Storm prediction research and its application to the oil/gas industry

The accurate prediction of storms is vital to the oil and gas sector for the management of their operations. An overview of research exploring the prediction of storms by ensemble prediction systems is presented and its application to the oil and gas sector is discussed. The analysis method used requires larger amounts of data storage and computer processing time than other more conventional analysis methods. To overcome these difficulties eScience techniques have been utilised. These techniques potentially have applications to the oil and gas sector to help incorporate environmental data into their information systems

Climate change, glacier retreat, and water availability in the Caucasus region

The paper discusses the observed and projected warming in the Caucasus region and its implications for glacier melt, water availability and potential hazards. A strong positive trend in summer air temperatures of 0.05 degrees C year(-1) is observed in the high-altitude areas (above 2000 m) providing for a strong glacier melt. A widespread glacier retreat has also been reported between 1985 and 2000, with an average rate of 8 m year(-1). A warming of 5-7 degrees C is projected for the Sum mer months in the 2071-2100 period under the A2 emission group of scenarios, Suggesting that enhanced glacier melt and a changing water balance can be expected.

Modelo de organização adaptável a cenários turbulentos: setor empresarial energético brasileiro

O cenário geopolítico global de desenvolvimento assimétrico e novas fontes de energia constituem um desafio para a sustentabilidade organizacional, requerendo organizações com capacidade de adaptação a ambientes turbulentos. Os principais aspectos que afetam a sobrevivência das empresas de energia podem ser categorizados em geopolíticos, econômicos, sociais, tecnológicos, legais, ambientais, de segurança, de energia e administrativos. Esta tese doutoral apresenta um modelo de organizações com capacidade de adaptação a ambientes turbulentos que permite à empresa atingir sustentabilidade no tempo, como resposta à pergunta de partida. Essa pergunta procura as características determinantes de um modelo de organização adaptável, considerando o setor energético brasileiro, no cenário geopolítico global de desenvolvimento assimétrico e novas fontes de energia, segundo a percepção de gestores. A metodologia adotada tomou por base a Grounded Theory apoiada pelo software Atlas/ti e aplicada a entrevistas em profundidade. O método utilizado permitiu construir a teoria indutivamente, com base em categorias, propriedades e dimensões. O modelo proposto emergiu da pesquisa configurando a capacidade de adaptação aos cenários turbulentos para atingir sustentabilidade organizacional como fundamentada nas categorias de Planejamento Prospectivo, Sistemas Adaptativos e Integração Estrutural, identificando as propriedades e dimensões requeridas em cada uma dessas categorias.

Hematologia e ecotoxicidade do teflubenzuron no controle de Trichodina sp. em peixes

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Morphology and distribution of volcanic bombs in Caldera Quemada de Arriba (Lanzarote, Canary Islands): implications for volcanic hazard analysis

Análisis del riesgo volcánico. We show the preliminary results of the study of 561 volcanic bombs ejected from a pyroclastic cone during the 1730-1736 Timanfaya eruption (Lanzarote, Canary Islands). This cone displays the highest concentration of big bombs (major axis higher than 1 m) of Timanfaya. More than 560 bombs have been studied to calculate their reach. The results suggest that bombs of 1t have a reach of 409 m, while bombs up to 28 t have a reach of 248 m. These data may be used to define a security area once a vent has been opened, but also to calculate other data such the initial velocity of ejection. The geomorphological analysis and the study of the deposits also contribute to better understand an undocumented episode of the Timanfaya eruption and also provide important data for volcanic bombs modeling for volcanic hazard analysis.

Reacting and Recycling

To a certain extent what this research is proposing is a return to local principles or to regionalism, which is able to employ place-specific tools and craftsmanship (local arts and their virtues) promoting and being innovative with traditional elements which belong to a particular place, and using tectonic and stereotomic logic. You can observe this, in the face of a destructive natural event. An immediate architectural reaction is produced in cooperation with the rest of the not affected territory. The cooperation of certain non-governmental organizations with other groups in the same collaborative cycle improves the recycling of ideas and city planning forms. These organizations cooperate in the development and implementation of cities and settlements that need a fast reaction when facing an unexpected disaster.

Reliability of vegetation community information derived using decorana ordination and fuzzy c-means clustering

Descriptions of vegetation communities are often based on vague semantic terms describing species presence and dominance. For this reason, some researchers advocate the use of fuzzy sets in the statistical classification of plant species data into communities. In this study, spatially referenced vegetation abundance values collected from Greek phrygana were analysed by ordination (DECORANA), and classified on the resulting axes using fuzzy c-means to yield a point data-set representing local memberships in characteristic plant communities. The fuzzy clusters matched vegetation communities noted in the field, which tended to grade into one another, rather than occupying discrete patches. The fuzzy set representation of the community exploited the strengths of detrended correspondence analysis while retaining richer information than a TWINSPAN classification of the same data. Thus, in the absence of phytosociological benchmarks, meaningful and manageable habitat information could be derived from complex, multivariate species data. We also analysed the influence of the reliability of different surveyors' field observations by multiple sampling at a selected sample location. We show that the impact of surveyor error was more severe in the Boolean than the fuzzy classification. © 2007 Springer.

Degradación ambiental y conflictos armados: las conexiones

"La seguridad ambiental es un concepto complejo que puede ser analizado desde varios enfoques. La conexión entre degradación ambiental, escasez de recursos, poco desarrollo económico e inestabilidad política puede generar rápidamente conflictos llamados ambientales, terrorismo ecológico y guerras verdes. Sin embargo, en la mayoría de las investigaciones sobre degradación ambiental y conflictos armados no se tienen en cuenta los factores desarrollo económico y régimen político, pues se considera que los problemas ambientales pueden, por sí solos, conducir a situaciones conflictivas nacionales, regionales e internacionales. En este contexto, los propósitos de este artículo son plantear las diferentes tendencias ideológicas de la seguridad ambiental, definir el contenido y las causas de los conflictos ambientales y proponer un marco analítico complementario que incluya las variables políticas y económicas como generadoras de conflictos ambientales y de conflictos armados de alta intensidad. Al final, se propone una agenda de investigación en materia de seguridad ambiental para Colombia."

Environmental Information Access as a Security Risk

The United Sates was founded on the principles of freedom. Events in recent history have threatened the freedoms we as individuals enjoy. Notably, changes to government legislation and policies regarding access to environmentally sensitive information following September 11, 2001, are troubling. The government has struggled with a difficult balancing act. The public has the right of access to information, yet, information some view as sensitive or dangerous must be kept out of the hands of terrorists. This project examines and discusses the information access debate within the United States and how to best provide the public environmentally sensitive information.

Agroforestry systems and food security among smallholder farmers of the Brazilian Amazon: A strategy for environmental global crisis.

2008

The environmental DNA in the risk assessment and decision making processes for the invasive species management in agri-food sector, hydraulic security and biodiversity conservation

The use of environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis as a monitoring tool is becoming more and more widespread. The eDNA metabarcoding methods allow rapid community assessments of different target taxa. This work is focused on the validation of the environmental DNA metabarcoding protocol for biodiversity assessment of freshwater habitats. Scolo Dosolo was chosen as study area and three sampling points were defined for traditional and eDNA analyses. The gutter is a 205 m long anthropic canal located in Sala Bolognese (Bologna, Italy). Fish community and freshwater invertebrate metazoans were the target groups for the analysis. After a preliminary study in summer 2019, 2020 was devoted to the sampling campaign with winter (January), spring (May), summer (July) and autumn (October) surveys. Alongside with the water samplings for the eDNA study, also traditional fish surveys using the electrofishing technique were performed to assess fish community composition; census on invertebrates was performed using an entomological net and a surber sampler. After in silico analysis, the MiFish primer set amplifying a fragment of the 12s rRNA gene was selected for bony fishes. For invertebrates the FWHF2 + FWHR2N primer combination, that amplifies a region of the mitochondrial coi gene, was chosen. Raw reads were analyzed through a bioinformatic pipeline based on OBITools metabarcoding programs package and QIIME2. The OBITools pipeline retrieved seven fish taxa and 54 invertebrate taxa belonging to six different phyla, while QIIME2 recovered eight fish taxa and 45 invertebrate taxa belonging to the same six phyla as the OBITools pipeline. The metabarcoding results were then compared with the traditional surveys data and bibliographic records. Overall, the validated protocol provides a reliable picture of the biodiversity of the study area and an efficient support to the traditional methods.

Environmental, land-use and economic implications of Brazilian sugarcane expansion 1996-2006

Governments are promoting biofuels and the resulting changes in land use and crop reallocation to biofuels production have raised concerns about impacts on environment and food security. The promotion of biofuels has also been questioned based on suggested marginal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions reduction, partly due to induced land use change causing greenhouse gas emissions. This study reports how the expansion of sugarcane in Brazil during 1996-2006 affected indicators for environment, land use and economy. The results indicate that sugarcane expansion did not in general contribute to direct deforestation in the traditional agricultural region where most of the expansion took place. The amount of forests on farmland in this area is below the minimum stated in law and the situation did not change over the studied period. Sugarcane expansion resulted in a significant reduction of pastures and cattle heads and higher economic growth than in neighboring areas. It could not be established to what extent the discontinuation of cattle production induced expansion of pastures in other areas, possibly leading to indirect deforestation. However, the results indicate that a possible migration of the cattle production reached further than the neighboring of expansion regions. Occurring at much smaller rates, expansion of sugarcane in regions such as the Amazon and the Northeast region was related to direct deforestation and competition with food crops, and appear not to have induced economic growth. These regions are not expected to experience substantial increases of sugarcane in the near future, but mitigating measures are warranted.

Environmental issues and international relations, a new global (dis)order - the role of International Relations in promoting a concerted international system

Is it possible to talk about the rise of a new global (dis)order founded on the challenges posed by environmental issues? Through the review of the state of the art on the subject, this article analyzes the growing importance of the environment, and natural resources in particular, in international relations; and aims to raise awareness among International Relations scholars to the potential positive impact of the development of the discipline in integration with global environmental change studies.

ZigBee/ZigBee PRO security assessment based on compromised cryptographic keys

Sensor networks have many applications in monitoring and controlling of environmental properties such as sound, acceleration, vibration and temperature. Due to limitedresources in computation capability, memory and energy, they are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks. The ZigBee specification based on the 802.15.4 standard, defines a set of layers specifically suited to sensor networks. These layers support secure messaging using symmetric cryptographic. This paper presents two different ways for grabbing the cryptographic key in ZigBee: remote attack and physical attack. It also surveys and categorizes some additional attacks which can be performed on ZigBee networks: eavesdropping, spoofing, replay and DoS attacks at different layers. From this analysis, it is shown that some vulnerabilities still in the existing security schema in ZigBee technology.