Climate change adaptation planning and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa

The post-2015 development agenda requires policy coherence, where achievement of development goals in one sector does not undermine the achievement of the goals of another. It also recognises that cross-cutting issues like adaptation to climate change need to be mainstreamed across multiple sectors. This paper presents a policy analysis using the cases of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. It analyses the water management and agricultural strategies and approaches identified in a variety of policies and plans. These include national sector policies for water and agriculture, National Development Plans, and climate change policies and strategies, including National Adaptation Programmes of Action and the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions submitted prior to the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties. It assesses the extent to which policies are coherent with one another with regard to their treatment of climate change adaptation using Qualitative Document Analysis. Findings identify that sector policies show some degree of cross-thematic coherence, in particular around their acknowledgement of the importance to address disaster management of floods and droughts. However, policy statements are typified by a relative lack of recognition of the need to develop supporting instruments and strategies that address climate adaptation needs over longer timeframes. Climate change policies explicitly call for significant investment in adaptation from the international community. Where coherence between sector and climate policies and strategies is strongest, the more recent climate policies largely repackage existing sectoral policy statements. These findings can be understood in the context of the uncertainty of climate change impacts for the longer term (for which a wider variety of adaptations are identified), alongside more event-driven disaster management planning where the impacts are more immediate and obviously evident. This prioritisation is also linked to development needs and the short-term nature of political cycles and economic gain. For climate-resilient policy decision-making to make further headway, we argue that governments need to embrace cross-sectoral planning more pro- actively in order to foster greater policy coherence and to deliver more climate resilient agriculture and water management

Reduced expression of brain cannabinoid receptor 1 (Cnr1) is coupled with an increased complementary micro-RNA (miR-26b) in a mouse model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders

BACKGROUND: Prenatal alcohol exposure is known to result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, a continuum of physiological, behavioural, and cognitive phenotypes that include increased risk for anxiety and learning-associated disorders. Prenatal alcohol exposure results in life-long disorders that may manifest in part through the induction of long-term gene expression changes, potentially maintained through epigenetic mechanisms. FINDINGS: Here we report a decrease in the expression of Canabinoid receptor 1 (Cnr1) and an increase in the expression of the regulatory microRNA miR-26b in the brains of adult mice exposed to ethanol during neurodevelopment. Furthermore, we show that miR-26b has significant complementarity to the 3’-UTR of the Cnr1 transcript, giving it the potential to bind and reduce the level of Cnr1 expression. CONCLUSIONS: These findings elucidate a mechanism through which some genes show long-term altered expression following prenatal alcohol exposure, leading to persistent alterations to cognitive function and behavioural phenotypes observed in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders

Prehistory of the British Isles: A tale of coming and going

It is now recognised that Britain has not always been geographically isolated from Europe and, for most of the last one million years, formed an extension of the northwest European landmass. During most of this time, Britain was accessible to migrating humans and animals, although climatic conditions varied greatly from Mediterranean-like through to glaciations and extreme cold, making Britain a difficult place to settle for any length of time. The oldest evidence for humans in Britain dates to between about 850,000 and 1 million years ago. Recovered lithic artefacts suggest that hominin species occupied and deserted the British Isles at least nine times. This article reviews the prehistory of the British Isles and presents the main sites and time periods

Previous reproductive history and post-natal family planning among HIV-infected women in Ukraine

BACKGROUND: Ukraine has the highest antenatal HIV prevalence in Europe. The national prevention of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) programme has reduced the MTCT rate, but less attention has been given to the prevention of unintended pregnancy among HIV-positive women. Our objectives were to describe the reproductive health, condom use and family planning (FP) practices of HIV-positive childbearing Ukrainian women and to identify factors associated with different methods of post-natal contraception. METHODS: HIV-infected childbearing women, diagnosed before or during pregnancy, were enrolled prospectively in a post-natal cohort study in four regional HIV/AIDS centres in Ukraine from December 2007. Logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with post-natal FP practices. RESULTS: Data were available for 371 women enrolled by March 2009; 82% (n = 303) were married or cohabiting, 27% (97 of 363) reported a current HIV-negative sexual partner and 69% were diagnosed with HIV during their most recent pregnancy. Overall, 21% (75 of 349) of women were not using contraception post-natally (of whom 80% reported no current sexual activity), 50% (174 of 349) used condoms, 20% (74 of 349) relied solely/partially on coitus interruptus and 4% used hormonal methods or intrauterine device. Among married/cohabiting women, consistent use of condoms in the previous pregnancy [AOR 1.96 (95%CI 1.06–3.62)], having an HIV-positive partner [AOR 0.42 (0.20–0.87)], current sexual activity [AOR 4.53 (1.19–17.3)] and study site were significantly associated with post-natal condom use; 16% of those with HIV-negative partners did not use condoms. Risk factors for non-use of FP were lack of affordability [AOR 6.34 (1.73–23.2)] and inconsistent use of condoms in the previous pregnancy [AOR 7.25 (1.41–37.2)]. CONCLUSIONS: More than 40% of HIV-positive women in this population are at risk of unintended pregnancy and the one in six women in HIV-discordant couples not using barrier methods risk transmitting HIV to their partners. Our study results are limited by the observational nature of the data and the potential for both measured and unmeasured confounding

Shock tunnel studies of scramjet phenomena

Commissioning of the new T4 shock tunnel at the University of Queensland implied that it was no longer necessary to focus the work of the research group about an annual test series conducted in the T3 shock tunnel in Canberra. Therefore, it has been possible to organize a group for work to proceed along lines such that particular personnel are associated with particular project areas. The format of this report consists of a series of reports on specific project areas, with a brief general introduction commenting on each report. The introduction is structured by project areas, with the title of the relevant report stated under the project area heading. The reports themselves follow in the order of the project area headings

The Challenge of Machine Learning in Space Weather Nowcasting and Forecasting

The numerous recent breakthroughs in machine learning (ML) make imperative to carefully ponder how the scientific community can benefit from a technology that, although not necessarily new, is today living its golden age. This Grand Challenge review paper is focused on the present and future role of machine learning in space weather. The purpose is twofold. On one hand, we will discuss previous works that use ML for space weather forecasting, focusing in particular on the few areas that have seen most activity: the forecasting of geomagnetic indices, of relativistic electrons at geosynchronous orbits, of solar flares occurrence, of coronal mass ejection propagation time, and of solar wind speed. On the other hand, this paper serves as a gentle introduction to the field of machine learning tailored to the space weather community and as a pointer to a number of open challenges that we believe the community should undertake in the next decade. The recurring themes throughout the review are the need to shift our forecasting paradigm to a probabilistic approach focused on the reliable assessment of uncertainties, and the combination of physics-based and machine learning approaches, known as gray-box.Comment: under revie

Sir Arthur Keith's Legacy: Re-discovering a lost collection of human fossils Quaternary International

In 2001, a collection of skeletal material was donated to the Natural History Museum, London, by the Royal College of Surgeons, London. It consisted of boxes discovered among the personal belongings of Sir Arthur Keith. This paper describes the work undertaken to identify and document the human skeletal material in the Keith Collection. The study identified the human fossils as having come from a number of excavations directed by Dorothy Garrod in the 1920s and 30s in Israel. The collection contains the long considered lost human skeletal collection from the type-site of the Natufian industry: Shukbah Cave. The majority of this material is of Natufian origin but contains a few Neanderthal specimens. A small amount of heavily fragmented bones associated with Skhul VII and IX were also found. The most remarkable of the re-discovered collection is the material from el-Wad and Kebara Caves. It was identified to be the missing material from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic levels briefly described in 1939 in The Stone Age of Mount Carmel by Theodore McCown and Sir Arthur Keith. These important fossils hold great potential to answer questions about the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in the Near East, and the emergence of anatomically modern humans

The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour though a messy turn

Mess and rigour might appear to be strange bedfellows. This paper argues that the purpose of mess is to facilitate a turn towards new constructions of knowing that lead to transformation in practice (an action turn). Engaging in action research - research that can disturb both individual and communally held notions of knowledge for practice - will be messy. Investigations into the 'messy area', the interface between the known and the nearly known, between knowledge in use and tacit knowledge as yet to be useful, reveal the 'messy area' as a vital element for seeing, disrupting, analysing, learning, knowing and changing. It is the place where long-held views shaped by professional knowledge, practical judgement, experience and intuition are seen through other lenses. It is here that reframing takes place and new knowing, which has both theoretical and practical significance, arises: a 'messy turn' takes place

The XWS open access catalogue of extreme European windstorms from 1979 to 2012

The XWS (eXtreme WindStorms) catalogue consists of storm tracks and model-generated maximum 3 s wind-gust footprints for 50 of the most extreme winter windstorms to hit Europe in the period 1979–2012. The catalogue is intended to be a valuable resource for both academia and industries such as (re)insurance, for example allowing users to characterise extreme European storms, and validate climate and catastrophe models. Several storm severity indices were investigated to find which could best represent a list of known high-loss (severe) storms. The best-performing index was Sft, which is a combination of storm area calculated from the storm footprint and maximum 925 hPa wind speed from the storm track. All the listed severe storms are included in the catalogue, and the remaining ones were selected using Sft. A comparison of the model footprint to station observations revealed that storms were generally well represented, although for some storms the highest gusts were underestimated. Possible reasons for this underestimation include the model failing to simulate strong enough pressure gradients and not representing convective gusts. A new recalibration method was developed to estimate the true distribution of gusts at each grid point and correct for this underestimation. The recalibration model allows for storm-to-storm variation which is essential given that different storms have different degrees of model bias. The catalogue is available at www.europeanwindstorms.org