Singular air entrapment at vertical and horizontal supported jets: plunging jets versus hydraulic jumps

Environmental Fluid Mechanics - In plunging jets and at hydraulic jumps, large amounts of air bubbles are entrained at the impingement of the liquid jet into the receiving body. Air is entrapped...     

“We can keep the fire burning”: building action competence through environmental justice education in Uganda and Germany

The global dimensions of climate change necessitate a response that takes national differences – social, economic, geographic, and cultural – into account. Action-oriented education has a key role to play in advancing citizen engagement in a culture of sustainability. This paper describes research conducted with one such education programme, Youth Leading Environmental Change (YLEC), which operates in six countries and engages university-aged youth in discussion and practice related to global sustainability, systems thinking, and environmental justice. YLEC aims to advance four key competencies; this paper focuses on the goal of action competence, which involves acquiring knowledge, reflecting on experience in the context of one’s values, envisioning alternative futures, and acting individually and collectively to advance those alternatives. The present article examines the impacts of YLEC on environmental action competence in two of the countries involved in this research: Uganda and Germany. In-depth interviews were conducted with participants in both countries to examine the development of action competence during and after the programme. Findings suggest that outcomes differed in each country, reflective of participants’ different lived experiences. YLEC effectively built on the conditions faced in each country to accompany youth to a higher level of awareness and action. These findings have implications for environmental education programmes striving to work with multiple nations and diverse participants.     

Heavy metal ion influence on the photosynthetic growth of Rhodobacter sphaeroides

The potential of purple non-sulphur bacteria for bioremediation was assessed by investigating the ability of Rhodobacter sphaeroides strain R26.1 to grow photosynthetically in heavy metal contaminated environments. Bacterial cultures were carried out in artificially polluted media, enriched with the transition metal ions Hg2+, Cu2+, Fe2+, Ni2+, Co2+, MoO4(2-), and CrO4(2-) in millimolar concentration range. For each investigated ion the effect on growth parameters was evaluated. The analysis of concentration-effect curves revealed a differentiated response, indicating that diverse mechanisms of tolerance and/or resistance are involved. Adaptation or selection procedures were not applied, leading to assess intrinsic abilities of coping with these contaminants. The microorganism proved to be highly tolerant to heavy metal exposure, especially towards Co2+, Fe2+ and MoO4(2-). In addition Ni2+ and Co2+ were found to decrease the cellular content of light harvesting complexes. A characteristic behavior was observed with mercuric ions, which produced a significant increase of the lag-phase.     

An integrated decision-support process for adaptation planning: climate change as impetus for scenario planning in an agricultural region of Canada

The amount of information required to adapt to climate change is vast: downscaled climate projections, information on environmental impact, sectoral performance, external drivers, regional strategies, policies and practices. It can be argued that most of this information is accessible at the community/regional level, and thus, the important challenges to adaptation are not information gaps, but constraints created by fragmented planning decisions and a sector-by-sector basis for financial and human resource allocations. To strategically address this through adaptation planning, we developed and tested a place-based decision-making framework that creates an integrated platform for considering regional and global sectoral drivers in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Using available socioeconomic and biophysical information from regional authorities, alternative future scenarios were used to describe the range of socioeconomic futures and their vulnerabilities to climate change. We found that: (1) integration of diverse sets of available data (rather than narrowly focused sectoral assessments) helped identify shared common objectives (maximizing the long-term environmental, economic, social well-being within the region), (2) a high degree of congruence existed as the key drivers of change, irrespective of sector, (3) exploring the future scenarios highlighted shared regional priorities and helped identify adaptation priorities requiring more integrated regional planning.