was lost to the environment; 80 kg N ha−1 higher than the low DMPP. Combining the nitrification inhibitor DMPP with reduced fertilizer application rates shows substantial potential to reduce N losses to the environment while sustaining productivity in subtropical dairy pastures.

Continually adjustable oriented 1D TiO2 nanostructure arrays with controlled growth of morphology and their application in dye-sensitized solar cells

Oriented, single-crystalline, one-dimensional (1D) TiO2 nanostructures would be most desirable for providing fascinating properties and features, such as high electron mobility or quantum confinement effects, high specific surface area, and even high mechanical strength, but achieving these structures has been limited by the availability of synthetic techniques. In this study, a concept for precisely controlling the morphology of 1D TiO2 nanostructures by tuning the hydrolysis rate of titanium precursors is proposed. Based on this innovation, oriented 1D rutile TiO2 nanostructure arrays with continually adjustable morphologies, from nanorods (NRODs) to nanoribbons (NRIBs), and then nanowires (NWs), as well as the transient state morphologies, were successfully synthesized. The proposed method is a significant finding in terms of controlling the morphology of the 1D TiO2 nano-architectures, which leads to significant changes in their band structures. It is worth noting that the synthesized rutile NRIBs and NWs have a comparable bandgap and conduction band edge height to those of the anatase phase, which in turn enhances their photochemical activity. In photovoltaic performance tests, the photoanode constructed from the oriented NRIB arrays possesses not only a high surface area for sufficient dye loading and better light scattering in the visible light range than for the other morphologies, but also a wider bandgap and higher conduction band edge, with more than 200% improvement in power conversion efficiency in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) compared with NROD morphology.