The case of the missing antipharos from ancient Patara’s port

Author SummaryWhen making a decision, we gather evidence for the different options and ultimately choose on the basis of the accumulated evidence. A fundamental question is whether and how conscious awareness of the evidence changes this decision-making process. Here, we examined the influence of sensory awareness on decision-making using behavioral studies and magneto-encephalographic recordings in human participants. In our task, participants had to indicate the prevailing direction of five arrows presented on a screen that each pointed either left or right, and in different trials these arrows were either easy to see (high visibility) or difficult to see (low visibility). Behavioral and neural recordings show that evidence accumulation changed from a linear to a non-linear integration strategy with increasing stimulus visibility. In particular, the impact of later evidence was reduced when more evidence had been accrued, but only for highly visible information. By contrast, barely perceptible arrows contributed equally to a decision because participants needed to continue to accumulate evidence in order to make an accurate decision. These results suggest that consciousness may play a role in decision-making by biasing the accumulation of new evidence.

Land degradation and soil erosion are becoming increasingly problematic in Africa's rapidly developing urban areas, particularly in Major Port Cities. Uncontrolled expansion and human pressures are hindering planning, adaptation, and conservation efforts. To understand the extent of these issues, this study combined morphometric analysis, soil loss calculation, field monitoring, and remote sensing and GIS tools to assess soil erosion in the Metropolis of Tangier (Morocco) located at the confluence of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean at the Strait of Gibraltar. The study relied on data from 13 rain gauge stations, official reports, and remote sensing acquisitions, as well as field observations. Results showed an average soil erosion rate of 24.2 t/ha/year, equivalent to an annual soil loss of 588,051 t/year. This high rate was largely due to areas with a high erosion risk (99.8%), covering only 8.3% of the territory, which were characterized by recently burned topsoil, fallow land, and steep slopes. These areas included both uncontrolled neighbourhoods and areas for planned urban and industrial expansion, posing a threat to the landscape's sustainability and socio-economic prospects. The morphometric analysis revealed its high vulnerability to erosion and degradation, with the highest soil loss rates observed in the eastern and western regions. The study also found that flash floods caused by hydroclimatic hazards can lead to significant damage to infrastructure and equipment, particularly in western sub-basins and mountainous regions. In conclusion, the use of remote sensing and GIS technologies provided valuable insights into the physical characteristics and vulnerability of the Tangier Metropolis to land degradation and soil erosion. These findings emphasize the need for effective land management practices and conservation measures to mitigate the impacts of land degradation and soil erosion in the face of climate change. This information is crucial for decision-makers and stakeholders to develop strategies to address these pressing issues.

Over the past 50 years, containerization has both enabled and reflected the articulation of increasingly concentrated and complex global trade flows. Once close infrastructural, economic and institutional ties between seaports and port cities have been loosened, since major ports now serve producers and consumers in widely dispersed hinterlands. This process has been especially intense in North America, where west coast ports serve markets across the continent. At the same time, many of the external costs of increased port activity are incurred in port cities. Hence, questions about the changing nature of employment in port and related goods-handling sectors have become increasingly important for understanding the share of economic benefits received by port cities. This paper focuses on the effects of containerization, and related changes in transportation regulation, on port-logistics worker earnings in major United States port cities since 1975. A difference-in-differences framework is used to examine the relative annual earnings of dock, trucking and warehouse workers in major container port cities. The analysis shows that, with notable exceptions, port-logistics worker earnings in major container ports are not necessarily higher than those of comparable workers. The findings provide further insights into the strained relationship between seaports and port cities in the era of containerization and economic globalization.

In each year, Dust and Sandstorms (DSSs) triggered by cold air masses enhance particle concentration over large areas in China during spring and winter. In this paper, daily Air Pollution Index (API) of 113 major cities in China during dust events was analyzed to present the influence of DSSs on urban air quality. From 2005 to 2010, a total of 93 dust events were identified, on average there are approximately 16 dust events in a year. The number of total polluted days caused by DSSs in 113 major cities ranged from 147 to 546 each year, with maximum in 2010 and minimum in 2007. The number of total heavily polluted days caused by DSSs in major cities ranged from 14 to 78 each year, with maximum in 2010 and minimum in 2005. DSSs affected major cities most severely during March to May. Furthermore, a typical DSS observed from 26 to 31 May 2008 was described in terms of meteorological features and PM10 concentration as well as API levels of 113 major cities. This event lead to high PM10 concentration and low visibility over major cities, with maximum daily PM10 concentration of 1511 μg m−3 in Chifeng on 28 May, which was directly caused by strong wind in front of surface high pressure system passing through sand source areas in Mongolia and North China. The most severe pollution occurred on 29 May, with 38 cities polluted and 7 cities heavily polluted.

TPS 761: Health effects of pollution sources and components, Johan Friso Foyer, Floor 1, August 28, 2019, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Background/Aim: Epidemiological studies suggested that the association between short-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and mortality or morbidity was possibly due to some chemical components of PM2.5. However, findings were inconsistent for the responsible PM2.5 components. This study aimed to examine the city-specific association of short-term exposure to PM2.5 metallic components with daily respiratory mortality in 6 major South Korean cities for 2011-2015. Methods: We obtained daily 24-hour concentrations of PM2.5 mass and chemical components measured every day or every third day for 2011-2015 at single monitoring sites located in residential areas of six major South Korean cities: Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon, and Ulsan. We focused on lead, nickel, silicon, vanadium, copper, and zinc that showed the associations with mortality in previous epidemiological studies. We also computed daily respiratory death counts for the same study period and area from death certificate data. Using Generalized Addictive Models, we estimated relative risks (RRs) of daily respiratory mortality for interquartile range increases in daily PM2.5 and metallic component concentrations for 0 to 7 previous days, while controlling for a long-term time trend and meteorology. Results: PM2.5 was marginally or significantly associated with respiratory mortality in 3 out of the 6 major South Korean cities (RR=1.073-1.107). The associations for metallic components varied across the 6 cities. However, in the second largest city with large major ports, Busan, there was strong positive associations with vanadium (RR=1.102, 95% confidence interval=1.033-1.175) and nickel (1.138, 1.061-1.221). RRs for vanadium and nickel tended to be higher in the cities with higher daily concentrations. Conclusion: Our findings showed that metallic components responsible for PM2.5-associated respiratory mortality differed across major South Korean cities depending on dominant pollution sources, suggesting large health effects of oil combustion-related PM2.5 components in major port cities.

The objective of this article is to analyze port production activities and city factors in port cities. Port activities take place in port cities and the analysis provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of ports and cities. The study uses the economic production equation to analyze the production of China's ports over the time period 1995–2007. Numerous studies have examined general port growth and development on the basis of conceptual discussion. It is generally accepted that the Anyport Model and the Port Generation Model are valuable models for analysis of a port developing into a port city. However, empirical studies on port growth and factors that influence the growth rate are rather few. This study seeks to identify the city factors that are critical in determining port growth and attempts to develop an empirical model in the macroeconomic perspective. Seven major China port cities and their interfaces with their associated ports are studied here. This article attempts to analyze the port activities as economic production outputs and the city factors as inputs. The article provides an empirical analysis of port growth and policy insights on the interdependence between ports and port cities.

This article processes some related statistical data of the three major port cities in China, and analysis of the regional characteristics of the port cities, introduce and compare the commonly used prediction model for container port throughput, through concrete examples to verify the prediction precisions of regression analysis model and neural network model, combined with the regional characteristics of the three major port cities to set up the corresponding regression analysis models.

Shipping emissions are an important source of Particulate Matter (PM) associated with an estimated 400,000 premature deaths per year globally. These negative effects on air quality disproportionately impact port and coastal communities, which include many of the world’s largest cities. Despite the English Channel being the busiest shipping lane in the world, and in close proximity to many major cities, the physicochemical characterisation of shipping emissions and their contribution to air quality in the UK remains understudied.Coarse (PM10-2.5) and fine (PM2.5-0.1) PM samples were collected between 2017 and 2020 at the UK port of Southampton. This port is Europe’s leading turnaround cruise port, handling 86% of all UK cruise passenger traffic in 2023.  In addition, Southampton is one of the UK's major gateway container ports, being the UK’s leading vehicle import/export and deep-sea trade port, attracting some of the world's largest ships. Importantly, as Southampton is located centrally on the south coast of England, this falls within the North Sea Emission Control Area and therefore, ships in this area are subject to the most stringent fuel restrictions of 0.1% S, or equivalent exhaust cleaning.To determine the contribution of shipping emissions to air quality, a positive matrix factorisation source apportionment model was generated using PM elemental concentrations measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The shipping fuel combustion factor was characterised by the traditional tracers of V and Ni within the expected ratio (V/Ni = 2.6) indicative of Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) associated shipping. However, Co was identified as a novel tracer species, which may be an artefact from the catalysis of fuel desulfurisation. The final five-factor model found that shipping fuel contributed almost exclusively to fine PM, rather than coarse PM, with an average contribution of 15% fine PM at the Port. This contribution was significantly elevated between April and September, representing the peak cruise shipping season.To study the spatial spread of PM emissions, samples of tree bark were used, as airborne particles can become trapped in the bark structure. This biomonitoring approach represents a cost- and time-effective alternative to the use of multiple PM-sampling sites.  Here, samples of bark from lime (Tilia spp.), oak (Quercus spp.) and aspen (Populus tremula) trees were collected at locations across the city of Southampton. The elemental concentration of the identified shipping tracers Ni and Co in the bark samples were investigated (V was unsuitable as a tracer due to uptake by bark lichens). This showed that concentrations of Ni and Co in tree bark displayed an exponential increase with increasing proximity to the port. Our data suggest deposited concentrations 300 m from the port are 2.5x higher than 2.2 km away and 4x greater than 6 km away.Collectively the contribution of shipping emissions to port city PM, and the spread of these emissions identified in this study underline the importance of including shipping in strategies to improve air quality. These strategies would be aided by a better understanding of the key aspects of port and shipping activity which drive these emissions.

Stowaway subcultures have existed in the Tanzanian port cities of Dar es Salaam and Tanga since the mid-1970s, from which they spread to the major ports of Mombasa, Lamu and as far north as Djibouti. Any southwards spread of this subculture was blocked by civil war in Mozambique and racial apartheid in South Africa, but by the mid-1990s these obstacles had fallen away, and young Tanzanian stowaways – men in their late teens and twenties – migrated to South Africa in significant numbers, establishing communities on the fringes of all the major port cities. The presence of the Beachboys provides an extraordinary bridge between Cape Town's present and its past, and simultaneously challenges predominant representations of the city as well as understandings of how city space is used and what politics are imbued in roads, railways and vacant lots.

Molecular Biology of the Cell’s (MBoC’s) electronic table of contents is delivered to more than 10,000 subscribers, including essentially all American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) members. This means that when you publish in MBoC, more than 20,000 eyes will focus on your work! If you are a cell biologist, these eyes belong to the readers who are arguably the most relevant target audience for your research. So what are you waiting for? Submit your next manuscript to MBoC, where it will be evaluated fairly and expeditiously and will have high visibility by cell biologists when published. Because MBoC exists to serve cell biologists, we are not looking for reasons to reject manuscripts. Rather, we endeavor to guide authors toward a successful outcome (manuscript acceptance) by providing objective evaluations, constructive feedback, and clarity on which improvements are required. Isn't this how the manuscript review process should work? Furthermore, because we refuse to bow down to the journal impact factor, we do not consider in our decision process how many citations a submitted manuscript is likely to attract, and we do not publish content, such as review articles, for the sole purpose of attracting citations. Rather, basic research articles are evaluated by peer reviewers and peer editors based only on completeness and rigor, leaving subjective judgments of impact and significance to future generations. Moreover, topics for Features articles are selected solely for the enlightenment of our community, without any consideration for how many citations they will attract. Fine examples of such Features articles can be found in this special 2013 ASCB Annual Meeting edition. This collection, edited by Features editors Bill Bement, Doug Kellogg, and Keith Kozminski, includes thought-provoking essays by ASCB award winners, whose important discoveries and exceptional service have inspired us all. Also included in this issue are several Perspectives focused on careers. The Perspectives by Doyle and Vale, Sandquist et al., and Yu, along with several that we have published previously (Zatz, 2011 ; Belmont, 2013 ; Fields, 2013 ; Machin, 2013 ), provide thoughtful firsthand perspectives on diverse career paths pursued by PhD cell biologists, as well as fascinating behind-the-scenes looks at what it is actually like to hold one of these positions. This year, the ASCB's executive director Stefano Bertuzzi and I were proud to share the SPARC Innovator Award (www.sparc.arl.org/initiatives/innovator) with Mark Patterson, Bernd Pulverer, Mike Rossner, and numerous other journal publishers and editors who came together at the 2012 ASCB meeting to develop the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA; www.ascb.org/SFdeclaration.html). DORA challenges the obsession of many scientists, journals, administrators, and funding agencies with journal metrics, such as the journal impact factor, and advocates for a cultural change in which research articles are assessed based on their content, rather than on where they are published. The SPARC Innovator Award recognized the authors of DORA for “working to challenge the status quo in scholarly communication for the benefit of researchers, libraries, universities and the public.” You can add your support to the DORA movement by signing the declaration here: http://am.ascb.org/dora/index.php/sign-the-declaration. MBoC and the ASCB will be hosting a special panel discussion about DORA at the 2013 ASCB Annual Meeting. David G. Drubin, Editor-in-Chief

Morphology changes and the expansion of major port cities in the Philippines from 1990 to 2020

As world seaborne trade continues to grow, especially in view of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), there is a mounting demand for a sustainable balance among the economic, social, and environmental performance of the port cities involved. This study aims to first conduct a review of existing sustainability frameworks; second, conduct a stakeholder analysis for port city sustainable development. The case studies of two major port cities in China—Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are conducted. According to the findings, a structured framework with main categories of economic, social and environmental indicators would be recommended for port cities. Dealing with diversified stakeholders and their interests is a major challenge for policy makers to overcome but opportunities do co-exist. Policy makers of Guangzhou and Shenzhen have made progress in balancing economic, social, and environmental interests in recent years. This study has taken a step forward in the research area, with a view to provide reference to stakeholders and governments in progressing towards sustainable development in port cities.

Singapore was a major Asian port city from the late thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century. After identifying and examining the different types of historical evidence relating to Singapore's role in the region, this article explains four main analytical frameworks that have been used to organize and interpret this body of evidence: Polanyi's port of trade and the idea of a port city in general, Bennet Bronson's upstream–downstream economy, and approaches from the vantage point of strategic location and the longue durée. This article concludes by exploring the consequences the evidence and frameworks of Singapore's past have on the reconstruction and understanding of Singapore and its historical trajectory.

Surat is a major port and trading city in the northwestern state of Gujarat, India, boasting a rich multicultural background where colonial, religious, and commercial cultures coexist. Field research conducted on the historical districts of Surat indicates that the traditional residential buildings in Surat are not havelis; rather, their planar features bear a remarkable similarity to shophouses in Southeast Asia. The urban formation, spatial pattern of historical blocks, and architectural characteristics of Surat were thoroughly analyzed at three levels: macro, meso, and micro, using methods such as the examination of historical maps, reading historical literature, gathering oral histories, and conducting field investigations. The analysis of the political culture of Asian port cities reveals that Surat has been involved in cross-cultural exchanges in Asia. Through document analysis, the study delves into the formation process of Surat City and the spatial pattern of its historical blocks. To gain a comprehensive understanding, an exploration of the types of planes and profiles of the existing gara cases was carried out, along with a study of the spatial characteristics and evolution of gara. Finally, a comparative analysis between gara and the local architecture haveli was conducted, examining the factors for gara formation from multiple aspects, such as politics, religion, and policy. It can be concluded that the formation of Surat’s city and architecture was not only influenced by the spread of Asian culture at that time but also integrated with local traditional characteristics.

The diurnal variations of ground-level ozone (O3) concentrations along a gradient of three major port cities (Klang, Perai, and Pasir Gudang) in Malaysia were evaluated. Annual monitoring records (2009) of O3, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and particulate matter (PM10) were obtained. Weather-influencing parameters such as incoming solar radiation, temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed were also analyzed. Although an overwhelming majority (99.9 %) of the recorded data are below the prescribed levels in the Malaysian Ambient Air Quality Guidelines (MAAQG), a number of exceedances (0.1 %) (>100 ppb) have been recorded in Klang and Pasir Gudang. The annual hourly average concentrations of O3 were 20.3 ± 18.2, 15.4 ± 15.8, and 14.4 ± 13.1 ppb for Klang, Perai, and Pasir Gudang, respectively. The diurnal cycles of ground-level O3 concentrations and cluster analysis suggest that a unimodal peak occurs between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., and the highest O3 concentrations were observed during the first quarter of 2009 as a result of the higher rate of local photochemical production. Results of principal component analysis showed that the contributions to O3 level variation by meteorological variables (UVB, temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed) are higher at 47.7, 39.5, and 18.2 % than those of primary air pollutants (NOx, CO, SO2, PM10) at 28.9, 32.6, and 45 % for Perai, Pasir Gudang, and Klang, respectively. The exposure of the population in the three port cities to the elevated levels of ozone during January–May months validated the increasing threat and risks that ozone presents to humans. Result indicated that the concentration of O3 in the three ports was still below the maximum permissible values prescribed by the MAAQG, and expansion in shipping industries is possible in exaggerating O3 problems especially in Klang.