Surface Of Globe Research Articles

Woda a energetyka w obliczu wyzwań i realizacji celów zrównoważonego rozwoju

Knowing that the water covers 72% of the globe's surface makes us treat it as an unlimited and universal good. The growth of the human population is related to the needs for food and energy production, and water is essential for this. Water is used in households in agriculture, in water transport, in electricity production and in all industries. The needs of individual economic sectors in terms of the use of water resources may differ and even be contradictory. Therefore, the role of proper management of water resources is very important. It should take into account both the needs of the population and the economy, as well as the requirements for the protection of water and related ecosystems, as well as issues related to protection against floods and drought, and each of us can take action to save the water.

Combined effects of two abiotic stressors (salinity and temperature) on a laboratory-simulated population of Daphnia longispina

Sea level rise is expected to continue apace, with a concomitant rise in temperature on the globe's surface. Natural populations genetic pool compromised by increased salinity would contribute to decrease resilience under future temperature changes. Therefore, this work aimed to understand the long-term effects of salinization on the genetic diversity of a cladoceran-simulated laboratory population under different temperature regimes. For that, six clonal lineages of the cladoceran Daphnia longispina were chosen based on their reported differential lethal sensitivity (LCx) to salinity. The chronic experiment was initiated when each individual clonal lineage reached the population’s carrying capacity, and then were exposed to the LC70,48 h for the most tolerant clonal lineage of D. longispina (corresponding to 5.91 mS/cm) to 17°C, 20°C and 23°C for at least 30 days. Salinity affected D. longispina survival and reproduction, with the disappearance of salt-tolerant earlier than salt-sensitive lineages after chronic exposures. Different sensitivity ranks were observed for clonal lineages when comparing short-term and chronic survival, most probably due to acclimation-driven population recovery. Non-optimal tested temperatures (17°C and 23°C) enhanced negative effects of salinity through loss of the most sensitive clonal lineages, suggesting a potential future synergistic effect between both abiotic factors.

World War II at Sea: A Global History

It is perhaps a truism, but ours is a “water-world,” with over 70 percent of the globe's surface dominated by ocean. In World War II at Sea, the historian Craig L. Symonds explores the pivotal role played by this “dominant” element in the twentieth century's preeminent “global” event. The volume skillfully identifies moments of connection between events distant in geography, includes revealing assessments of key personalities involved, and offers thought-provoking comparisons of the rival navies at war. Symonds is especially good at showing how, for all their differences, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy were remarkably similar in persistently seeking a “decisive” encounter. Symonds begins with a prologue recounting the discussions and disagreements of the 1930 London Naval Treaty, one of those final prewar occasions at which senior naval figures attempted to calm burgeoning international rivalries. Part 1 examines the outbreak of war in Europe, with extended treatment of the naval encounters off Norway, at Dunkirk, and at Mers-el-Kebir. In part 2 Symonds turns to the other side of the world and to the Japanese-American tensions that prefigured the attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the other Japanese naval victories that followed. In part 3, “Watershed,” Symonds—the author of a prize-wining account of the Battle of Midway—is on especially familiar ground. While he skillfully weaves a global narrative throughout, he is particularly deft in this section of the book, showing how November 1942—which saw Allied amphibious landings in both North Africa and Guadalcanal—was the key “watershed moment in the history of the Second World War” (p. 372). Part 4 focuses on Allied counterattacks in 1943, a year in which two navies central to the conflict—the Italian Regina Marina and the German Kreigsmarine—“ceased to exist” (p. 468). Beginning with the well-known story of D-day, part 5, “Reckoning,” concludes with the war's naval denouement and with the destruction of Japanese sea power in the waters around the Philippines, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima.

Video recording and light intensity change analysis during cataract surgery using an animal model.

To estimate light exposure changes during cataract surgery through intraoperative images simulated from the "patient's perspective" using an animal model. In this experimental study, a 3-mm maculostomy was performed through the posterior globe's surface of 15 porcine eyes. Eyes were fixated to a glass slide and placed over an iPad camera. Video footage of a cataract surgery was obtained through the maculostomy for each eye, keeping light exposure parameters and focus constant. Seventy-five images, five from each eye, were extracted at pre-determined points, and mean gray value (MGV), a light intensity measure, was calculated. Differences in MGV between discrete surgical steps were evaluated using multiple one-sample t-tests. This technique allowed for the capture of a full-length cataract surgery through a 3-mm maculostomy. MGV range was 14.21-132.51. Light intensity was similar across surgeries and varied greatly through each procedure. A 24% decrease in MGV between post-hydrodissection and post-phacoemulsification stages was noted (difference - 18.36; 95% CI - 30.50 to - 6.22; p value = 0.006). A 22.4% decrease in light intensity was noted after phacoemulsification in comparison to the starting image (MGV difference - 16.78; 95% CI - 32.45 to - 1.12; p value: 0.0375). Light intensity was similar at the start and end of surgery (difference - 7.15; 95% CI - 19.35 to + 5.05; p value = 0.229). Light intensity changes through different steps of cataract surgery and may be minimal after phacoemulsification completion. This video and data may serve as informational and educational tools for surgeons and patients.

Alternative and efficient extraction methods for marine-derived compounds.

Marine ecosystems cover more than 70% of the globe’s surface. These habitats are occupied by a great diversity of marine organisms that produce highly structural diverse metabolites as a defense mechanism. In the last decades, these metabolites have been extracted and isolated in order to test them in different bioassays and assess their potential to fight human diseases. Since traditional extraction techniques are both solvent- and time-consuming, this review emphasizes alternative extraction techniques, such as supercritical fluid extraction, pressurized solvent extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, ultrasound-assisted extraction, pulsed electric field-assisted extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, and extraction with switchable solvents and ionic liquids, applied in the search for marine compounds. Only studies published in the 21st century are considered.

Model and Simulation of the Brain Scalp Potential Analysis

Based on spherical head models, this paper, by employing the finite element method (FEM), analyzes the potential distribution of the brain scalp surface and attempts to work out the electroencephalography (EEG) forward problem, in hope of finding out the impact the dipole parameters has on it. According to the electromagnetism theory, this paper discusses the general resolution of EEG, it requires electric potentials of the globe's surface, and graphically displays results of computation through finite element post-processing, which tests their effectiveness. Furthermore, it analyzes the influences of dipole parameters on the potential distribution of scalp surface, such as position, direction and strength, which attempts to provide an effective method to solve EEG forward problem, based on diversified head model, and also proposes a prior information to the solution to EEG inverse problem.

Differences in Landsat-based trend analyses in drylands due to the choice of vegetation estimate

Drylands cover about 41% of the globe's surface and provide important ecosystem services, but land use and climate change exert considerable pressure on these ecosystems. Both of these drivers frequently result in gradual vegetation change and landscape-scale trend analysis based on yearly vegetation estimates can capture such changes. Such trend analyses based on high-resolution time series of satellite imagery have so far not widely been used and existing studies in drylands relied on different vegetation measures. Spectral mixture analysis (SMA) has been chosen due to its superiority to simpler vegetation estimates in quantifying vegetation cover in single-date studies, however SMA can be challenging to implement for large areas. Here, we quantify the trade-off involved when using simple vegetation estimates instead of SMA fractions for subsequent trend analyses. We calculated NDVI, SAVI and Tasseled Cap Greenness, as well as SMA green vegetation fractions for a time series of Landsat images from 1984–2005 for a study region in Crete. Linear trend analysis showed that trend coefficients and the spatial patterns of trends were similar across all vegetation estimates and the entire study region, especially for areas where vegetation changed gradually. On average, trends based on simple measures differed less than 5% from SMA-based trends with decreasing similarity in trend results from Tasseled Cap Greenness to SAVI and NDVI. Vegetation estimates differed markedly in their response to disturbance events such as fires. Trend analyses based on qualitative measures can easily be applied across very large areas and using multi-sensor time series based on high-resolution data. While the subtle differences between vegetation estimates may still be important for some applications, the robustness of trend analyses regarding the choice of vegetation estimate bears considerable promise to reconstruct fine-scale vegetation dynamics and land use histories and to assess climate change impacts on the world's drylands.

Crusta: A new virtual globe for real-time visualization of sub-meter digital topography at planetary scales

Virtual globes are becoming ubiquitous in the visualization of planetary bodies and Earth specifically. While many of the current virtual globes have proven to be quite useful for remote geologic investigation, they were never designed for the purpose of serving as virtual geologic instruments. Their shortcomings have become more obvious as earth scientists struggle to visualize recently released digital elevation models of very high spatial resolution (0.5–1 m 2/sample) and extent (>2000 km 2). We developed Crusta as an alternative virtual globe that allows users to easily visualize their custom imagery and more importantly their custom topography. Crusta represents the globe as a 30-sided polyhedron to avoid distortion of the display, in particular the singularities at the poles characteristic of other projections. This polyhedron defines 30 “base patches,” each being a four-sided region that can be subdivided to an arbitrarily fine grid on the surface of the globe to accommodate input data of arbitrary resolution, from global (BlueMarble) to local (tripod LiDAR), all in the same visualization. We designed Crusta to be dynamic with the shading of the terrain surface computed on-the-fly when a user manipulates his point-of-view. In a similarly interactive fashion the globe's surface can be exaggerated vertically. The combination of the two effects greatly improves the perception of shape. A convenient pre-processing tool based on the GDAL library facilitates importing a number of data formats into the Crusta-specific multi-scale hierarchies that enable interactive visualization on a range of platforms from laptops to immersive geowalls and caves. The main scientific user community for Crusta is earth scientists, and their needs have been driving the development.

Frontalis muscle advancement: a dynamic structure for the treatment of severe congenital eyelid ptosis.

Forty-two consecutive patients have had severe eyelid ptosis corrected by intraorbital frontalis flap advancement as a motor unit to substitute for the function of the levator muscle. This technique has avoided the need for the linking structure necessary in the standard frontalis sling approach and has improved the direction of pull to more closely mimic that of a normal levator. This simple technique includes elevation of the innervated frontalis muscle flap and the creation of a pulley near the insertion of the orbital septum at the superior orbital rim, which redirects the lid movement along the surface of the globe rather than lifting it from the globe's surface toward the brow. This type of displacement is produced because the muscle is directed posteriorly by the pulley, so that it conforms to the plane of the levator aponeurosis all the way down to the tarsal plate. In addition, to improve the remaining function of the levator muscle (if any) and to facilitate voluntary positioning of the eyelid, the levator aponeurosis is shortened by plication. Symmetry is created by intervention on the contralateral eyelid to provide symmetrical supratarsal creases.

The polarcardiograph. Terminology and normal findings

The clinical application of the Polarcadiograph has brought out the need for a comprehensive, yet concise, terminology to describe the polar coordinates of the heart vector. In the terminology proposed, precedent has been followed insofar as consistency and clarity permit. Frontal, transverse, and sagittal longitudes, designated by α, β, and γ, have been based on Einthoven's precedent for α. The corresponding latitudes are indicated by P-A, I-S, and R-L. The spatial magnitude is indicated by M, and the magnitudes in the frontal, transverse, and sagittal planes by fm, tm, and sm. By integration of the spatial magnitude tracing produced by the QRS vectors a point is found at which the area under this curve is half inscribed. The QRS vector associated with this point in time is termed IR . It is suggested that this be considered representative of the QRS vectors. Other defined vectors are R , the peak QRS vector, and T , the peak T vector. The usefulness of the Polarcardiograph derives from the fact that it provides a fresh display of the electrical events associated with the cardiac cycle. P-R, QRS, and Q-T intervals are clearly indicated by the spatial magnitude tracing and have their usual significance. However, difficulties arising out of asynchronous isoelectric portions of the electrocardiogram are avoided. In a group of 192 elderly men with completely normal electrocardiograms, the QRS interval determined from the spatial magnitude tracing was found to be between 61 and 105 msec. for 95 per cent of them. The distributions of values for the spherical polar coordinates of R and T are given. The relationship between R and T was indicated by the distribution of their magnitude ratio, MT MR , and of the subtended angle. The spatial magnitude of R , MR, was between 0.7 and 2.0 mv. in 95 per cent of the cases. (A small sample of athletes showed much larger values.) The spatial magnitude of T , MT, was between 0.19 and 0.74 mv. The directions of R covered approximately one third of the globe's surface. Most remarkable was the relatively small scatter of the directions of T , of which 95 per cent were contained in one fifteenth of the globe's surface.

A New Method in Biogeography

THE last two or three decades have witnessed great progress in the studies of ecological and geological factors of distribution of plants and animals, but the results of these studies have had little influence on biogeographers, whose work is still mainly concerned in the parcelling out of the globe's surface into regions, provinces, etc., characterized by statistical ratios of endemic forms and those common to several divisions. The methods of biogeographical work remain generally the same as in the time of Wallace, and a great proportion of literature (zoogeographical in particular) is devoted to discussions of the exact boundaries between formal divisions. When, however, two types of fauna or flora, different in their geological origin and adjusted to different ecological conditions, have to develop in close geographical proximity, there can be no linear boundary between them. Their various elements will penetrate more or less deeply into the main area occupied by the other type, this process being usually favoured in the case of one of the types by slow climatic changes in a certain direction. When such changes, for example, favour the spread of forests over a steppe area, some ‘islands' of steppe with their characteristic plant and animal population will still remain as evidence of former conditions. Usually, in calculating statistical ratios, such inclusions of alien fauna, or flora, are not distinguished from the elements of the dominating population, which is obviously incorrect.

A SEARCH FOR “ATLANTIS” WITH THE MICROSCOPE

THE revival of the idea of a former “Atlantis” has given rise in recent years to much ingenious argument. The presence of so many widely separated islands or groups of islets along the depression filled by the Atlantic Ocean has to some writers been in itself sufficient proof of a submerged continent, the islands remaining still above water as the last visible relics of the foundered land. The same conclusion has been drawn from the Atlantic soundings, which have undoubtedly shown the existence of a long ridge running down the length of the Atlantic at an average depth of some 2000 fathoms from the surface. From this ridge rise the oceanic islands of Tristan d'Acunha, Ascension, St. Paul, the Azores, and Iceland. Other writers have invoked the former presence of land over the Atlantic area, from the difficulty of otherwise accounting for the resemblance of the flora in North America and Europe during later geological times. On the other hand, it has been forcibly argued that in every case the peaks of the supposed submerged land are of volcanic origin, that not a single fragment of any truly continental rock has been detected on any of these islands, and therefore that no evidence can be adduced save of a submarine ridge on which volcanic cones have gradually been built up above the sea-level. Reasoning based on similar data furnished by the other great oceans, and also upon the evidence supplied by the stratified rocks as to the permanence of the continental areas, has led many thoughtful geologists to regard the ocean-basins as primeval depressions of the globe's surface, and consequently to reject the tempting hypothesis of a lost Atlantis.

Relations between Sun and Earth

PERMIT me to correct a slight misapprehension in Mr. Archibald's very interesting article on the Indian rainfall in NATURE, vol. xvi. p. 340. Mr. Archibald speaks as if my discovery regarding the coincidence of the increase and decrease of the Madras rainfall with the cycle of sun-spots applied to “the whole of Southern India.” Now, on the contrary, I guarded against such a generalisation by a sentence expressly inserted for that purpose. “I merely record,” I said at p. 9 of my paper, “the statistical evidence collected at a point on the globe's surface, at which, from its tropical situation and physical conditions, such a factor would exercise an influence in a well-marked manner.” I insisted on this, as the local influences at work on the rainfall suffice in several parts of Southern India, to disguise the operation of any general law. Mr. Archibald may, however, have been led into this misapprehension from an ambiguous expression in the first sheets of my paper, which were hastily struck off as I was leaving India, with a view to placing the Government in possession of the facts before my departure. In these sheets I find the words “Southern India” used once or twice as a periphrasis to avoid the too frequent repetition of the word Madras. This ambiguity was removed irom the paper as finally printed. I need hardly add that the words “the whole of Southern India” nowhere occurred. I hope shortly to show in a more carefully elaborated work, the limitations under which the results arrived at in my former paper can be safely generalised. Meanwhile Mr. Archibald's interesting communications both in NATURE, and in the Calcutta English man are worthy of careful study.